Originally Posted by
rukkhamula
Here's my effort.
Hanoi is a place with a thousand years of recorded history. Its well-known 'thirty-six streets', of which(or where?) Hang Bac street is a typical example, are still lively and colourful.
I understand 'ghi dầu' to mean 'written down', and I think this is the point of the first sentence - written history means civilisation. Many places have thousands of years of history, but it is the writing down of that history which separates civilised people from 'barbarians'.
However, the special nature of this historic region is being threated(or threatened?) by indiscriminate development.
'xô bồ' I translate here as 'indiscriminate', meaning 'without care, chaotic, unrestrained'.
You may notice that my translations leave out a few words from the original. That's because English is rather intolerant of redundancy; good style in Enlgish usually means trying to say things in a succinct yet clear manner. So that's what I've aimed for.