2018年11月6日,由比尔及梅琳达·盖茨基金会(Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)、中国国际贸易促进委员会以及中国国际商会联合举办的新世代厕所博览会(Reinvented Toilet Expo)在北京开幕。比尔·盖茨出席博览会开幕式并发表演讲。
演讲现场,比尔盖奇举起拿着一个装有人类粪便的烧杯表示:“这么点儿粪便就能携带两百万亿个轮状病毒、两百亿个贺氏菌和十万个寄生虫卵。”
毫无意外,“将粪便摆上讲台”这一幕也成为了今天BBC中国版块的头条:
Bill Gates brandishespoo to showcase reinvented toilet tech
Mr Gates used the beaker of faeces to highlight bacteria and sanitation-related disease
Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft founder Bill Gates had his hands full on-stage in Beijing on Tuesday, showing a jar of human faeces.
brandish
表示“威胁(或兴奋)地挥舞,炫耀”,英文解释为“to wave something in the air in a threatening or excited way”,举个🌰:
She brandished a pan at me so I ran out of the kitchen.
她拿着平底锅向我挥来,于是我就跑出了厨房。
通常用于表示挥舞“武器”(especially a weapon),如:brandish a knife
beaker & jar
beaker一词有两个含义:
1)表示“(直身无柄,一般用塑料做成的)杯子”,英文解释为“a drinking cup with straight sides and no handle, usually made of plastic”;
2)表示“烧杯,量杯”,英文解释为“a glass cup with straight sides that is used in chemistry for measuring and heating liquids”。
在后文中,则用了jar来替换beaker
jar表示“一罐的量或物”,英文解释为You can use jar to refer to a jar and its contents, or to the contents only. 或者是指存放食物的玻璃罐(glass container),举个🌰:
She opened up a jar of plums.
她打开了一罐李子。
poo/poop
poo/poop均表示“屎,大便”,英文解释为“solid waste from the body”;一说poo是英式,poop是美式,比较不正式,口语上更常用;而柯林斯英汉双解大词典解释称poo是儿童用语“大便; 臭臭”(Poo is a child's word for faeces.)
poop也可以作动词,除了表示“拉屎”,如:
Ted, did you poop in your pants?
泰德,你是不是拉在裤子里了?
还有一些奇怪的用法:
比如poop out可以表示“筋疲力尽”,英文解释为:to become too tired to continue what you are doing. 举个🌰:
I just poop out if I stay up too late.
我晚上熬夜熬得太晚的话就会筋疲力尽的。
还可以指机器或者设备“停止工作,停止运行,熄火”,英文解释为:to stop working or operating. 举个🌰:
The engine pooped out before we reached our destination.
在我们抵达目的地之前发动机就坏了。
当然,更奇怪的是在old-fashioned slang中,作为名词的poop还可以表示“信息; 事实”(information),感受下这个🌰:
Did you get the poop on all the candidates?
你弄到所有候选人的信息了吗?
feces/faeces
feces /'fiːsiːz,ˋfisiz/
faeces /'fiːsiːz/
feces是faeces的美式拼法(复数)
均表示“粪便”,英文解释为“solid waste material from the bowels”
下文会出现其形容词性:fecal / faecal.
bowels
表示“肠”,英文解释为“Your bowels are the tubes in your body through which digested food passes from your stomach to your anus.”(同样也是复数形式)
“大解,排便(the act of getting rid of solid waste from your body)”有更优雅的说法:
move/empty/open your bowels 或者是 a bowel movement
philanthropist
/fɪˈlænθrəpɪst/
表示“慈善家,乐善好施者”,英文解释为“A philanthropist is someone who freely gives money and help to people who need it.”
之前推送过的,比尔盖茨做过另一个件好事,你还记得吗?
have one's hands full
表示“忙得不可开交”,英文解释为“to be so busy that you do not have time to do anything else”,举个🌰:
I'd love to help but I've got my hands full organizing the school play.
我愿意帮忙,可是我正忙着组织学校的戏剧演出,腾不出空儿来。
The stunt was part of his speech at the Reinvented Toilet Expo event - a showcase for new toilet technologies.
stunt
表示“引人注目的噱头,花招”,英文解释为“A stunt is something interesting that is done in order to attract attention and get publicity for the person or company responsible for it.”,举个🌰:
Todd flew over the city in a hot-air balloon as a publicity stunt.
作为一种宣传噱头,托德乘坐热气球飞越城市上空。
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has spent more than $200m on researching the field across the last seven years.
从2011年开始,盖茨基金会先后投资逾2亿美元,用于新世代厕所和万能处理器的早期研发,旨在帮助企业和政府降低采用新卫生解决方案的门槛和风险。
Twenty cutting-edgesanitation products were on display, intended to destroy harmful bacteria and prevent disease.
通过盖茨基金会的一系列投资活动,目前已有二十种新世代厕所和万能处理器技术和产品进入商业性许可和量产阶段。
cutting-edge
之前其实出现过好几次啦,这里再回顾一下:
cutting-edge字面意思是“刀刃,刀口”,实际上表示某事物发展的“最尖端,最前沿”,和state-of-the-art同义,State of the art, the highest level of development, as of a device, technique, or scientific field,举个🌰:
The research is at the cutting edge of computer science.
这项研究处于计算机科学的最前沿。
sanitation
上文就出现了sanitation-related disease,sanitation表示“公共卫生,环境卫生”,英文解释为“the protection of public health by removing and treating waste, dirty water etc”,举个🌰:
Overcrowding and poor sanitation are common problems in prisons.
过度拥挤和卫生状况差是监狱里的普遍问题。
"I have to say, a decade ago I never imagined that I'd know so much about poop," Mr Gates joked at the conference. "And I definitely never thought that Melinda would have to tell me to stop talking about toilets and faecal sludge at the dinner table."
“不得不说,十年前,我无法想象自己会如此了解粪便。也绝对没有想到,我已经对在餐桌前畅谈厕所和粪污习以为常,以至于需要梅琳达来打断我。”
sludge
/slʌdʒ/
表示“淤泥; 污水; 工业废料”,英文解释为“Sludge is thick mud, sewage, or industrial waste.”,举个🌰:
More than a million gallons of sludge has seeped into the water.
超过一百万加仑的工业废料已渗进水中。
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