《中英對照讀新聞》Hong Kong mulls green"eco"coffins 香港考慮使用「環保」棺材

◎ 俞智敏

They're presentable, environmentally friendly and burn faster：cardboard "eco-coffins" may just be the solution to long queues at Hong Kong's busy crematoriums, officials say.

它們外觀漂亮、對環境友善、而且燃燒速度更快：紙板製成的「環保棺材」可能正是解決香港忙碌的火葬場大排長龍難題的方法，官員表示。

Health officials want to introduce the green coffins -- made of corrugated cardboard and said to speed up the cremation process from two and a half hours to an hour -- to alleviate traffic at crematoriums.

衛生官員希望引進環保棺材─這種棺材是由瓦楞紙板製成，據說可將火化程序由原本的2.5小時減為1小時─以紓解火葬場滿檔的狀況。

"With less time required for each session, we can arrange more sessions per day to cut queuing time for cremation," said permanent secretary for Health, Welfare and Food Carrie Yau in a statement. "That in turn will help ease the demand on our public mortuary."

「每次火化所需時間減少，我們每天就可安排更多火化時段，縮短等候火化的時間，」衛生福利及食物局常任秘書長尤曾家麗在聲明中指出。「如此一來，又可紓解民眾對殮葬服務的需求。」

Cremating the dead is more common and affordable than burials in land-scarce Hong Kong.

在地少人多的香港，火葬遠較土葬更常見，費用也較負擔得起。

Although the cardboard coffins are more efficient and are said to produce less toxic gas during combustion, they aren't likely to be popular in Hong Kong, where skimping on the traditional Chinese rituals of sending the dead away is seen as a sign of disrespect.

雖然紙板棺材效率較高，火化過程產生的有毒氣體據說也較少，不過這種棺材在香港不太可能大受歡迎，因為省略中國傳統喪葬儀式會被視為不尊重死者。

新聞辭典

queue：名詞，指人或車的行列、長隊，如︰The queue extended all the way to the street corner.（排隊的人龍一直排到了街角。）插隊為jump the queue（主要為英式英語），如︰Don't jumpt the queue！╱No queue-jumping！（不要插隊！）

alleviate：減輕、緩和，如︰Her sympathy alleviated his distress.（她的同情和緩了他的沮喪。）

crematorium：火葬場、垃圾焚化場，複數可加s或用crematoria。火化遺體的動詞為cremate，名詞為cremation，如︰His father's cremation was a sad affair.（他父親的火化儀式令人感傷。）