The ocean is a scary place,deep and cold . But what if I told you there was another source of watery joy that’s shallow, warm, full of handy resources, and... oh, you know about rivers already? There goes my dramatic intro. Well, I will have to tell you all about them anyway, otherwise my editor is going to yell at me.
海洋是一个骇人的地方， 它既深又冷。但是如果我告诉一件喜事那就是水资源还存在于那水汪汪的、温暖的、充满便捷资源的...哦，等等，你已经知道河流的存在了？我的前言可真戏剧化。那么，无论如何我都得向你们介绍河流，不然的话编辑会骂死我的。

Rivers became a part of Minecraft in the Adventure Update in June 2011, which totally rewrote the terrain generation code. There was water in the game before that, in the form of oceans and lakes, but rivers didn’t formally exist as a biome of their own.
河流于2011年6月的冒险更新中成为Minecraft世界的一部分，这次更新完全重写了地形生成代码。在这之前，游戏中的水是以海洋和湖泊的形式而存在的，但是河流并没有作为自己的生物群系而正式存在。

Today, it’s usually pretty easy to find a river in Minecraft. They usually generate at the borders of land biomes, but it is possible that you’ll find one cutting across a single larger biome. They’re filled with water up to sea level, which means that they can run dry in particularly mountainous terrain.
如今，在Minecraft中找到一条河通常是很容易的一件事。它们通常在陆地生物群系的边界生成，但是你可能会发现在一个大型生物群系中会有一个缺口。这个缺口被高于海平面的水充满，这意味着它们可以在干燥的特殊山地群系中流淌。

So why hang out at a river? Well, for one they’re pretty safe places to be. No one-eyed laser monsters shooting at you. Fewer hostile mobs generally, in fact – and you can always cross the river to escape if you start getting swarmed from one of the neighbouring biomes, shooting at them with a bow or crossbow as they struggle through the water. Watch out for Drowned, though, which can spawn in the water.
那为什么玩家要在河边闲逛呢？好吧，对于他们来说，这是一个非常安全的地方。不会有独眼激光怪物向你射击。事实上，敌对生物很少存在于河流附近。如果你在河流附近的生物群系被一大群怪物追赶，你可以游过河流来逃脱它们。当它们蹚水过河时，你可以用弓或弩向它们射击。注意会生成在水中的敌对生物溺尸！⚠️

Rivers are a great place to harvest a few key resources – sand, gravel, clay, seagrass, and sugarcane are all readily found in river biomes, as well as ink from squid, and salmon if you’re a fan of fishing.
河流是一个收获关键资源的绝佳场所。在河流生物群系中很容易找到沙子、沙砾、粘土、海草还有甘蔗。如果你喜欢钓鱼，你也可以得到鲑鱼并且从鱿鱼身上获得墨囊。

In chilly biomes, like Snowy Tundra, rivers can spawn frozen – with ice above the regular water, sand, gravel, and clay. In these rivers, you’ll also see rabbits and polar bears patrolling, so be a little more cautious if you don’t want to end up as a tasty treat.
在寒冷生物群系中，例如积雪的冻原，河流会冻住，沙子，沙砾以及粘土上会覆盖冰。你还会看到兔子和在巡逻的北极熊，所以如果你不想作为它们的美味猎物而结束生命的话，请小心一点。

Minecraft’s rivers meander across the landscape rather aimlessly. But rivers in the real world always begin in areas of high ground and almost always flow into the ocean (occasionally flowing underground instead).
但是现实世界中的河流总是源于高地，而且它们几乎总是流入海洋（它们偶尔也流向地下）。

While rivers only cover about 0.1% of the surface of the world, they’ve been incredibly important to human civilization, and almost all of the world’s cities are sited next to rivers. Why? Because humans need water to drink and rivers are a great source of a lot of water. We also use rivers for obtaining food, for transport, as borders, as defense, as a source of power, for irrigation, for bathing, and for, er, waste disposal.
尽管河流总面积仅占地球表面的0.1％的，但是它们对人类文明至关重要，世界上几乎所有城市都位于河流附近。这是为什么呢？因为人类需要喝水，而河流蕴含大量的水资源。我们还利用河流来获取食物，用于运输，作为边界，作为防御工事，作为动力能源，用于灌溉，沐浴以及废料垃圾处理。

The coolest fact I know about rivers concerns the world’s largest river – the Amazon – which used to flow in the opposite direction . The Amazon has been flowing for a very, very long time – since at least 65 million years ago, when South America and Africa were still the same continent – Gondwana. Around then, a mountain chain in what is now Africa produced a river that flowed westward across what is now South America and emptied into the ocean there.
我所知道的关于河流的最酷的事实与世界上最大的河流有关，那就是曾经向相反方向流动的亚马逊河。曾经，当南美洲和非洲还是冈瓦纳大陆这一块大陆时，亚马逊河这样流淌了很长很长一段的时间——至少在6500万年以前。大约在那时，在现在非洲的一条山链中产生了一条河流，这条河流现在向西流过南美洲，并流入那里的海洋。

Until plate tectonics intervened. Gondwana broke up, and the proto-Amazon flowing across South America was split in two. Half flowed westward, and half flowed eastward. But then something else happened - the rising Andes mountain chain, at some point between 23 and 5 million years ago, blocked the westward river’s journey across the continent, and the water began pooling up into a huge lake. This lake eventually eroded its way through the mountain range that had split the river in too – and suddenly the entire Amazon was flowing eastward.

直到板块构造运动的介入，冈瓦纳大陆裂开了，使得跨流南美洲的古亚马逊一分为二。但随后又发生了另一件事，那就是上升的安第斯山脉大约在23到500万年前，阻碍了亚马逊河向西穿过大陆的流淌，然后这些水开始汇聚形成了一个湖泊。最终，这个湖侵蚀了整个河流，使整个山脉也分裂了——使得整个亚马逊河突然向东流动。

Minecraft’s rivers don’t flow at all, – they’re as calm as a Minecraft.net editor who gets his article delivered on time! But if you’ve got a hankering for a flowing river, then there are plenty of mods that’ll do the trick. Now go forth and explore!
Minecraft中的河流根本不会流动，它们就像准时收到文章的Minecraft.net编辑一样平静，而后者会准时发布文章！但是，如果你渴望一条流淌着的河流，那么有很多好玩的mods供你选择。那么从现在开始继续探索Minecraft吧！

【A55778866579 译自官网 2020 年 10 月 22 日发布的 Around the Block: River；原作者 Duncan Geere】
【本文排版借助了：SPX】