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History, which seemed to be a cut-and-dried matter of memorizing "facts," now becomes a matter of choosing one good interpretation from among many. Historical truth becomes a matter of personal preference.
历史在过去似乎被认为只是普通地记忆“事实”，而现在却成为要从许多解释中挑选出一个理想解释的过程。历史真相变成了一桩由个人喜好所决定的事情。
This position is hardly satisfying. They cannot help but feel that two diametrically opposed points of view about an event cannot both be right; yet they lack the ability to decide between them.
这种看法几乎无法令人满意。学生们禁不住会觉得，就同一个历史事件的两种截然不同的观点不可能都正确；然而，他们缺乏从中作出取舍的能力。
To understand why historians disagree, students must consider a problem they have more or less taken for granted. They must ask themselves what history really is.
要理解历史学家们为什么意见迥异，学生们必须考虑一个他们或多或少视为理所当然的问题。他们必须问自己历史究竟是什么。
In its broadest sense, history denotes the whole of the human past. More restricted is the notion that history is the recorded past, that is, that part of human life which has left some sort of record such as folk tales, artifacts, or written documents. Finally, history may be defined as that which historians write about the past. Of course the three meanings are related. Historians must base their accounts on the remains of the past, left by people. Obviously they cannot know everything for the simple reason that not every event, every happening, was fully and completely recorded. Therefore the historian can only approximate history at best. No one can ever claim to have concluded the quest.
从广义来说，历史是指人类过去的全部。比较狭义的概念是，历史是被记录下来的过去，即留下了某种记录的人类生活的一部分，如民间故事、手工制品或有文字记载的文献等。最后，历史也可以被定义为历史学家们所撰写的有关过去的资料。当然，三种意思是相互关联的。历史学家们必须将他们对历史的叙述建立在前人的遗留物上。很显然，他们不可能对过去一切都了解得非常清楚，原因很简单，即并非过去的每一件大小事情都有详细全面的记录。因此，历史学家们至多只能接近历史。还没有哪个人敢说自己已完成了这项探索。
But this does not say enough. If historians cannot know everything because not everything was recorded, neither do they use all the records that are available to them.
但这种说法还不全面。如果说历史学家是因为记载不全面而不能对历史做全面了解的话，他们也没能有效地利用他们所能得到的所有记录。
