Sebastian Wernicke: 1000 TEDTalks, 6 words

翻译人员: Lawrence Wang 校对人员: Angelia King

There's currently over a thousand TED Talks on the TED website.

目前在TED网站上有超过上千个TED演讲,

And I guess many of you here think that this is quite fantastic,

我想在场的多数人

都会认为这简直太棒了--

except for me, I don't agree with this.

除了我，我不认同。

I think we have a situation here.

我认为我们有这么一种情况，

Because if you think about it, 1,000 TED Talks,

你想一下，1000个TED演讲，

that's over 1,000 ideas worth spreading.

那可是1000个值得传播的想法。

那么说到底

How on earth are you going to spread a thousand ideas?

如何去传播这一千个想法？

Even if you just try to get all of those ideas into your head

即便是将这些想法吸收到你脑子里

也需要看这上千个TED视频，

by watching all those thousand TED videos,

这就要花费你

it would actually currently take you over 250 hours to do so.

超过250个小时的时间。

And I did a little calculation of this.

我稍微计算了一下，

要这么做了，这相当于经济损失的

The damage to the economy for each one who does this is around $15,000.

价值估计约15,000美元。

So having seen this danger to the economy,

看到有损经济的危险，

我想我们应该找个办法来解决这问题。

I thought, we need to find a solution to this problem.

这是我的提议：

Here's my approach to it all.

看下这个情况，

If you look at the current situation, you have a thousand TED Talks.

这有上千个TED演讲，

Each of those TED Talks has an average length of about 2,300 words.

这些TED演讲视频有一个平均长度，

大概2,300个词汇。

现在放在一起

Now take this together, and you end up with 2.3 million words of TED Talks,

所有TED演讲总计大约230万词汇

这大约相当于三本【圣经】的内容。

which is about three Bibles-worth of content.

(Laughter)

明显的问题是

The obvious question here is, does a TED Talk really need 2,300 words?

一个TED演讲是否需要2300个词汇？

没有更短的吗？

Isn't there something shorter?

I mean, if you have an idea worth spreading,

我意思是，如果你有值得传播的思想，

你肯定能让它短点儿，

surely you can put it into something shorter than 2,300 words.

比2300个词短。

The only question is, how short can you get?

那么问题是：要多短？

最少需要多少词汇？

What's the minimum amount of words you would need to do a TED Talk?

一个TED演讲能多短？

当我考虑这个问题时

While I was pondering this question,

I came across this urban legend about Ernest Hemingway,

我想起了欧内斯特·海明威的传奇故事

据说他说过一个仅仅六个词的小说

who allegedly said that these six words here:

“出售：小孩的鞋，永远不会穿破。”

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn,"

这是他写的最好的小说。

were the best novel he had ever written.

And I also encountered a project called Six-Word Memoirs

我也有过一个项目叫“六字回忆录”，

我请人们

where people were asked, take your whole life

把整个人生总结在六个词里，比如：

and please sum this up into six words, such as these here:

“找到过真爱，但与他人结婚。”

"Found true love, married someone else."

或者“活于存在的空虚中，太糟了。”

Or "Living in existential vacuum; it sucks."

I actually like that one.

我喜欢这个。

So if a novel can be put into six words

如果一个小说只用六个词，

and a whole memoir can be put into six words,

一整个回忆录也能用六个词，

you don't need more than six words for a TED Talk.

在TED上你就不需要多于六个词，

We could have been done by lunch here.

我们中午前就能做完。

我意思是... ...

(Laughter)

And if you did this for all thousand TED Talks,

若在全部的上千个TED演讲这么做，

you would get from 2.3 million words down to 6,000.

那么230万词就减少到6000个词汇。

那我认为这太值得了

So I thought this was quite worthwhile.

我开始问我所有朋友们，

So I started asking all my friends,

please take your favorite TED Talk and put that into six words.

选择最喜欢的TED演讲并总结成六个词汇。

So here are some of the results that I received.

我得到些结果，很不错。

比如：Dan Pink关于激励的TED演讲，

I think they're quite nice.

For example, Dan Pink's talk on motivation, which was pretty good,

他的演讲很好，可总结为：

“不要萝卜和大棒，要有意义”

if you haven't seen it: "Drop carrot. Drop stick. Bring meaning."

这就是他在18分半钟里谈的基本意思。

It's what he's basically talking about in those 18,5 minutes.

或者还包括给演讲人的参考，

Or some even included references to the speakers,

比如内森·梅尔沃德的演讲类型，

或者Tim Ferriss的演讲

such as Nathan Myhrvold's speaking style, or the one of Tim Ferriss,

他的演讲可能有点费力。

which might be considered a bit strenuous at times.

这可是个挑战，如果我系统性地这么做

The challenge here is, if I try to systematically do this,

我可能要做很多总结，

I would probably end up with a lot of summaries,

但很多朋友撑不到最后。

but not with many friends in the end.

所以我得找个不同办法，

So I had to find a different method, preferably involving total strangers.

最好都是陌生人。

幸好的是有个网站叫Mechanical Turk,

And luckily, there's a website for that, called Mechanical Turk,

你可以在这网站发布任务，

which is a website where you can post tasks

任务你不用自己做，网友可以认领。

that you don't want to do yourself,

比如：“请帮我用六个词汇总结这段文字，”

such as "Please summarize this text for me in six words."

我没有让低薪国家的人来做这个，

And I didn't allow any low-cost countries to work on this,

我发现“六字总结”只需要10美分，

but I found out I could get a six-word summary for just 10 cents,

我认为这是个好价。

which I think is a pretty good price.

即便如此，还是有遗憾

Even then, unfortunately,

去总结每个TED演讲是不可能的，

it's not possible to summarize each TED Talk individually.

Because if you do the math, you have a thousand TED Talks,

因为你算下，有一千个TED演讲，

每个10美分

you pay 10 cents each;

you have to do more than one summary for each of those talks,

你得为每个TED演讲做不止一个总结，

because some of them will probably be, or are, really bad.

因为有些演讲可能真的很糟。

So I would end up paying hundreds of dollars.

如此的话，我得支付几百美元。

So I thought of a different way,

于是我想到另外一个办法，

by thinking, well, the talks revolve around certain themes.

想到那些围绕特定主题的TED演讲。

So what if I don't let people summarize individual TED Talks to six words,

如果我不是让大家总结

单个的TED演讲成六个词汇，

而是同时给大家10个TED演讲，

but give them 10 TED Talks at the same time

并说：“请为此做六词总结”。

and say, "Please do a six-word summary for that one."

那么成本就能砍90%

I would cut my costs by 90 percent.

大概就是60美元

So for $60,

I could summarize a thousand TED Talks into just 600 summaries,

我能把一千个TED演讲

归到只有600个总结里来，

which would actually be quite nice.

这就特别好了。

Some of you might actually right now be thinking,

现在你们可能正在想，

把10个TED演讲用六个词汇总结，这太疯狂了。

it's downright crazy to have 10 TED Talks summarized into just six words.

但，可不是这样，

But it's actually not,

because there's an example by statistics professor Hans Rosling.

因为有个例子统计学教授汉斯·罗斯林（TED演讲常客）。

我想你们很多人都看过他一个或多个演讲。

I guess many of you have seen one or more of his talks.

他有8个在线的TED演讲，

He's got eight talks online,

那些演讲能被4个词汇简单地总结出来，

and those can basically be summed up into just four words,

because that's all he's basically showing us, our intuition is really bad.

因为这就是他展示给我们的，

我们的直觉太差。

他一直证明我们是错的。

He always proves us wrong.

So people on the Internet, some didn't do so well.

网络上的人们，有些做得并不那么好，

And when I asked them to summarize the 10 TED Talks at the same time,

我意思是，当我请他们一下去总结10个TED演讲时，

有人就走捷径，

some took the easy route out.

他们只给些一般评论。

They just had some general comment.

There were others -- and I found this quite cheeky --

还有些人，我觉得脸皮太厚了，

They used their six words to talk back to me

他们用他们的六字词汇和我辩驳，

并问我是否我最近用Google太多了。

and ask me if I'd been too much on Google lately.

(Laughter)

And finally also, I never understood this,

最终，我无法理解的是

some people really came up with their own version of the truth.

有些人真的是总结出自己版本，

但我不知道有任何TED演讲包含这个。

I don't know any TED Talk that contains this.

But, oh well.

但，好吧，最终

In the end, however, and this is really amazing,

这真的太令人吃惊，

for each of those 10 TED Talk clusters that I submitted,

我提出的10个TED演讲的每个总结

我都收到有意义的总结。

I actually received meaningful summaries.

我中意的一些，

Here are some of my favorites.

比如，所有食品主题的TED演讲，

For example, for the TED Talks about food,

有人总结：“美食塑体、塑脑、塑造环境”

someone summed this up into: "Food shaping body, brains and environment,"

我觉得棒极了。

which I think is pretty good.

或关于幸福的：“努力奋斗得幸福，

Or happiness: "Striving toward happiness = moving toward unhappiness."

被动慢步得悲催。“

就是这样。

So here I was.

I had started out with a thousand TED Talks

我已经从一千个TED演讲着手

and I had 600 six-word summaries for those.

相对这些TED演讲，我有600个六词总结。

在开始时，这听起来很好，

Actually, it sounded nice in the beginning,

但，当你看到600个总结时，还是很多，

but when you look at 600 summaries, it's quite a lot, it's a huge list.

这是一个大列表。

(Laughter)

于是我想，我可能得更进一步

So I thought, I probably have to take this one step further here

and create summaries of the summaries, and this is exactly what I did.

为这些总结再提炼总结----就是这么做。

于是我用了手头这600个总结，

So I took the 600 summaries that I had, put them into nine groups

放在9个群组里

according to the ratings that the talks had originally received on TED.com

对应于它们在TED.com网站上的评分

and asked people to do summaries of those.

并请人们去做这些总结。

于是，就又有了些误解。

Again, there were some misunderstandings.

比如，当我有一组所有关于美丽的TED演讲时，

For example, when I had a cluster of all the "Beautiful" talks,

有人就以为我正试图找出“万能搭讪用语”。

someone thought I was just trying to find the ultimate pick-up line.

但最终令人吃惊的是

But in the end, amazingly,

人们又做得很好。

again, people were able to do it.

比如，所有关于勇气的TED演讲：

For example, all the courageous TED Talks:

“人们以简易之法死去”，另外一个

"People dying" or "People suffering" was also one,

“人们以简易之法去承受。”

"with easy solutions around."

或这个令人惊叹的TED演讲：

Or the recipe for the ultimate jaw-dropping TED Talk:

“银河系古典作曲家的Flickr图片”

"Flickr photos of intergalactic classical composer."

我的意思是：那是所有的根本。

I mean that's the essence of it all.

Now I had my nine groups, but, I mean, it's already quite a reduction.

现在我有9个群组，

但，这已经是很大的削减了。

But of course, once you are that far, you're not really satisfied.

当然，仅仅看这些，你是不会满意的。

我会尝试所有办法，能酝酿提炼的办法，

I wanted to go all the way, all the way down the distillery,

这始于一千个TED演讲。

starting out with a thousand TED Talks.

我想把一千个TED演讲总结成只有6个词汇---

I wanted to have a thousand TED Talks summarized into just six words --

这将减少99.9997%的内容，

which would be a 99.9997 percent reduction in content.

并且，我将只支付99.5美元，

And I would only pay $99.50 --

能保持在一百美元以下。

so stay even below $100 for it.

我总共已经做了50个总结。

So I had 50 overall summaries done.

这次我支付25美分，

This time I paid 25 cents

因为我认为任务有点难了，

because I thought the task was a bit harder.

And unfortunately, when I first received the answers --

令人遗憾的是当我收到答案---

这你能看到这六组的六词答案--

and here, you'll see six of the answers -- I was a bit disappointed.

我有点失望，

Because I think you'll agree, they all summarize some aspect of TED,

因为，我想我们都同意，他们总结了TED的部分方面，

但对于我来说没什么特点，

but to me, they felt a bit bland,

或他们只是抓到某些TED特质。

or they just had a certain aspect of TED in them.

于是，我几乎要放弃了，

So I was almost ready to give up

when one night, I played around with these sentences

可有一晚我在玩味这些句子，

并发现了事实上有一个漂亮的解决方法，

and found out that there's actually a beautiful solution in here.

这就是，

So here it is,

a crowd-sourced, six-word summary of a thousand TED Talks

TED演讲的一个众包式的六词总结

at the value of $99.50:

价值99.50美元：

"Why the worry? I'd rather wonder."

“为何被忧扰？宁持好奇心。”

非常感谢。

Thank you very much.

(Applause)

(鼓掌)