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VOA慢速英语2011--Remembering Three Interesting Americans

时间:2011-09-21 03:30:29

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(单词翻译)

EXPLORATIONS - Remembering Three Interesting Americans

BARBARA KLEIN: I’m Barbara Klein.
MARIO RITTER: And I’m Mario Ritter with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today, we learn about three Americans who died recently. Eugene Nida had a big influence in making Christianity’s holy book, the Bible, available in hundreds of languages. Betty Skelton set height and speed records as a pilot and racecar driver. And Michael Hart helped invent the electronic book and the online library called Project Gutenberg.
(MUSIC)
BARBARA KLEIN: Eugene Nida was a language expert, a Baptist religious worker, and a Bible historian. He worked for the American Bible Society for fifty years. Mr. Nida is widely considered the father of modern Bible translation. He helped translate the world’s most popular book, the Bible, into two hundred languages.
Eugene Nida was born in Oklahoma City in nineteen fourteen. He studied two ancient languages, Greek and Latin, in college, then completed a master’s degree program in New Testament1 Greek. He later received a doctorate2 degree from the University of Michigan in linguistics4. Mister Nida began working for the American Bible Society in nineteen forty-three. That same year, he also became a Baptist clergyman.
MARIO RITTER: Eugene Nida was known for developing a new method of Bible translation, called “functional equivalence.” He believed that language in Bible translations had to be understandable and culturally meaningful to the people reading them. Before Mr. Nida, different language versions of the Bible were mainly the product of western religious workers. The workers often had limited knowledge of other languages. So their translations were often based on an exact word-by-word translation.
Mr. Nida developed Bible translations that honored the original Greek and Hebrew writings. But they also sounded natural and made use of a culture’s own linguistic3 expressions.
BARBARA KLEIN: Mr. Nida traveled all over the world, teaching native translators about his method. He believed that translation was impossible without cultural understanding. One of his most difficult projects involved producing an Inukitut version of the Bible. Inukitut is the language of the Inuit people who live in the Arctic area. This project lasted twenty-four years.
The Bible is filled with stories that take place in warm places, often with deserts. Biblical stories involve animals like camels, donkeys and sheep. Yet the Inuit Bible had to be understood by a people who live in a climate of snow and ice. The animals they knew were walruses5 and seals.
Mr. Nida also learned that, in parts of Africa, sheep are considered damaging and problematic animals. So, Bible stories about sheep and shepherds had a very different meaning there than in the west.
MARIO RITTER: Mr. Nida also worked on creating the Good News Bible. This English language Bible was written in simple, modern English. It was aimed at non-native English speakers, but also became hugely successful with native English speakers.
Eugene Nida died on August twenty-fifth at the age of ninety-six. In all, he wrote more than forty books about languages, translations, and Biblical studies. He once said that it did not matter in what language a person reads the Bible. He said the goal was to “read it, understand it, and be transformed by its message.”
(MUSIC)
BARBARA KLEIN: Betty Skelton was often called “The First Lady of Firsts” because of the many records she set. She grew up in Pensacola, Florida, watching airplanes flying to and from a nearby navy base. As a child, she persuaded her parents to let her take flying lessons. By twelve, Betty made her first flight alone, although she was not legally permitted to do so until she turned sixteen. By sixteen she earned a permit to fly a plane and, two years later, received a commercial license6.
MARIO RITTER: During the nineteen forties, female pilots were mostly barred from commercial and military flying. So Betty Skelton decided7 to use her flight skills in aerobatics, performing difficult turns, drops, and other exercises. She began performing and competing around the country.
She won the International Feminine Aerobatic Championship for three years in a row, starting in nineteen forty-eight. She and her little Pitts Special plane the “Little Stinker” became famous.
BARBARA KLEIN: Dorothy Cochrane is an aviation expert at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. She has studied and worked with Betty Skelton.
DOROTHY COCHRANE: “Betty was such a wonderful aerobatic pilot that she really set the bar high for other women to follow behind her and she was a great role model for them. She really was as good as some of the men.”
BARBARA KLEIN: Ms. Cochrane says Betty Skelton flew during a period when men and women aerobatic pilots competed separately. And she set the example when later women did compete and win against men.
DOROTHY COCHRANE: “She also became the first woman to perform the inverted8 ribbon cut. And that’s a very tricky9 thing to do.”
BARBARA KLEIN: This flying trick involved using her plane’s propeller10 to cut a ribbon held between two tall sticks. Betty Skelton did this while flying about three meters off the ground—upside down.
MARIO RITTER: Once Ms. Skelton had made her mark flying, she moved on to racecars. She became the first female test driver in the racecar industry. She set several land speed records. She also set a cross-country record, driving from New York to California in under fifty-seven hours. And, she became one of the top women advertising11 experts working with General Motors in support of the company’s Corvette car.
DOROTHY COCHRANE: “She loved speed, that’s part of who she was and that was part of her attraction to aviation. And then when she did all she could in aviation, she moved on to automobiles12. She still had a beautiful red corvette that she was driving around the retirement13 community that she lived in, passing some of the golf carts that other people were driving.”
MARIO RITTER: Ms. Skelton died in August at the age of eighty-five. Visitors to the Washington area can see her “Little Stinker” plane at the Smithsonian Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The small red and white plane hangs high in the air above the entrance to the museum. And as its former owner would have liked, the plane is hanging upside down.
(MUSIC)
BARBARA KLEIN: Michael Hart is widely credited as the inventor of the first electronic book, or e-book. He also helped create Project Gutenberg, the first and largest free library on the Internet.
Mr. Hart was born in nineteen forty-seven in Tacoma, Washington, but grew up in Illinois. His father was a professor of Shakespearian literature and his mother was a mathematician14.
MARIO RITTER: Michael Hart first became interested in the idea of information sharing while studying at the University of Illinois in the early nineteen seventies. He had permission to use the university’s mainframe computer. This huge machine was connected to a network of other computers. He later estimated that the time given to him on the computer network was worth about one hundred million dollars. So, he wanted to come up with a project that was valuable enough to justify15 the cost of the technology.
BARBARA KLEIN: After attending an Independence Day celebration, Mr. Hart received a free copy of the Declaration of Independence. He decided to type the words of the document on the computer and share this text with the computer network. He decided that this was worth a hundred million dollars, because in the future hundreds of millions of people could use his copy of the Declaration of Independence.
This event marked the beginning of Project Gutenberg. Over the next ten years, Mr. Hart added the Bible, William Shakespeare’s plays and other texts to the project’s storage system.
MARIO RITTER: Mr. Hart said the goal of Project Gutenberg was to support the creation and spreading of e-books free of cost to computer users. He said this effort aimed to “break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy16.
Greg Newby is the head of the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. He says Mr. Hart’s philosophy behind the project was about helping17 people.
GREG NEWBY: “He had this idea that through literacy, through access to literature really, people could become literate18. And then through literacy people could become educated, and through education people could empower themselves to have more successful lives and eventually participate in making the world a better place.”
MARIO RITTER: Today, Project Gutenberg contains more than thirty six thousand books. Most are no longer protected by copyright laws. Others are still protected by such laws, but were donated with the permission of the copyright owner. Project Gutenberg depends on volunteers to enter new books into its collection.
BARBARA KLEIN: Michael Hart once said that the Gutenberg Project represented a complete system change. It lets a person share his or her favorite book with millions of people.
GREG NEWBY: “Michael really was someone that sacrificed the ability to have what probably would have been a successful and, if he desired traditional career, to electronic books and to these principles of literacy and freedom of access to information.”
BARBARA KLEIN: Mr. Hart died earlier this month at the age of sixty-four. He once told a newspaper that there were only two things in the world that were truly free and in endless supply. He said these were the air we breathe and the texts on Project Gutenberg.
(MUSIC)
MARIO RITTER: This program was written and produced by Dana Demange. I’m Mario Ritter.
BARBARA KLEIN: And I’m Barbara Klein. Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.


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点击收听单词发音收听单词发音  

1 testament yyEzf     
n.遗嘱;证明
参考例句:
  • This is his last will and testament.这是他的遗愿和遗嘱。
  • It is a testament to the power of political mythology.这说明,编造政治神话可以产生多大的威力。
2 doctorate fkEzt     
n.(大学授予的)博士学位
参考例句:
  • He hasn't enough credits to get his doctorate.他的学分不够取得博士学位。
  • Where did she do her doctorate?她在哪里攻读博士?
3 linguistic k0zxn     
adj.语言的,语言学的
参考例句:
  • She is pursuing her linguistic researches.她在从事语言学的研究。
  • The ability to write is a supreme test of linguistic competence.写作能力是对语言能力的最高形式的测试。
4 linguistics f0Gxm     
n.语言学
参考例句:
  • She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
  • Linguistics is a scientific study of the property of language.语言学是指对语言的性质所作的系统研究。
5 walruses 617292179d7a1988bfff06ba7b4f606b     
n.海象( walrus的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • Walruses have enormous appetites and hunt for food almost constantly. 海象食欲极大,几乎一直在猎取食物。 来自互联网
  • Two Atlantic walruses snuggle on an ice floe near Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada. 加拿大努勒维特伊格卢利克附近,两头大西洋海象在浮冰上相互偎依。 来自互联网
6 license B9TzU     
n.执照,许可证,特许;v.许可,特许
参考例句:
  • The foreign guest has a license on the person.这个外国客人随身携带执照。
  • The driver was arrested for having false license plates on his car.司机由于使用假车牌而被捕。
7 decided lvqzZd     
adj.决定了的,坚决的;明显的,明确的
参考例句:
  • This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
  • There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。
8 inverted 184401f335d6b8661e04dfea47b9dcd5     
adj.反向的,倒转的v.使倒置,使反转( invert的过去式和过去分词 )
参考例句:
  • Only direct speech should go inside inverted commas. 只有直接引语应放在引号内。
  • Inverted flight is an acrobatic manoeuvre of the plane. 倒飞是飞机的一种特技动作。 来自《简明英汉词典》
9 tricky 9fCzyd     
adj.狡猾的,奸诈的;(工作等)棘手的,微妙的
参考例句:
  • I'm in a rather tricky position.Can you help me out?我的处境很棘手,你能帮我吗?
  • He avoided this tricky question and talked in generalities.他回避了这个非常微妙的问题,只做了个笼统的表述。
10 propeller tRVxe     
n.螺旋桨,推进器
参考例句:
  • The propeller started to spin around.螺旋桨开始飞快地旋转起来。
  • A rope jammed the boat's propeller.一根绳子卡住了船的螺旋桨。
11 advertising 1zjzi3     
n.广告业;广告活动 a.广告的;广告业务的
参考例句:
  • Can you give me any advice on getting into advertising? 你能指点我如何涉足广告业吗?
  • The advertising campaign is aimed primarily at young people. 这个广告宣传运动主要是针对年轻人的。
12 automobiles 760a1b7b6ea4a07c12e5f64cc766962b     
n.汽车( automobile的名词复数 )
参考例句:
  • When automobiles become popular,the use of the horse and buggy passed away. 汽车普及后,就不再使用马和马车了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
  • Automobiles speed in an endless stream along the boulevard. 宽阔的林荫道上,汽车川流不息。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
13 retirement TWoxH     
n.退休,退职
参考例句:
  • She wanted to enjoy her retirement without being beset by financial worries.她想享受退休生活而不必为金钱担忧。
  • I have to put everything away for my retirement.我必须把一切都积蓄起来以便退休后用。
14 mathematician aoPz2p     
n.数学家
参考例句:
  • The man with his back to the camera is a mathematician.背对着照相机的人是位数学家。
  • The mathematician analyzed his figures again.这位数学家再次分析研究了他的这些数字。
15 justify j3DxR     
vt.证明…正当(或有理),为…辩护
参考例句:
  • He tried to justify his absence with lame excuses.他想用站不住脚的借口为自己的缺席辩解。
  • Can you justify your rude behavior to me?你能向我证明你的粗野行为是有道理的吗?
16 illiteracy VbuxY     
n.文盲
参考例句:
  • It is encouraging to read that illiteracy is declining.从读报中了解文盲情况正在好转,这是令人鼓舞的。
  • We must do away with illiteracy.我们必须扫除文盲。
17 helping 2rGzDc     
n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的,辅助的
参考例句:
  • The poor children regularly pony up for a second helping of my hamburger. 那些可怜的孩子们总是要求我把我的汉堡包再给他们一份。
  • By doing this, they may at times be helping to restore competition. 这样一来, 他在某些时候,有助于竞争的加强。
18 literate 181zu     
n.学者;adj.精通文学的,受过教育的
参考例句:
  • Only a few of the nation's peasants are literate.这个国家的农民中只有少数人能识字。
  • A literate person can get knowledge through reading many books.一个受过教育的人可以通过读书而获得知识。

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