The Millennium Bridge 千禧桥（在线收听）
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| Go for a bouncy walk over the Thames on the Millennium Bridge |
Oliver: I’m Oliver.
John: And I’m John, and in this edition of On The Town we’re investigating the Millennium Bridge.
Oliver: 千禧桥。
John: It was designed by the architect Lord Norman Foster, and has a very sleek, silvery appearance.
Oliver: 桥梁的设计者是一名建筑师，an architect。 银色的桥梁呈现出圆滑的造型。A sleek and silvery appearance。
John: It has a very modern look, and it’s also a suspension bridge.
Oliver: 吊桥 a suspension bridge。
Oliver: Now, I hear that there was a problem when the bridge opened to the public in 2000.
John: There was. A big problem!
Oliver: What was it?
John: The bridge wobbled!
Oliver: It wobbled， 桥是晃动的!
John: The day the bridge opened hundreds of people walked across it and it started to sway in a disconcerting way! It took two years for the bridge to be secured and made rigid.
Oliver: 工程师们不得不给桥梁重新加固，rigid，两年之后，千禧桥才得以再次向公众开放。接下来我们会听到桥梁设计者、建筑师 Norman Foster 接受 BBC 采访时的录音。
John: Did the architect find it frustrating that the bridge had to be closed for two years?
Insert
Challenging I would say, but of course, if you measure the life of this structure in hundreds of years it will be around for as long as it has a useful life. It’s not made of materials which are going to corrode, so if you measure that period that we are talking about in the wider perspective, it's a blip. A pretty harrowing blip, but a blip
John: Lord Norman Foster said it was pretty challenging to have to keep the bridge closed for two years of repairs.
Oliver: 是具有挑战性的 challenging。
John: He said the bridge is not made of materials that are going to corrode.
Oliver: 千禧桥不会被腐蚀， to corrode。
John: So the length of closure is only a blip in the life of the bridge. A blip is very short period of time.
Oliver: 建筑师说对于将长时间存在的千禧桥来讲，关闭整修的两年是非常短的，仅仅是一个微不足道的小点儿 a blip。
John: Now that the bridge has been made rigid, what do the pedestrians who walk across it think of it?
Insert
Man:
It’s like a carnival, everybody is just talking about the bridge, and the construction and the wind. We’ve not had a wobble yet, it doesn’t feel like jelly.
Girl:
It doesn’t wobble anymore.
Older woman:
Well, I’m a bridge freak, and having not seen it before I came down especially to see it, and walking over, I thought it was rather beautiful to look at. It’s a bicycle-friendly, pedestrian-friendly bridge. There is in the wind, I’m afraid a slight vibration, but as somebody pointed out to me, if there weren’t a vibration at all we’d have to worry. Walking over it, it looks rather beautiful.
Man with French accent:
Well it’s absolutely terrific. It’s my last day in London. I’ve been here in May last year, when it couldn’t open, and I couldn’t cross it. And today’s the last day. Look at that!
John: So now people seem to like the Millennium Bridge. One woman said she was a bridge freak.
Oliver: 那位年纪大的女性说她自己是一个桥梁迷，a bridge freak 意思是说她是一个桥梁爱好者。
John: She said it was bicycle and pedestrian-friendly.
Oliver: 方便步行和骑自行车。
John: The older woman you heard said she felt some light vibration when she was on the bridge.
Oliver: 轻微振动 Light vibration。
John: But with a suspension bridge there has to be some movement!
Oliver: But not so much that it wobbles!
John: Exactly. Well, we’ll be talking to you about more interesting places in the UK in the next On The Town, so listen out for that.