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Twice the Carolingian lands were divided, by the treaties of Verdun in the year 843 and by the treaty of Mersen-on-the-Meuse in the year 870. The latter treaty divided the entire Frankish Kingdom into two parts. Charles the Bold received the western half. It contained the old Roman province called Gaul where the language of the people had become thoroughly romanized. The Franks soon learned to speak this language and this accounts for the strange fact that a purely Germanic land like France should speak a Latin tongue.
卡羅林王朝的國土被兩次瓜分，一次是根據公元843年的凡爾登條約，一次是根據公元870年在繆士河畔簽訂的默森條約。后者把整個祛蘭克王國一分為二。"勇敢者"查理接管了帝國的西半部分，包括舊羅馬時代的高盧行省。在這一地區，當地居民的語言早已全盤拉丁化，這就是法蘭西這樣一個純屬日爾曼民族的國家，用的卻是拉丁語的原因。
The other grandson got the eastern part, the land which the Romans had called Germania. Those inhospitable regions had never been part of the old Empire. Augustus had tried to conquer this "far east," but his legions had been annihilated in the Teutoburg Wood in the year 9 and the people had never been influenced by the higher Roman civilisation. They spoke the popular Germanic tongue. The Teuton word for "people" was"thiot." The Christian missionaries therefore called the German language the "lingua theotisca" or the "lingua teutisca," the "popular dialect" and this word "teutisca" was changed into"Deutsch" which accounts for the name "Deutschland."
查理曼的另一個孫子獲得了帝國的東半部分，即被日爾曼族人稱為"日爾曼尼"的地方。這片蠻荒強悍的土地從來就不屬于羅馬帝國的轄區。奧古斯都大帝（渥大維）曾試圖征服這片"遙遠的東方"，不過當公元9年他的軍隊在條頓森林全軍覆沒后，他再未做過此類嘗試。該地區的居民沒有受過高度發展的羅馬文明的教化，他們使用的是普通的條頓方言。條頓語里，"人民"（people）被稱為"thiot"，基督教傳教士因此把日爾曼民族使用的語言叫做"大眾方言"或"條頓人的語言"（linguateutisca），"teutisca"一詞后來逐漸演變為"deutsch"，這就是"德意志"（deutschland）這一稱呼的來源。
As for the famous Imperial Crown, it very soon slipped off the heads of the Carolingian successors and rolled back onto the Italian plain, where it became a sort of plaything of a number of little potentates who stole the crown from each other amidst much bloodshed and wore it(with or without the permission of the Pope) until it was the turn of some more ambitious neighbour.
至于那頂眾人覬覦的帝國皇冠，它很快從卡羅林王朝繼承者的頭上，滾回到意大利平原，成為一些小君主、小權謀家手里的玩物。他們相互爭斗，通過屠殺和流血盜得皇冠，戴在頭上（不管教皇陛下允許與否），不久便為另一個更強大的鄰居奪走。
