Daylight Savings Time

Did you set your clock forward for daylight savings time?

你调时钟了吗？为了夏令时。

What? Why do we have to do that?

什么？为什么要调？

Well, at the start of the spring we usually have more daylight in the mornings and less in the afternoon. This is basically due to our position on the planet and the rotation of the earth. In any case, to take better advantage of the daylight available, we compensate by moving our clocks forward one hour.

嗯，春天开始的时候，早上天亮得早，下午天黑得也早。这主要是因为我们在地球上的位置和地球自转造成的。总之，为了更好地利用白天时间，我们把时钟拨快一小时。

I see. That’s convenient! I never understood things like this, such as GMT. I never know what time zone we are in or when to change my clock!

明白了。真方便！我从来搞不懂这些，比如GMT。我总不知道自己在哪个时区，也不知道什么时候该调表！

That just stands for Greenwich Mean Time. Here in California, we are in Pacific Standard Time, that is eight time zones west of Greenwich. Remember when we were in Beijing? Well, then we were in China Standard Time, and that’s eight time zones east of Greenwich!

那是格林威治标准时间。在加州，我们用的是太平洋标准时间，比格林威治晚八个时区。还记得我们在北京的时候吗？那是中国标准时间，比格林威治早八个时区！

That’s why it was so weird traveling from Beijing to LA! Because of the huge time difference, even though we left Beijing at noon and flew for more than eight hours, we still arrived in LA the same day at noon! It’s like we went back in time!

怪不得从北京飞洛杉矶那么奇怪！因为有时差，虽然我们中午离开北京，飞了八个多小时，结果到洛杉矶还是同一天的中午！就像时光倒流了一样！