英语演讲稿精品范文2篇(附翻译)
英语演讲稿一: Hiding power of a smile笑容的隐藏力量 When I was a child, I always wanted to be a superhero. I wanted to save the world and then make everyone happy. But I knew that I'd need superpowers to make my dreams come true. So I used to embark on these imaginary journeys to find intergalactic objects from planet Krypton, which was a lot of fun, but didn't get much result. When I grew up, and realized that science-fiction was not a good source for superpowers, I decided instead to embark on a journey of real science, to find a more useful truth. 我童年时,一直想成为一位超级英雄,我想拯救世界,让每个人都快乐,但我知道需要超能力才能让我的梦想成真,所以我展开这些想象之旅,到克利普顿星(超人的家乡)寻找星际间的天体。这很有趣,但没什么成果。当我长大后,了解到科幻小说不是超能力的好来源,我决定展开一场真正的科学之旅,寻找更有用的真理。 I started my journey in California with a UC Berkley 30-year longitudinal study that examined the photos of students in an old yearbook and tried to measure their success and well-being throughout their life. By measuring their student smiles, researchers were able to predict how fulfilling and long-lasting a subject's marriage will be, how well she would score on standardized tests of well-being and how inspiring she would be to others. In another yearbook, I stumbled upon Barry Obama's picture. When I first saw his picture, I thought that these superpowers came from his super collar. But now I know it was all in his smile. 我的旅程开始于加州,以柏克莱大学从事30年期的纵贯研究,研究一本旧年鉴中的学生照片,试着衡量他们一生的成就和幸福。藉由衡量学生的微笑,研究人员能够预测研究对象的婚姻是否圆满及长久,他在标准化幸福评量中能得到多少分,以及他能为别人带来多少启发。在另一本年鉴中,我偶然发现了欧巴马的照片,当我第一次看到他的照片时,我认为这些超能力来自于他的超大衣领,但现在我知道这全来自于他的笑容。 Another aha! moment came from a 20_ Wayne State University research project that looked into pre-1950s baseball cards of Major League players. The researchers found that the span of a players smile could actually predict the span of his life. Players who didn't smile in their pictures lived an average of only 72.9 years, where players with beaming smiles lived an average of almost 80 years. 另一个啊哈!时刻,来自20_年Wayne州立大学的研究项目,观察50年代前职棒大联盟球员的棒球卡,研究人员发现,球员微笑的宽度事实上可以预测他寿命的长度,相片中没有笑容的球员,平均寿命仅72.9岁,拥有灿烂笑容的球员,平均寿命将近80岁。 The good news is that we're actually born smiling. Using 3D ultrasound technology, we can now see that developing babies appear to smile, even in the womb. When they're born, babies continue to smile -- initially, mostly in their sleep. And even blind babies smile to the sound of the human voice. Smiling is one of the most basic, biologically-uniform expressions of all humans. In studies conducted in Papua New Guinea, Paul Ekman, the world's most renowned researcher on facial expressions, found that even members of the Fore tribe, who were completely disconnected from Western culture, and also known for their unusual cannibalism rituals, attributed smiles to descriptions of situations the same way you and I would. So from Papau New Guinea to Hollywood all the way to modern art in Beijing, we smile often, and you smile to express joy and satisfaction. 在巴布亚新几内亚进行的研究中,Paul Ekman,世界上最知名的脸部表情研究者发现,即使是Fore部落中的成员,他们完全与西方文化隔绝,也因他们不寻常的吃人仪式而众所皆知,他们就像你我一样,也会在某些情况下微笑。因此,从巴布亚新几内亚到好莱坞,一直到北京的现代艺术,我们经常微笑着。你用微笑来表达喜悦和满足。 How many people here in this room smile more than 20 times per day? Raise your hand if you do. Oh, wow. Outside of this room, more than a third of us smile more than 20 times per day, whereas less than 14 percent of us smile less than five. In fact, those with the most amazing superpowers are actually children who smile as many as 400 times per day. 在这房间里,有多少人每天微笑超过20次?如果有的话请举起手。哦,哇!在这个房间外,超过三分之一的人每天微笑超过20次,不到14%的人每天微笑少于5次。事实上,拥有最惊人超能力的是孩童,他们每天微笑多达400次。 Have you ever wondered why being around children who smile so frequently makes you smile very often? A recent study at Uppsala University in Sweden found that it's very difficult to frown when looking at someone who smiles. You ask, why? Because smiling is evolutionarily contagious, and it suppresses the control we usually have on our facial muscles. Mimicking a smile and experiencing it physically help us understand whether our smile is fake or real, so we can understand the emotional state of the smiler. 你有没有想过,为什么身处在经常微笑的孩子身边,也会让你经常微笑?最近在瑞典Uppsala大学的一项研究发现,当看着正在微笑的人时是很难皱眉的。你会问为什么?因为微笑具有演化上的感染性,它能抑制我们平时对脸部肌肉的控制,模仿一个微笑并实际体验它,帮助我们了解我们的微笑是假是真,因此我们可以了解微笑者的情绪状态。 In a recent mimicking study at the University of Clermont-Ferrand in France, subjects were asked to determine whether a smile was real or fake while holding a pencil in their mouth to repress smiling muscles. Without the pencil, subjects were excellent judges, But with the pencil in their mouth, when they could not mimic the smile they saw, their judgment was impaired. 最近在法国Clermont-Ferrand大学的一次模仿研究中,要求测试对象在口中含住一支铅笔抑制微笑肌肉时,判断一个微笑是真是假。不含住铅笔时测试对象有优秀的判断力,但当他们口中含着铅笔时,就无法模仿他们看到的笑容,他们的判断力就会受损。 In addition to theorizing on evolution in "The Origin of Species", Charles Darwin also wrote the facial feedback response theory. His theory states that the act of smiling itself actually makes us feel better -- rather than smiling being merely a result of feeling good. In his study, Darwin actually cited a French neurologist, Guillaume Duchenne, who used electric jolts to facial muscles to induce and stimulate smiles. Please, don't try this at home. 除了在《物种起源》中阐述进化论以外,达尔文还写了脸部回馈理论。他的理论阐述,微笑这个行为本身,事实上能让我们感觉更好,而不仅是感觉不错的一个结果。在他的研究中,达尔文事实上引用了法国神经学家Guillaume Duchenne的实验,他使用电刺激脸部肌肉,诱发及激起微笑产生。请不要在家里尝试这个。 In a related German study, researchers used fMRI imaging to measure brain activity before and after injecting Botox to suppress smiling muscles. The finding supported Darwin's theory by showing that facial feedback modifies the neural processing of emotional content in the brain in a way that helps us feel better when we smile. Smiling stimulates our brain reward mechanism in a way that even chocolate -- a well-regarded pleasure inducer -- cannot match. 在德国一项相关研究中,研究人员使用功能性核磁共振造影(fMRI),拍摄在注射肉毒杆菌抑制微笑肌肉前后,对大脑活动进行测量的照片,这个发现支持达尔文的理论,显示当我们微笑时,脸部回馈会改变大脑中情绪部份的神经处理程序,在某种程度上帮助我们感觉更好。微笑刺激我们的大脑奖励机制,在某种程度上,甚至连巧克力,一个公认的快乐诱导物,都无法比拟。 British researchers found that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 bars of chocolate. (Laughter) Wait. The same study found that smiling is as stimulating as receiving up to 16,000 pounds Sterling in cash. That's like 25 grand a smile. It's not bad. And think about it this way: 25,000 times 400 -- quite a few kids out there feel like mark Zuckerberg every day. 英国研究人员发现,一个微笑可以使大脑产生与2000根巧克力棒相同程度的刺激。(笑声)等等,同样的研究发现,微笑造成的刺激跟得到16000英镑现金相同,一个微笑就像25000美金,还不错。再想想看,25000乘以400,世上不少孩子每天都有像Mark Zuckerberg的感觉(facebook创办人)。 And, unlike lots of chocolate, lots of smiling can actually make you healthier. Smiling can help reduce the level of stress-enhancing hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine, increase the level of mood-enhancing hormones like endorphin and reduce overall blood pressure. 而且,不像一大堆巧克力,大量微笑事实上可以让你更健康。微笑可以帮助降低提升压力荷尔蒙的含量,如皮质醇、肾上腺素和多巴胺,增加提升情绪荷尔蒙的含量,如脑内啡,并降低整体血压。 And if that's not enough, smiling can actually look good in the eyes of others. A recent study at Penn State University found that when you smile you don't only appear to be more likable and courteous, but you actually appear to be more competent. 如果这还不够,微笑事实上可以使你在他人眼中看起来更好。最近一项在宾州州立大学的研究发现,当你微笑时,你不仅显得更可爱、更有礼貌,事实上你会显得更能干。 So whenever you want to look great and competent, reduce your stress or improve your marriage, or feel as if you just had a whole stack of high-quality chocolate -- without incurring the caloric cost -- or as if you found 25 grand in a pocket of an old jacket you hadn't worn for ages, or whenever you want to tap into a superpower that will help you and everyone around you live a longer, healthier, happier life, smile. 所以,当你想看起来很棒、很能干、减少你的压力,或改善你的婚姻,或想要感觉像是吃了一堆高质量巧克力,而不需承受热量的代价,或彷佛在一件多年没穿的旧夹克口袋中发现二万五千元,或当你想使用超能力帮助自己和周围每个人活得更长久、更健康、生活得更幸福,微笑吧! 英语演讲稿二: What fear can teach us恐惧可以教会我们什么 One day in 1819, 3,000 miles off the coast of Chile, in one of the most remote regions of the Pacific Ocean, 20 American sailors watched their ship flood with seawater. 1819年的某一天, 在距离智利海岸3000英里的地方, 有一个太平洋上的最偏远的水域, 20名美国船员目睹了他们的船只进水的场面。 They'd been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped a catastrophic hole in the ship's hull. As their ship began to sink beneath the swells, the men huddled together in three small whaleboats. 他们和一头抹香鲸相撞,给船体撞了 一个毁灭性的大洞。 当船在巨浪中开始沉没时, 人们在三条救生小艇中抱作一团。 These men were 10,000 miles from home, more than 1,000 miles from the nearest scrap of land. In their small boats, they carried only rudimentary navigational equipment and limited supplies of food and water. 这些人在离家10000万英里的地方, 离最近的陆地也超过1000英里。 在他们的小艇中,他们只带了 落后的导航设备 和有限的食物和饮水。 These were the men of the whaleship Essex, whose story would later inspire parts of "Moby Dick." 他们就是捕鲸船ESSEX上的人们, 后来的他们的故事成为《白鲸记》的一部分。 Even in today's world, their situation would be really dire, but think about how much worse it would have been then. 即使在当今的世界,碰上这种情况也够杯具的,更不用说在当时的情况有多糟糕。 No one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. No search party was coming to look for these men. So most of us have never experienced a situation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, but we all know what it's like to be afraid. 岸上的人根本就还没意识到出了什么问题。 没有任何人来搜寻他们。 我们当中大部分人没有经历过 这些船员所处的可怕情景, 但我们都知道害怕是什么感觉。 We know how fear feels, but I'm not sure we spend enough time thinking about what our fears mean. 我们知道恐惧的感觉, 但是我不能肯定我们会花很多时间想过 我们的恐惧到底意味着什么。 As we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, just another childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates. 我们长大以后,我们总是会被鼓励把恐惧 视为软弱,需要像乳牙或轮滑鞋一样 扔掉的幼稚的东西。 And I think it's no accident that we think this way. Neuroscientists have actually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists. 我想意外事故并非我们所想的那样。 神经系统科学家已经知道人类 生来就是乐观主义者。 So maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and of itself. "Don't worry," we like to say to one another. "Don't panic." In English, fear is something we conquer. It's something we fight. 这也许就是为什么我们认为有时候恐惧, 本身就是一种危险或带来危险。 “不要愁。”我们总是对别人说。“不要慌”。 英语中,恐惧是我们需要征服的东西。 是我们必须对抗的东西,是我们必须克服的东西。 It's something we overcome. But what if we looked at fear in a fresh way? What if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something that can be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself? 但是我们如果换个视角看恐惧会如何呢? 如果我们把恐惧当做是想象力的一个惊人成果, 是和我们讲故事一样 精妙而有见地的东西,又会如何呢? It's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in young children, whose fears are often extraordinarily vivid. 在小孩子当中,我们最容易看到恐惧与想象之间的联系, 他们的恐惧经常是超级生动的。 When I was a child, I lived in California, which is, you know, mostly a very nice place to live, but for me as a child, California could also be a little scary. 我小时候住在加利福尼亚, 你们都知道,是非常适合居住的位置, 但是对一个小孩来说,加利福尼亚也会有点吓人。 I remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier that hung above our dining table swing back and forth during every minor earthquake, and I sometimes couldn't sleep at night, terrified that the Big One might strike while we were sleeping. 我记得每次小地震的时候 当我看到我们餐桌上的吊灯 晃来晃去的时候是多么的吓人, 我经常会彻夜难眠,担心大地震 会在我们睡觉的时候突然袭来。 And what we say about kids who have fears like that is that they have a vivid imagination. But at a certain point, most of us learn to leave these kinds of visions behind and grow up. 我们说小孩子感受到这种恐惧 是因为他们有生动的想象力。 但是在某个时候,我们大多数学会了 抛弃这种想法而变得成熟。 We learn that there are no monsters hiding under the bed, and not every earthquake brings buildings down. But maybe it's no coincidence that some of our most creative minds fail to leave these kinds of fears behind as adults. 我们都知道床下没有魔鬼, 也不是每个地震都会震垮房子。但是我们当中最有想象力的人们 并没有因为成年而抛弃这种恐惧,这也许并不是巧合。 The same incredible imaginations that produced "The Origin of Species," "Jane Eyre" and "The Remembrance of Things Past," also generated intense worries that haunted the adult lives of Charles Darwin, Charlotte BrontĂŤ and Marcel Proust. So the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear from visionaries and young children? 同样不可思议的想象力创造了《物种起源》, 《简·爱》和《追忆似水年华》, 也就是这种与生俱来的深深的担忧一直缠绕着成年的 查尔斯·达尔文, 夏洛特·勃朗特和马塞尔·普罗斯特。 问题就来了, 我们其他人如何能从这些 梦想家和小孩子身上学会恐惧? Well let's return to the year 1819 for a moment, to the situation facing the crew of the whaleship Essex. Let's take a look at the fears that their imaginations were generating as they drifted in the middle of the Pacific. 让我们暂时回到1819年, 回到ESSEX捕鲸船的水手们面对的情况。 让我们看看他们漂流在太平洋中央时 他们的想象力给他们带来的恐惧感觉。 Twenty-four hours had now passed since the capsizing of the ship. The time had come for the men to make a plan, but they had very few options. 船倾覆后已经过了24个小时。 这时人们制定了一个计划, 但是其实他们没什么太多的选择。 In his fascinating account of the disaster, Nathaniel Philbrick wrote that these men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere on Earth. 在纳撒尼尔·菲尔布里克(Nathaniel Philbrick)描述这场灾难的 动人文章中,他写到“这些人离陆地如此之远, 似乎永远都不可能到达地球上的任何一块陆地。” The men knew that the nearest islands they could reach were the Marquesas Islands, 1,200 miles away. But they'd heard some frightening rumors. 这些人知道离他们最近的岛 是1200英里以外的马克萨斯群岛(Marquesas Islands)。 但是他们听到了让人恐怖的谣言。 They'd been told that these islands, and several others nearby, were populated by cannibals. So the men pictured coming ashore only to be murdered and eaten for dinner. Another possible destination was Hawaii, but given the season, the captain was afraid they'd be struck by severe storms. 他们听说这些群岛, 以及附近的一些岛屿上都住着食人族。 所以他们脑中都是上岸以后就会被杀掉 被人当做盘中餐的画面。 另一个可行的目的地是夏威夷, 但是船长担心 他们会被困在风暴当中。 Now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult: to sail 1,500 miles due south in hopes of reaching a certain band of winds that could eventually push them toward the coast of South America. 所以最后的选择是到最远,也是最艰险的地方: 往南走1500英里希望某股风 能最终把他们 吹到南美洲的海岸。 But they knew that the sheer length of this journey would stretch their supplies of food and water. To be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms, to starve to death before reaching land. 但是他们知道这个行程中一旦偏航 将会耗尽他们食物和饮水的供给。 被食人族吃掉,被风暴掀翻, 在登陆前饿死。 These were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men, and as it turned out, the fear they chose to listen to would govern whether they lived or died. 这就是萦绕在这群可怜的人想象中的恐惧, 事实证明,他们选择听从的恐惧 将决定他们的生死。 Now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name. What if instead of calling them fears, we called them stories? 也许我们可以很容易的用别的名称来称呼这些恐惧。 我们不称之为恐惧, 而是称它们为故事如何? Because that's really what fear is, if you think about it. It's a kind of unintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. And fears and storytelling have the same components. 如果你仔细想想,这是恐惧真正的意义。 这是一种与生俱来的, 无意识的讲故事的能力。 恐惧和讲故事有着同样的构成。 They have the same architecture. Like all stories, fears have characters. In our fears, the characters are us. Fears also have plots. They have beginnings and middles and ends. You board the plane. 他们有同样的结构。 如同所有的故事,恐惧中有角色。 在恐惧中,角色就是我们自己。 恐惧也有情节。他们有开头,有中间,有结尾。 你登上飞机。 The plane takes off. The engine fails. Our fears also tend to contain imagery that can be every bit as vivid as what you might find in the pages of a novel. Picture a cannibal, human teeth sinking into human skin, human flesh roasting over a fire. 飞机起飞。结果引擎故障。 我们的恐惧会包括各种生动的想象, 不比你看到的任何一个小说逊色。 想象食人族,人类牙齿 咬在人类皮肤上, 人肉在火上烤。 Fears also have suspense. If I've done my job as a storyteller today, you should be wondering what happened to the men of the whaleship Essex. Our fears provoke in us a very similar form of suspense. 恐惧中也有悬念。 如果我今天像讲故事一样,留个悬念不说了, 你们也许会很想知道 ESSEX捕鲸船上,人们到底怎么样了。 我们的恐惧用悬念一样的方式刺激我们。 Just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a question that is as important in life as it is in literature: What will happen next? 就像一个很好的故事,我们的恐惧也如同一部好的文学作品一样, 将我们的注意力集中在对我们生命至关重要的问题上: 后来发生了什么? In other words, our fears make us think about the future. And humans, by the way, are the only creatures capable of thinking about the future in this way, of projecting ourselves forward in time, and this mental time travel is just one more thing that fears have in common with storytelling. 换而言之,我们的恐惧让我们想到未来。 另外,人来是有能力 通过这种方式想到未来的生物, 就是预测时间推移后我们的状况, 这种精神上的时间旅行是恐惧 与讲故事的另一个共同点。 As a writer, I can tell you that a big part of writing fiction is learning to predict how one event in a story will affect all the other events, and fear works in that same way. 我是一个作家,我要告诉你们写小说一个很重要的部分 就是学会预测故事中一件 事情如何影响另一件事情, 恐惧也是同样这么做的。 In fear, just like in fiction, one thing always leads to another. When I was writing my first novel, "The Age Of Miracles," I spent months trying to figure out what would happen if the rotation of the Earth suddenly began to slow down. What would happen to our days? 恐惧中,如同小说一样,一件事情总是导致另一件事情。 我写我的第一部小说《奇迹时代》的时候, 我花了数月的时间想象如果地球旋转突然变慢了之后 会发生什么。 我们的一天变得如何? What would happen to our crops? What would happen to our minds? And then it was only later that I realized how very similar these questions were to the ones I used to ask myself as a child frightened in the night. 我们身体会怎样? 我们的思想会有什么变化? 也就是在那之后,我意识到 我过去总是问自己的那些些问题 和孩子们在夜里害怕是多么的相像。 If an earthquake strikes tonight, I used to worry, what will happen to our house? What will happen to my family? And the answer to those questions always took the form of a story. 要是在过去,如果今晚发生地震,我会很担心, 我的房子会怎么样啊?家里人会怎样啊? 这类问题的答案通常都会和故事一样。 So if we think of our fears as more than just fears but as stories, we should think of ourselves as the authors of those stories. But just as importantly, we need to think of ourselves as the readers of our fears, and how we choose to read our fears can have a profound effect on our lives. 所以我们认为我们的恐惧不仅仅是恐惧 还是故事,我们应该把自己当作 这些故事的作者。 但是同样重要的是,我们需要想象我们自己 是我们恐惧的解读者,我们选择如何 去解读这些恐惧会对我们的生活产生深远的影响。 Now, some of us naturally read our fears more closely than others. I read about a study recently of successful entrepreneurs, and the author found that these people shared a habit that he called "productive paranoia," which meant that these people, instead of dismissing their fears, these people read them closely, they studied them, and then they translated that fear into preparation and action. 现在,我们中有些人比其他人更自然的解读自己的恐惧。 最近我看过一个关于成功的企业家的研究, 作者发现这些人都有个习惯 叫做“未雨绸缪“, 意思是,这些人,不回避自己的恐惧, 而是认真解读并研究恐惧, 然后把恐惧转换成准备和行动。 So that way, if their worst fears came true, their businesses were ready. 这样,如果最坏的事情发生了, 他们的企业也有所准备。 And sometimes, of course, our worst fears do come true. That's one of the things that is so extraordinary about fear. Once in a while, our fears can predict the future. 当然,很多时候,最坏的事情确实发生了。 这是恐惧非凡的一面。 曾几何时,我们的恐惧预测将来。 But we can't possibly prepare for all of the fears that our imaginations concoct. So how can we tell the difference between the fears worth listening to and all the others? I think the end of the story of the whaleship Essex offers an illuminating, if tragic, example. 但是我们不可能为我们想象力构建的所有 恐惧来做准备。 所以,如何区分值得听从的恐惧 和不值得的呢? 我想捕鲸船ESSEX的故事结局 提供了一个有启发性,同时又悲惨的例子。 After much deliberation, the men finally made a decision. Terrified of cannibals, they decided to forgo the closest islands and instead embarked on the longer and much more difficult route to South America. 经过数次权衡,他们最终做出了决定。 由于害怕食人族,他们决定放弃最近的群岛 而是开始更长 更艰难的南美洲之旅。 After more than two months at sea, the men ran out of food as they knew they might, and they were still quite far from land. When the last of the survivors were finally picked up by two passing ships, less than half of the men were left alive, and some of them had resorted to their own form of cannibalism. 在海上呆了两个多月后,他们 的食物如预料之中消耗殆尽, 而且他们仍然离陆地那么远。 当最后的幸存者最终被过往船只救起时, 只有一小半的人还活着, 实际上他们中的一些人自己变成了食人族。 Herman Melville, who used this story as research for "Moby Dick," wrote years later, and from dry land, quote, "All the sufferings of these miserable men of the Essex might in all human probability have been avoided had they, immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for Tahiti. 赫尔曼·梅尔维尔(Herman Melville)将这个故事作为 《白鲸记》的素材,在数年后写到: ESSEX船上遇难者的悲惨结局 或许是可以通过人为的努力避免的, 如果他们当机立断地离开沉船, 直奔塔西提群岛。 But," as Melville put it, "they dreaded cannibal