随手做翻译 2016-08-24

今天的翻译还是The Gene里面选取的。我看书速度实在是奇慢无比，基本上半小时也就十页左右，看着欠下的债越来越多，非常焦虑。

原文：

In the history of science and technology too, breakthroughs seem to come in two fundamental forms. There are scale shifts--where the crucial advance emerges as a result of an alteration of size or scale alone (the moon rocket, as one engineer famously pointed out, was just a massive jet plane pointed vertically at the moon). And there are conceptual shifts--in which the advance arises because of the emergence of a radical new concept or idea. In truth, the two modes are not mutually exclusive, but reinforcing.

译文：

在科技史上，重大突破一般出现在两个方面。第一种是量变：因为规模或者数量的改变带来了关键发展（曾经有个工程师说，登月火箭不过就是一架巨大的喷气式飞机，屁股朝下朝月球飞而已）。第二种是质变：这类进步得益于新的理念和新的创意。其实这两者并不是相互排斥的，反而是相得益彰的。

原文：

"Patents (or so I had believed) are designed to protect inventions," he wrote. "There was no 'invention' involved in finding [gene fragments] so how could they be patentable?" "It's a quick and dirty land grab.”

译文：

他写道，“专利（至少我认为）是用来保护发明权的，但是【基因碎片】的发现跟‘发明’根本风马牛不相及，怎么能注册专利呢？”“这就是跑马圈地的伎俩罢了。”