英汉双语名人演讲：比尔·盖茨2020年终总结 I ended 2020 by compiling something slightly unusual： a list of some of the good news you might have missed. I thought it was a pretty good note to end the year on, and people seemed to like reading about some of the ways the world is becoming a better place. This year, I thought I’d do it again. 我写了一些略微特别的东西来结束2020年：一份你可能已经错过的好消息的清单。我想，以那样的方式为这个年划上句号，是一个非常棒的方式，而且人们似乎很愿意看到我们的世界在一天天变得更好。今年，我还要这么做。 Of course, we can’t ignore the fact that it’s been a turbulent year, in the United States and many other countries. But it’s worth taking a moment to celebrate some of the good news too. More children are surviving than ever before. We’re making progress against some of the world’s deadliest diseases. These are some of the most fundamental ways to measure the world’s progress—and by that measure, 2020 was definitely another good year. 不能否认，在美国以及其他国家，2020年是动荡的一年。但是还有好消息值得我们去庆祝：相比以前，更多的孩子得以存活;面对全世界最致命的疾病，我们在持续进步。衡量世界是否进步，有几种重要的方法。通过这些方法我们看得到，2020年又是进步的一年。1.More Fifth Birthdays Than Ever Before有更多孩子过上了他们的5岁生日 To me, one of the best ways to measure progress is to look at how many children are dying of preventable causes. And today, more kids are living to see their fifth birthday than ever before. This year, for at least the 42nd year in a row, the child mortality rate has fallen. And it’s not just moving in the right direction—it’s falling faster than anyone expected. The Economist ran a great article about this in September, where it estimated that just since 2001, the world has saved 13.6 million children’s lives. It’s hard to think of a better sign the world is improving. 对我来说，判断世界是否进步的方式，就是看看有多少孩子的死亡其实能够避免。如今，能活到5岁的孩子，比以往任何时代都要多。到今年为止，已经连续42年，儿童的死亡率在持续下降，这个数字不止是在持续下降，下降速度也出人意料地迅速。《经济学人》杂志今年9月发表的一篇文章称：自2001年以来，我们已经挽救了1360万孩子的生命。不难想像，这是世界进步的标志。2.We Hit a Big Milestone in Fighting AIDS里程碑与艾滋病的斗争 The world has done an impressive job of providing treatment to people living with HIV. But for years we were falling behind, because for all the people who started getting treatment, even more would become infected. Not anymore, though. New data released this month show that 2020 was the first year when more people started getting treatment than became infected with HIV. Why does that matter? Because treating people not only keeps them alive, it also dramatically reduces the odds that they will pass the virus on to anyone else. As the epidemiologists say, we can start to bend the curve of the disease. We still have a long way to go before we can declare the end of AIDS, but this is a big milestone.
对于HIV病毒感染者的治疗，我们已经取得了非常不错的成果。但是前些年，不得不说，我们落在了HIV后面：虽然越来越多的HIV携带者开始接受治疗，但却总有更多的人感染了HIV病毒。但今非昔比，本月新发布的数据报道显示：2020年，接受治疗的患者数量首次超过新增感染者。为什么会这样?治疗不但能够让病毒携带者生存下去，还能够大幅度减少病毒传播的可能性。如流行病学家所说，这是一个转折点。虽然离消灭艾滋病还有一段很长的路要走。但是，这是里程碑式的一年。 3.Rotavirus Vaccine is Reaching More Kids Than Ever有更多孩子注射了轮状病毒疫苗 When I read an article in the late 1990s that mentioned a diarrheal disease called rotavirus killed hundreds of thousands of kids a year, I couldn’t believe something I’d never even heard of was killing that many children. But rotavirus doesn’t get much press because it’s almost never deadly in rich countries—and the world tends to ignore diseases that only affect the world’s poorest people. In many ways, rotavirus was a catalyst for my commitment to global health—in fact, one of our foundation’s first grants supported efforts against rotavirus. Since then, the number of kids dying from this illness has been cut nearly in half thanks to a cheap and effective vaccine. And today, that vaccine is reaching more kids than ever before. For example in India, where rota kills nearly 80,000 children a year, the government decided this year to deliver the vaccine for free to poor children. And manufacturers there are working on a more affordable vaccinethat could reach even more children in the coming years.
