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.
卡罗林王朝的国土被两次瓜分，一次是根据公元843年的凡尔登条约，一次是根据公元870年在缪士河畔签订的默森条约。后者把整个祛兰克王国一分为二。"勇敢者"查理接管了帝国的西半部分，包括旧罗马时代的高卢行省。在这一地区，当地居民的语言早已全盘拉丁化，这就是法兰西这样一个纯属日尔曼民族的国家，用的却是拉丁语的原因。
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."
查理曼的另一个孙子获得了帝国的东半部分，即被日尔曼族人称为"日尔曼尼"的地方。这片蛮荒强悍的土地从来就不属于罗马帝国的辖区。奥古斯都大帝（渥大维）曾试图征服这片"遥远的东方"，不过当公元9年他的军队在条顿森林全军覆没后，他再未做过此类尝试。该地区的居民没有受过高度发展的罗马文明的教化，他们使用的是普通的条顿方言。条顿语里，"人民"（people）被称为"thiot"，基督教传教士因此把日尔曼民族使用的语言叫做"大众方言"或"条顿人的语言"（linguateutisca），"teutisca"一词后来逐渐演变为"deutsch"，这就是"德意志"（deutschland）这一称呼的来源。
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.
至于那顶众人觊觎的帝国皇冠，它很快从卡罗林王朝继承者的头上，滚回到意大利平原，成为一些小君主、小权谋家手里的玩物。他们相互争斗，通过屠杀和流血盗得皇冠，戴在头上（不管教皇陛下允许与否），不久便为另一个更强大的邻居夺走。
