Advanced Week 146
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Last updated
Was this helpful?
“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 点训练复述及同声传译。
第 146 周训练为交替传译和复述。本日志整理的是复述材料The Lightbulb的部分内容，选择 BBC 栏目“50 Things That Made the Modern Economy”。
But we can try—and Bill Nordhaus was trying as he fooled around with wood fires, antique oil lamps, and Minolta light meters. He wanted to unbundle the cost of a single quality that humans have cared deeply about since time immemorial, using the state-of-the-art technology of different ages: illumination.
fool around with sth: to behave in a way which is careless and not responsible乱弄，瞎弄
unbundle: v. to separate (hardware from software) for sales purposes 将(软件和硬件)分开销售
immemorial: adj. starting longer ago than people can remember, or than written history shows年代久远的，远古的；史前的
from/since time immemorial自古以来
Nor were these the romantic, clean-burning paraffin wax candles we use today. The wealthiest people could afford beeswax, but most people—even the Harvard president—used tallow candles: stinking, smoking sticks of animal fat. Making such candles involved heating up the animal fat and patiently dipping and redipping wicks into the molten lard. It was pungent and time-consuming work. According to Nordhaus’s research, if you set aside one whole week a year to spend sixty hours devoted exclusively to making candles—or earning the money to buy them—that would enable you to burn a single candle for just two hours and twenty minutes every evening.
paraffin (wax): 固体石蜡
beeswax: 蜂蜡
tallow: 〔用于制造蜡烛的〕动物油脂
spermaceti （用在化妆品、蜡烛、油膏等中的）鲸油
smoke: vi. if something smokes, it has smoke coming from it 冒烟
molten: adj. [only+noun] molten metal or rock has been made into a liquid by being heated to a very high temperature〔金属、岩石〕熔化的，熔融的
lard [U] white fat from pigs that is used in cooking猪油
pungent: adj. having a strong taste or smell〔味道或气味〕强烈的，刺激性的，刺鼻的
Things improved a little as the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries unfolded. Candles were made of spermaceti—the milk-hued oily gloop harvested from dead sperm whales. ... A few decades later, gas lamps and kerosene lamps helped lower lighting costs; they also saved the sperm whale from extinction. But they, too, were basically an expensive hassle. They tipped, dripped, smelled, and set fire to things.
hued: adj. (in combination) 有……色调的，eg. milk-hued 牛奶色的 rosy-hued 玫瑰色的
gloop: any messy sticky fluid or substance 稠厚黏性液体; 黏性糊状物
sperm whales: 抹香鲸
gas lamps: 煤气灯
kerosene lamps: 煤油灯
By 1900, one of Thomas Edison’s carbon filament bulbs would provide you with ten days of bright, continuous illumination, a hundred times as bright as a candle, for the money you’d earn with our sixty-hour week of hard labor. By 1920, that same week of labor would pay for more than five months of continuous light from tungsten filament bulbs; by 1990, it was ten years. A couple of years after that, thanks to compact fluorescent bulbs, it was more than five times longer. The labor that had once produced the equivalent of fifty-four minutes of quality light now produced fifty-two years. And modern LED lights continue to get cheaper and cheaper.
filament: a very thin thread or wire 细丝，细线，eg. carbon filament bulbs: 碳丝灯泡
tungsten: 钨，eg. tungsten filament bulbs 钨丝灯泡
fluorescent bulbs: 荧光灯，日光灯
compact: adj. small, but arranged so that everything fits neatly into the space available – used to show approval 小巧便携的
Switch off a lightbulb for an hour and you’re saving illumination that would have cost our ancestors all week to create. It would have taken Benjamin Franklin’s contemporaries all afternoon. But someone in a rich industrial economy today could earn the money to buy that illumination in a fraction of a second. And of course lightbulbs are clean, safe, and controllable—no flicker or stink of pig fat or risk of fire. You could leave a child alone with one.
contemporary: [C]someone who lived or was in a particular place at the same time as someone else 同时代的人；同辈
fraction: [C] a very small amount of something 少量，一点
flicker: [C] an unsteady light that goes on and off quickly 〔光的〕闪烁，摇曳
stink: [usually singular] a very bad smell 恶臭，难闻的气味
None of this has been reflected in traditional measures of inflation, which Nordhaus reckons has overstated the price of light by a factor of about 1,000 since 1800. Light seems to have become more expensive over time, but in fact it’s vastly cheaper. Timothy Taylor’s students instinctively feel that they could buy more of what they really want with $70,000 today than $70,000 in 1900. Bill Nordhaus’s investigations suggest that—when it comes to light, at least—they’re quite right.
overstate: vt. to talk about something in a way that makes it seem more important, serious etc than it really is 夸大，夸张
by a factor of five/ten etc = by five times, ten times etc.: if something increases or decreases by a factor of five, ten etc, it increases or decreases by five times, ten times etc 〔增加或减少〕五倍/十倍等
