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Is TED the New Harvard? TED是新的哈佛大学吗？

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A bevy of online talk videos combine the principles of “radical openness” and “the power of ideas to change the world”  一大批在线演讲影片结合了「彻底开放」及「藉由观点的力量来改变世界」的两大原则

If you were starting a top university today, what would it look like? You would start by gathering the very best minds from around the world, from every discipline. You’d curate the lectures carefully, with a focus on the new and original. You’d create a sustainable economic model by focusing on technological rather than physical infrastructure. You’d also construct a robust network so people could access resources whenever and from wherever they like, and you’d give them the tools to collaborate beyond the lecture hall.

如果你今天要成立一所顶尖大学，它会是什么样貌？你首先会从延揽世界各地各个领域的顶尖人才着手，还会严选各个演讲，以新颖及原创为重点。你会把焦点放在科技而非实体基础设施上，以创造出永续的经营模式。你也会建构强健的网络，好让大家可以随心所欲随时随地取得资源，而且你还会提供他们能在讲堂外合作的工具。

If you did all that, you’d have TED.

如果上述种种你都做到了，那就成立了TED。

Elite faculty, open platform  菁英教师、开放平台

Its “faculty”: A roster of speakers that runs from Bill Clinton to J.J. Abrams, from Desmond Tutu to Isabel Allende – anyone who’s driving change across the globe. Their topics range from biophysics to graphic design. The economic model? With attendance fees, advertising and corporate sponsorships, TED ran an operating surplus of more than $2 million last year, which was reinvested into expanding its reach.

TED的「教职员」是一长串名单的演讲者，从比尔．柯林顿（译注：前美国总统）到J.J.亚伯拉罕（译注：美国导演，作品包括《不可能的任务III》、《星际争霸战》）、，从戴斯蒙．图图（译注：诺贝尔和平奖得主、南非圣公会前主教）到依莎贝．艾兰德（译注：女权运动者）──包括了任何驱动世界改变的人。他们的讲题从生物物理学到平面设计都有。至于经营模式？答案是透过报名费、广告及企业赞助，TED去年有超过两百万美元的营运盈余，这笔钱被再度投资来扩大它的影响范围。

The runaway success of the TED talk videos, curator Chris Anderson tells me, persuaded him “to completely rethink what TED was, from a conference to a platform for ideas worth spreading.” TED’s Open Translation Project has in the past year made its videos truly accessible to a global audience; 3,100 community volunteers have translated the videos into more than 77 languages. “We’re exploring TED as a global classroom,” Anderson tells me. “It’s very much part of what we’re dreaming of.”

总监克里斯．安德森告诉我，TED演讲影片轻易就大获成功，说服他「重新彻底思考TED究竟是什么，它原本只是一场会议，而后转变为一个平台，以供发表值得推广的观点。」TED的开放式翻译计划在过去的一年来已让全球观众能够真正理解其影片；三千一百名社群志工已把影片翻译成超过七十七种语言。「我们正在探索让TED成为全球教室的方式，」安德森向我透露，「这就是我们梦寐以求的一部分。」

“The world’s best dinner party”  「全球最棒的晚宴」

The story of TED goes back to 1984, when Richard Saul Wurman started the Technology, Entertainment, Design conference. With TED, he says, “I just wanted to throw the world’s best dinner party.”

TED的故事可回溯至1984年，当时理查．索尔．伍尔曼成立科技、娱乐、设计会议（译注：该会议的英文名字称前缀缩写即是TED）。他表示，透过TED，「我只想举办全球最棒的晚宴。」

Wurman turned TED into a three-ring circus of ideas. “I had magicians and … Nobel Prize winners and Bill Gates and Bill Graham and the Google guys when they were just two kids from Stanford – everybody you could think of.”

伍尔曼把TED变成五花八门的观点激荡场所。「我请了魔术师和……诺贝尔奖得主、比尔．盖兹和葛理翰，还有谷歌创办人，当时他们还只是来自史丹福的两个小伙子（译注：为Sergey Brin和Larry Page，两人均曾就读史丹福大学）──任何你想得到的人都请来了。」

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discipline [ˋdɪsəplɪn] n. 学科 a branch of knowledge or teaching

runaway [ˋrʌnə͵we] adj. 遥遥领先的；轻易取得的；巨大的 easily won

curator [kjʊˋretɚ] n. 管理者

throw [θro] v.【口】举行（宴会等）to arrange or give (a party, for example).

three-ring circus 【美】【口】大型热闹的演出；五花八门的场面 something spectacular, tumultuous, or entertaining

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With that kind of mix, speakers (who have never been paid, but don’t have to fork over the $6,000 admission fee) would hang around for the entire week, mingling with celebrities, writers, moguls, and their moms in a marathon bull session.

各领域菁英齐聚一堂，讲者（从未拿演讲费，但不需要缴交六千美元的报名费）会待上整个星期，与名人、作家、显要人物及这些人的母亲往来打交道，进行马拉松式的长谈。

Chris Anderson takes over  克里斯．安德森接管大会

This is exactly what Anderson hoped for when he bought TED in 2001. As the son of a missionary doctor, Anderson grew up in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan, and as an adult he sold two tech-related publishing companies. After purchasing TED, he changed its status from for-profit to non-for-profit, and went about trying, in Wurman’s words, “to save the world.” According to Bruno Giussani, a former journalist who now directs TEDGlobal, “Chris believes in the fact that when you put smart people together into a room, they tend to engage, and he wants to use that to make a contribution toward a better world.”

安德森在2001年买下TED时，这正是他所希望的情况。身为传教士医生之子的他，在巴基斯坦、印度及阿富汗长大，成年后他卖了两家跟科技相关的出版公司。买下TED之后，他把机构的性质从营利改为非营利，然后开始尝试「拯救世界」，这是引用伍尔曼所说的话。之前当过新闻记者、现为TEDGlobal负责人的布鲁诺．吉乌沙尼表示：「克里斯相信，聚集聪明人共处一室，他们往往会开始建立密切关系，而他想利用这点来促成更美好的世界。」

Passionate viewers  热情的视听群众

The instant popularity of TED talks might say something promising about both our collective consciousness and our collective attention span. TED video chief June Cohen tells me, “The talks were watched 10.5 million times in the first year.” People emailed Cohen from all over the world, saying that they had shared a video with their entire address book, or that they’d watched a video with tears running down their face. That passion reset TED’s mission. “Within three months, we relaunched ted.com and realigned the entire organization around this mission of spreading ideas,” says Cohen. TED first put the talks online in 2006. “That year,” she says, “we increased the fee for the conference by 50 percent, and sold out in one week with a 1,000-person waiting list.”

TED演讲的迅速窜红，可能说明了人类的集体意识及集体专注时间是有希望的。TED影片主管琼恩．柯罕告诉我：「演讲影片在头一年就被收看了一千零五十万次。」世界各地的民众寄电子邮件给柯罕，表示已把某支影片和他们（电子邮件）通讯簿里所有亲朋好友分享，或是他们观赏影片时泪流满面，这种热情让TED的使命又被重新位了。「在三个月内，我们重新推出ted.com，并以传播观点的使命来重新调整整个组织。」柯罕如此表示。TED在2006年首度把演讲影片放在网络上。「那一年，」她表示，「我们把会议的报名费提高50%，还是能在一周内就销售一空，还有一千人在候补名单上。」

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hang around  闲混, 厮混 to spend a lot of time with someone; to waste away time with someone

mogul [moˋgʌl] n. 大人物 an important or powerful person

bull session【美﹐非正式】闲聊﹐轻松而友好的交谈 an informal conversation in which a group of people talk about something

engage [ɪnˋgedʒ] v. 从事，参加 to involve (a person or his attention) intensely

promising [ˋprɑmɪsɪŋ] adj. 有前途的，大有可为的 likely to develop in a desirable manner

realign [͵riəˋlaɪn] v. 重新组合; 调整 to re-adjust (parts of a mechanism, for example) to produce a proper relationship or orientation

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Globally accessible  全球皆可收看

If you visit ted.com today, you’ll find more than 700 talks. The most popular clock 5 million or 6 million views apiece, and are backed by adverting from sponsors such as IBM.

如果你今天进入ted.com，会找到超过700场演讲的影片。人气最旺的演讲影片，往往每部片有500万或600万的观看次数，而且还获得IBM等广告赞助者的支持。

Sure, these talks have their limits as an educational medium. An 18-minute presentation, no matter how expert, can’t accommodate anything overly theoretical or technical.

当然，这些演讲做为教育媒介仍有其局限。一场18分钟的报告，不管多么专门，都无法涵盖任何极度理论性或技术性的内容。

Nevertheless, the videos are finding their way into classrooms across the world. And thanks to volunteers, the Open Translation movement has subtitled 10,000 videos in just one year, bringing them into global classrooms too.

尽管如此，这些影片仍然有办法进入世界各地的教室里。拜志工之赐，开放式翻译运动在仅仅一年之内就替一万支影片配上字幕，这也把影片带入全球的教室里。

The birth of TEDx  TEDx的诞生

（译注：x代表「独立筹办的TED活动」）

“When we put the talks online for free,” says licensing director Lara Stein, “the brand was increasing in visibility. The concept was, how can we leverage the power of that and allow people to create something with it?” Stein championed the idea of allowing the community to create spin-off conferences called TEDx. She established a short-and-sweet set of guidelines designed to affirm the balance TED has always sought between intellectual freedom and quality control. TEDx licenses are free.

「当我们免费把演讲放在网络上时，」授权主管莱拉．斯坦表示，「品牌的能见度就提升了。我们的想法是，该如何善于发挥那样的力量，好让人们能够藉此创造出一些东西？」斯坦支持让社群创造出称为TEDx的衍生会议。她建立一套简明扼要的准则，准则的设计是为了确认TEDx能够在知识自由及质量管理之间取得平衡，这是TED一直在追求的。TEDx的许可是免费的。

Events can’t be longer than a day. At least 25% of the content must be existing TED talk videos. Local speakers must be recorded, with the videos released to ted.com and also to a YouTube channel. If more than 100 people are to attend, one of the organizers must have attended TED proper and “experienced the TED DNA,” as Stein says. Live by those guidelines and you too can set up a TEDx event.

活动不能超过一天。至少25%的内容必须是现有的TED演讲影片。地方讲者必须接受录像，其影片必须被放上ted.com以及YouTube频道。如果有超过一百个人参加，那么筹办人之一必须参加过真正的TED会议，并「体验过TED的DNA」──套用斯坦的话来说。只要把这些准则奉为圭臬（译注：live by原指以…维生，或依循某种信念或原则来生活，此指务必随时遵循这些准则，引申为奉为圭臬）你也可以成立一场TEDx活动。

“It is truly a new model,” Stein says, “this willingness by a community to volunteer and change the world through education, and leveraging the platform to do that. There’s nothing I can point to quite like it.”

「这的确是个新模式，」斯坦表示，「社群乐于担任志工，想要透过教育来改变世界，并善用这个平台来办到，我找不到有哪种模式可以与此相比。」

－by Anya Kamenetz

单词发音

Vocabulary Focus

bevy [ˋbɛvɪ] n. 一批，一群，一团 a large group of similar things

curate [ˋkjʊrɪt] v. 管理(博物馆展品等) to organize and choose items, often for an exhibition

robust [rəˋbʌst] adj. 强健的；健全的 strong and healthy

roster [ˋrɑstɚ] n. 名册 a list of people’s names, often with the jobs they have been given to do

surplus [ˋsɝpləs] n. 盈余 the amount of money left when one sells more than one buys, or spends less than one has

fork [fɔrk] over 不情愿付出 to give away something, especially on demand

mingle [ˋmɪŋg!] v. 交往，往来 to be with or among other people, especially talking to them

consciousness [ˋkɑnʃəsnɪs] n. 意念；意识 the state of understanding and realizing something

back [bæk] v. 支持；援助；赞助 to give support to someone or something with money or words

accommodate [əˋkɑmə͵det] v. 能容纳；提供 to be flexible enough to allow something without major change

leverage [ˋlɛvərɪdʒ] v. 对…产生影响; 善于发挥  to exert power or influence on something in order to influence results

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clock [klɑk] v.【口】（用机械装置）记录（时间，速度等）; 【英】【俚】打；打击 Slang. to strike sharply or heavily

apiece [əˋpis] adv. 各个，每个

expert [ˋɛkspɚt] adj. 内行的；专门的 having, involving, or demonstrating great skill, dexterity, or knowledge as the result of experience or training

overly [ˋovɚlɪ] adv. 太﹐非常﹐极为

subtitle [ˋsʌb͵taɪt!] v.  在……上印字幕 to provide a written translation superimposed on a film that has foreign dialogue

spin-off [ˋspɪn͵ɔf] n. 衍生;  副产品 something, such as a product, that is derived from something larger and more or less unrelated; a byproduct

proper [ˋprɑpɚ] adv. 好好地; 完完全全地 thoroughly