Vampire
吸血鬼之谜

A vampire is a mythical being who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures. In folkloric tales, undead vampires often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighborhoods they inhabited when they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 1800s.
吸血鬼是一种以吸食生物精华(通常是血液)为生的神秘生物。在民间故事里，拥有不死之身的吸血鬼常常回到生前居住的地方，看望至亲至爱，还会给当地制造麻烦或伤亡。吸血鬼常常披着斗篷，身体浮肿，脸色红润甚至暗红，而19世纪初流传至今的吸血鬼则是脸色苍白、瘦骨嶙峋，两者的形象大相径庭。

In modern times, however, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity. Early folkloric belief in vampires has been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalize this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death.
然而到了现代社会，人们认为吸血鬼只是虚构的事物，本身并不存在。早期那些关于吸血鬼的民间传说，其实是当时的人们不了解尸体的分解过程。工业时代以前的人们为了解释死亡的神秘现象，将死亡合理化，才捏造了吸血鬼的存在。

The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of The Vampyre by John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. However, it is Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula which is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, and television shows.
现代小说中吸血鬼精明老成、充满魅力的形象源于约翰·波里杜利1819年发表的小说《吸血鬼》，该小说获得极大成功，可以说是19世纪初最有影响力的吸血鬼作品。但是真正为现代吸血鬼传说奠基的是1897年布拉姆·斯托克创作的具有典型意义的吸血鬼小说《德古拉》。该小说成功开创了吸血鬼这一特色体裁，到21世纪的今天仍然流行在各类书籍、电影和电视节目中。