咖啡最早发现于今天的东非埃塞俄比亚。流行的说法是一个名叫Kaldi的牧羊人发现山羊吃了一种浆果后行动敏捷。出于好奇，Kaldi自己也尝试着吃了一点。他发现这些浆果使他精神焕发。这种使人体能充沛的浆果很快在这一地区变得人人皆知。
Coffee was first discovered in Eastern Africa in an area we know today as Ethiopia. A popular legend refers to a goat herder by the name of Kaldi, who observed his goats acting unusually frisky after eating berries from a bush. Curious about this phenomena, Kaldi tried eating the berries himself. He found that these berries gave him a renewed energy. The news of this energy laden fruit quickly spread throughout the region.

修道士们听说了这种神奇的浆果后，把浆果烘干以便运到远处的修道院。然后再用水将这些浆果浸泡成原状，吃果实并喝浸泡过的水，以便延长祈祷的时间。
Monks hearing about this amazing fruit, dried the berries so that they could be transported to distant monasteries.They reconstituted these berries in water, ate the fruit, and drank the liquid to provide stimulation for a more awakened time for prayer.

咖啡豆从埃塞俄比亚运到阿拉伯半岛，第一次在今天的也门种植。
Coffee berries were transported from Ethiopia to the Arabian peninsula, and were first cultivated in what today is the country of Yemen.

从也门传到了土尔其，这时才开始用明火烘培咖啡豆。烘培后的咖啡被磨碎，用水煮后就是我们今天所喝咖啡饮料的雏形。
From there, coffee traveled to Turkey where coffee beans were roasted for the first time over open fires. The roasted beans were crushed, and then boiled in water, creating a crude version of the beverage we enjoy today.

威尼斯商人首次将咖啡带到了欧洲大陆。这种新饮料一度遭到天主教堂的严厉批评。许多人认为教皇应禁止咖啡，并称之为罪恶饮料。令人惊奇的是，教皇已经是一个咖啡饮用者，并宣布咖啡是一种真正的基督徒饮料。
Coffee first arrived on the European continent by means of Venetian trade merchants. Once in Europe this new beverage fell under harsh criticism from the Catholic church. Many felt the pope should ban coffee, calling it the drink of the devil. To their surprise, the pope, already a coffee drinker, blessed coffee declaring it a truly Christian beverage.

咖啡屋在欧迅速发展起来，并成为知识分子的交流中心。欧洲论坛的很多创新思想都源于这种饮料的提高思维能力和创造性这一作用。
Coffee houses spread quickly across Europe becoming centers for intellectual exchange. Many great minds of Europe used this beverage, and forum, as a springboard to heightened thought and creativity.

18世纪，一名法国步兵上尉将咖啡传入美洲。他在穿越大西洋的长途旅行中养育了一株小咖啡树。这株咖啡树移植到了加勒比海的马提尼克岛，在随后50年里在该岛繁衍出一千九百万株以上咖啡树。虽然起步艰难，但咖啡种植正是以此为契机，传遍了中南美洲的热带地区。
In the 1700's, coffee found its way to the Americas by means of a French infantry captain who nurtured one small plant on its long journey across the Atlantic. This one plant, transplanted to the Caribbean Island of Martinique, became the predecessor of over 19 million trees on the island within 50 years. It was from this humble beginning that the coffee plant found its way to the rest of the tropical regions of South and Central America.

为了抗议英国政府征收的茶叶附加税，大陆议会宣布咖啡作为美国殖民地的国家饮料。
Coffee was declared the national drink of the then colonized United States by the Continental Congress, in protest of the excessive tax on tea levied by the British crown.

今天，咖啡成为全球的大产业，从业人员两千多万。这种商品在以美元为单位的全球贸易中仅次于石油居第二位。咖啡是世界上最流行的饮料，每年消耗4000亿杯。可以想象出，仅仅在巴西，就有五百多万人从事种植和收获，而咖啡树的数量达到30亿棵之巨。
Today, coffee is a giant global industry employing more than 20 million people. This commodity ranks second only to petroleum in terms of dollars traded worldwide. With over 400 billion cups consumed every year, coffee is the world's most popular beverage. If you can imagine, in Brazil alone, over 5 million people are employed in the cultivation and harvesting of over 3 billion coffee plants.

摘译自www.coffeeuniverse.com