RichardPreston_巨人树【中英文对照】

1.The north coast of California has rainforests — temperate rainforests — where it can rain more than 100 inches a year.
加州北部海岸有着一片片雨林—— 温带雨林——每年降水量超过25400毫米。
2.This is the realm of the Coast Redwood tree.
这就是海岸红杉的领域。
3.Its species name is Sequoia sempervirens.
它的学名为Sequoia sempervirens。
4.Sequoia sempervirens is the tallest living organism on Earth.
它是地球上最大的生命机体。
5.The range of the species goes up to as much as 380 feet tall.
这个物种可高达116米
6.That’s 38 stories tall.
相当于38层楼的高度。
7.These are trees that would stand out in midtown Manhattan.
若放在曼哈顿中城，这些巨杉将鹤立其中。
8.Nobody knows how old the oldest living Coast Redwoods are because nobody has ever drilled into any of them to count their annual growth rings, and, in any case,
没有人知道最老的海岸红杉有多大岁数 因为没有人试过钻开他们 去数他们的年轮
9.the centers of the oldest individuals appear to be hollow.
并且这些最古老的树木的中心似乎是空的。
10.But it’s believed that the oldest living Redwoods are perhaps 2,500 years old — roughly the age of the Parthenon — although it’s also suspected that there may be individual trees
但是人们普遍认为最老的红杉 有2500岁——几乎跟帕台农神庙一样古老了 不过还有人怀疑
11.that are older than that.
有比这更古老的红杉。
12.You can see the range of the Coast Redwoods. It’s here, in red.
你可以看到海岸红杉的领域，就在红色的区域里。
13.The largest individuals of this species, the dreadnoughts of their kind, live just on the north coast of California, where the rain is really intense.
这个物种最巨型的个体，他们之中的“无畏战舰”， 就生活在加州北部海岸， 那里雨量十分充沛。
14.In recent historic times, about 96 percent of the Coast Redwood forest was cut down, especially in a series of bursts of intense liquidation logging,
在近代历史时期，96%的海岸红杉林木 被砍伐，特别是在70年代到90年代早期发生的严重的森林砍伐，
15.clear-cutting that took place in the 1970s through the early 1990s.
毁灭性的森林开垦活动中。
16.Even so, about four percent of the primeval Redwood rainforest remains intact, wild and now protected — entirely protected — in a chain of small parks strung out like pearls
尽管如此，还是有4%的原始红杉雨林保留了下来 它们未受人类文明践踏，而且现在被保护了起来——全面地被保护起来 它们被保护于沿着加州北海岸
17.along the north coast of California, including Redwood National Park.
珠连起来的一些小公园里，包括红杉国家公园。
18.But curiously, Redwood rainforests, the fragments that we have left, to this day remain under-explored.
但奇怪的是，剩下的红杉雨林 直到今天还未被充分开发。
19.Redwood rainforest is incredibly difficult to move through, and even today, individual trees are being discovered that have never been seen before, including, in the summer of 2006,
在红杉雨林里行走十分困难，困难得令人难以置信 时至今日，新的红杉仍不断地被发现 包括发现于2006夏的世界最高之树——
20.Hyperion, the world’s tallest tree.
亥帕龙神（Hyperion,希腊神话中一巨人之名），世界上最高的树。
21.I’m going to do a little Gedanken experiment.
我想做一个小小的想象实验
22.I’m going to ask you to imagine what a Redwood really is as a living organism.
让你们去想象一下，一棵红杉作为一个生命体究竟是什么东西
23.And, Chris, if I could have you up here?  I have a tape measure.
克里斯，你能站到舞台上来么？我有一把卷尺
24.It’s a kind loaner from TED.
是从TED借来的。
25.And Chris, if you could take the end of that tape measure?
克里斯，拿着卷尺的头好么?
26.We’re going to show you what the diameter at breast height of a big Redwood is.
我们将要向你们展示 一棵大型红杉在我们胸部高度位置的直径大小
27.Unfortunately, this tape isn’t long enough — it’s only a 25-foot tape.
很遗憾，这卷尺不够长——只有7.6米长。
28.Chris, could you extend your arm out that way?  There we go.  OK.
克里斯，你能向那边伸出你的手臂么？就这样，好了。
29.And maybe about here, about 30 feet, is the diameter of a big Redwood.
大概就是这么多，9.1米左右，就是一颗大型红杉的直径。
30.Now, let your imagination go upward into space.
现在，然你的想象力向天空延伸
31.Think about this tree, rising upward into Redwood space, 325 feet, 32 stories, an individual living organism articulating its forms
想象一下这棵树，耸立至红杉林的99米高， 32层楼的高度——这就是一棵红杉
32.upward into space over long periods of time.
长期逐渐成长至天际的体型
33.The Redwood species seems to exist in another kind of time: not human time, but what we might call Redwood time.
红杉这种植物似乎存在于另一种时间体系中 不是人类的时间标准，而我们更愿意称其为“红杉时间”
34.Redwood time moves at a more stately pace than human time.
“红杉时间”以比人类时间更宏伟的节奏流逝着
35.To us, when we look at a Redwood tree, it seems to be motionless and still, and yet Redwoods are constantly in motion, moving upward into space, articulating themselves
对我们来说，当我们看着一棵红杉树，它似乎一动不动 但实际上它不停地在运动 向上生长，展现着自己
36.and filling Redwood space over Redwood time, over thousands of years.
在几千年的红杉时间之中填满了整个红杉树林。
37.Plant this small seed, wait 2,000 years, and you get this: the Lost Monarch.
将这颗小种子播种下去，等待两千年，然后就有了这个： “失落的君王”。
38.It dwells in the Grove of Titans on the North Coast, and was discovered in 1998.
它坐落于北部海岸的“泰坦丛林”， 1998年我们发现了它。
39.And yet, when you look at the base of a Redwood tree, you’re not seeing the organism.
另外，当你看着一棵红杉树的树桩时， 你所看到的不是一个完整的生物。
40.You’re like a mouse looking at the foot of an elephant, and most of the organism is overhead, unseen.
你会像一只老鼠，看着一只大象的腿， 而这个生物的大部分就在你头顶上，你却无法看到。
41.I became very interested, and I wrote about a couple.
我变得饶有兴致，并记录了一对夫妇在这里的生活。
42.Steve Sillett and Marie Antoine are the principal explorers of the Redwood forest canopy.  They’re world-class athletes, and they also are world-class forest ecology scientists.
史蒂夫·西莱特 和 马莉·安东尼 是 主要的 红杉林树冠探险者。他们是世界级的运动员， 他们还是世界级的森林生态科学家。
43.Steve Sillett, when he was a 19-year-old college student at Reed College, had heard that the Redwood forest canopy is considered to be a so-called Redwood desert.
当史蒂夫还是一个19岁的里德大学的学生时， 就听说过红杉林的树冠层 被称为一个红杉沙漠。
44.That is to say, at that time it was believed that there was nothing up there except the branches of Redwood trees.
换句话说，在那个时候，人们相信 在那里除了红杉树枝外什么都没有。
45.And with a friend of his, he took it upon himself to free-climb a Redwood without ropes or any equipment to see what was up there.
之后他与他的一个朋友毅然试着徒手攀爬一棵红杉 而没有用任何绳子或装备，想看一下在上面究竟有什么。
46.He climbed up a small tree next to this giant Redwood, and then he leaped through space and grabbed a branch with his hands, and ended up hanging, like catching a bar of a trapeze.
他爬上了这棵巨型红杉旁的一棵小树， 然后腾空一跃，用双手抓住了一根树枝， 然后悬挂在那，就像抓住秋千的横杠一样。
47.And then, from there, he climbed directly up the bark until he got to the top of the tree.
接着，从那里他直接从树皮爬了上去 直到他到了树顶。
48.His friend, a guy named Marwood Harris, was following behind.
他的朋友玛沃德·查尔斯跟在他后面。
49.Neither one of them had noticed that there was a Yellow Jacket wasp’s nest the size of a bowling ball hanging from the branch that Steve had jumped into.
两个人都没有注意到， 一个保龄球大小的黄蜂巢 就挂在史蒂夫跳过去的那根树枝上。
50.And when Marwood made the jump, he was covered with wasps stinging him in the face and eyes.  He nearly let go.
当玛沃德跳过去的时候，他立刻就被黄蜂包围了 黄蜂叮咬他的脸跟眼睛。他差点就放手了。
51.He would have fallen to his death, being 75 feet above the ground.
如果从上面高达23米的地方摔下来，他肯定就摔死了。
52.But they made it to the top, and what they found was not a Redwood desert, but a lost world — a kind of three-dimensional labyrinth in the air, filled with unknown life.
但他们成功地到了顶，而他们看到的 不是一个红杉沙漠，而是一个失落的世界—— 一个空中三围迷宫，里面充满了不为人知的生命。
53.Now, I had been working on other topics: the emergence of infectious diseases, which come out of the natural ecosystems of the Earth,
我一直都在研究其它的课题： 传染病的诞生 它们源于地球的自然生态系统，
54.make a trans-species jump, and get into humans.
跨越种族，传染给人类。
55.After three books on this, it got to be a bit much, in a way.
我写过三本关于此课题的书之后，觉得在某种程度上有点过火了。
56.My wife and I adore our children.
我和我妻子很喜欢我们的孩子
57.And I began climbing trees with my kids as just something to do with them, using the so-called arborist climbing technique, with ropes. You use ropes to get yourself up into the crown of a tree.
然后我开始和我的孩子们爬树，以此和他们一起做些事， 我们采用了被称为树艺师的爬树技巧， 还有绳子。你要用绳子帮你爬到树冠。
58.Children are incredibly adept at climbing trees.
难以置信地，孩子们十分擅长爬树。
59.That’s my son, Oliver.
那是我的儿子奥利弗。
60.They don’t seem to suffer from the same fear of heights that humans do.
他们似乎一点也不畏高——不像人类那样畏高。
61.(Laughter) If ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, then children are somewhat closer to our roots as primates in the arboreal forest.
（笑声） 如果个体发生机理会再现种系发生的话，那么孩子们 就有点接近我们生活在树上的灵长类祖先了。
62.Humans appear to be the only primates that I know of that are afraid of heights.
在我所知道的所有灵长类动物中，似乎只有人类 是畏高的。
63.All other primates, when they’re scared, they run up a tree, where they feel safe.
其他所有的灵长动物在它们害怕的时候， 就爬上一棵树，在那里他们感到很安全。
64.We camped overnight in the trees, in tree boats.
我们在树林里或树舟上宿营过夜，
65.This is my daughter Laura, then 15, looking out of a tree boat.
这是我女儿罗拉，那时她15岁，正从树舟往外看。
66.She’s, by the way, tied in with a rope so she can’t fall.
顺便提一下，她身上帮着绳子，所以她不会掉下去。
67.Looking out of a tree boat in the morning and hearing birdsong coming in three dimensions around us.
在清晨向外望去，听着鸟儿的歌唱 全方位地围绕着我们。
68.We had been visited in the night by flying squirrels, who don’t seem to recognize humans for what they are because they’ve never seen them in the canopy before.
有时在夜晚一些鼯鼠会造访我们， 他们似乎不认得人类 因为他们从来没有在树冠上面见过人类。
69.And we practiced advanced techniques like sky-walking, where you can move from tree to tree through space, rather like Spiderman.
我们还练习了一些高级技巧，如“天空行走” 你可以在空中从一棵树走到另一棵树， 像蜘蛛侠一样。
70.It became a writing project.
这变成了我的一个写作计划。
71.When Steve Sillett gets up into a big Redwood, he fires an arrow, which trails a fishing line, which gets over a branch in the tree,
当史蒂夫爬上一棵大红杉之后，他向外射出一箭， 箭上绑着鱼线，之后鱼线缠住了树上的一根树枝，
72.and then you ascend up a rope which has been dragged into the tree by the line.
然后你可以爬上那根鱼线拖着的绳子，
73.You ascend 30 stories.
直上30层楼高。
74.There are two people climbing this tree, Gaya, which is thought to be one of the oldest Redwoods.  There they are.
有两个人正爬着这棵树——盖亚（Gaia，希腊神话中的大地女神）， 它被认为是最古老的红杉之一。那是他们两人。
75.They are only one-seventh of the way up that tree.
他们只到了树身的1/7处，
76.You do feel a sense of exposure.
你一定有一丝刺眼的感觉。
77.There is a small person right down there on the ground.
就在下面有个小人。
78.You feel like you’re climbing a wall of wood.
你会觉得你在爬一堵树墙，
79.But then you enter the Redwood canopy, and it’s like coming through a layer of clouds.
然而你却来到了树冠层， 那感觉就像穿越一个云层。
80.And all of a sudden, you lose sight of the ground, and you also lose sight of the sky, and you’re in a three-dimensional labyrinth in the air
突然之间，你再也看不见地面了， 天空也看不见了， 你身处于一个空中三维迷宫
81.filled with hanging gardens of ferns growing out of soil, which is populated with all kinds of small organisms.
里面悬着一丛丛由土壤长出来的蕨类植物， 而土里生活着各式各样的生物。
82.There are epiphytes, plants that grow on trees.
这是附生植物，一种长在树上的植物。
83.These are huckleberry bushes.
这些是越橘丛。
84.Many species of mosses, and then all sorts of lichens just plastering the tree.
很多种类的苔藓，还有各种的地衣贴在了树上。
85.When you get near the top of the tree, you feel like you can’t fall — in fact, it’s difficult to move.
当你接近树顶的时候，你觉得你不可能掉下去—— 实际上，上面寸步难行。
86.You’re worming your way through branches which are crowded with living things that don’t occur near the ground.
你只能像虫子一样在茂密的树枝里慢慢向前蠕动 而树枝间充满了在地面上不会出现的生物。
87.It’s like scuba diving into a coral reef, except you’re going upward instead of downward.
这感觉就像潜入一个珊瑚礁， 只是你现在是向上走而不是向下潜。
88.And then the trees tend to flare out into platform-like areas at the top.
这些树会向外伸展，在顶部形成一个平台。
89.Maria’s sitting on one of them.
玛丽亚坐在其中的一个上。
90.These limbs could be five to six hundred years old.
这些大树枝可能有五六百岁了。
91.Redwoods grow very slowly in their tops.
红杉的顶部生长得很慢。
92.They also have a feature: thickets of huckleberry bushes that grow out of the tops of Redwood trees that are technically known as huckleberry afros,
他们还有另外一个特点：一簇簇的越橘丛 从红杉顶长出来， 我们专门称其为“越橘爆炸头”，
93.and you can sit there and snack on the berries while you’re resting.
当你休息的时候，你可以坐在那，品尝这些浆果。
94.Redwoods have an enormous surface area that extends upward into space because they have a propensity to do something called reiteration.
红杉树向外延伸的表面积很巨大 因为他们有我们称之为“横向生长”的倾向。
95.A Redwood is a fractal.  And as they put out limbs, the limbs burst into small trees, copies of the Redwood.
红杉是一种不规则的生物。随着他们的枝干向外伸展， 这些枝干会爆芽，长成小的红杉树。
96.Now, here we see a reiteration in Chronos, one of the older Redwoods.
现在我们看到的是一棵侧苗，它长在名为“克罗诺斯”（Cronus,希腊神话中的时间之神）这棵年长的红杉上。
97.This reiteration is a huge flying buttress that comes out the tree itself.
这棵侧木像一个巨型飞拱 从这棵树里长出来。
98.This buttress is less than halfway up the tree.
这个树垛不到树身的一半。
99.And then it bursts into a forest of Redwoods.
然后它萌发出一片红杉林。
100.This particular extra trunk is a meter across at the base and extends upward for 150 feet.
这根特别的额外树干在它底座那有一米宽 向上伸至46米。
101.It’s as big as any of the biggest trees east of the Mississippi River, and yet it’s only a minor feature on Chronos.
它跟任何一株在密西西比河东岸最大的树一样高大， 却只是克罗诺斯上的一个小特征而已。
102.This three-dimensional map of the crown structure of a Redwood named Iluvatar, made by Steve Sillett, Marie Antoine and their colleagues, gives you an idea.
这张是名为“伊卢瓦塔”（Illuvatar,托尔金魔戒三部曲中的众生之父）的红杉其树冠结构的三维图， 由史蒂夫，玛丽·安东尼，以及他们的同事绘制，它能让你更好理解一些。
103.What you’re seeing here is a hierarchical schematic development of the trunks of this tree as it has elaborated itself over time into six layers of fractal,
你现在看到的是一个分层发展模式的示意图， 它展现了这棵树的树枝是怎样慢慢地长出六层复合树枝结构的，
104.of trunks springing from trunks springing from trunks.
以及树枝怎样从树枝中长出来。
105.I asked Steve to put a human being in this to give a sense of scale.
我让史蒂夫将一个人放到那里好让大家感受一下它的大小.
106.There’s the person, right there.  The person is waving to us.
那个人就在那。他在向我们招手。
107.I’ve wanted to ask Craig Venter if it would be possible to insert a synthetic chromosome into a human so that we could reiterate ourselves if we wanted to.
我曾想问克雷格·文特尔可不可以 将一条人工合成的染色体植入人体 好让我们能随心所欲地侧生。
108.And if we were able to reiterate, then the fingers of our hand would be people who look like us, and they would have people on their hands and so on.
如果我们能够做到的话，那么我们的手指 就可以长成像我们一样的人了， 而在他们的手指也会长出很多人，如此下去。
109.And if we had Redwood-like biology, we would have six layers of people on our hands, as it were.
又如果我们有红杉般的生理机制， 可以说，我们的手就能长出六层的人。
110.and it would be a lovely thing to be able to wave to someone and have all our reiterations wave at the same time.
如果能够让我们所有的手指上的人们同时向某人挥手的话 那将是多么可爱啊。
111.(Laughter) To reiterate the point, let’s go closer into Iluvatar.
(笑声) 重申一下这一点，让我们走近伊路瓦塔。
112.We’re looking at that yellow box.
我们现在看到那个黄色的盒子。
113.And this hallucinatory drawing shows you — everything you see in this drawing is Iluvatar.
这张幻觉般的图画向你展现—— 在这张图画里你看到的所有东西就是伊路瓦塔。
114.These are millennial structures — portions of the tree that are believed to be more than 1,000 years old.
这些是千年结构—— 那些被认为超过1000岁的部分。
115.There are four humans in this shot — one, two, three, four.
在这张照片里有四个人——一，二，三，四。
116.And there’s also something that I want to show you.
我还有一些东西给你们展示一下。
117.This is a flying buttress.
这是一个飞拱。
118.Redwoods grow back into themselves as they expand into space, and this flying buttress is a limb shot out of that small trunk, going back into the main trunk and fusing with it.
红杉向周围空间延伸的时候同时也向自身生长， 这个飞拱就是那根小树干长出的一根树枝， 它向主干生长，与之糅合。
119.Flying buttresses, just as in a cathedral, help strengthen the crown of the tree and help the tree exist longer through time.
这些飞拱，正如在一座大教堂里一样，强化了树冠 也让这些树活得更久。
120.The scientists are doing all kinds of experiments in these trees.
科学家在这些树上做着各种各样的实验。
121.They’ve wired them like patients in an ICU.
他们将树像重症护理病房的病人一样用铁丝环绕起来。
122.They’re finding out that Redwoods can move moisture out of the air and down into their trunks, possibly all the way into their root systems.
他们发现红杉可以吸收空气中的水分 至它们的树干里， 很有可能一路送到它们的根部系统。
123.They also have the ability to put roots anywhere in the tree itself.
他们还有能力将自己的根放到树内的任何地方。
124.If a portion of a Redwood is rotting, the Redwood will send roots into its own form and draw nutrients out of itself as it falls apart.
如果红杉有一部分在腐烂， 红杉就会将这些根收回体内 在它溃坏的同时吸收其营养。
125.If we had Redwood-like biology, if we got a touch of gangrene in our arm then we could just, you know, extract the nutrients extract the nutrients and the moisture out of it until it fell off.
如果我们有红杉一般的生理机制，如果我们的手臂有某处坏死了 你知道，那么我们就可以， 吸收这部分的营养跟水分直至其脱落。
126.Canopy soil can occur up to a meter deep, hundreds of feet above the ground, and there are organisms in this soil that have, as yet, no names.
树冠的泥土可以有一米厚， 离地面几百英尺，里面还有很多生物 至今为止都还没有名字。
127.This is an unnamed species of copapod.  A copapod is a crustacean.
这是一个还没被命名的桡足类动物。桡足类动物属甲壳纲。
128.These copapods are a major constituent of the oceans, and they are a major part of the diet of grazing baleen whales.
这些桡足类是海洋里的一种主要动物， 他们也是须鲸的主要食粮。
129.What they’re doing in the Redwood forest canopy soil hundreds of feet above the ocean, or how they got there, is completely unknown.
关于他们在离海洋几百英尺高的红杉林树冠的土壤里做着什么 或他们是怎么到达那里的， 我们完全不知道。
130.There are some interesting theories that, if I had time, I would tell you about.
有些有趣的理论 如果我有时间的话，我会告诉你们的。
131.But as you go and you look closer at a tree, what you see is, you see increasing complexity.
不过当你走近一棵树并仔细看看， 你看到的将越来越复杂。