The
smells of ordinary life, from traditional pubs to old books, are part
of our culture and heritage – and many of them are in danger of being
lost.
“平常生活的气味、传统酒馆的气味、老旧书籍的味道...都是我们文化与传统的一部分——如今许多这样的味道都濒临灭绝。”Imagine an old leather-bound book just pulled out from a wooden shelf.
Its yellowed pages release dust as they open. Even before you begin to
read the book, the unique smell of it fills your nose.想象一下，你将一本老旧的皮革封面的书从木质书架上抽出来。翻开书，泛黄的书页散发着尘土的味道。即使还没有开始阅读，书中独特的味道也萦绕在你的鼻尖。
This familiar scent is not only a simple pleasure for people who like to
peruse libraries and bookshops. These smells have a cultural heritage
value, and they are at risk of being lost.
这种熟悉的味道对于一些热爱去图书馆和书店人来说，不仅仅是一个简单的快乐，还是一种文化传统的价值观。然而，这些味道也即将消失在世界上。For every old book that falls
apart, is thrown away or kept locked behind a temperature-controlled
curatorial door, these scents become harder to experience. It is a
problem that is far from unique to books – from perfumeries and pubs to
entire cities, the background scents of our lives are changing all the
time.
如果一本旧书散架了，人们通常会将其丢弃，或锁在恒温仓库中。而这些味道也将永远退出人们的生活。这个问题远不止在书籍上发生——从香水，到小酒馆，到整座城市，我们生活中的气味一直在改变。
curatorial adj. 馆长的；管理者的；评议员的
For Cecilia Bembibre, a researcher at the UCL Institute for Sustainable
Heritage, the smell of old books is important. She is developing
different techniques to recover “extinct” scents from the past and to
preserve those around today for the future.西西莉亚·本比贝是伦敦大学学院可持续遗产研究所的一名研究人员。她认为，旧书的气味十分重要。她正在研发不同的技术，以复原过去“已经灭绝”的气味，并为未来保存现下的一些气味。It’s a facet of heritage that is often, quite literally, overlooked.
“The proposals made by cultural heritage spaces such as galleries,
museums, historic houses, are mostly focused on the sight,” says
Bembibre. “The engagement they propose tends to be visual. [With] some
exceptions, the stimulation of senses, like the objects that can be
touched or smelled, is reserved for children.”
作为文化遗产的一个方面，气味往往被人们所忽视。“一般正式申请的文化遗产往往是画廊、博物馆、古屋等，它们多数都是看得见的事物，”本比贝说道，“人们申请的遗产都是可以看到的事物，但其他感官能捕捉到的事物是个例外，比如能摸到或闻到的东西。这些需要为了孩子们而留存下来。”
Bembibre is trying to rectify that neglect of scent. “I wanted to
address an issue that has been researched quite little – that has to do
with smells as the olfactory heritage of humanity.”本比贝想让人们重拾对气味的重视。“我想研究一个很少被人研究到的课题——与味道有关，也是人类嗅觉方面的遗产。”But
how do you capture something as intangible as a historical scent? One
method involves exposing a polymer fibre to the odour, so that the
smell-causing chemical compounds in the air can stick to it. Then
Bembibre analyses the sample in the laboratory, dissolving the compounds
stuck to the fibre, separating them and identifying them. The resulting
list of chemicals is effectively a recipe for the scent.不过，怎样才能捕捉到古老的气味这种看不见、摸不着的东西呢？有一个方法可以做到。这种方法需要将一种高分子聚合物纤维暴露在某种气味之中，纤维因而捕捉到该气味所散发出的化学物质。然后，本比贝在实验室中分析纤维样本，并将纤维中的化合物分解、扩散并识别出来。识别后的一系列化学成分就是该气味的“配方”了。
Another method separates and identifies the compounds directly from the
gas sample – an approach commonly used in the perfume, food and
beverages industry, as it allows volatile odour-active compounds to be
identified. 另外一种可以分离并识别气体中复合物的方法经常用在香水、食物和饮料行业中。这种方法能够识别气味浓烈且容易挥发的气体。volatile adj. 挥发性的；不稳定的；反复无常的A third way is to use the nose itself, either by asking
panels of people to describe certain smells, or by asking expert
“noses”, who may be perfumers or scent designers.
第三种方法就要用到鼻子了。要么让一群人先闻气味，再描述出来，要么就求助专业“鼻子”，也就是香水或某种味道的设计师。“We characterise the smell from the human point of view,” adds Bembibre.
“This is important because if we want to preserve it for the future, it
depends on many factors. Not only the chemical composition but also our
experience.”“我们从人的角度来定义一种气味，”本比贝补充道，“这很重要，因为如果我们想一直将这种气味保存下去，就要考虑到很多因素。不仅要考虑其中的化学成分，还要考虑我们自身对这种气味的经历。”
Bembibre has chemically extracted the smells of old leather gloves,
ancient books and mould, among other things. She has reinterpreted the
smells of a 1750 potpourri house recipe and of the old books housed in
St Paul’s cathedral. To do this, she reinterprets them from the smell’s
chemical compounds until reaching the same scent.本比贝已经将许多气味的化学成分成功提取出来，包括旧皮革手套、古书和模具等。她也将一座1750年的老房子和圣保罗大教堂中的书籍所存有的各种气味提取了出来。为了达到这一目的，她将气味中的化学物质进行调整，直到气味与原物一模一样为止。potpourri n. 百花香（房间熏香用的干花和叶子的混合物）；杂烩；集锦In 2003, UNESCO adopted a convention to safeguard intangible cultural heritage,
which includes social practices, oral traditions and performing arts.
Where, though, were the scents? For centuries there have been cultural
practices where smell plays a vital role, like the Spanish Fiesta of the patios in Cordova or the Holy Week processions in Popayán, Colombia. In 2018, the skills related to perfumery in Pays de Grasse, France, were included on the intangible heritage list. No scents themselves, however, are listed.2003年，联合国教科文组织举办了一场会议，目的是保护包括社会行为，语言传统和行为艺术在内的非物质文化遗产。但是，为什么这其中没有气味呢？几百年来，气味都在文化行为中扮演者重要的角色，例如哥多华城市露台上举办的西班牙嘉年华，或者哥伦比亚波帕扬的圣周（复活节前一周）队列等。2018年，法国格拉斯地区的香水技艺被列入非物质文化遗产名录。但是任何气味本身都没有被列入其中。据说，你可以将所爱之人的气味做成香水，让ta永远陪伴在你身边。
Other countries have also made efforts to recognise the value of
their odours. In 2001, Japan’s environment minister classified the country’s top 100 best-smelling spots,
which included both natural and cultural sites. Later, in 2016, the Koç
University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations in Istanbul
opened the exhibition “Scents and the City” to explore 4,000 years of civilisation through its smells.其他国家也采取行动，承认本国内的气味。2001年，日本环保部长列出本国100个最好闻的地点，其中包括自然地点和文化地点。之后，2016年，伊斯坦布尔科萨大学安纳托利亚文明研究中心举办了“气味与城市”展览，通过气味探索这个拥有4000年历史的文明。“There is a way of inscribing these things into world heritage lists,
in the same way as a world heritage site managed by Unesco. So it is
part of a whole intangible heritage world,” says Katy Lithgow, an
independent specialist in cultural heritage conservation and former head
of conservators for the UK’s National Trust.“对于气味的描述应该被列入世界遗产名录中，就像联合国教科文组织那样。这样，气味就可以成为世界非物质遗产的一部分了”，凯蒂·利思戈说道。利思戈是文化遗产保护方面的独立专家，也是英国国民托管组织保护团队的前负责人。
But, as with French perfumery culture, it is rare for a scent to be
the focus of conservation in its own right. In some cases, a conservator
might only be concerned with a scent when it is a warning sign that
something is deteriorating – the smell of rotting organic matter or
decay.不过，正如法国香水文化那样，让气味本身成为保护的重点是很罕见的事情。有些时候，保护者只会关注那些能够警示事情恶化的气味——例如有机物质腐烂的味道。Despite
the overall neglect of odours as heritage, some olfactory enthusiasts
are working to preserve meaningful everyday scents before they
disappear. Kate McLean, the creator of Sensory Maps,
is a researcher and visual artist who works “at the intersection of
human-perceived smellscapes, cartography and the communication of
‘eye-invisible’ sensed data”.即使人们忽视了对气味的遗产保护，许多嗅觉爱好者仍在积极行动，以保护日常具有意义的气味，防止他们消失。凯特·麦克林是“感知地图”的创始人，也是一名研究者、视觉艺术家。她在“人类嗅觉领域、感知地图领域和'视觉传达'数据等领域”工作。cartography n. 地图制作；制图；制图学
“气味博物馆”
Her goal is to create “smellmaps”. These maps aren’t limited to
geographically distributed smells. They can also include changes over
time, comparing the morning and afternoon odours of the streets in
Shanghai, or focus solely on the summer smells of Le Marais, Paris.
McLean also considers smells of the past, creating a smellmap of the famously pungent Widnes, Lancashire, an old manufacturing town.她的目标是创造一个“嗅觉地图”。该地图不仅仅局限于嗅觉的地理分布，还将包括嗅觉的演化，例如上海街道从早到晚的气味变化。地图也能只关注巴黎玛黑区夏天的气味。麦克林也研究过去的气味，并为兰开夏郡威德尼斯这个旧日制造业重镇的刺鼻味道制作气味地图。pungent adj, 辛辣的；刺激性的；刺鼻的In the 19th and early 20th Centuries, Widnes was home to soap
factories and a thriving chemical manufacturing industry. Today, those
factories are gone and the contemporary smellscape is quite different.
McLean wanted to explore Widnes’ “smelly history” as well as its
contemporary smellscape. McLean creates maps of towns like Widnes
overlaid with data on what scents can be perceived in a specific area.
She also uses “smellwalks”, graphic design and smell generation and
diffusion to explore the complexity of aromatic landscapes and the way
we relate to them.19世纪到20世纪早期，威德尼斯充斥着香皂工厂和蓬勃发展的化学物质制造厂。如今，这些工厂早已不在，该地的气味也大不相同。麦克林想要探索威德尼斯的“气味历史”及其现今的气味状况。所以，她利用数据分析威德尼斯这样的地区能够感知到何种气味。她也使用“气味路线”来进行图表设计，气味创造与扩散。这样她能够分析出气味分布集群并研究出人类如何将气味联系起来。aromatic adj. 芳香的；芳香族的；芬芳的
市面上出现了模仿自然、天气和物品的香水：“气味图书馆”
But
why does a town’s smell matter? What valuable information is written
into the odour of a city, street or building? It runs a lot deeper than
just preserving a scent for its novelty, says Alex Rhys-Taylor of
Goldsmiths University, who specialises in the multisensory experience of
urban space. “I would say, through my research, that you can learn a
lot about a city’s economy, a lot about its culture, through the sense
of smell.”不过，为什么一个小镇的气味如此重要呢？一座城市、一条街道、一幢大楼的气味能够传达哪些有价值的信息？相比于仅为新鲜感而保存气味，这其中还有更深的奥秘。伦敦大学金史密斯学院的艾利克斯·莱斯-泰勒专攻城市多种感知经验的的研究。他说：“通过研究，我认为人们可以从气味中学到很多，如该城市的经济和文化等。”Take London, for example. A deep breath of not-so-fresh air in a
typical Central London street might bring you a waft of an Indian curry
restaurant, an English pub and traffic exhaust fumes. “The smells and
taste in London give you a strong sense of place, a sense of locality,
and part of that is that contemporary cities reveal particular paths of
migration,” says Rhys-Taylor. “It generally has global roots [and] that
has to do with the city’s colonial history.”拿伦敦来举个例子。在伦敦中心的街道深吸一口（不那么新鲜的）空气，你会闻到一缕印度餐厅飘来的咖喱味道，一间英格兰小酒馆的味道，以及交通的废气。“伦敦的气味与味道有一种该地区特有的感觉，一种位置的观念。有一部分原因是，当代城市有特殊的移民痕迹，”莱斯·泰勒说道，“这其中有全球的根源，也与伦敦的殖民历史有关。”
But these particular smells, while omnipresent to those living in the
city, will not be around forever. “What we increasingly see is the
arrival of a transnational aromascape or flavourscape,” says
Rhys-Taylor. “It is pretty much the same in every global city now: smell
of pulled pork, flat whites, roasting coffee beans is an increasing
one, microbreweries. There is a global constellation of transnational
aromas and flavours associated with a transnational class, people that
move around from city to city.”但是，虽然这些特殊的气味对于城市居民来说无所不在，但它们不会一直留存。“我们愈加看到的现象是，气味开始跨越国界存在，”莱斯-泰勒说道，“现在任何一个国际大都市的味道都很相似了：手撕猪肉，馥芮白（星巴克的一种咖啡）和烘咖啡豆的气味逐渐增多，还有小啤酒厂的味道。城市汇聚着全球各地的味道，而味道与不同国家的阶层紧密相关，昭示着在城市间奔波的人们。”
This evolution of smells is the motivation for the work of UCL’s
Cecilia Bembibre. Cities continuously lose their characteristic odours.
Yet, even as scents are disappearing, developing new ones is becoming
crucial to their conservation.气味的演变是西西莉亚·本比贝的工作动力。城市不断地逝去其标志性气味，然而，旧的气味在消失，新气味的形成使得保护旧气味变得尤为重要。
来源：BBC
编译：Veronica