有人出书,就难免有评论。我也讲几句



所有跟贴·加跟贴·新语丝读书论坛http://www.xys.org/cgi-bin/mainpage.pl

送交者: 田牛 于 July 15, 2003 01:23:12:

回答: 评清华大学刘兵教授对新语丝的漫骂 由 方舟子 于 July 14, 2003 19:57:03:

我只看了刘兵教授这篇文章的前面一部分,对他的英文不是很有信心。有兴趣的读者不妨接着自行比较。

英文原文 http://clinton4.nara.gov/Initiatives/Millennium/shawking.html
刘兵教授和傅英凯的译文 http://www.gmdaily.com.cn/1_sz/2000/20000610/gb/2000%5E94%5E0%5E000617.htm

Science in the Next Millennium
Remarks by Stephen Hawking

想象与变革
——下一个千年的科学
〔英〕斯蒂芬·霍金 著 刘兵、傅英凯译

My theme tonight is science in the new millennium. The popular picture of science in the future is shown on television every night in science fiction series like Star Trek. They even persuaded me to take part, not that it was difficult.
我今晚所要讲的主题,是未来一千年中的科学。每天晚上,在像《星际旅行》这样的科学幻想电视系列节目中,都播映关于未来的科学的通俗影片。他们甚至说服我也来参加,但这似乎并不很困难。

〔田〕最后一句话的原意是:他们甚至说服了我参加演出,表演者事似乎并不很困难。

[Clip from Star Trek shown]
〔放映《星际旅行》的剪辑〕
〔田〕应该是:放映他参加演出《星际旅行》的片断

Because of the red alert I never collected my winnings. I approached Paramount studios but they didn't know the exchange rate.
由于身处“紧急戒备”状态,我从来没有去取我的奖金。我曾与派拉蒙制片厂联系,但他们不知道兑换率。

〔田〕原意是:处于“一级战备”的我从来没有去领过我的片酬。我和派拉蒙制片厂谈过,他们说不知道美元怎么换英镑。

The Star Trek appearance was great fun, but I show it to make a serious point. Nearly all the visions of the future that we have been shown from HG Wells onwards have been essentially static. They show a society that is in most cases far in advance of ours, in science, in technology, and in political organization. (The last might not be difficult). There must have been great changes with their accompanying tensions and upsets in the period between now and then. But by the time we are shown the future science, technology, and the organization of society, are supposed to have achieved a level of near perfection.
《星际旅行》这部片子演得很有趣,但我播放它却是为了一个严肃的目的。从H.G.威尔斯开始,我们所看到的几乎所有关于未来的想象,在本质上都是静态的。它们所表现的社会,大多在科学、技术和政治体制方面都远比我们的社会要先进。(这最后一点也许并不那么困难。)在现在和未来之间,必定会有巨大的变革,并伴随着局势的紧张和混乱。但在此之前,我们所看到的未来的科学、技术和社会组织,都被假定是达到了接近完美的程度。

〔田〕第一句话应该是:参加《星际旅行》的演出很有趣,我在这里播放它却有一个严肃的目的。

I want to question this picture and ask if we will ever reach a final steady state of science and technology. At no time in the ten thousand years or so since the last Ice Age has the human race been in a state of constant knowledge and fixed technology. There have been a few set backs like the Dark Ages after the fall of the Roman Empire. But the world's population which is a measure of our technological ability to preserve life and feed ourselves has risen steadily, with a few hiccups like the Black Death. In the last two hundred years the growth has become exponential, that is, the population grows by the same percentage each year. Currently the rate is about 1.9% a year. 1.9 % may not sound very much but it means that the world population doubles every 40 years. Other measures of technological development in recent times are electricity consumption, or the number of scientific articles. They also show exponential growth with a doubling time of 40 years or less. Indeed, we now have such heightened expectations that some people feel cheated by politicians and scientists because we have not already achieved the Utopian visions of the future. For example, the film Two Thousand and One' showed us with a base on the Moon and launching a manned, or should I say personned, flight to Jupiter. I can't see us managing that in the next three years, whoever wins the election.
我要对此图景表示怀疑,并就我们是否将达到科学和技术的一种最终的稳态提出疑问。在自从最后一次冰川期以来一万年左右的时间中,人类从来就不曾处于一种知识永恒、技术不变的状态。曾经有过不多几次的倒退,例如像在罗马帝国崩溃后的黑暗时期,但是,除了像黑死病之类少数几次暂时的下降之外,作为维持生命和养育自己的技术能力之衡量的世界人口,却在稳定地增长。在过去200年中,这种增长呈指数型,也就是说,人口每年以相同的百分比增长。目前,一年的增长率大约是1.9%。1.9%可能听上去不是很大,但它意味着世界人口每40年就要翻一番。作为近来技术发展的另一衡量是电力的消费,或科学论文的篇数。它们也表现出每40年翻一番或稍少些的指数增长。实际上,我们现在具有的期望如此之高,以至于一些人觉得受到了政治家和科学家的欺骗,因为我们还没有实现关于未来的乌托邦式的幻想。例如,在影片《2001年》中,就向我们展示了月球上的基地,以及发射一艘前往木星的载人——也许我应该说是个人的——飞行器的情形。不论谁当选,我都无法想象我们在未来3年中能做到这一点。

〔田〕大师的幽默:a few hiccups like the Black Death没有翻译出来,欧洲the Black Death在全球最多造成人口增长暂时的停顿,不一定有下降。
大师的另一处幽默没有看懂,所以翻译出来走样:launching a manned, or should I say personned, flight to Jupiter. 在美国用manned会招致女权主义者的攻击,他便用了个中性的 personned, personned 被译者误解为personal了。

There is no sign that scientific and technological development will slow down and stop in the near future. Certainly not by the time of Star Trek which is only about 300 years away. But the present exponential growth can not continue for the next millennium. By the year 2600 the world's population would be standing shoulder to shoulder and the electricity consumption would make the Earth glow red hot. If you stacked the new books being published next to each other you would have to move at 90 miles an hour just to keep up with the end of the line. Of course by 2600, new artistic and scientific work will come in electronic forms rather than as physical books and papers. Nevertheless, if the exponential growth continued, there would be ten papers a second in my kind of theoretical physics, and no time to read them.
没有什么迹象表明在不远的将来科学和技术的发展将变缓和停止。显然,到只有300光年之遥的星际旅行的时代不会如此。但在下一个一千年中,目前的指数增长也不会继续下去。到2600年,世界上的人们将摩肩接踵,电力的消费将使地球烧得通红。如果你把新出版的书籍一本接一本地排列起来,你得以每小时90英里的速度移动才能跟上队尾。当然,到2600年,新的论文和科学著作将不是以实物的书籍和论文而是以电子的形式出现。然而,如果指数的增长继续下去,在像我所在的这种理论物理学领域,每秒钟将有10篇论文问世,而人们则没有时间去读它们。

〔田〕第二,三句话应该是:到了300年以后的《星际旅行》时代也不会停下来。在新的一千年里,目前的增长指数不会继续下去。

Clearly the present exponential growth can not continue indefinitely. So what will happen? One possibility is that we wipe ourselves out completely by some disaster such as a nuclear war. There is a sick joke that the reason we have not been contacted by extra-terrestrials is that when a civilization reaches our stage of development it becomes unstable and destroys itself. Of course it is possible that UFO's really do contain aliens, as many people believe, and the government is hushing it up. I couldn't possibly comment!
显然,目前的指数增长不可能无限地继续下去。那么,将会出现什么样的情形呢?一种可能性就是,由于某种像核战争这样的灾难,我们将自己彻底消灭。有一个令人不快的笑话,说我们之所以没有与外星人接触,原因在于当一个文明达到了我们的发展阶段时,它就会变得不稳定并摧毁自身。当然,就像许多人相信的那样,或许在UFO上真的有外星人,而政府却掩盖此事。我还是不做评论为好。

〔田〕我们有本事主动与外星人接触?大师的笑话原意指外星人有能力来接触我们。

Personally I believe there's a different explanation why we have not been contacted, but I won't go into it here. However even without that there is a very real danger that we will kill everything on this planet now that we have the technological power to do so. Even if we don't destroy ourselves completely there is the possibility that we might descend into a state of brutalism and barbarity like the opening scene of Terminator.
就个人来说,关于为什么我们没有与外星人接触,我相信有一种不同的解释,但我不想在这里谈它。不过,就算不考虑这个问题,仍然存在我们将毁灭这个星球上的一切的非常真实的危险,我们拥有做到这一点的技术力量。即使我们没有彻底摧毁自己,却仍有这样一种可能性,即我们可能沦落到一种野蛮的状态,像在《终结者》一开始的场景中那样丧失人性。

〔田〕第一句话应该是:外星人为什么不来接触我们,我个人认为另有原因,今天我不谈这个。
最后一句话的brutalism 被理解为brutality了。

But I'm an optimist. I think we have a good chance of avoiding both Armageddon and a new Dark Ages.
但我是一个乐观主义者。我认为,我们有充分的机会来避免世界末日的善恶大决战和新的黑暗时期。

〔田〕好莱坞电影Armageddon的中文片名叫:世界末日的善恶大决战?圣经读多了吧。

So how will we develop in science and technology over the next millennium? This is very difficult to answer. But let me stick my neck out and offer my predictions for the future. I will have some chance of being right about the next hundred years, but the rest of the millennium will be wild speculation.
那么,我们在下一个一千年中将如何发展科学和技术呢?这是一个很难回答的问题。请允许我冒险地提出我对未来的预测。对于下一个100年,我将有一些机会是正确的,而关于下一个一千年的其余部分,就将是异想天开的遐想了。

〔田〕wild speculation至少是a conclusion, theory, or opinion based on incomplete information or evidence,不能翻译成“异想天开的遐想”。

Our modern understanding of science began about the same time as the European settlement of North America. In 1687 Isaac Newton, the second Lucasian professor at Cambridge, published his theory of gravity and in 1864 Clerk Maxwell, another Cambridge man, discovered the equations that govern electricity and magnetism. By the end of the 19th century it seemed that we were about to achieve a complete understanding of the universe in terms of what are now known as classical laws. These correspond to what might seem the common sense notion that physical quantities such as position, speed, and rate of rotation, should be both well defined and continuously variable. But common sense is just another name for the prejudices that we have been brought up with. Common sense might lead us to expect quantities like energy to be continuous. But from the beginning of the 20th century observations began to show that energy came in discrete packets called quanta. It seems that Nature is grainy not smooth.
大约与欧洲人移民北美同时,我们对科学的现代理解也开始了。1687年,在剑桥的第二任卢卡逊教授艾萨克·牛顿发表了他关于引力的理论;1864年,另一位剑桥的绅士克拉克·麦克斯韦发现了支配电和磁的方程。到19世纪末,利用我们现在所谓的经典定律,似乎我们就要达到对宇宙完备的认识了。这样的看法与常识性的观念相一致,即诸如像位置、速度和旋转速率这样的物理量应该是定义明确且连续可变的,但常识只不过是我们所具有的偏见的别名而已。常识可能会使我们预期像能量这样的量是连续的。但是,自从20世纪初,观察开始表明,能量是以被称为量子的能包存在的。看来,自然是颗粒性的,而不是连续的。

〔田〕自然看来是粗糙的,不是平坦的。



所有跟贴:


加跟贴

笔名: 密码(可选项): 注册笔名请按这里

标题:

内容(可选项):

URL(可选项):
URL标题(可选项):
图像(可选项):


所有跟贴·加跟贴·新语丝读书论坛http://www.xys.org/cgi-bin/mainpage.pl