> “Well, one school of thought says it was actually cool then because the sun was much weaker.” (I later learned that biologists, when they are feeling jocose, refer to this as the “Chinese restaurant problem”—because we had a **dim sun**.) “Without an atmosphere ultraviolet rays from the sun, even from a weak sun, would have tended to break apart any incipient bonds made by molecules. And yet right there”—she tapped the stromatolites—“you have organisms almost at the surface. It’s a puzzle.”
这个确实晦涩。原文后面的解释，译者没有看明白，那时太阳比较昏暗，英文是dim sun，读起来和中餐馆提供的典型中式食品【点心】的英文译音词 Dim sum 很像（是从广东话发音音译的）。所以，“中国餐馆问题”，就是“点心问题”，是dim sum问题，也就是dim sun问题。
对其他翻译错误的平息感兴趣可以搜【网易课堂】《万物简史》导读。
> “Well, one school of thought says it was actually cool then because the sun was much weaker.” (I later learned that biologists, when they are feeling jocose, refer to this as the “Chinese restaurant problem”—because we had a **dim sun**.) “Without an atmosphere ultraviolet rays from the sun, even from a weak sun, would have tended to break apart any incipient bonds made by molecules. And yet right there”—she tapped the stromatolites—“you have organisms almost at the surface. It’s a puzzle.”
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