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The British Museum bull sculpture was cast using the lost-wax technique.
大英博物馆的这尊公牛雕像使用了失蜡法来铸造。
The artist firstly models his vision in wax, then he moulds clay around it.
艺术家首先用蜡制成雕像，
And this is then put into the fire, which hardens the clay and melts the wax.
其后在外裹上一层黏土，放入火中烘烤。
The wax is then drained off and, in its place, a bronze alloy is poured into the mould, so that it takes on the exact form the wax had occupied.
待黏土变硬、蜡融 化之后，将蜡液排出，往模具中注入青铜溶液。
When it cools, the mould is broken to reveal the bronze which can then be finished-polished, inscribed or filed, to produce the final sculpture.
冷却之后再敲开模子，取出青铜，进行最后加工—拋光、镌刻或挫平。雕像最终成形。
The bull leaper is quite badly corroded.
虽然 这座雕像如今已严重腐蚀，
It's now degraded to a greenish-brown colour.
外表呈灰棕色，
It would never of course have been as sparkling as gold but, originally, it would have had a powerful, seductive gleam.
但刚制作完成时必定极为精美。 青铜当然不能像黄金一样闪闪发光，但其自有一种迷人的光泽。
It's the bronze that makes sculptures like this one gleam, and it's the bronze that lets our bull move from myth into history.
制作这尊雕像所用的青铜原料让我们的公牛从神话回到现实。
At first sight, it's surprising that it's made of bronze at all, considering that neither copper nor tin-both of which are needed-are found on Crete.
事实上，光是它用青铜制成这一点就足够让人惊讶，因为克里特并没有制造青铜所需的铜和锡，
Both came from much further afield, with copper coming from Cyprus-the very name means the 'copper island'-or from the eastern Mediterranean coast.
二者都需要从远方运来。铜有可能来自塞浦路斯它的名 字本身便有“青铜岛”之意,也可能来自地中海东岸。
But tin had an even longer journey to make, travelling along trade routes from eastern Turkey, and sometimes even from Afghanistan.
锡则走过了更 漫长的旅途，沿当时的贸易路线从土耳其东部，甚至是从阿富汗来到这里。
It was often in short supply, because those trade routes were frequently interrupted, on occasion by pirates.
这些路线上海盗猖獗，导致锡的供应常常短缺。
Here with the sculpture itself, you can actually see something of that struggle to secure the tin supplies.
事实上，从这尊雕像上，你便能看到一些为了保证供应所做的努力。
There hasn't been quite enough in the alloy, which explains why the surface is rather pock-marked, and also why the structure has been weak, so that the hind legs of the bull have broken off over time.
合金中锡的比例显然太小，因此表面上才会坑坑洼洼，合金的质地也相对脆弱，牛的后腿因此折断了。
