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English to Chinese - Rates: 0.08 - 0.12 USD per word / 15 - 16 USD per hour
English to Chinese: Natural Substantive Colours.—Indigo(Simplified)
Source text - English Natural Substantive Colours.—Indigo, one of the most valuable dyes, is the product of a large number of plants, the most important being different species of indigofera, which belong to the pea family. None of the plants (of which indigofera tinctoria is the chief) contain the colouring matter in the free state, ready-made, so to say, but only as a peculiar colourless compound called indican, first discovered by Edward Schunck. When this body is treated with dilute mineral acids it splits up into Indigo Blue and a kind of sugar. But so easily is this change brought about that if the leaf of the plant be only bruised, the decomposition ensues, and a blue mark is produced through separation of the Indigo Blue. The possibility of dyeing with Indigo so readily and easily is due to the fact that Indigo Blue absorbs hydrogen from bodies that will yield it, and becomes, as we say, reduced to a body without colour, called Indigo White, a body richer in hydrogen than Indigo Blue, and a body that is soluble. If this white body (Indigo White) be exposed to the air, the oxygen of the air undoes what the hydrogen did, and oxidises that Indigo White to insoluble Indigo Blue. Textile fabrics dipped in such reduced indigo solutions, and afterwards exposed to the air, become blue through deposit in the fibres of the insoluble Indigo Blue, and are so dyed. This is called the indigo-vat method. We can reduce this indigo so as to prepare the indigo-vat[Pg 85] by simply mixing Indigo Blue, copperas (ferrous sulphate) solution, and milk of lime in a closely-stoppered bottle with water, and letting the mixture stand. The clear liquor only is used. A piece of cotton dipped in it, and exposed to the air, quickly turns blue by absorbing oxygen, and is thus dyed. The best proportions for the indigo-vat are, for cloth dyeing, 4000 parts of water, 40 of indigo, 60 to 80 of copperas crystals, and 50 to 100 of dry slaked lime. The usual plan is to put in the water first, then add the indigo and copperas, which should be dissolved first, and finally to add the milk of lime, stirring all the time. Artificial indigo has been made from coal-tar products. The raw material is a coal-tar naphtha called toluene or toluol, which is also the raw material for saccharin, a sweetening agent made from coal-tar. This artificial indigo is proving a formidable rival to the natural product.
(From THE CHEMISTRY OF HAT MANUFACTURING
BY WATSON SMITH, F.C.S., F.I.C.)
Translation - Chinese 天然直接染料——最宝贵的染料之一的靛蓝，是多种植物所产生的，其中最重要的是属于豌豆科靛蓝属(indigofera)中一个特殊的品种的植物。没有任何植物（其中以木蓝indigofera tinctoria居首）载有游离状态的，也可以说现成的染料的，但只有称为糖苷(indican)的一种特殊的无色化合物，首先发现了爱德华 Schunck 。当这种物质经过稀浓度的矿物酸性溶液的处理，便分解为靛蓝和一种糖。 .但是这种改变是很容易发生的，只要植物的叶子被划破，随后便分解，产生靛蓝分离出的蓝色标记。随即可用作靛蓝染料的可能性的事实，是由于靛蓝从本体吸收氢，使自身成分还原成无色，称为靛白，是一种可溶性、含氢量比靛蓝更丰富的物质。靛白如果暴露在空气中，氧气的氧化作用使靛白变成蓝色难溶的靛蓝。纺织面料经过还原的靛白浸染，然后暴露于空气，通过不溶性的靛蓝沉淀染于纤维，这就是所谓的靛瓮法。我们可以还原蓝靛来准备靛瓮，只要在瓶子里混合靛蓝、绿矾（硫酸亚铁）溶液、和石灰乳液，加水并塞紧瓶塞存放着，只用上面部分澄清的液体。拿一片棉花蘸上它，暴露于空气中，吸收了氧气，很快就变成蓝色而染上颜色了。染衣料靛瓮最适当的比例是： 4000分水40分靛蓝、60分至80分的绿矾结晶体、50分到100分的干熟石灰。通常先加水，然后添加靛蓝和已溶于水的绿矾，最后加石灰乳，不时的搅拌人造靛青是取自煤焦油的产品物，原料是所谓甲苯的煤石脑油，这也是糖精的原料，糖精是取自煤石脑油的一种甜剂。这种人造的靛蓝证明是一项天然产物难以对付的劲敌。
English to Chinese: Are We Hardwired with a Sense of Irony? (Simplified)
Source text - English Language has many layers of meaning. When and how do we grasp them?
By Wray Herbert
Well, that’s just great.” Quick, what does that sentence mean? Is the speaker acknowledging some good news, celebrating a joyful event that just took place? Do we take the statement at face value? Or could the person who said it mean something quite different, maybe even the opposite? Perhaps his pleasure is not genuine.
The fact is we do not know. The words are ambiguous. The comment could be kind and authentic: imagine his daughter has just announced that she made the school honor roll for the first time. But he could just as well be stuck in rush-hour traffic, late for an important meeting. His comment in that case is probably not genuine at all but sarcastic.
How can we tell which is which? How as listeners do we recognize and comprehend irony? And what makes us use sarcasm and irony in the first place, when we could just as easily be literal and unambiguous? Communication is tricky enough without deliberately muddling things with hidden layers of meaning. What social purpose could such vagueness serve?
Language of Failed Expectations?
Psychologists are very interested in both how we use ironic language and how we see it for what it is. And there are lots of ideas. Some argue that ironic language is the language of failed expectations; it is a fact of the human condition that things do not always turn out as planned, and language needs to capture and highlight that ironic sense of life. But when and how does that sense of life emerge, and when do we develop the social competence to recognize it?
One way to approach these questions is to look at language comprehension in children. Youngsters have few life experiences to speak of, so it would seem that they should be innocent of its ironies. They should take every sentence they hear literally, unless they are given some reason not to do so. So, to stick with the same example: if someone says, “Well, that’s just great,” kids should simply believe it. They should not be expected to probe for deeper meaning. If they do probe, it should be as an afterthought.
But is that the case? Psychologist Penny M. Pexman of the University of Calgary in Alberta decided to explore this problem in the laboratory, to see how quick and efficient kids are at processing irony and sarcasm. She wanted to see how early in life this cognitive skill emerges. She also wanted to find out if indeed kids go through a two-step process every time they are confronted with irony—taking the literal meaning first, then perceiving the hidden meaning as an afterthought.
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It is hard to study children’s minds, especially the five- to 10-year-old minds in Pexman’s studies. She could not entirely rely on them to report on their own thinking, so she had to devise special methods to probe their perceptions. Here is an example of what she did. In one experiment, she trained kids to associate niceness with a smiling yellow duck and meanness with a snarling gray shark. Then they watched puppet shows, in which the puppets made both sarcastic and literal remarks. Rather than asking the kids to interpret the remarks, she tracked their eye gaze, to see whether they shifted their attention ever so slightly toward the shark or the duck after a particular remark.
The results, reported in the August issue of the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science, were intriguing. If kids were indeed processing every sentence as literally true to begin with, then their eyes would reveal that. That is, they would look automatically at the duck on hearing “Well, that’s just great.” But they did not. When that sentence was used ironically, their eyes went immediately to the mean shark. The irony required no laborious cognitive crunching. They processed the insincerity as rapidly as they processed the basic meaning of the words.
Hints of Irony
So ironic sensibility appears to be hardwired into the neurons, although using and understanding irony also require social intelligence. Both children and adults need hints that a comment is ironic as opposed to literal. These hints come in the form of facial expression, tone of voice, knowledge of the speaker’s personality, and so forth. But all these social cues are processed instantaneously and integrated into a reliable sense of another person’s beliefs and intentions. Children with autism have difficulty doing this processing—that is, “theorizing” about what others are thinking and feeling. Interestingly, some autistic children also have difficulty appreciating irony and sarcasm, suggesting that the same brain abnormality may be linked to both deficits.
Pexman’s puppet experiments have revealed a fascinating subtlety about children’s emerging ironic sensibilities. She found that although even those as young as six years understand ironic criticism, they do not seem to “get” ironic praise. For example, if a young child misses a soccer goal, he has no trouble knowing that “Hey, nice shot” is insincere and mean-spirited. But if he scores a difficult shot and a teammate yells, “Hey, lousy shot, man,” that is a lot harder to process. It does not compute automatically. In other words, children appreciate hurtful irony but not cheerful irony.
Why would that be? Pexman believes it is because most people have a general expectation that others will be nice to them, not mean; ironic language calls attention to the unexpected meanness. Which seems to suggest that kids develop a sardonic sense of life’s travails very early on. Well, that’s just great.
Source text - English Rare Newton's apple tree
bears fruit for the first time
Look out for falling apples on York’s Keele campus: a rare descendant of Sir Isaac Newton’s famed apple tree has borne fruit for the first time
"We were delighted and surprised to see we now have our own ‘Newton’s apple’ growing on our tree," said York Professor Emeritus Michael Boyer, Department of Biology, Faculty of Science & Engineering, who has played a key role in the project since its beginnings in 2000.
In November of the same year, three tiny trees, grafted with cuttings from Newton’s original apple tree, were planted in the quadrangle adjacent to the Petrie Science Building. Earlier efforts by the National Research Council of Canada to plant a Newton's Apple tree were thwarted because of Ottawa's extreme winters.
The tree is an old variety known as the Flower of Kent. It likely originated from France and produces a pear-shaped fruit smaller than today’s popular varieties. "The tree is still quite small, and the apple is about the size of a golf ball," explained Boyer, who noted that the tree will eventually grow to a height of approximately 10-12 metres. "But it’s really quite amazing when you think about the genesis of it."
The cuttings (or scions) made it to York in a rather circuitous way from Woolsthorpe Manor in Lincolnshire, England. The manor was Newton's birthplace and the site of the famous story of the falling apple. After Newton’s death on March 20, 1727, the manor’s new owners transferred cuttings of the tree to Belton Park, Lincolnshire, a few miles away. From Belton Park, scions were transferred to the National Fruit Research Station in East Malling, Kent. The Agriculture Canada Quarantine Station in British Columbia later obtained some from East Malling and put them under a four-year quarantine. Still later, scions were shipped to York and grafted to a nurse tree on campus, and finally provided in the spring of 1998 to Siloam Orchards in Uxbridge, Ontario, which specializes in heritage varieties.
Translation - Chinese 罕見的牛頓蘋果樹首度結果:
在約克基爾大學的校園裡,當心落下的蘋果：艾薩克·牛頓爵士著名的蘋果樹罕見的後代, 首度結了果.
“我們非常高興和驚訝地看到，現在我們有我們自己的‘牛頓的蘋果’生長在我們的樹上” 約克大學生物系、自然科學與工程系的榮譽退職教授邁克爾博耶說。自從2000年這項計畫開始以來，他就扮演了關鍵人物的角色。
在同年十一月，從原來的牛頓蘋果樹剪枝的嫁接，三株細小的樹被種植於皮特里科學大樓毗鄰的四合院。先前加拿大國家研究理事會種植牛頓的蘋果樹的努力，因渥太華的極度嚴冬而挫敗。
Source text - English Now he remembered the first gem he had considered---the Deathstone It had signaled his demise in a few hours.Those hours had passed. The love stone had proved itself, so he had no further reson to doubt the deathstone. Even the Wealthstone worked, in its fashion. He was fated soon to depart this life.
Zane lifeted the gun. Why not? His life might as well end efficiently, instead of being drangered out in the gutters of the city. Some considered a meeting with ghost Molly to be a signal of doom. Certainly it would have been, had hhe accerpted her offer and nmade love to her. It was, of course, death to love the dead.Sweet Molly herself might not be aware of that, but she did want a husband, and if he had become a ghost in her arms…
The truth about Molly was that, while any person could see her with impunity, she herself could perceive only those who were approaching her condition. So if Molly saw a person, that person would soon be dead. She was not the cause, merely the signal. If a person was afraid he was destined to die soon,perhapssuffering from a mysterious illness,he could show himself to Molly and,if she passd him by without notice,he could relax. This aspect of her nature, had somehow escaped Zane’s consciousness at the time, but it was true. Probably he had censured it out emotionally. Yet of course the robber, who had certainly taken a fatal wound.
Translation - Chinese 現在他記起了他第一個考慮的那一顆寶石———死亡石。它預言數小時之內的事，而這個數小時已經過去了 。愛情石証實靈驗了，死亡石也無可置疑。財富石的確生了效，只不過它有自已的一套做法。他注定了就要別離他的人生。
然因舉起槍，有什麼理由不速戰速決呢？早點結束生命，也免得被拖入城市的溝壑。有人說，和茉莉見面，是死亡的前兆。如果他接受了她的提議，和她做愛，那當然算是愛死人愛到死，茉莉也許沒想到這一點，茉莉也不是不想要有個丈夫的，萬一他在她的懷裏也變成一個幽靈呢？
事實是這樣的，別人可以看到她而無患無災，而她可以看見的，是條件情況和她近似的。所以如果她看見一個人，這個人必定是注定快死了。她不是造成一個人死的原因，她只是一個前兆。一個病魔纏身的人，怕是不是注定要死了，他可以走到茉莉面前，看茉莉會不會看見他。如果她看不見，那麼他就可以放心了。
她的性質這一方面，當時逃過了然因的意識，可是這是真的。情緒上他也許責難自己，可是他又想，那個強盜被幽靈看見了，他當然就中了致命的一槍。
English to Chinese: Thirst
Source text - English I was passing through a street, I cast my eyes on a beautiful girl. It was in the autumn, when the heat dried up all moisture from the mouth, and the sultry wind made the marrow boil in the bones, so that, being unable to support the sun’s powerful rays, I was obliged to take shelter under the shade of a wall, in hopes that some one would relieve me from the distressing heat, and quench my thirst with a draught of water. Suddenly from the portico of a house I beheld a female form whose beauty it is impossible for the tongue of eloquence to describe, insomuch that it seemed as if the dawn was rising in the obscurity of night, or as if the Water of Immortality was issuing from the Land of Darkness. She held in her hand a cup of snow-water, into which she had sprinkled sugar and mixed with it the juice of the grape. I know not whether what I perceived was the fragrance of rose-water, or that she had [pg 29]infused into it a few drops from the blossom of her cheek. In short, I received the cup from her beauteous hand, and, drinking the contents, found myself restored to new life. The thirst of my soul is not such that it can be allayed with a drop of pure water—the streams of whole rivers would not satisfy it. How happy is that fortunate one whose eyes every morning may behold such a countenance! He who is intoxicated with wine will be sober again in the course of the night; but he who is intoxicated by the cup-bearer will never recover his senses till the day of judgment.
Translation - Chinese 我走在路上，從不遠處街道的一端，一個美麗的姑娘迎面走近，我不由得對她望了一眼，那時正值炎熱的夏天，熱氣烘乾了嘴唇所沾的濕氣， 悶熱的風沸騰了骨髓，也支撐不起太陽強有力的光芒。我不得不在房屋牆影下避蔭，期望有人解除我的困熱，給我一口涼水， 淬息我的乾渇。
突然從房子的門廊出現一個清秀女子的身影，她像朦朧夜色逐漸消失時上升的黎明；像黑暗籠罩的大地之下湧出來清新的靈水。她的手端著一杯灑以糖，澆以葡萄汁的霜水遞給我。我不知道我所感受的芬芳，是她參入玫瑰花瓣的精油，還是從她面頰摘取的花露。
我從她的手接過杯子，一飲而盡杯中的水汁，覺得精神恢復了，然而我的心靈的乾渇，不是一杯清水所能滿足--即使一江的流水也不能使它減輕些許。每日一早起就能眼見到這樣女子的人是多麼幸運啊!
一個沉醉於杯酒的人，或許經過一夜，明日就能清醒； 人，陶醉於持酒杯的人的，永遠生活在陶醉之中‧‧‧
