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I have all my life wondered what mind-boggling meant.
我整整一生都在想，mind-boggling（令人难以置信的）到底是指什么。
After two days here, I declare myself boggled, and enormously impressed,and feel that you are one of the great hopes not just for American achievement in science and technology,but for the whole world.
在这里呆了两天，我承认，我已经被深深感染，我感到，你们代表着伟大的希望不仅仅是美国在科学技术上取得进步的希望，也是整个世界的希望。
I've come, however, on a special mission on behalf of my constituency,which are the 10-to-the-18th-power that's a million trillion insects and other small creatures, and to make a plea for them.
我今天来到这里，是代表我的选民，它们的数量多达10的18次方,它们是昆虫以及其他的小动物，我是来为它们申张正义的。
If we were to wipe out insects alone, just that group alone, on this planet which we are trying hard to do,the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land.
假如我们要把昆虫从地球上消灭掉，就单单是昆虫,实际上我们也在努力这样做，那么剩下的生物包括人类也很可能从地球消失。
And within a few months.
这只需几个月的时间。
Now, how did I come to this particular position of advocacy?
那我是怎么成为这样一个为昆虫辩护的斗士呢？
As a little boy, and through my teenage years,I became increasingly fascinated by the diversity of life.
当我还是小孩子的时候，我就对生物之多样性感到越来越浓厚的兴趣。
I had a butterfly period, a snake period, a bird period, a fish period, a cave period and finally and definitively, an ant period.
我曾经对蝴蝶、蛇、小鸟、鱼以及洞穴感兴趣,最后，我对蚂蚁产生浓厚而长久的兴趣。
By my college years, I was a devoted myrmecologist,a specialist on the biology of ants,but my attention and research continued to make journeys across the great variety of life on Earth in general,including all that it means to us as a species, how little we understand it and how pressing a danger that our activities have created for it.
读大学的时候，我对于蚂蚁研究很有热情，我是一位研究蚂蚁的专家，我的关注点以及研究都围绕地球上巨大的生物多样性而展开,包括这对我们人类意味着什么，以及为何我们对此所知甚少,还有人类活动正在对生物多样性构成的严重威胁。
Out of that broader study has emerged a concern and an ambition,crystallized in the wish that I'm about to make to you.
长期的研究使我产生一种对生物的关切以及一个宏愿，待会我会在叙述愿望的时候具体说明。
My choice is the culmination of a lifetime commitment that began with growing up on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, on the Florida peninsula.
我的这一选择是整个研究生涯之落脚点,我小时候在佛罗里达半岛的阿拉巴马湾度过。
As far back as I can remember, I was enchanted by the natural beauty of that region and the almost tropical exuberance of the plants and animals that grow there.
从记事起，我就被那一带的自然美景深深陶醉,包括该地繁盛成长的接近热带的动植物。
One day when I was only seven years old and fishing,I pulled a pinfish, they're called, with sharp dorsal spines, up too hard and fast,and I blinded myself in one eye.
七岁那年，有一天我去钓鱼，我捉到一条免齿鲷—有尖利的背棘—猛然用力拉上来，并因此而弄瞎了其中一只眼睛。
I later discovered I was also hard of hearing,possibly congenitally, in the upper registers.
另外，我后来还发现自己在听力方面也不是很好，也许是生来就有的缺陷。
So in planning to be a professional naturalist.
于是，为了成为一名职业的自然学家。
I never considered anything else in my entire life.
我就决定只做一件事。
I found that I was lousy at bird watching and couldn't track frog calls either.
要我观鸟，我不在行；要我追踪青蛙，我也不擅长于此。
So I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger:
于是我决定做那些小动物的研究,它们大多可以放在我的拇指跟食指之间，
the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems,the little things, as I like to say, who run the world.
而正是它们构建了我们整个生态圈的基础，它们才是世界的主人。
