Advanced Week 165

写在前面的话

“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。

本周复盘说明

第 165 周训练材料选用了几篇关于扶贫的 Ted 演讲，小组成员利用该材料练习了交替传译和同声传译，并学习原文的词汇、表达和句型句式。设备建议：你需要电脑或手机播放音频、手机发送语音。本日志整理的是比尔·盖茨的演讲 Living in Extreme Poverty 的部分内容。

第 165 周——知识点整理

段落一

Imagine what it's like to live in extreme poverty. You have to think about the basics like your next meal all the time. An extremely poor family mostly has access only to the food that they grow themselves. If you have a bad harvest, or if your animals get sick, you're going to have a period where you're not getting enough food. Daughters in these families have to gather water and wood. They have to cook dinners on an open fire with lots of smoke, and then they have to clean everything up. If they get a chance to do schoolwork at all, it's going to be very late at night. They need a lamp, if they have it, to be able to do that work. So, the upshot is, if you're extremely poor, your time and energy really goes to mere survival.

参考译文

想象一下极端贫困的生活状态是什么样。你总是得考虑生计问题，比如下一顿饭吃什么。极端贫困的家庭大多只能吃自家种养的食物。一旦收成不好，或者家禽生病，就得忍饥挨饿一阵子。这些家庭的女孩儿要收集水与木材，只能在室外的明火上做饭，烟很大，做完饭还必须打扫干净。如果这些孩子有机会上学的话，要到很晚才能做家庭作业。他们要用灯（如果有灯的话）才能做作业。所以结果就是，如果你非常穷困，你的时间和精力真的都得耗在生存问题上了。

解析

• extreme poverty 极端贫困

• basics: the simplest and most important facts, ideas or things connected with something 最基本的问题

• open fire 明火

• at all 一般用于否定句，这里强调极端贫困家庭的孩子上学的可能性很小

• upshot: the final result or outcome 最后结果， 结局

段落二

Is poverty inevitable? The answer is no. We asked 2,000 people what they thought was going on with poverty. We told them the 1990 number and asked them to guess where it had gone. And their guess was that it had fallen from that 36 percent down to 22 percent. In fact, the real line is far, far better. It drops all the way down to 9 percent. That means since 1990, 1.2 billion people have overcome extreme poverty. As the economist Max Roser has said, "The newspapers could have run a headline Number of People in Poverty Fell by 137,000 Since Yesterday every single day for 25 years and been right." Real news. According to the World Bank, this extreme poverty definition we use is a cutoff of about a $1.90 per day or less. Getting out of extreme poverty is not the end goal. We want people lifted up way beyond extreme poverty. But it's really the start that gets things going, that gets countries on the way to self-sufficiency and moving towards middle income. So, this is not just about the individuals, it's also about the countries themselves.

参考译文

贫穷是不可避免的吗？答案是否定的。我们问了2000个人对贫穷的看法，还告诉他们1990年世界贫穷人口的比例，让他们猜猜后来的情况。他们猜测这一比例从36％下降到22％。实际情况要好得多。这个比例一直下降到9％。这意味着1990年以来，已经有12亿人脱离了极端贫困。正如经济学家麦克斯·勒泽尔（Max Roser）所说：“过去这25年里，每天报纸的头条新闻都可以是《昨天贫困人口减少了13.7万》。”这是真新闻。根据世界银行的定义，极度贫困指的是日均生活费不足1.9美元。消除极端贫困不是最终目标，我们希望人们的生活水平远远超过极端贫困线。但是这确实是一个起点，推动各国走向自足，并迈向中等收入国家。所以这个问题不仅关乎个人生存，也关乎国家发展。

解析

• overcome extreme poverty /get out of extreme poverty /lift out of extreme poverty

• far better /way beyond

• The newspapers could have run a headline Number of People in Poverty Fell by 137,000 Since Yesterday every single day for 25 years and been right.

  • run a headline 刊登头条新闻

  • 这里是诙谐地说明脱贫人口数量庞大，平均到每天的数字也很惊人

• cutoff: the point, date, or period for a cutoff 截止点