Advanced Week 116
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“ScalersTalk 口译进阶小组”的前身是“ScalersTalk 交传小组”，成立于 2015 年 2 月，现阶段，小组继续专注高级阶段的交替传译与同声传译训练，在巩固语言基本功的同时训练各类口译技能，从而为承担正式场合的口译打下坚实基础。 96 周起，小组全面引入 CATTI 新版二口教材的训练，时间为每天晚上 8 点到 9 点，训练期间播放录音、记笔记，在空白处按暂停键后做口译，用 QQ 发群语音，然后对照文档，查找漏译和错译的部分，标出口译时较为困难的词汇和表达，随时发到群里；每天早上 6 点到 7 点训练复述。
第 116 周训练材料选自BBC节目50 Things That Made the Modern Economy，主题为Air Conditioning。小组成员利用该材料练习了复述，并学习原文的词汇、表达和句型句式。本日志整理的是第 116 周英文练习的内容。
If only we could control the weather - at the push of a button, making it warmer or cooler, wetter or drier, we'd have no more droughts or floods, no heat waves or icy roads. Deserts would become verdant. Crops would never fail. Clever as humans are, however, we're nowhere near precision control of the weather. At least if we're talking about outside. Since the invention of air conditioning, we can control the weather inside. That's not quite as big a deal, but it has still had some far-reaching and unexpected effects.
verdant：翠绿，是green的一种。
crops would never fail 一年四季都能收获粮食
precision control 精确控制
that's not quite as big a deal 那没什么大不了的
have some far-reaching and unexpected effects 有深远的出乎意料的影响
Air conditioning as we know it began in 1902, and it was nothing to do with human comfort. The workers at Sackett & Wilhelms Lithography and Printing Company in New York were frustrated with varying humidity levels when trying to print in colour. The process required the same paper to be printed four times - in cyan ink, magenta, yellow and black. If the humidity changed between print runs, the paper would slightly expand or contract. Even a millimetre's misalignment looked awful. The printers asked Buffalo Forge, a heating company, if it could devise a system to control humidity. Buffalo Forge assigned the problem to a young engineer, just a year out of university. Willis Carrier was earning just ten dollars a week - below minimum wage in today's money. But he figured out a solution: circulating air over coils that were chilled by compressed ammonia maintained the humidity at a constant 55 per cent.
cyan：青色
magenta：洋红，相当于red
be frustrated with sth. 感到沮丧
varying humidity levels 不同的湿度水平
misalignment 错位
be nothing to do with：与have nothing to do with意义相同，译为“与……无关”
a heating company 供暖公司
just a year out of university 刚毕业一年
ammonia 氨
The printers were delighted, and Buffalo Forge was soon selling Willis Carriers invention wherever humidity posed problems: from textiles to flour mills to the Gillette corporation, where excessive moisture rusted its razor blades. These early, industrial clients didn't much care about making temperatures more comfortable for their workers: that was an incidental benefit of controlling the humidity. But Carrier saw an opportunity. By 1906 he was already talking up the potential for 'comfort' applications in public buildings such as theatres. It was an astute choice of target market. Historically, theatres often shut down for summer - on a stifling-hot day, nobody wanted to see a play. It's not hard to imagine why: no windows; human bodies tightly packed: and. before electricity, lighting provided by flares that gave off heat. New England ice was briefly popular: in the summer of 1880, New York's Madison Square Theatre used four tons of ice a day, and an eight-foot fan to blow air over the ice and through ducts towards the audience. Unfortunately, this wasn't an ideal solution. The air, though cool, was also damp, and pollution was increasing in New England's lakes. Sometimes, as the ice melted, into the auditorium wafted some unpleasant smells. Willis Carrier called his system of cooling the weather-maker', and it was much more practical. The burgeoning mode theatres of the 1920s were where the general public first experienced air conditioning, and it quickly became as much of a selling point as the new talking films. The enduring and profitable Hollywood tradition of the summer blockbuster traces directly back to Carrier. So does the rise of the shopping mall
sth. pose(s) problems 带来问题
talk up the potential for sth.：指to talk up means to discuss favorably，相当于advocate, promote；to speak up plainly or directly
astute 精明shrewd
target market 目标市场
give off heat 发热
duct 管道
a stifling-hot day：stifling means depressing，即令人窒息的
burgeoning mode 新兴模式
a selling point 卖点
talking films 有声电影
But there's an inconvenient truth: you can only make a room or building cooler inside by making it warmer outside. Air conditioning units pump hot air out of buildings - a study in Phoenix. Arizona, found that this increased the city's night-time temperature by two degrees. Of course, that only makes air conditioning units work harder, making the outside hotter still. On underground metro systems, cooling the trains can lead to swelteringly hot platforms. Then there's the electricity that powers air conditioning, often made by burning gas or coal, and the coolants air conditioners use, many of which are powerful greenhouse gases when they leak. You'd expect air conditioning technology to be getting cleaner and greener, and you’d be right. But demand is growing so quickly that, even if the optimists are right about possible efficiency gains, there'll be an eightfold increase in energy consumption by 2050. That's worrying news for climate change. Will we get inventions to control the outdoor weather, too? Perhaps. But even air conditioning - a brilliant but simple and straightforward invention - has had some powerful and unexpected side effects. Controlling the climate itself will be neither simple nor straightforward. And the side effects? We can barely imagine.
air conditioning pays for itself by reducing fights： if something pays for itself, it works so well that it saves the same amount of money that it cost，即值得的。
pump hot air out of… 把热空气从……中排出去
night-time temperature 夜间温度
coolants 冷却剂
