With the 10th National Memorial Day for victims of the Nanjing Massacre upcoming, on 13 December, so annual attention turns to the atrocities in Nanjing of 1937, this year being marked by the release of newly-discovered evidence thereof.
12 月 13 日，第十个南京大屠杀死难者国家公祭日即将到来，一年一度的关注焦点转向 1937 年南京大屠杀，今年的标志是新发现的相关证据的公布。
The historical materials in question include a slideshow made of photos of the headquarters of the International Committee of the Nanjing Safety Zone and a postcard mailed by Japanese soldiers from Nanjing on New Year’s Day, 1938.
相关史料包括由南京安全区国际委员会总部照片组成的幻灯片以及1938年元旦日本士兵从南京寄出的明信片。
As the Yangtze Evening News reported yesterday, 29 November, the colour photos of the headquarters in glass-slide format are being revealed for the first time.
据扬子晚报昨天11月29日报道，总部玻璃幻灯片形式的彩色照片首次曝光。
The image in the slide, by its very nature, is semi-transparent, and appears to be have been produced using the Autochrome Lumière colour photography process
幻灯片中的图像本质上是半透明的，似乎是使用 Autochrome Lumière 彩色摄影流程制作的
As per the Preservation Self-Assessment Program at the University of Illinois, “An autochrome is a colour transparency supported on a glass plate with an image composed of an irregular ‘screen’ of dyed starch grains”.
根据伊利诺伊大学的保存自我评估计划，“自变色是一种玻璃板上支持的彩色透明材料，其图像由染色淀粉粒的不规则‘屏幕’组成”。
The grains utilised for the autochrome process were red-orange, blue-violet and green; the very same colours present in the photo which has emerged of the Safety Zone headquarters. The dyes in the image are also distorted, a common phenomenon found in autochrome images.
用于自镀铬工艺的颗粒为红橙色、蓝紫色和绿色；与安全区总部照片中的颜色完全相同。图像中的染料也会扭曲，这是自动彩色图像中常见的现象。
While it was a very popular format, thought of as portraying “the colour of dreams”, by the late 1930s autochrome was falling out of favour, as subtractive colour film took hold.
虽然它是一种非常流行的格式，被认为描绘了“梦想的颜色”，但到了 20 世纪 30 年代末，随着减色胶片的流行，Autochrome 逐渐失宠。
The question is now therefore why the autochrome format was chosen to record these images of the Nanjing Massacre. That it was likely all that was available at the time may also be turning out to be the very reason the images have survived to this day.
因此，现在的问题是为什么选择 autochrome 格式来记录这些南京大屠杀的图像。很可能当时所有可用的东西也可能是这些图像至今幸存的原因。
Lu Yanming has a PhD in history from Nanjing University and is a researcher at the Red Culture Institute of Changzhou University. While scholars are yet to verify, Lu believes it is possible that George Fitch used this slide format to accompany his post-war lectures in the USA on the Massacre, and that the format may well have helped in evading searches by the Japanese army.
卢彦明，南京大学历史学博士，常州大学红色文化研究所研究员。虽然学者们尚未证实，但卢认为乔治·菲奇有可能使用这种幻灯片格式来配合他在美国进行的关于大屠杀的战后演讲，并且这种格式很可能有助于逃避日本军队的搜查。
