兔子與籃球有什麼共同點?“瘋狂三月”

Before March fades too far from our meMories, we wanted to follow up on a back story that appeared recently in the versions of our Morning Briefing in Asia and Europe.

在三月從我們的記憶裏淡去之前，我們想對近期出現在我們早報亞洲版和歐洲版中的一篇幕後故事進行後續報道。

In it, we explained to our internationAl audience the history of the N.C.A.A. basketball tournament, which acquired the nickname “March Madness” in the 1980s.

在那篇幕後故事中，我們對國際讀者解釋了NCAA（國家大學體育協會）籃球聯賽的歷史，該聯賽在1980年代獲得了“瘋狂三月”的稱號。

As it relates to basketball, March Madness can be traced to 1939, when it was used by the Illinois High School Association to describe a statewide high-school basketball tournament: “A little March madness may complement and contribute to sanity and help keep society on an even keel.”

“瘋狂三月”與籃球的歷史可追溯至1939年，當時伊利諾伊州高中聯盟用它來描述一場全州範圍內的高中籃球聯賽：“一點點的三月瘋狂可能會補充、促進人們保持頭腦清醒，讓社會保持在一個平衡的水平上。”

One of our erudite readers, however, pointed out that the link between March and madness is much older: The old English phrase “mad as a March hare” stretches back to the 1500s.

然而，我們一位最爲博學之一的讀者指出，三月與瘋狂之間的關係要回溯到更爲久遠以前：古老的英語短語“mad as a March hare”（瘋得像只三月的野兔）可追溯至1500年代。

The idiom, used to describe someone who is crazy or irrational, derives its meaning from the behavior of hares at the beginning of breeding season.

這個諺語被用來描述瘋狂、不理性的人，意思源自於野兔在交配季節開始時的行爲。

In Lewis Carroll’s “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” from 1865, the March Hare famously attends the Mad Hatter’s tea party, before which Alice thinks: “The March Hare will be much the most interesting, and perhaps as this is May, it won’t be raving mad — at least not so mad as it was in March.”

在劉易斯·卡羅爾(Lewis Carroll)1865年的《愛麗絲漫遊奇境記》(Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland)中，三月野兔參加了瘋帽子的茶會，這一事件十分著名，在這之前，愛麗絲想道：“三月野兔會是最有趣的，可能因爲現在是五月，它不會瘋狂到極點——至少不會像三月那麼瘋狂。”