【学习笔记】懂你英语 核心课 Level 8 Unit 2 Part 1(I)A South Pole Expedition 1

TED Talk      To the South Pole and back — the hardest 105 days of my life  Speaker:  Ben Saunders     第一课

So in the oasis of intelligentsia that is TED, I stand here before you this evening as an expert in dragging heavy stuff around cold places.   TED是智慧的绿洲,今晚我有幸站在这里,以一位行走在天寒地冻区域的探险专家的身份发言。

I've been leading polar expeditions for most of my adult life,   成年后,我把大部分时间用于带领极地探险,

and last month, my teammate Tarka L'Herpiniere and I finished the most ambitious expedition I've ever attempted.    上个月,我和队友拉卡·赫皮尼尔完成了有生以来最雄心勃勃的探险。

In fact, it feels like I've been transported straight here from four months in the middle of nowhere, mostly grunting and swearing, straight to the TED stage.    我差不多像是从那无人区四个月的骂骂咧咧的生活中,直接被传送到了演说现场。

So you can imagine that's a transition that hasn't been entirely seamless. 因此你们大概可以发现,我还没有完全缓过劲来。

One of the interesting side effects seems to be that my short-term memory is entirely shot.    其中有一个有意思的后遗症,就是我的短期记忆真的非常短。

So I've had to write some notes to avoid too much grunting and swearing in the next 17 minutes.   所以我不得不记笔记,从而让剩下的17分钟不会充满咒骂和嘟哝。

This is the first talk I've given about this expedition, and while we weren't sequencing genomes or building space telescopes,     这是我第一次谈论这次探险,虽然我们没有做出基因测序或者建设太空望远镜这类的贡献,

this is a story about giving everything we had to achieve something that hadn't been done before.   但是这次探险里,我们依然竭尽所能,达成了人类前所未有的目标。

So I hope in that you might find some food for thought.  所以,我也希望你们能从中获得一些启示。


It was a journey, an expedition in Antarctica, the coldest, windiest, driest and highest altitude continent on Earth.   这是一次南极洲探险,全球最冷,风最大,最干燥,海拔最高的大洲。

It's a fascinating place. It's a huge place.    那是个不可思议的,巨大的地方。

It's twice the size of Australia, a continent that is the same size as China and India put together.   它的面积是澳大利亚版图的两倍,等同于中国和印度版图面积的总和。


As an aside, I have experienced an interesting phenomenon in the last few days, something that I expect Chris Hadfield may get at TED in a few years' time, 

conversations that go something like this: "Oh, Antarctica. Awesome. My husband and I did Antarctica with Lindblad for our anniversary." Or, "Oh cool, did you go there for the marathon?" 


Our journey was, in fact, 69 marathons back to back in 105 days, an 1,800-mile round trip on foot from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and back again. 

In the process, we broke the record for the longest human-powered polar journey in history by more than 400 miles. 

For those of you from the Bay Area, it was the same as walking from here to San Francisco, then turning around and walking back again. 

So as camping trips go, it was a long one, and one I've seen summarized most succinctly here on the hallowed pages of Business Insider Malaysia.   【词汇】succinct 简洁的,简明的=clearly and briefly expressed

["Two Explorers Just Completed A Polar Expedition That Killed Everyone The Last Time It Was Attempted"]


Chris Hadfield talked so eloquently about fear and about the odds of success, and indeed the odds of survival.  【词义】eloquently 善辩的,富于表现力地=express one's opinion in clear and effective language.

Of the nine people in history that had attempted this journey before us, none had made it to the pole and back, and five had died in the process.

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