[whale sound] Maybe you've heard that sound. It's an Orca, a killer whale. We know that whales have a kind of language. Families and closely related groups even share dialects.
(鯨魚的聲音)也許你聽到過這種聲音。這是一只逆戟鯨,虎鯨的一種。我們知道,鯨是有語言的。鯨魚家族和彼此關系密切的鯨魚群體甚至還有自己的“方言”。
Are they letting members of the pod know where the food is, crooning a romantic ballad to a potential mate, or something else altogether? That's what researchers want to know--and where citizen scientists come in.
他們的語言用來干嘛呢?是告訴群體成員食物在哪里?是求愛時浪漫的低聲吟唱?還是別的什么原因?其實,這就是研究人員同是也是市民科學家們想揭開的秘密。

The first step in understanding whale talk is cataloging the calls. You might organize your messy drawer by matching up the socks--at our website, citizen scientists can match up the whale calls. You listen to an uncategorized call [sound] then find one that it sounds like it [similar sound].
要想了解鯨類的語言,第一步是將它們的聲音進行分類。就像你可以把襪子分類然后整理好你的襪子抽屜一樣——市民科學家們可以在我們的網站上給鯨魚的聲音進行匹配。這是你聽到的未經分類的叫聲(聲音),然后找到一個聽起來和它類似的聲音(類似的聲音)。
So far, more than 5,000 volunteers have matched 100,000 calls. That effort would have taken professionals years. The data will help answer questions like: How many kinds of calls do whales make? And: What does the number of calls say about intelligence? The studies will also help researchers develop guidelines to reduce the impact of man-made sounds on marine life. To lend us your ears, just go to whale.scientificamerican.com
目前,有超過5000名志愿者已經匹配了100,000個鯨魚的聲音。這樣的工作要是讓專業人員來做,估計需要耗費他們好幾年的時間。這些數據有助于給這些問題做出解答:鯨類可以發出多少種聲音?有多少種聲音是和鯨類的智商有關的?這項研究也將有助于研究人員找到減少人類聲音對海洋生物的影響的方法。登陸whale.scientificamerican.com網站,把你的耳朵借給我們,幫助我們匹配鯨魚聲音吧。