英文寫作翻譯頻道為大家整理的英語演講翻譯：每個人都能掌握的記憶技巧，供大家參考:)
I'd like to invite you to close your eyes.
請大家跟我一起閉上眼睛，象一下。
Imagine yourself standing outside the front door of your home. I'd like you to notice the color of the door, the material that it's made out of. Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles. They are competing in a naked bicycle race, and they are headed straight for your front door. I need you to actually see this. They are pedaling really hard, they're sweaty, they're bouncing around a lot. And they crash straight into the front door of your home. Bicycles fly everywhere, wheels roll past you, spokes end up in awkward places. Step over the threshold of your door into your foyer, your hallway, whatever's on the other side, and appreciate the quality of the light. The light is shining down on Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster is waving at you from his perch on top of a tan horse. It's a talking horse. You can practically feel his blue fur tickling your nose. You can smell the oatmeal raisin cookie that he's about to shovel into his mouth. Walk past him. Walk past him into your living room. In your living room, in full imaginative broadband, picture Britney Spears. She is scantily clad, she's dancing on your coffee table, and she's singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time." And then follow me into your kitchen. In your kitchen, the floor has been paved over with a yellow brick road and out of your oven are coming towards you Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion from "The Wizard of Oz," hand-in-hand skipping straight towards you. 你站在，自己家門口的外面，請留心一下門的顏色，以及門的材質(zhì)，現(xiàn)在請想象一群超重的*騎者，正在進行一場*自行車賽，向你的前門直沖而來，盡量讓畫面想象得栩栩如生近在眼前，他們都在奮力地踩腳踏板 汗流浹背，路面非常顛簸，然后徑直撞進了你家前門，自行車四下飛散 車輪從你身旁滾過，輻條扎進了各種尷尬角落，跨過門檻，進到門廳、走廊 和門里的其他地方，室內(nèi)光線柔和舒適，光線灑在甜餅怪物身上，他坐在一匹棕色駿馬的馬背上，正向你招手，這匹馬會說話，你可以感覺到他的藍色鬃毛讓你鼻子發(fā)癢，你可以聞到他正要扔進嘴里的葡萄燕麥曲奇的香氣，繞過他 繞過他走進客廳，站在客廳里 把你的想象力調(diào)到檔，想象小甜甜布蘭妮，她衣著暴露 在你咖啡桌上跳舞，并唱著"Hit Me Baby One More Time"，接下來 跟著我走進你的廚房，廚房的地面被一道黃磚路覆蓋，依次鉆出你的烤箱向你走來的是，《綠野仙蹤》里的多蘿西 鐵皮人，稻草人 和獅子，他們手挽著手蹦蹦跳跳地向你走來，
Okay. Open your eyes. 好了 睜開眼睛吧，
I want to tell you about a very bizarre contest that is held every spring in New York City. It's called the United States Memory Championship. And I had gone to cover this contest a few years back as a science journalist expecting, I guess, that this was going to be like the Superbowl of savants. This was a bunch of guys and a few ladies, widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep. 我要給你們講一個每年春天在紐約，都會舉辦的奇異競賽，叫做全美記憶冠軍賽，幾年前我作為一名科技類記者，去報道這項競賽，心里想著 大概那兒得像，怪才的"超級碗冠軍賽"一樣熱鬧吧，一大堆男人和屈指可數(shù)的女性，從小孩兒到老人 有些還不怎么注意個人衛(wèi)生，
(Laughter) (大笑)，
They were memorizing hundreds of random numbers, looking at them just once. They were memorizing the names of dozens and dozens and dozens of strangers. They were memorizing entire poems in just a few minutes. They were competing to see who could memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards the fastest. I was like, this is unbelievable. These people must be freaks of nature. 有的奮力在只看一次的情況下，記下上百個任意列出的數(shù)字，有的在努力記住成群的陌生人的名字，有的想在幾分鐘內(nèi)努力背下整篇詩歌，還有的在比賽誰能以最快速度，記下一整副打亂的牌的順序，我當(dāng)時覺得 這太不可思議了，這些人肯定天賦異稟。
And I started talking to a few of the competitors. This is a guy called Ed Cook who had come over from England where he had one of the best trained memories. And I said to him, "Ed, when did you realize that you were a savant?" And Ed was like, "I'm not a savant. In fact, I have just an average memory. Everybody who competes in this contest will tell you that they have just an average memory. We've all trained ourselves to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory using a set of ancient techniques, techniques invented 2,500 years ago in Greece, the same techniques that Cicero had used to memorize his speeches, that medieval scholars had used to memorize entire books." And I was like, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?" 所以我開始采訪參賽者，這位叫Ed Cook，是從英格蘭來的，他在那兒接受了的記憶訓(xùn)練，我問他 "Ed 你是什么時候開始意識到，自己是記憶天才的?"，Ed答道 “我并不是什么專家，其實 我的記憶力很一般，來參賽的每一個人，都會告訴你他們的記憶力只是一般水平，我們都在訓(xùn)練自己后才能，完成這些奇跡般的記憶游戲，我們運用了一系列古老的技巧，這些技巧是希臘人在兩千五百年前發(fā)明的，西塞羅正是用了這些技巧，來記憶他的演講稿的，中世紀(jì)學(xué)者用這種技巧來背誦正本書籍的內(nèi)容"，我驚訝不已 "哇噻 怎么我從來沒聽說過呢?"，
And we were standing outside the competition hall, and Ed, who is a wonderful, brilliant, but somewhat eccentric English guy, says to me, "Josh, you're an American journalist. Do you know Britney Spears?" I'm like, "What? No. Why?" "Because I really want to teach Britney Spears how to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards on U.S. national television. It will prove to the world that anybody can do this." 我們站在競技大廳外，聰明過人 令人驚嘆，而又稍有些古怪的英國人Ed，對我說 "Josh 你是個美國記者，你知道小甜甜布蘭妮吧?”，我茫然不解 "什么? 當(dāng)然 為什么要問這個?"，“因為我真的很想在，美國國家電臺上教會布蘭妮，怎樣記住一整副打亂的牌的順序，就能證明這是人人都可以做到的了"，
(Laughter) (哄笑)，
I was like, "Well I'm not Britney Spears, but maybe you could teach me. I mean, you've got to start somewhere, right?" And that was the beginning of a very strange journey for me. 我說 "雖然我不是布蘭妮，但你也可以教教我呀，總得找個人開教嘛 不是嗎?"，接著 一段非常奇特的歷程在我面前展開了序幕，
I ended up spending the better part of the next year not only training my memory, but also investigating it, trying to understand how it works, why it sometimes doesn't work and what its potential might be. 結(jié)果 第二年的大部分時間，我都花在了訓(xùn)練自己的記憶力，同時調(diào)查研究記憶上，我想嘗試?yán)斫猱a(chǎn)生記憶的原理，為何有時會記了又忘，及其它到底隱藏著什么樣的潛力，
I met a host of really interesting people. This is a guy called E.P. He's an amnesic who had, very possibly, the very worst memory in the world. His memory was so bad that he didn't even remember he had a memory problem, which is amazing. And he was this incredibly tragic figure, but he was a window into the extent to which our memories make us who we are. 途中我遇到了很多有趣的人，其中一個叫E.P.，他患有健忘癥 他的記憶力，恐怕是世界上最差的了，他的記憶能力差到，甚至記不得自己有健忘癥，真的很神奇，雖然他是個悲劇角色，但通過他 我們能了解到，記憶在何種程度上塑造了我們的人格，
The other end of the spectrum: I met this guy. This is Kim Peek. He was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man." We spent an afternoon together in the Salt Lake City Public Library memorizing phone books, which was scintillating. 情況的另一個極端是 我遇到了這樣一個人，他叫Kim Peek，他是Dustin Hoffman在電影《雨人》里的角色的原型，我和他花了一下午，在鹽湖城公共圖書館里背電話簿，讓我大開眼界，
(Laughter) (大笑)，
And I went back and I read a whole host of memory treatises, treatises written 2,000-plus years ago in Latin in Antiquity and then later in the Middle Ages. And I learned a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. One of the really interesting things that I learned is that once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today. Once upon a time, people invested in their memories, in laboriously furnishing their minds. 回家后 我讀了許多關(guān)于記憶的論文，寫于兩千多年前的論文，用拉丁文寫的 從古代，一直到后來中世紀(jì)期間，我學(xué)到很多很有意思的事兒，其中一個就是，曾經(jīng)，訓(xùn)練 規(guī)束 培養(yǎng)記憶力的這種概念，完全不像如今那樣陌生，曾幾何時 人們寄希望于自己的記憶，能不遺余力地裝飾自己的心靈，
Over the last few millenia we've invented a series of technologies -- from the alphabet to the scroll to the codex, the printing press, photography, the computer, the smartphone -- that have made it progressively easier and easier for us to externalize our memories, for us to essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity. These technologies have made our modern world possible, but they've also changed us. They've changed us culturally, and I would argue that they've changed us cognitively. Having little need to remember anymore, it sometimes seems like we've forgotten how. 近幾千年來，人類發(fā)明了一系列技術(shù)，從字母表到卷軸，到法典 印刷機 攝影技術(shù)，電腦 智能手機，讓我們能越來越輕松地，外化記憶能力，讓我們從根本上，把這種基礎(chǔ)的人類能力拱手讓出，這些技術(shù)讓現(xiàn)代生活變?yōu)榭赡?，但同時也改變了我們，不僅在文化上，我覺得也在認(rèn)知上，不再需要費勁去記憶，有時會覺得我們已經(jīng)忘了如何去記憶，
One of the last places on Earth where you still find people passionate about this idea of a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory is at this totally singular memory contest. It's actually not that singular, there are contests held all over the world. And I was fascinated, I wanted to know how do these guys do it. 在這片地球上已經(jīng)很少有地方，能讓你覺得人們?nèi)詿嶂杂?，?xùn)練 規(guī)束 培養(yǎng)記憶力了，那非同尋常的記憶大賽算是一個，其實它也沒有那么非同尋常，世界各地都開始舉辦這樣的競賽，我對此深深著迷 想要知道這些人是怎么做到的，
A few years back a group of researchers at University College London brought a bunch of memory champions into the lab. They wanted to know: Do these guys have brains that are somehow structurally, anatomically different from the rest of ours? The answer was no. Are they smarter than the rest of us? They gave them a bunch of cognitive tests, and the answer was not really. 幾年前 倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院的一組研究人員，請來一批記憶大賽的冠軍接受研究，他們想要弄明白，這些人的大腦，是否跟我們其他人在解剖學(xué)上的結(jié)構(gòu)不一樣?，答案是否定的，那他們比我們都聰明嗎?，他們給研究對象實施了一系列認(rèn)知測試，依舊得出了否定結(jié)論，
There was however one really interesting and telling difference between the brains of the memory champions and the control subjects that they were comparing them to. When they put these guys in an fMRI machine, scanned their brains while they were memorizing numbers and people's faces and pictures of snowflakes, they found that the memory champions were lighting up different parts of the brain than everyone else. Of note, they were using, or they seemed to be using, a part of the brain that's involved in spatial memory and navigation. Why? And is there something the rest of us can learn from this? 但對比受控制的比對目標(biāo)的大腦，記憶大賽冠軍們的大腦，確實有一處很有趣的不同 很說明問題，這些人被送去做功能磁共振，掃描大腦時，當(dāng)他們在記憶數(shù)字或人臉或雪花圖案時，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)記憶大賽冠軍們，的大腦激活的區(qū)域，跟普通人不太一樣，值得注意的是 他們看來是在用，腦中在空間記憶和導(dǎo)航時會用到的部分，為什么? 我們可以從中得出什么樣的結(jié)論呢?，
The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catchup. 競爭性記憶的較量，被一種類似軍事比賽的方式推向了白熱化，每年都會有人，帶著更有效的記憶方法現(xiàn)身賽場，而其他人就必須迎頭趕上，
This is my friend Ben Pridmore, three-time world memory champion. On his desk in front of him are 36 shuffled packs of playing cards that he is about to try to memorize in one hour, using a technique that he invented and he alone has mastered. He used a similar technique to memorize the precise order of 4,140 random binary digits in half an hour. Yeah. 這是我的朋友Ben Pridmore，贏得過三次國際記憶大賽冠軍，在他的臺前，有三十六副打亂順序的牌，他要在一個小時內(nèi)記下全部，用的是一種他自己發(fā)明的 也只有他會的技巧，用與此類似的方法，他曾一字不差地背下了，4140個任意排列的二進制數(shù)，只用了半個小時，很牛吧，
And while there are a whole host of ways of remembering stuff in these competitions, everything, all of the techniques that are being used, ultimately come down to a concept that psychologists refer to as elaborative encoding. 參賽者在這些競賽中，運用過很多不同的記憶方法，各式各樣 被運用到的所有技巧，最終都能歸化為一個概念，心理學(xué)家稱之為"精細編碼"，
And it's well illustrated by a nifty paradox known as the Baker/baker paradox, which goes like this: If I tell two people to remember the same word, if I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy named Baker." That's his name. And I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy who is a baker." And I come back to you at some point later on, and I say, "Do you remember that word that I told you a while back? Do you remember what it was?" The person who was told his name is Baker is less likely to remember the same word than the person was told his job is that he is a baker. Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird. What's going on here? 這個概念能用一則幽默的悖論完美詮釋，叫做Baker/baker悖論，簡單說來就是，假設(shè)我讓兩個人去記同一個詞，我跟你說，"記住有個人叫Baker"，Baker是人名，我又來告訴你 "記住有個人是面包師(baker)"，過了一段時間我又回來找到你們，問 "還記得我之前，叫你們記住的那個詞嗎?"，”還記得是什么詞嗎?“，被告知人名是Baker的人，記住這個詞的可能性遠不如，被告知職業(yè)是面包師的那個人，同樣的詞 導(dǎo)致不同的記憶程度，到底是為什么呢，
Well the name Baker doesn't actually mean anything to you. It is entirely untethered from all of the other memories floating around in your skull. But the common noun baker, we know bakers. Bakers wear funny white hats. Bakers have flour on their hands. Bakers smell good when they come home from work. Maybe we even know a baker. And when we first hear that word, we start putting these associational hooks into it that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date. The entire art of what is going on in these memory contests and the entire art of remembering stuff better in everyday life is figuring out ways to transform capital B Bakers into lower-case B bakers -- to take information that is lacking in context, in significance, in meaning and transform it in some way so that it becomes meaningful in the light of all the other things that you have in your mind. 是因為 人名Baker沒有任何特殊含義，沒法跟你腦海里，零碎繁雜的記憶產(chǎn)生任何聯(lián)系，但是面包師(baker)作為一個常用名詞，我們都知道面包師是什么，面包師帶著搞笑的白帽子，他們手上沾滿了面粉，他們下班回到家?guī)е鴵浔堑目久姘?，甚至可能有些人有朋友就是面包師，我們初次聽到這個詞時，馬上就會產(chǎn)生各種各樣的聯(lián)想，這使我們能在一段時間后還能回憶起來，其實 要理解記憶競賽中的，一切奧妙，或在日常生活中改善記憶力的秘訣，僅僅在于想辦法把Baker中的大寫B(tài)，變?yōu)槊姘鼛?baker)中的小寫b，把沒有前因后果，沒有重要性 沒有涵義的信息，用某種方法轉(zhuǎn)化為，有意義的內(nèi)容，跟腦海里的其他記憶串聯(lián)起來，
One of the more elaborate techniques for doing this dates back 2,500 years to Ancient Greece. It came to be known as the memory palace. The story behind its creation goes like this: There was a poet called Simonides who was attending a banquet. He was actually the hired entertainment, because back then if you wanted to throw a really slamming party, you didn't hire a D.J., you hired a poet. And he stands up, delivers his poem from memory, walks out the door, and at the moment he does, the banquet hall collapses, kills everybody inside. It doesn't just kill everybody, it mangles the bodies beyond all recognition. Nobody can say who was inside, nobody can say where they were sitting. The bodies can't be properly buried. It's one tragedy compounding another. Simonides, standing outside, the sole survivor amid the wreckage, closes his eyes and has this realization, which is that in his mind's eye, he can see where each of the guests at the banquet had been sitting. And he takes the relatives by the hand and guides them each to their loved ones amid the wreckage. 這種精確記憶的技巧，在兩千五百年前的古希臘就已出現(xiàn)，后來將其稱為記憶宮殿，發(fā)明這種技巧的過程如下，有個叫做Simonides的詩人，他要去參加一個晚宴，其實他算是被請去做表演嘉賓的，因為在那個年代 炫酷派對的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，不是請D.J.來打碟 而是要請詩人來頌詩，他站起來 背出了他的全篇詩作 然后瀟灑離去，他剛走出門口 晚宴大廳就塌了，砸死了里面所有的人，不僅全體死亡，所有的死者都被砸得面目全非，沒人說得清死者都有些誰，沒人說得清誰坐在哪兒，導(dǎo)致死者的尸體沒法得到合適的殉葬安置，這又加重了整件事的悲劇色彩，Simonides站在外面，作為廢墟中的幸存者，閉上眼睛 猛然意識到，在他的腦海中，他眼前出現(xiàn)了所有賓客所坐的位置，他就牽著親屬們的手，穿過廢墟 把他們帶到了親人身邊，
Imagine yourself standing outside the front door of your home. I'd like you to notice the color of the door, the material that it's made out of. Now visualize a pack of overweight nudists on bicycles. They are competing in a naked bicycle race, and they are headed straight for your front door. I need you to actually see this. They are pedaling really hard, they're sweaty, they're bouncing around a lot. And they crash straight into the front door of your home. Bicycles fly everywhere, wheels roll past you, spokes end up in awkward places. Step over the threshold of your door into your foyer, your hallway, whatever's on the other side, and appreciate the quality of the light. The light is shining down on Cookie Monster. Cookie Monster is waving at you from his perch on top of a tan horse. It's a talking horse. You can practically feel his blue fur tickling your nose. You can smell the oatmeal raisin cookie that he's about to shovel into his mouth. Walk past him. Walk past him into your living room. In your living room, in full imaginative broadband, picture Britney Spears. She is scantily clad, she's dancing on your coffee table, and she's singing "Hit Me Baby One More Time." And then follow me into your kitchen. In your kitchen, the floor has been paved over with a yellow brick road and out of your oven are coming towards you Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Lion from "The Wizard of Oz," hand-in-hand skipping straight towards you. 你站在，自己家門口的外面，請留心一下門的顏色，以及門的材質(zhì)，現(xiàn)在請想象一群超重的*騎者，正在進行一場*自行車賽，向你的前門直沖而來，盡量讓畫面想象得栩栩如生近在眼前，他們都在奮力地踩腳踏板 汗流浹背，路面非常顛簸，然后徑直撞進了你家前門，自行車四下飛散 車輪從你身旁滾過，輻條扎進了各種尷尬角落，跨過門檻，進到門廳、走廊 和門里的其他地方，室內(nèi)光線柔和舒適，光線灑在甜餅怪物身上，他坐在一匹棕色駿馬的馬背上，正向你招手，這匹馬會說話，你可以感覺到他的藍色鬃毛讓你鼻子發(fā)癢，你可以聞到他正要扔進嘴里的葡萄燕麥曲奇的香氣，繞過他 繞過他走進客廳，站在客廳里 把你的想象力調(diào)到檔，想象小甜甜布蘭妮，她衣著暴露 在你咖啡桌上跳舞，并唱著"Hit Me Baby One More Time"，接下來 跟著我走進你的廚房，廚房的地面被一道黃磚路覆蓋，依次鉆出你的烤箱向你走來的是，《綠野仙蹤》里的多蘿西 鐵皮人，稻草人 和獅子，他們手挽著手蹦蹦跳跳地向你走來，
Okay. Open your eyes. 好了 睜開眼睛吧，
I want to tell you about a very bizarre contest that is held every spring in New York City. It's called the United States Memory Championship. And I had gone to cover this contest a few years back as a science journalist expecting, I guess, that this was going to be like the Superbowl of savants. This was a bunch of guys and a few ladies, widely varying in both age and hygienic upkeep. 我要給你們講一個每年春天在紐約，都會舉辦的奇異競賽，叫做全美記憶冠軍賽，幾年前我作為一名科技類記者，去報道這項競賽，心里想著 大概那兒得像，怪才的"超級碗冠軍賽"一樣熱鬧吧，一大堆男人和屈指可數(shù)的女性，從小孩兒到老人 有些還不怎么注意個人衛(wèi)生，
(Laughter) (大笑)，
They were memorizing hundreds of random numbers, looking at them just once. They were memorizing the names of dozens and dozens and dozens of strangers. They were memorizing entire poems in just a few minutes. They were competing to see who could memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards the fastest. I was like, this is unbelievable. These people must be freaks of nature. 有的奮力在只看一次的情況下，記下上百個任意列出的數(shù)字，有的在努力記住成群的陌生人的名字，有的想在幾分鐘內(nèi)努力背下整篇詩歌，還有的在比賽誰能以最快速度，記下一整副打亂的牌的順序，我當(dāng)時覺得 這太不可思議了，這些人肯定天賦異稟。
And I started talking to a few of the competitors. This is a guy called Ed Cook who had come over from England where he had one of the best trained memories. And I said to him, "Ed, when did you realize that you were a savant?" And Ed was like, "I'm not a savant. In fact, I have just an average memory. Everybody who competes in this contest will tell you that they have just an average memory. We've all trained ourselves to perform these utterly miraculous feats of memory using a set of ancient techniques, techniques invented 2,500 years ago in Greece, the same techniques that Cicero had used to memorize his speeches, that medieval scholars had used to memorize entire books." And I was like, "Whoa. How come I never heard of this before?" 所以我開始采訪參賽者，這位叫Ed Cook，是從英格蘭來的，他在那兒接受了的記憶訓(xùn)練，我問他 "Ed 你是什么時候開始意識到，自己是記憶天才的?"，Ed答道 “我并不是什么專家，其實 我的記憶力很一般，來參賽的每一個人，都會告訴你他們的記憶力只是一般水平，我們都在訓(xùn)練自己后才能，完成這些奇跡般的記憶游戲，我們運用了一系列古老的技巧，這些技巧是希臘人在兩千五百年前發(fā)明的，西塞羅正是用了這些技巧，來記憶他的演講稿的，中世紀(jì)學(xué)者用這種技巧來背誦正本書籍的內(nèi)容"，我驚訝不已 "哇噻 怎么我從來沒聽說過呢?"，
And we were standing outside the competition hall, and Ed, who is a wonderful, brilliant, but somewhat eccentric English guy, says to me, "Josh, you're an American journalist. Do you know Britney Spears?" I'm like, "What? No. Why?" "Because I really want to teach Britney Spears how to memorize the order of a shuffled pack of playing cards on U.S. national television. It will prove to the world that anybody can do this." 我們站在競技大廳外，聰明過人 令人驚嘆，而又稍有些古怪的英國人Ed，對我說 "Josh 你是個美國記者，你知道小甜甜布蘭妮吧?”，我茫然不解 "什么? 當(dāng)然 為什么要問這個?"，“因為我真的很想在，美國國家電臺上教會布蘭妮，怎樣記住一整副打亂的牌的順序，就能證明這是人人都可以做到的了"，
(Laughter) (哄笑)，
I was like, "Well I'm not Britney Spears, but maybe you could teach me. I mean, you've got to start somewhere, right?" And that was the beginning of a very strange journey for me. 我說 "雖然我不是布蘭妮，但你也可以教教我呀，總得找個人開教嘛 不是嗎?"，接著 一段非常奇特的歷程在我面前展開了序幕，
I ended up spending the better part of the next year not only training my memory, but also investigating it, trying to understand how it works, why it sometimes doesn't work and what its potential might be. 結(jié)果 第二年的大部分時間，我都花在了訓(xùn)練自己的記憶力，同時調(diào)查研究記憶上，我想嘗試?yán)斫猱a(chǎn)生記憶的原理，為何有時會記了又忘，及其它到底隱藏著什么樣的潛力，
I met a host of really interesting people. This is a guy called E.P. He's an amnesic who had, very possibly, the very worst memory in the world. His memory was so bad that he didn't even remember he had a memory problem, which is amazing. And he was this incredibly tragic figure, but he was a window into the extent to which our memories make us who we are. 途中我遇到了很多有趣的人，其中一個叫E.P.，他患有健忘癥 他的記憶力，恐怕是世界上最差的了，他的記憶能力差到，甚至記不得自己有健忘癥，真的很神奇，雖然他是個悲劇角色，但通過他 我們能了解到，記憶在何種程度上塑造了我們的人格，
The other end of the spectrum: I met this guy. This is Kim Peek. He was the basis for Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie "Rain Man." We spent an afternoon together in the Salt Lake City Public Library memorizing phone books, which was scintillating. 情況的另一個極端是 我遇到了這樣一個人，他叫Kim Peek，他是Dustin Hoffman在電影《雨人》里的角色的原型，我和他花了一下午，在鹽湖城公共圖書館里背電話簿，讓我大開眼界，
(Laughter) (大笑)，
And I went back and I read a whole host of memory treatises, treatises written 2,000-plus years ago in Latin in Antiquity and then later in the Middle Ages. And I learned a whole bunch of really interesting stuff. One of the really interesting things that I learned is that once upon a time, this idea of having a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory was not nearly so alien as it would seem to us to be today. Once upon a time, people invested in their memories, in laboriously furnishing their minds. 回家后 我讀了許多關(guān)于記憶的論文，寫于兩千多年前的論文，用拉丁文寫的 從古代，一直到后來中世紀(jì)期間，我學(xué)到很多很有意思的事兒，其中一個就是，曾經(jīng)，訓(xùn)練 規(guī)束 培養(yǎng)記憶力的這種概念，完全不像如今那樣陌生，曾幾何時 人們寄希望于自己的記憶，能不遺余力地裝飾自己的心靈，
Over the last few millenia we've invented a series of technologies -- from the alphabet to the scroll to the codex, the printing press, photography, the computer, the smartphone -- that have made it progressively easier and easier for us to externalize our memories, for us to essentially outsource this fundamental human capacity. These technologies have made our modern world possible, but they've also changed us. They've changed us culturally, and I would argue that they've changed us cognitively. Having little need to remember anymore, it sometimes seems like we've forgotten how. 近幾千年來，人類發(fā)明了一系列技術(shù)，從字母表到卷軸，到法典 印刷機 攝影技術(shù)，電腦 智能手機，讓我們能越來越輕松地，外化記憶能力，讓我們從根本上，把這種基礎(chǔ)的人類能力拱手讓出，這些技術(shù)讓現(xiàn)代生活變?yōu)榭赡?，但同時也改變了我們，不僅在文化上，我覺得也在認(rèn)知上，不再需要費勁去記憶，有時會覺得我們已經(jīng)忘了如何去記憶，
One of the last places on Earth where you still find people passionate about this idea of a trained, disciplined, cultivated memory is at this totally singular memory contest. It's actually not that singular, there are contests held all over the world. And I was fascinated, I wanted to know how do these guys do it. 在這片地球上已經(jīng)很少有地方，能讓你覺得人們?nèi)詿嶂杂?，?xùn)練 規(guī)束 培養(yǎng)記憶力了，那非同尋常的記憶大賽算是一個，其實它也沒有那么非同尋常，世界各地都開始舉辦這樣的競賽，我對此深深著迷 想要知道這些人是怎么做到的，
A few years back a group of researchers at University College London brought a bunch of memory champions into the lab. They wanted to know: Do these guys have brains that are somehow structurally, anatomically different from the rest of ours? The answer was no. Are they smarter than the rest of us? They gave them a bunch of cognitive tests, and the answer was not really. 幾年前 倫敦大學(xué)學(xué)院的一組研究人員，請來一批記憶大賽的冠軍接受研究，他們想要弄明白，這些人的大腦，是否跟我們其他人在解剖學(xué)上的結(jié)構(gòu)不一樣?，答案是否定的，那他們比我們都聰明嗎?，他們給研究對象實施了一系列認(rèn)知測試，依舊得出了否定結(jié)論，
There was however one really interesting and telling difference between the brains of the memory champions and the control subjects that they were comparing them to. When they put these guys in an fMRI machine, scanned their brains while they were memorizing numbers and people's faces and pictures of snowflakes, they found that the memory champions were lighting up different parts of the brain than everyone else. Of note, they were using, or they seemed to be using, a part of the brain that's involved in spatial memory and navigation. Why? And is there something the rest of us can learn from this? 但對比受控制的比對目標(biāo)的大腦，記憶大賽冠軍們的大腦，確實有一處很有趣的不同 很說明問題，這些人被送去做功能磁共振，掃描大腦時，當(dāng)他們在記憶數(shù)字或人臉或雪花圖案時，研究人員發(fā)現(xiàn)記憶大賽冠軍們，的大腦激活的區(qū)域，跟普通人不太一樣，值得注意的是 他們看來是在用，腦中在空間記憶和導(dǎo)航時會用到的部分，為什么? 我們可以從中得出什么樣的結(jié)論呢?，
The sport of competitive memorizing is driven by a kind of arms race where every year somebody comes up with a new way to remember more stuff more quickly, and then the rest of the field has to play catchup. 競爭性記憶的較量，被一種類似軍事比賽的方式推向了白熱化，每年都會有人，帶著更有效的記憶方法現(xiàn)身賽場，而其他人就必須迎頭趕上，
This is my friend Ben Pridmore, three-time world memory champion. On his desk in front of him are 36 shuffled packs of playing cards that he is about to try to memorize in one hour, using a technique that he invented and he alone has mastered. He used a similar technique to memorize the precise order of 4,140 random binary digits in half an hour. Yeah. 這是我的朋友Ben Pridmore，贏得過三次國際記憶大賽冠軍，在他的臺前，有三十六副打亂順序的牌，他要在一個小時內(nèi)記下全部，用的是一種他自己發(fā)明的 也只有他會的技巧，用與此類似的方法，他曾一字不差地背下了，4140個任意排列的二進制數(shù)，只用了半個小時，很牛吧，
And while there are a whole host of ways of remembering stuff in these competitions, everything, all of the techniques that are being used, ultimately come down to a concept that psychologists refer to as elaborative encoding. 參賽者在這些競賽中，運用過很多不同的記憶方法，各式各樣 被運用到的所有技巧，最終都能歸化為一個概念，心理學(xué)家稱之為"精細編碼"，
And it's well illustrated by a nifty paradox known as the Baker/baker paradox, which goes like this: If I tell two people to remember the same word, if I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy named Baker." That's his name. And I say to you, "Remember that there is a guy who is a baker." And I come back to you at some point later on, and I say, "Do you remember that word that I told you a while back? Do you remember what it was?" The person who was told his name is Baker is less likely to remember the same word than the person was told his job is that he is a baker. Same word, different amount of remembering; that's weird. What's going on here? 這個概念能用一則幽默的悖論完美詮釋，叫做Baker/baker悖論，簡單說來就是，假設(shè)我讓兩個人去記同一個詞，我跟你說，"記住有個人叫Baker"，Baker是人名，我又來告訴你 "記住有個人是面包師(baker)"，過了一段時間我又回來找到你們，問 "還記得我之前，叫你們記住的那個詞嗎?"，”還記得是什么詞嗎?“，被告知人名是Baker的人，記住這個詞的可能性遠不如，被告知職業(yè)是面包師的那個人，同樣的詞 導(dǎo)致不同的記憶程度，到底是為什么呢，
Well the name Baker doesn't actually mean anything to you. It is entirely untethered from all of the other memories floating around in your skull. But the common noun baker, we know bakers. Bakers wear funny white hats. Bakers have flour on their hands. Bakers smell good when they come home from work. Maybe we even know a baker. And when we first hear that word, we start putting these associational hooks into it that make it easier to fish it back out at some later date. The entire art of what is going on in these memory contests and the entire art of remembering stuff better in everyday life is figuring out ways to transform capital B Bakers into lower-case B bakers -- to take information that is lacking in context, in significance, in meaning and transform it in some way so that it becomes meaningful in the light of all the other things that you have in your mind. 是因為 人名Baker沒有任何特殊含義，沒法跟你腦海里，零碎繁雜的記憶產(chǎn)生任何聯(lián)系，但是面包師(baker)作為一個常用名詞，我們都知道面包師是什么，面包師帶著搞笑的白帽子，他們手上沾滿了面粉，他們下班回到家?guī)е鴵浔堑目久姘?，甚至可能有些人有朋友就是面包師，我們初次聽到這個詞時，馬上就會產(chǎn)生各種各樣的聯(lián)想，這使我們能在一段時間后還能回憶起來，其實 要理解記憶競賽中的，一切奧妙，或在日常生活中改善記憶力的秘訣，僅僅在于想辦法把Baker中的大寫B(tài)，變?yōu)槊姘鼛?baker)中的小寫b，把沒有前因后果，沒有重要性 沒有涵義的信息，用某種方法轉(zhuǎn)化為，有意義的內(nèi)容，跟腦海里的其他記憶串聯(lián)起來，
One of the more elaborate techniques for doing this dates back 2,500 years to Ancient Greece. It came to be known as the memory palace. The story behind its creation goes like this: There was a poet called Simonides who was attending a banquet. He was actually the hired entertainment, because back then if you wanted to throw a really slamming party, you didn't hire a D.J., you hired a poet. And he stands up, delivers his poem from memory, walks out the door, and at the moment he does, the banquet hall collapses, kills everybody inside. It doesn't just kill everybody, it mangles the bodies beyond all recognition. Nobody can say who was inside, nobody can say where they were sitting. The bodies can't be properly buried. It's one tragedy compounding another. Simonides, standing outside, the sole survivor amid the wreckage, closes his eyes and has this realization, which is that in his mind's eye, he can see where each of the guests at the banquet had been sitting. And he takes the relatives by the hand and guides them each to their loved ones amid the wreckage. 這種精確記憶的技巧，在兩千五百年前的古希臘就已出現(xiàn)，后來將其稱為記憶宮殿，發(fā)明這種技巧的過程如下，有個叫做Simonides的詩人，他要去參加一個晚宴，其實他算是被請去做表演嘉賓的，因為在那個年代 炫酷派對的標(biāo)準(zhǔn)，不是請D.J.來打碟 而是要請詩人來頌詩，他站起來 背出了他的全篇詩作 然后瀟灑離去，他剛走出門口 晚宴大廳就塌了，砸死了里面所有的人，不僅全體死亡，所有的死者都被砸得面目全非，沒人說得清死者都有些誰，沒人說得清誰坐在哪兒，導(dǎo)致死者的尸體沒法得到合適的殉葬安置，這又加重了整件事的悲劇色彩，Simonides站在外面，作為廢墟中的幸存者，閉上眼睛 猛然意識到，在他的腦海中，他眼前出現(xiàn)了所有賓客所坐的位置，他就牽著親屬們的手，穿過廢墟 把他們帶到了親人身邊，