听力原文

You are about to hear the sound of the past, In fact It's the sound of a ghost, it's a haunting magnetic pulse -which is all that's left of a mighty star that we can still hear today, thanks to the Centre for Astrophysics at Jodrell Bank.

远古的声音实际上是幽灵的声音，那是挥之不去的磁脉冲波——一个巨大的恒星仅存的残余。感谢坐落于周德尔堤(Jodrell Bank)的天体物理学研究中心，我们今天依然能够听到这个磁波。

The explosion that killed this star was so intense, that it was seen in broad daylight across Europe, North America and China in the summer of the year 1054; at least that's what the year was called in Europe. So what was our world up to, when men and women, however they counted the years, were gazing up to the heavens at this dying star, which they could see and we can still hear?

时值1054年的夏天，至少欧洲纪年法如是说，导致这颗恒星陨落的爆炸如此剧烈，以至于横跨欧洲、北美以及中国的居民在光天化日下见证了这一幕。这颗恒星他们看得到，我们听得到，那么，忽略各种纪年方式，当那些古人仰视苍穹中这颗即将陨落的恒星时，我们的世界何去何从？

What were they doing, making, thinking? Well, a thousand years ago in America, pyramids are taking shape on the Mississippi river; the world's first bank notes are circulating in China; a magnificent Baghdad is the largest city in the world; in West Africa, Ghana rules a vast empire and, on a chilly island in northern Europe, there's a nasty surprise on the horizon for a king called Harold.

他们在从事什么，制作什么，思考什么？1000年前，美洲密西西比河上金字塔日将成形，在中国世界上首批纸币开始流通，雄伟的巴格达城在世界上首屈一指，西非的加纳统治着泱泱帝国，欧洲一个冰冷的小岛上正酝酿着一次针对哈罗德(Harold)国王的卑鄙奇袭。

In these programmes, I'm travelling back in time and across the globe, to see how we humans, over two million years, have shaped our world, and been shaped by it. And I'm going to tell this story exclusively through the 'things' that humans have made ... all sorts of 'things', carefully designed and then either admired and preserved or used, broken and thrown away.

在这一系列节目中，我将追溯时光，纵横全球，探索200多万年来我们人类如何塑造世界并为世界所塑造。我将仅仅通过各种各样精心打造的“人造物”——或为人敬仰、保存，或为人使用、损坏、丢弃，来讲述这个故事。

I've chosen just a hundred objects from different points on our journey -from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card, and in each programme I'm going to be talking about one object from the British Museum's collection.

在这次时空之旅中，我从不同的点上选取了正好100件物品——从一个烹饪罐到一艘金帆船，或从一个石器时代的工具到一张现代的信用卡。每期节目中，我将谈论大英博物馆馆藏中的一件展品。

'When I see it, I immediately think of the mastery of technology and art, the welding of the two ...' 'I just thought it was beautiful to look at, that it made me feel that it was used, and used again and again ...' 'It's a beautiful object, and it's fascinating, of course, because it's probably quite accurate ...' 'Holding this I can feel what it was like to be out on the African savannahs ...'A history of the world in a hundred objects-the Mummy of Hornedjitef . A wooden coffin from Thebes in Egypt(third century BC).

“看见它，我便想到精湛的技术和圆熟的艺术，以及二者的紧密结合……”“我就是觉得它看上去很美，让我联想到它曾被人们反反复复使用……”“这件展品很精美，也很迷人，当然啦，因为它可能相当精确……”“握着它时，我仿佛感受到了非洲大草原上的野外生活……”

重点讲解

1. about to

即将，行将；刚要

eg. He had to happen along just as we were about to leave.

我们刚要走，他装出一副不知情的样子冒了出来。

eg. Every one feels that a disaster is imminent, as if a catastrophe is about to come.

谁都感到大事不好， 似乎有什么极大的灾难即将来临。

2. In fact

事实上，实际上

eg. In fact, you have to.

实际上，你必须要这么做。

eg. She carries her age very well. She looks 50 but in fact she's more than 60 .

她不显老，她看上去像50岁，其实已经60多了。

3. take shape

形成；成形；体现；具体化

eg. Until these new open source projects take shape, not much can be said.

在这些新的开放源代码项目成形之前，我们需要拭目以待。

eg. More failing tests could be written for those pieces of code until a reasonable specification begins to take shape.

可以为那些代码片段编写更多的失败测试，直到一个合理的规范开始成形。