TED演讲:火星现在是什么时间(6)

Again, we didn't start out thinking, "Oh, let's invent a language."

我们开始想：“对了，我们干脆发明一种语言吧。”

It was just very confusing. I remember somebody walked up to me and said,

刚开始真的非常的混乱。我记得有人走过来对我说：

"I would like to do this activity on the vehicle tomorrow, on the rover."

“我明天要在漫游者上做这个任务。”

And I said, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, or Mars, tomorrow?"

我就问：“明天，地球的明天还是火星的明天？”

We started this terminology¹ because we needed a way to talk to each other.

我们开始想一些专有术语，否则我们都没法交谈了。

Tomorrow became "nextersol" or "solorrow."

于是“明天”变成了“nextersol”或是“solorrow”。

Because people have different preferences for the words they use.

毕竟人们用词各有所好。

Some of you might say "soda²" and some of you might say "pop."

有些人说“苏打”，有些人说“饮料”。

So we have people who say "nextersol" or "solorrow."

所以我们有人说“nextersol”，有人说“solorrow”。

And then something that I noticed after a few years of working on these missions,

在这个项目工作几年后，我发现

was that the people who work on the rovers, we say "tosol."

运行漫游者的人说“tosol”。

The people who work on the landed missions that don't rove around, they say "tosoul."

处理陆地工作的，不接触漫游者的人，他们说“tosoul”。

So I could actually tell what mission you worked on from your Martian accent.

所以我都能从工作人员的“火星口音”中推断出他的工作。

1 terminology   

n.术语；专有名词

参考例句：

• He particularly criticized the terminology in the document.他特别批评了文件中使用的术语。
• The article uses rather specialized musical terminology.这篇文章用了相当专业的音乐术语。

2 soda   

n.苏打水；汽水

参考例句：

• She doesn't enjoy drinking chocolate soda.她不喜欢喝巧克力汽水。
• I will freshen your drink with more soda and ice cubes.我给你的饮料重加一些苏打水和冰块。