每日英译中，来自每日翻译

· 英译中

原文：

And then we shrink. Humanity will not reach a plateau and then stabilize. It will begin an unprecedented decline.

Because most demographers look ahead only to 2100, there is no consensus on exactly how quickly populations will fall after that. Over the past 100 years, the global population quadrupled, from two billion to eight billion. As long as life continues as it has — with people choosing smaller family sizes, as is now common in most of the world — then in the 22nd or 23rd century, our decline could be just as steep as our rise.

Most people now live in countries where two or fewer children are born for every two adults. If all people in the United States today lived through their reproductive years and had babies at an average pace, then it would add up to about 1.66 births per woman. In Europe, that number is 1.5; in East Asia, 1.2; in Latin America, 1.9. Any worldwide average of fewer than two children per two adults means our population shrinks and in the long run each new generation is smaller than the one before. If the world’s fertility rate were the same as in the United States today, then the global population would fall from a peak of around 10 billion to less than two billion about 300 years later, over perhaps 10 generations. And if family sizes remained small, we would continue declining.

译文：

达峰后，全球人口将逐渐减少，不会在经过一段时期的减少后稳定下来，而是走上前所未有的下坡路。

因为大多数人口学家的展望仅到2100年，所以对那之后人口究竟会以多大速度下降尚无共识。全球人口在过去100年里翻了两番，从20亿增长到80亿。只要人类像现在这样生活下去的话——现在世界上大多数地方的人选择更小的家庭规模，那么到下个世纪或下下个世纪时，人类衰退的速度可能会与我们崛起的速度一样快。

世界上的大多数人现在生活在每两个成年人生育两个或不足两个孩子的国家。如果美国现在的所有人都活过生育年龄，并以平均速度生育的话，那意味着每名女性生育约1.66个孩子。这个数字在欧洲是1.5，在东亚是1.2，在拉丁美洲是1.9。全球每两个成年人平均生的孩子少于两个，那就意味着世界人口将减少，从长远来看，每代人的数量将少于上代人。如果全世界与美国今天的生育率相同的话，那么全球人口将在大约300年后，也就是约十代人的时间里，从100亿左右的峰值降到少于20亿。如果家庭保持小规模的话，全球人口将继续下降。