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I have all my life wondered what mind-boggling meant.
我整整一生都在想，mind-boggling（令人難以置信的）到底是指什么。
After two days here, I declare myself boggled, and enormously impressed,and feel that you are one of the great hopes not just for American achievement in science and technology,but for the whole world.
在這里呆了兩天，我承認，我已經被深深感染，我感到，你們代表著偉大的希望不僅僅是美國在科學技術上取得進步的希望，也是整個世界的希望。
I've come, however, on a special mission on behalf of my constituency,which are the 10-to-the-18th-power that's a million trillion insects and other small creatures, and to make a plea for them.
我今天來到這里，是代表我的選民，它們的數量多達10的18次方,它們是昆蟲以及其他的小動物，我是來為它們申張正義的。
If we were to wipe out insects alone, just that group alone, on this planet which we are trying hard to do,the rest of life and humanity with it would mostly disappear from the land.
假如我們要把昆蟲從地球上消滅掉，就單單是昆蟲,實際上我們也在努力這樣做，那么剩下的生物包括人類也很可能從地球消失。
And within a few months.
這只需幾個月的時間。
Now, how did I come to this particular position of advocacy?
那我是怎么成為這樣一個為昆蟲辯護的斗士呢？
As a little boy, and through my teenage years,I became increasingly fascinated by the diversity of life.
當我還是小孩子的時候，我就對生物之多樣性感到越來越濃厚的興趣。
I had a butterfly period, a snake period, a bird period, a fish period, a cave period and finally and definitively, an ant period.
我曾經對蝴蝶、蛇、小鳥、魚以及洞穴感興趣,最后，我對螞蟻產生濃厚而長久的興趣。
By my college years, I was a devoted myrmecologist,a specialist on the biology of ants,but my attention and research continued to make journeys across the great variety of life on Earth in general,including all that it means to us as a species, how little we understand it and how pressing a danger that our activities have created for it.
讀大學的時候，我對于螞蟻研究很有熱情，我是一位研究螞蟻的專家，我的關注點以及研究都圍繞地球上巨大的生物多樣性而展開,包括這對我們人類意味著什么，以及為何我們對此所知甚少,還有人類活動正在對生物多樣性構成的嚴重威脅。
Out of that broader study has emerged a concern and an ambition,crystallized in the wish that I'm about to make to you.
長期的研究使我產生一種對生物的關切以及一個宏愿，待會我會在敘述愿望的時候具體說明。
My choice is the culmination of a lifetime commitment that began with growing up on the Gulf Coast of Alabama, on the Florida peninsula.
我的這一選擇是整個研究生涯之落腳點,我小時候在佛羅里達半島的阿拉巴馬灣度過。
As far back as I can remember, I was enchanted by the natural beauty of that region and the almost tropical exuberance of the plants and animals that grow there.
從記事起，我就被那一帶的自然美景深深陶醉,包括該地繁盛成長的接近熱帶的動植物。
One day when I was only seven years old and fishing,I pulled a pinfish, they're called, with sharp dorsal spines, up too hard and fast,and I blinded myself in one eye.
七歲那年，有一天我去釣魚，我捉到一條免齒鯛—有尖利的背棘—猛然用力拉上來，并因此而弄瞎了其中一只眼睛。
I later discovered I was also hard of hearing,possibly congenitally, in the upper registers.
另外，我后來還發現自己在聽力方面也不是很好，也許是生來就有的缺陷。
So in planning to be a professional naturalist.
于是，為了成為一名職業的自然學家。
I never considered anything else in my entire life.
我就決定只做一件事。
I found that I was lousy at bird watching and couldn't track frog calls either.
要我觀鳥，我不在行；要我追蹤青蛙，我也不擅長于此。
So I turned to the teeming small creatures that can be held between the thumb and forefinger:
于是我決定做那些小動物的研究,它們大多可以放在我的拇指跟食指之間，
the little things that compose the foundation of our ecosystems,the little things, as I like to say, who run the world.
而正是它們構建了我們整個生態圈的基礎，它們才是世界的主人。
