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To see a world in a grain of sand 从一粒沙子看到一个世界 That quarry’s nature, reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is not a complete surprise. A larger virus, called Mimivirus, which lives in freshwater amoebas, turned up in 2003 and a few other, similar, viruses have been found since then. But CroV is by far the biggest to come out of the sea. 本周的《美国国家科学院院刊》报道了这一新发现病毒的性质，这也并非完全出人意料。因为另一个比较大称为“Mimivirus”的病毒，是一种生活在淡水中变形虫，在2003年就被人发现，还有其他几个类似的病毒之后也相继被人发现。但是CroV是来自海洋的最大的病毒。 Those who like their categories cut and dried may wonder whether viruses are alive or not. Wise biologists do not struggle too much with such questions. Viruses have genes, can reproduce and are subject to the evolutionary pressures imposed by natural selection. That is enough for biology to claim them. As for CroV, those 544 genes (composed of 730,000 base pairs, the DNA letters in which the language of the genes is written) mean its genome is bigger than those of several bacteria—creatures which everyone agrees are alive. 那些习惯于传统分类学的人可能想知道病毒是活的还是死的。真正明智的生物学家不太纠缠于这类问题。病毒有基因，能再生，需要应对自然选择的进化压力。对生物学而言，这足以让其有资格成为生物了。至于CroV，那些544个基因（由73万组碱基对组成，这是构成基因语言的DNA字母）表明其基因图谱比几种大家认为是活体的细菌生物要大。 The problem with categorical thinking in biology is that evolution does not work like that. It actually works by whatever works working. If an organism can successfully subcontract part of the business of metabolism to another while retaining the rest itself, rather than offloading the whole lot as most viruses do, then there are no rules to stop it happening. 在生物学上，对什么都要分门别类的思维面临的问题是生物进化的方式并非一成不变。进化实际上是不拘一格，随遇而安。如果一种生物能够成功地将部分新陈代谢工作分包给另一个生物，但同时又保留其余的新陈代谢工作，而不是象大多数病毒那样把工作全部推掉，那么，就没有任何规则阻止其进化。 CroV seems to do just that. Besides the genes that relate to protein synthesis it has others which encode DNA repair mechanisms and still others which are involved with protein recycling and signalling within cells. This is not mere hijacking. It is tantamount to a complete personality transplant for the infected cell. Crov似乎正是这么做的。除与蛋白合成有关的基因外，它将DNA修复机制的编码工作以及细胞内蛋白的回收和发送信号工作都交给其他生物完成。这不仅仅是简单的劫持。这相当于将特性完整植入被感染的细胞。 About a third of CroV’s genes are similar to Mimivirus genes, suggesting they share a distant ancestor. On the other hand, two-thirds are not. A significant chunk of them seem to have been copied from bacteria. But the majority are unique, and previously unknown to science. A whole new chapter of life, in other words, has been opened. CroV的基因中，约有三分之一同Mimivirus基因类似，说明它们之间都拥有共同的祖先。从另一方面讲，它们之间还有三分之二的基因不同。其中很大一部分似乎是从细菌中复制的。但大多数基因在科学上特性明显，属于新发现的基因。换句话说，人类已经翻开了生命研究的新篇章。 This discovery, then—and the earlier one of C. roenbergensis itself—speak volumes, albeit in a microscopic language, about biodiversity. Two centuries after Carl Linnaeus invented the system now used to describe it, and a century after Charles Darwin worked out what causes it, the ability of that diversity to surprise is still staggering. 这一发现—以及早先发现的C. roenbergensis —充分说明了生物的多样性，尽管是以微生物的语言表述的。生物多样性至今依然让人眼花缭乱，目不暇接，尽管卡尔?林奈（Carl Linnaeus）200年前就发明了我们现在仍然使用的其描述体系，尽管达尔文100年前就找到了其发生的原因。 Science and Technology 译者心得： 1. 本文是科技文章，又是微生物的，很多业外人士有恐惧感（我也不例外），想象拉丁文名字就够头大的。但这类文章语言比较规范，逻辑性强，所以，通过专业工具书解决掉最困难的名称之外，其他部分的翻译，同一般英文一样。 2. 几个词汇的处理。首句中的“matter”很多人译为“事情”，“是关于什么什么的事情”，这样的译文读起来很罗嗦，其实担子大一些，置之不理，中文意思也出来了。另外，“Viruses have genes, can reproduce and are subject to the evolutionary pressures imposed by natural selection. That is enough for biology to claim them”本段中的“Claim”不太好翻，for biology to claim them，让生物学对它们有主张，让生物学认领它们，其实就是“它们有资格属于生物范畴”的意思，如果直译，估计译者本人也觉得不是滋味。 3. 一个复杂句子的处理。“In that context, the discovery by Curtis Suttle of the University of British Columbia and his colleagues of a critter they propose to call Cafeteria roenbergensis virus, or CroV, should not be surprising”，先看一下直翻，“从这个意义上讲，由英属哥伦比亚大学的Curtis Suttle和他的同事发现的一种他们建议命名为Cafeteria roenbergensis 病毒的生物，或CroV，不应该太出人意料。”这样的句子不能说不对，但但起来非常罗嗦，翻译腔太强，因此，在准确表述愿意的前提下，我译为“从这个意义上讲，英属哥伦比亚大学的Curtis Suttle和他的同事发现的一种新生物，不应该太出人意料。他们建议将其命名为Cafeteria roenbergensis病毒，或CroV。”将原句拆为两句，使其更符合中文行文习惯。这在翻译中很常见，毕竟译出的东西是让中国人看的。 4. 一个简单句型的处理。“It is found in every ocean”，这句话很简单，它被发现于各大洋，它存在于各大洋等等，都不错。但鉴于前文出现“hunts down and eats bacteria, to be the most abundant predator ”这类动作性很强的语句，我们不妨在这里也“生动”一些，译为“各大洋都能见到其身影”。 5. 关于逻辑性。翻译其实就是理解外语的逻辑性，然后将其外语按照译入语的逻辑性进行翻译。本文中CroV和Cafeteria roenbergensis什么关系？不要被名字吓倒，注意这句“CroV, as its full name suggests, is a parasite of Cafeteria roenbergensis, a single-celled planktonic organism that was itself discovered only in 1988”，说得是CroV其实是寄生在Cafeteria roenbergensis上的一种生物，是宿主身上的一种病毒。关系弄清了，下文接着讲的都是宿主Cafeteria roenbergensis的事情，它们如何捕食，生存在什么地方。这其实也就间接介绍了CroV。 6. 名言警句的引用。《经济学人》的文章经常不经意间引用一些名言警句、诗词歌赋，恰当地表述其意义。本文不例外。“To see a world in a grain of sand”在本文中就有类似中文“麻雀虽小，五脏俱全”的意思，即使是一粒沙子，那上面生存着芸芸众生。建议大家看一部动画片，“Horton hears a who”，里边讲的是一头大象如何同一朵蒲公英上的生命群体沟通的故事。这句话来自英国诗人William Blake的一首诗： “A Grain of Sand 一粒沙子 William Blake/威廉.布莱克 To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. 从一粒沙子看到一个世界， 从一朵野花看到一个天堂， 把握在你手心里的就是无限， |
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