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AnnMorgan_2015G-_我的阅读世界年_
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It's often said that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at what's on their bookshelves . |
常说看一个人的书架 就能了解到这个人很多事情 |
bookshelves:n.书架(bookshelf的复数);
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What do my bookshelves say about me? |
那么我的书架是怎么展现我的呢? |
Well, when I asked myself this question a few years ago, |
嗯,当几年前我问自己这个问题时 |
I made an alarming discovery. |
我被自己吓了一跳 |
I'd always thought of myself as a fairly cultured, cosmopolitan sort of person. |
我一直觉得自己是一个有教养的 比较与时俱进的人 |
fairly:adv.相当地;公平地;简直; cosmopolitan:adj.世界性的;四海一家的;n.四海为家者;世界主义者;
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But my bookshelves told a rather different story. |
但我的书架展现的却是另一回事 |
Pretty much all the titles on them were by British or North American authors, and there was almost nothing in translation. |
大部分的书 作者都是英国或北美的 基本没什么翻译过来的书 |
Discovering this massive , cultural blind spot in my reading came as quite a shock. |
在我的阅读里,我发现了这个庞大的文化盲点 确实挺惊人的 |
massive:adj.大量的;巨大的,厚重的;魁伟的; cultural:adj.与文化有关的;文化的;与艺术、文学、音乐等有关的; blind spot:n.视线盲区(尤指车辆驾驶员看不见的路段);无视;没有认识;
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And when I thought about it, it seemed like a real shame. |
当我仔细去想的时候,真的挺遗憾的 |
I knew there had to be lots of amazing stories out there by writers working in languages other than English. |
我知道在这个世界上除了英语 一定还有很多其他语言的有趣的故事 |
And it seemed really sad to think that my reading habits meant |
而我的阅读习惯意味着我估计永远也不会去接触这一类书 |
I would probably never encounter them. |
这想起来让人有点伤心 |
encounter:v.遭遇,邂逅;遇到;n.遭遇,偶然碰见;
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So, I decided to prescribe myself an intensive course of global reading. |
所以我下定决心 把自己的阅读范围扩大到世界级的范围 |
prescribe:v.给…开(药);让…采用(疗法);开(处方);命令; intensive:adj.加强的;集中的;透彻的;加强语气的;n.加强器; global:adj.全球的;总体的;球形的;
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2012 was set to be a very international year for the UK; it was the year of the London Olympics. |
2012年对于英国来说是非常国际化的一年 这一年伦敦举办了奥运会 |
And so I decided to use it as my time frame to try to read a novel , short story collection or memoir from every country in the world. |
所以我决定把它当成一个时间段 去尝试从世界上不同的国家里 选一本小说来读,不管是短篇的还是自传的 |
time frame:n.期间时限; novel:adj.新奇的;异常的;n.小说; short story:短篇小说(指一万字以内的小说); memoir:n.回忆录;研究报告;自传;实录;
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And so I did. |
所以我这么做了 |
And it was very exciting and I learned some remarkable things and made some wonderful connections that I want to share with you today. |
非常刺激 我学到很多有用的东西 也了解到很多有趣的联系 让我很想今天跟大家分享 |
remarkable:adj.卓越的;非凡的;值得注意的;
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But it started with some practical problems. |
但万事开头难 |
practical:adj.实际的;真实的;客观存在的;n.实习课;实践课;
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After I'd worked out which of the many different lists of countries in the world to use for my project, |
当我整理出这个世界不同国家的 列表后 |
I ended up going with the list of UN-recognized nations, to which I added Taiwan, which gave me a total of 196 countries. |
我又对照了联合国认证的国家列表 所以我增加了台湾 所以总共有196个国家 |
And after I'd worked out how to fit reading and blogging about, roughly , four books a week around working five days a week, |
在我算出如何在一周内 一周五天的时间内 读完并记录日志后, |
blogging:v.写网志;写博客(blog的现在分词) roughly:adv.粗糙地;概略地;
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I then had to face up to the fact that I might even not be able to get books in English from every country. |
我不得不面对这么一个现实 就是我可能无法获取每个国家书籍的英文版 |
face up to:勇敢地面对;
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Only around 4.5 percent of the literary works published each year in the UK are translations, and the figures are similar for much of the English-speaking world. |
大约在英国出版的有翻译版本的书籍 仅占全部的4.5% 对于世界上讲英语的其他地区来说,这个数字也差不多 |
literary:adj.文学的;书面的;精通文学的;
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Although, the proportion of translated books published in many other countries is a lot higher. |
尽管在许多其他国家 翻译出版的书籍的比例要高很多 |
proportion:n.比例;部分;份额;均衡;v.摊派;使相称;
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4.5 percent is tiny enough to start with, but what that figure doesn't tell you is that many of those books will come from countries with strong publishing networks |
4.5%对刚开始来说虽然足够 但这个数字并没有告诉你的 是这些书中很多会来自 拥有强大出版网络的国家 |
and lots of industry professionals primed to go out and sell those titles to English-language publishers . |
而且当中很多专业人士也很想把这些书 卖给英文出版社 |
professionals:n.[管理]专业人员(professional的复数); primed:adj.待发的;v.使准备好;装填;使泵起动;涂底漆;修剪树枝(prime的过去分词); publishers:n.出版商,出版公司;出版社(publisher的复数);
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So, for example, although well over 100 books are translated from French and published in the UK each year, most of them will come from countries like France or Switzerland. |
例如,虽然每年有超过100本的法语书 会译成英文在英国发行 但大部分是来自法国或瑞士 |
French-speaking Africa, on the other hand , will rarely ever get a look-in. |
另一方面,在非洲讲法语的地区 则几乎没有机会涉及到 |
on the other hand:另一方面; rarely:adv.很少地;难得;罕有地;
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The upshot is that there are actually quite a lot of nations that may have little or even no commercially available literature in English. |
结果就是,有很多很多国家 根本进不了英文文学的商业区 根本进不了英文文学的商业区 |
upshot:n.结果,结局;要点; commercially:adv.商业上;通商上; literature:n.文学;文献;文艺;著作;
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Their books remain invisible to readers of the world's most published language. |
对世界上发行语言受众最多的读者来说 这些国家的书籍鲜为人知 |
invisible:adj.看不见的;n.看不见的人或物;
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But when it came to reading the world, the biggest challenge of all for me was that fact that I didn't know where to start. |
但当谈到阅读世界这一做法时 对我来说最大的困难就是 我不知道从何入手 |
Having spent my life reading almost exclusively British and North American books, |
我这一生几乎都在阅读 英国和北美的书籍 |
exclusively:adv.唯一地;专有地;排外地;
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I had no idea how to go about sourcing and finding stories and choosing them from much of the rest of the world. |
我根本不知道该怎么搜索寻找 去选择世界上大部分其他地方的作品 |
sourcing:v.(从…)获得;(source的现在分词)
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I couldn't tell you how to source a story from Swaziland. |
我没办法告诉你要怎么去搜索斯威士兰的文学作品 |
source:n.来源;水源;原始资料;
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I wouldn't know a good novel from Namibia. |
我不知道纳米比亚有哪些好的文学作品 |
There was no hiding it -- |
这些作品并没有被藏起来—— |
I was a clueless literary xenophobe . |
我在文学上就是一个外盲 |
clueless:adj.无线索的;愚蠢的; xenophobe:n.仇外;害怕生人者;畏惧和憎恨外国人的人;
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So how on earth was I going to read the world? |
那么我到底要怎么去阅读这个世界呢? |
I was going to have to ask for help. |
我不得不寻求帮助 |
So in October 2011, I registered my blog, and I posted a short appeal online. |
在2011年10月,我注册了我的博客 然后我发了一条简短的求助 |
registered:adj.登记过的;记名的;挂号的;v.登记;注册;(register的过去式和过去分词) appeal:n.上诉;吸引力;申诉;魅力;v.上诉;呼吁;申诉;恳求;
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I explained who I was, how narrow my reading had been, and I asked anyone who cared to to leave a message suggesting what I might read from other parts of the planet. |
我解释我是谁 我的阅读面有多窄 我问有没有人愿意 给我留言,建议我应该去读 这个世界上其他地方的那些书 |
narrow:adj.狭窄的; v.使窄小; n.峡谷; (场所,物品等的)狭窄部分;
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Now, I had no idea whether anyone would be interested, but within a few hours of me posting that appeal online, people started to get in touch. |
我当时不知道有没有人会给我留言 但在我发了求助后的几个小时内 人们开始给我回复了 |
At first, it was friends and colleagues . |
一开始,是朋友和同事 |
colleagues:n.同事;同行(colleague的复数);
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Then it was friends of friends. |
然后就是朋友的朋友 |
And pretty soon, it was strangers. |
很快,就是陌生人 |
Four days after I put that appeal online, |
在我在网上留了那条求助之后的第四天 |
I got a message from a woman called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur. |
我收到了一条消息它来自一位在吉隆坡叫 Rafidah 的女士 |
She said she loved the sound of my project, could she go to her local English-language bookshop and choose my Malaysian book and post it to me? |
她说她很喜欢我这个项目的意义 问她能不能去当地的英文书店 然后帮我选马来语书籍然后发给我? |
I accepted enthusiastically , and a few weeks later, a package arrived containing not one, but two books -- |
我满腔热情地接受了 几个星期后 包裹来了,里面不是一本,是两本—— |
enthusiastically:adv.热心地;满腔热情地;
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Rafidah's choice from Malaysia, and a book from Singapore that she had also picked out for me. |
Rafidah 选的一本是马来西亚的书 还有一本也是她选的,来自新加坡的书 |
Now, at the time, I was amazed that a stranger more than 6,000 miles away would go to such lengths to help someone she would probably never meet. |
当时,我都惊呆了 一个远在6000英里之外的陌生人 会如此用心去帮一个 她从未见过的陌生人 |
But Rafidah's kindness proved to be the pattern for that year. |
但 Rafidah 的善良,成了那一年的常规 |
Time and again , people went out of their way to help me. |
一次又一次,人们用他们的方式来帮我 |
Time and again:adv.屡次;常常;
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Some took on research on my behalf , and others made detours on holidays and business trips to go to bookshops for me. |
有些人帮我做了研究 有些人在假期或出差的时候 专门跑一趟书店帮我找书 |
behalf:n.代表;利益; detours:n.绕路;便道(detour的复数形式);v.绕路而行(detour的第三人称单数形式);
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It turns out, if you want to read the world, if you want to encounter it with an open mind, the world will help you. |
事实证明,如果你想阅读这个世界 如果你想用开放的思维去与之交流 那么整个世界都会帮你 |
When it came to countries with little or no commercially available literature in English, people went further still. |
对于那些 在商业上没什么机会进入英文文学界的国家来说 人们会更努力地去帮我 |
Books often came from surprising sources . |
这些书籍的来源经常让我出乎意料 |
sources:n.来源;出处;起源;根源;原因;v.(从…)获得(source的第三人称单数和复数)
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My Panamanian read, for example, came through a conversation |
举个例子,我的巴拿马阅读,是来自 |
Panamanian:n.巴拿马人;adj.巴拿马的;
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I had with the Panama Canal on Twitter. |
推特上我和“巴拿马运河”这个账号的对话 |
Yes, the Panama Canal has a Twitter account. |
是的,巴拿马运河在有推特账号的 |
And when I tweeted at it about my project, it suggested that I might like to try and get hold of the work of the Panamanian author Juan David Morgan. |
当我在推特上发布我这个项目的消息时 它建议说,我可能会想要去读一读 一位叫 Juan David Morgan 的巴拿马作家的作品 |
tweeted:v.(小鸟)吱吱地叫;啾鸣;(tweet的过去分词和过去式) get hold of:把握;抓住;得到;
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I found Morgan's website and I sent him a message, asking if any of his Spanish-language novels had been translated into English. |
我找到了作家的网站,然后给他发了一条消息 问他,他的西语小说 有没有被翻译成英文的 |
novels:n.小说;(novel的复数)
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And he said that nothing had been published, but he did have an unpublished translation of his novel "The Golden Horse." |
他答复说目前还没有出版 但他确实有一份未出版的英文译文 一本名叫《金马》的小说 |
unpublished:adj.未公开出版的;未发表过的;
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He emailed this to me, allowing me to become one of the first people ever to read that book in English. |
他用邮件把译文发给我 允许我成为第一批阅读这本书 的英文版本的读者之一 |
Morgan was by no means the only wordsmith to share his work with me in this way. |
Morgan 并不是唯一一个 愿意用这种方式和我分享他的作品的作家 |
by no means:决不; wordsmith:n.擅长文字的人,舞文弄墨者;作家;
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From Sweden to Palau, writers and translators sent me self-published books and unpublished manuscripts of books that hadn't been picked up by Anglophone publishers or that were no longer available, giving me privileged glimpses of some remarkable imaginary worlds. |
从瑞典到帕劳 作家和翻译家给我发来他们自己出版的书籍 还有未被以英文为母语的出版商挑中的 或者是不再有机会发表的 所有未出版的手稿 这让我有机会一窥某些精彩的世界 |
self-published:adj.由作者自行出版的; manuscripts:n.[图情]手稿;草稿(manuscript的复数形式); privileged:adj.有特权的; v.给予特权; (privilege的过去式和过去分词) glimpses:n.一瞥;一看;;v.瞥见;看一眼;开始领悟;(glimpse的第三人称单数和复数) imaginary:adj.虚构的,假想的;想像的;虚数的;
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I read, for example, about the Southern African king Ngungunhane, who led the resistance against the Portuguese in the 19th century; and about marriage rituals in a remote village on the shores of the Caspian sea in Turkmenistan. |
比如说,我读了 关于南非国王 Ngungunhane 的书籍 他在19世纪领导反抗葡萄牙人 我也读了土库曼斯坦的里海岸边 那些偏僻村庄的结婚仪式 |
resistance:n.电阻;抵抗;阻力;抗力; Portuguese:adj.葡萄牙的;葡萄牙人的;葡萄牙语的;n.葡萄牙人;葡萄牙语; remote:adj.偏远的;偏僻的;遥远的;久远的; Caspian:adj.里海(附近)的;
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I met Kuwait's answer to Bridget Jones. |
我还读了科威特版本的《BJ单身日记》 |
(Laughter) |
(笑声) |
And I read about an orgy in a tree in Angola. |
我还读了安哥拉一场树上狂欢 |
orgy:n.狂欢;放荡;
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But perhaps the most amazing example of the lengths that people were prepared to go to to help me read the world, came towards the end of my quest , when I tried to get hold of a book from the tiny, Portuguese-speaking |
在人们想尽办法 帮我去阅读这个世界的例子中 可能最让人惊奇的 出现在我网上求助的最后时期 当时我在找一本书 |
quest:n.追求;寻找;vi.追求;寻找;vt.探索;
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African island nation of S?o Tomé and Príncipe. |
它来自来自说葡萄牙语的圣多美岛和普林西比岛非洲小岛国 |
Now, having spent several months trying everything I could think of to find a book that had been translated into English from the nation, it seemed as though the only option left to me was to see if I could get something translated for me from scratch . |
花了好几个月,用尽所有我能想到的办法 去找一本从别的国家翻译成英文的书(但都找不到) 我觉得剩下的唯一方式 就是看能不能重新去翻译 |
option:n.选择;可选择的东西; from scratch:白手起家;从头做起;
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Now, I was really dubious whether anyone was going to want to help with this, and give up their time for something like that. |
我当时也没什么把握 不知道是否有人愿意帮我 愿意花时间来为我做这样的事 |
dubious:adj.可疑的;暧昧的;无把握的;半信半疑的;
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But, within a week of me putting a call out on Twitter and Facebook for Portuguese speakers, |
但,就在我在推特和脸书上发出寻找会讲葡萄牙语的人 这一消息的一周内 |
I had more people than I could involve in the project, including Margaret Jull Costa , a leader in her field, who has translated the work of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. |
我找到的人多到超乎预期 包括有 Margaret Jull Costa,在她领域的杰出人才 她翻译了获诺贝尔奖的文学作品《若泽·萨拉马戈》 |
involve:v.包含;需要;牵涉;牵连;影响;(使)参加; Costa:n.[解剖]肋骨;叶脉;[昆]前缘脉; Nobel Prize:n.诺贝尔奖;
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With my nine volunteers in place, |
然后带着9位志愿者 |
volunteers:n.志愿者; v.自愿做; (volunteer的第三人称单数和复数)
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I managed to find a book by a S?o Toméan author that I could buy enough copies of online. |
我找到了一本出自圣多美岛作家的书 然后在网上买了几本 |
Here's one of them. |
这是其中的一本 |
And I sent a copy out to each of my volunteers. |
我给每个志愿者都发了一本 |
They all took on a couple of short stories from this collection, stuck to their word, sent their translations back to me, and within six weeks, I had the entire book to read. |
他们各自从这个系列中选几个短故事 然后开始翻译,然后把译文发给我 在六周内,我已经拥有一本可读的书了 |
In that case, as I found so often during my year of reading the world, my not knowing and being open about my limitations had become a big opportunity. |
类似的情况在我阅读世界那一年经常发生 我的不知,以及无畏自己的局限 成了一个巨大的机遇 |
limitations:n.局限性;(限制)因素;边界(limitation的复数形式);
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it was a chance not only to learn something new and discover a new collection of stories, but also to bring together a group of people and facilitate a joint creative endeavor . |
不单是一个学习新知识的机会 探索新文学作品的机会 还是将人们聚集起来 团结起来创新努力的机会 |
facilitate:vt.促进;帮助;使容易; joint:n.关节; adj.共同的; v.连接,贴合; creative:adj.创造性的; endeavor:n.v.努力;尽力;试图;
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My weakness had become the project's strength. |
我的局限反倒成了这个项目的优势 |
The books I read that year opened my eyes to many things. |
那一年我看过的书开拓了我的视野 |
As those who enjoy reading will know, books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself and into someone else's mindset , so that, for a while at least, you look at the world through different eyes. |
那些享受阅读的人就能体会 书籍有着强大能力把你带出自我 进入别人的思想众 所以,至少有一段时间 你能看到别人眼中的世界 |
extraordinary:adj.非凡的;特别的;离奇的;临时的;特派的; mindset:n.心态;倾向;习惯;精神状态; for a while:adv.片刻;暂时;一会儿;一时;
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That can be an uncomfortable experience, particularly if you're reading a book from a culture that may have quite different values to your own. |
这或许不会是一段好过的经历 尤其是你在读一本 文化上与自己的观念大为不同的书 |
particularly:adv.特别地,独特地;详细地,具体地;明确地,细致地;
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But it can also be really enlightening . |
但它却可能很有启发性 |
enlightening:adj.富有启发性的;v.启发;开导;阐明;(enlighten的现在分词)
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Wrestling with unfamiliar ideas can help clarify your own thinking. |
与不熟悉的想法产生碰撞能帮你更好认识自己的想法 |
Wrestling:n.摔跤运动;v.摔跤;奋力对付;全力解决;(wrestle的现在分词) unfamiliar:adj.不熟悉的;不常见的;没有经验的; clarify:v.澄清;阐明;得到澄清;得到净化;
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And it can also show up blind spots in the way you might have been looking at the world. |
也能帮你告诉自己 在你看到这个世界的方式上有哪些盲点 |
in the way:妨碍;挡道;
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When I looked back at much of the English-language literature |
当我回头看我从小到大 |
I'd grown up with, for example, |
读过的大多数英文文学 |
I began to see how narrow a lot of it was, compared to the richness that the world has to offer. |
相比世界上其他书籍的丰富程度 这些书籍确实太狭隘了 |
compared:adj.比较的,对照的; v.相比; (compare的过去式和过去分词) richness:n.丰富;富裕;肥沃;华美;
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And as the pages turned, something else started to happen, too. |
每翻一页 便长一智 |
Little by little , that long list of countries that I'd started the year with, changed from a rather dry, academic register of place names into living, breathing entities . |
积少成多 我年初列出的国家列表 从一些列枯燥充满学术的地名 变成了活生生会呼吸的实体 |
Little by little:渐渐;逐渐地; academic:adj.学术的;理论的;学院的;n.大学生,大学教师;学者; entities:n.实体;存在(entity的复数形式);字符实体;
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Now, I don't want to suggest that it's at all possible to get a rounded picture of a country simply by reading one book. |
现在,我并不想建议说 单靠读一本书就能大致了解一个国家 |
But cumulatively , the stories I read that year made me more alive than ever before to the richness, diversity and complexity of our remarkable planet. |
但积少成多,那一年我读过的故事 它们的对这个世界展示的丰富性,多样化性,和复杂性 让我更有存在感 |
cumulatively:adv.累积地;渐增地; diversity:n.差异(性):多样性:多样化: complexity:n.复杂性;难以理解的局势
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It was as though the world's stories and the people who'd gone to such lengths to help me read them had made it real to me. |
就好像是这些世界性的故事 以及那些想办法帮我阅读这些书籍的人们 是他们让我变得真实 |
These days, when I look at my bookshelves or consider the works on my e-reader , they tell a rather different story. |
这些天来,当我看着我的书架的时候 或者在我的电子阅读器上思考这些作品时 它们在诉说这一个不一样的故事 |
e-reader:电子阅读器;
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It's the story of the power books have to connect us across political, geographical , cultural, social, religious divides. |
这是一个关于书籍的故事 书能将我们联系在一起,跨越政治,区域,文化,社会,宗教的隔阂 |
geographical:adj.地理的;地理学的; religious:adj.宗教的;虔诚的;严谨的;修道的;n.修道士;尼姑;
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It's the tale of the potential human beings have to work together. |
它是人们拥有协同工作的潜能的故事 |
potential:n.潜能;可能性;[电]电势;adj.潜在的;可能的;势的;
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And, it's testament to the extraordinary times we live in, where, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever before for a stranger to share a story, a worldview , a book with someone she may never meet, on the other side of the planet. |
还有,它是一个证明的故事 证明了我们现在的这个时代,由于有互联网 让一切变得前所未有的方便—— 让一个陌生人来与来自地球另一半素未谋面的另一陌生人 分享一个故事,一种世界关,一本书 |
testament:n.[法]遗嘱;圣约;确实的证明; worldview:n.世界观; on the other side:另一面;在另一边;
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I hope it's a story I'm reading for many years to come. |
我希望这是一个我阅读这么多年所追求的故事 |
And I hope many more people will join me. |
我也希望会有更多的人可以与我同阅 |
If we all read more widely, there'd be more incentive for publishers to translate more books, and we would all be richer for that. |
如果我们都扩宽我们的阅读面,那么对于出版商来说 就更有动机去翻译更多书籍 我们就有机会更广地阅读了 |
incentive:n.动机;刺激;adj.激励的;刺激的; translate:v.翻译;被翻译;被译成;(使)转变;
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Thank you. |
谢谢 |
(Applause) |
(掌声) |