评论
打印
But only 700 pupils appeared over the following days, and numbers haven’t increased in the months since.
但在接下来的几天里，只有700名学生出现，此后的几个月里，学生人数一直没有增加。
By December, so many of the wooden benches and desks were sitting empty that the school started selling them off as scrap material.
到了12月，很多木凳和木桌都空着，于是学校开始把它们当作废料卖掉。
Two-thirds of the children missing from the classrooms are adolescent boys.
三分之二的教室失踪儿童是青春期男孩。
“They are the only wage earners of their families now,” says head teacher Biplab Kumar Saha.
班主任比普拉·库马尔·萨哈说：“他们现在是家里唯一挣钱的人。”
Although it’s impossible to know exactly how many children in Bangladesh have started working since the start of the pandemic,
虽然无法确切知道自疫情爆发以来孟加拉国有多少孩子开始工作，
attendance figures for 20 schools across the country collated by TIME reveal that boys accounted for at least 59% of dropouts from March 2020 to November 2021,
但《时代》杂志整理的全国20所学校的出勤率数据显示，从2020年3月到2021年11月，男孩辍学人数至少占辍总人数的59%，
a gender imbalance confirmed by data from the nonprofit organization BRAC.
非盈利组织BRAC的数据证实了这一性别失衡的现象。
The growing crisis stirred Bangladeshi authorities to ratify the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Convention 138 on child labor in March.
日益严重的危机促使孟加拉国当局于3月份批准了国际劳工组织（ILO）关于童工的第138号公约。
They declared that no child under the age of 14 should be employed in any industry, and promised to eradicate child labor in its entirety over the next three years.
他们宣布，任何行业都不应雇用14岁以下的儿童，并承诺在未来三年内彻底根除童工现象。
But as household incomes across the country plunged by an average of 23% during the first 18 months of the pandemic, many parents say they’re out of alternatives:
但在疫情爆发的前18个月，全国家庭收入平均下降23%，许多家长表示他们别无选择：
unless their son goes to work, his siblings won’t be able to eat. That wasn’t the case two years ago.
除非他们的儿子去工作，否则他的兄弟姐妹将没有饭吃。两年前并不是这样的。
When the schools first shut, Rafi’s parents were concerned about their sons’ education—Rafi’s younger brother is just 8—and joined with other neighborhood families to find a private tutor to teach a dozen of the local children for an hour every day.
学校刚关闭时，拉菲的父母很担心儿子的教育问题，（拉菲的弟弟才8岁，）他们和附近的其他家庭一起找了一位家教，每天教十几个当地孩子一个小时。
But as weeks passed and Bangladesh remained in lockdown, the family’s financial situation quickly deteriorated.
但几周过去了，孟加拉国仍然处于封锁状态，这家人的经济状况迅速恶化。
By the summer of 2020, Rekha’s husband Tajul, a successful entrepreneur, had lost his clothing business and started working two jobs—manning a small roadside stall by day, before patrolling a market as a security guard through the night.
瑞卡的丈夫塔朱尔(Tajul)曾是一位成功的企业家，但2020年夏天，他的服装生意失败，于是他开始做两份工作，白天在路边的一个小摊位上摆摊，晚上在市场上巡逻当保安。
The hours were long, and his income still wasn’t enough to pay back microcredit loans and cover rent.
工作时间很长，但他的收入仍然不足以偿还小额贷款和支付租金。
Debt collectors began showing up at their door, threatening Rekha, who suffers from abscesses and diabetes and is too sick to work.
收债人找到他家，威胁患有脓肿和糖尿病的瑞卡，她病得太重，无法工作。
In desperation, Tajul turned to Rafi.
绝望之下，塔朱尔转向拉菲。
“It wasn’t the plan, but the situation became really bad,” Rekha recalls.
瑞卡回忆道:“这并不在计划之内，但情况真的变得很糟糕。”
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
关注微信公众号【可可双语精读】，获取更多优质详细讲解内容。
