盖茨夫妇2019年公开信
所以面对“这个世界会好吗”的一问，我想我们可以乐观地说，因为有善良的我们，这个世界一定会变好的。
How would you describe 2018?
你怎么评价2018年?
Was it what you expected?
是你想象的那样吗?
We’d probably say no. From especially devastating natural disasters on the one hand to record numbers of women campaigning for office on the other, 2018 felt to us like a series of surprises. The world looking backward from today is very different from what we pictured a couple years ago looking forward.
我们的答案恐怕是否定的。无论是毁灭性的自然灾害，还是参加竞选的女性数量创下的记录，对我们来说，2018年发生了很多意料之外的事情。从今天回望过去，这个世界已经和我们几年前展望的世界大相径庭。
A benefit of surprises is that they’re often a prod to action. It can gnaw at people to realize that the realities of the world don’t match their expectations for it. Some surprises help people see that the status quo needs to change. Some surprises underscore that transformation is happening already.
惊喜的好处是它们经常激励我们行动。这些意料之外的事情困扰着人们，让他们意识到现实与自己的期望并不匹配。有些意外让我们意识到现状需要改变，有些意外则强调改变已经在发生。
In this year’s annual letter, we’re highlighting nine more things that have surprised us along this journey. Some worry us. Others inspire us. All of them are prodding us to action. We hope they do the same for you, because that’s how the world gets better.
在今年的年度信里，我们突出强调一路走来的九个意外。有些让我们忧虑，有些给我们启迪，但无一不激励我们行动。我们希望这些意外对你们有同样的影响，因为这样，世界才能变得更好。
SURPRISE 1
Africa is the youngest continent.
非洲是最年轻的大陆。
The world keeps getting older, but Africa stays (nearly) the same age. It sounds confusing, but it makes sense when you break it down.
全球老龄化趋势仍在持续，但非洲的年龄(几乎)没变。这听起来令人费解，仔细分析一下发现言之有理。
The global median age is on the rise. In every part of the world, people are living longer. As more children survive to adulthood, women are having fewer kids than ever before. The result is a global population that’s creeping slowly toward middle age.
全球的中值年龄不断提高，在世界的每个地方，人们的寿命更长。随着越来越多的孩子能长大成人，妇女的生育数量比之前下降，带来的结果就是全球人口年龄正在慢慢地向中年靠拢。
Except in Africa. The median age there is just 18. In North America, it is 35. And the number of young Africans is expected to rise in the decades to come.
但非洲却是例外。非洲的中值年龄只有18岁，北美的则是35岁。未来几十年，非洲的年轻人数量有望上升。
When economists describe the conditions under which countries prosper, one of the factors they stress is “human capital,” which is another way of saying that the future depends on young people’s access to high-quality health and education services. Health and education are the twin engines of economic growth.
经济学家谈到经济繁荣的诸多要素，他们会强调其中的一个因素是“人力资本”。换言之，未来取决于年轻人获得优质的健康和教育服务的机会。健康和教育是经济增长的双引擎。
If sub-Saharan Africa commits to investing in its young people, the region could double its share of the global labor force by 2050, unlocking a better life for hundreds of millions of people.
如果撒哈拉以南的非洲国家能对年轻人进行投资，那么到2050年，该地区的劳动力在全球的占比会翻一番，并为亿万民众开启更好的生活。
Girls’ education, especially, is among the most powerful forces on the planet. Educated girls are healthier. They are wealthier. And their families benefit, too. The more education a woman has, the better equipped she is to raise healthy children.
尤其是女孩的教育堪称全球最强大的力量。受过教育的女孩更健康、更富裕。她们的家庭也会受益。女性受到的教育水平越多，就更能养育健康的子女。
SURPRISE 2
At-home DNA tests can find serial killers—and could also help prevent premature birth.
家庭基因检测既能帮助发现“连环杀手”，又能预防早产。
When police used genetic test results to catch the Golden State Killer last year, the story made headlines around the world. But it’s not the only discovery to come out of at-home DNA tests. By looking at more than 40,000 samples voluntarily submitted by 23andMe users, scientists discovered a potential link between preterm labor and six genes—including one that regulates how the body uses a mineral called selenium.
去年，一则警察利用基因检测结果抓获“金州杀手”的新闻轰动世界。但家庭基因检测的发现不止于此。基因检测公司23andMe的用户自愿提交了四万多份样本，通过分析这些样本，科学家们发现了早产与六个基因之间的潜在关联，其中的一个基因负责调节人体如何利用矿物质硒。
Some people have a gene that prevents them from processing selenium properly. The 23andMe study (which our foundation helped fund) found that expectant mothers who carry that gene were more likely to give birth early. This suggests that selenium plays a role in determining when a woman begins labor.
有些人的基因妨碍硒的正常代谢。由盖茨基金会资助的23andMe研究发现，携带这种基因的孕妇更易早产，这表明硒对产妇的分娩时间有重要影响。
Understanding what causes prematurity is hugely important. Researchers won’t know until later this year how exactly the mineral affects preterm birth risk. But if the link proves substantial, selenium could one day be a cheap and easy solution to help women extend their pregnancy to full term.
了解早产的原因非常重要。到今年年底，研究者们将有望搞清楚硒对早产风险的确切影响。如果二者之间的关联足够显著，硒有可能成为帮助孕妇足月生产经济、易行的解决方法。
For the vast majority of preterm births, we can’t identify the cause, nor do we know why some groups of women are more prone to delivering their babies early. But here’s one thing we do know: Prematurity is not binary. It matters a lot how early a baby is born; a baby born at 36 weeks is much better off than a baby born at 34 weeks. Our goal should not be to prevent prematurity categorically, which may be impossible anyway. Instead, it should be to extend pregnancies closer to full term for everyone. And we’re finally starting to fill the gaps in our knowledge about how to do so.
我们无法识别大多数早产发生的原因，也不知道为什么有些孕妇更容易早产。但我们很清楚地知道一件事：早产不是二元的。一个婴儿生产的时间有重要的影响——36周出生的婴儿要比34周出生的婴儿健康得多。我们的目标不应该是绝对地杜绝早产，这也不可能发生。我们的目标应该是将孕期尽量接近足月。现在，我们终于开始填补这方面的知识空白。
SURPRISE 3
We will build an entire New York City every month.
今后四十年，全世界每个月将新建一个纽约市。
I wish more people fully understood what it will take to stop climate change. Electricity accounts for only a quarter of all the greenhouse gases emitted around the world. Manufacturing isn’t far behind, at 21 percent.
我希望更多的人能充分了解如何才能阻止气候变化。电力只占全球温室气体排放总量的四分之一。制造业也没有落后，占21%。
As the urban population continues to grow in the coming decades, the world’s building stock is expected to double by 2060—the equivalent of adding another New York City monthly between now and then. That’s a lot of cement and steel. We need to find a way to make it all without worsening climate change.
在未来几十年，随着城市人口的持续增长，全球建筑物到2060年预计将会翻倍，相当于从现在开始每月新建一个纽约市。这需要大量钢铁水泥。我们需要想办法在不加剧气候变化的前提下实现这一切。
The larger point is that if we’re going to solve climate change, we need to get to near-zero emissions on all the things that drive it—agriculture, electricity, manufacturing, transportation, and buildings. I call these five areas the grand challenges in climate change.
重要的是，我们如果要解决气候变化，就要让农业、电力、制造、交通、建筑等所有导致气候变化的行业都实现近零排放。我把这五个领域称为气候变化的五大挑战。
But we need to do a much better job of informing people about the challenges. It would help if media coverage matched the breadth of the problem. Solar panels are great, but we should be hearing about trucks, and cement too.
我们需要更好地努力让公众了解这些挑战，而媒体对这些问题的广泛关注将对此大有帮助。太阳能电池板，但我们也应该了解卡车、水泥等方面的信息。
SURPRISE 4
Data can be sexist.
数据也存在性别歧视。
I spend big chunks of my day studying data on health and development. I’m amazed at how little data we have on women and girls. I think the main reason is that we create this artificial divide where some issues are “women’s” issues and others aren’t, and the women’s issues don’t get as much in-depth study. That blocks progress for everyone. You can’t improve things if you don’t know what’s going on with half the population. There’s no good reason for that, now that technology makes it so much easier to gather data.
我每天花大量的时间研究有关健康和发展的数据。关于妇女和女童的数据如此之少，让我非常惊讶。我想主要原因在于我们人为地将某些问题划分为“女性”问题和其他问题，而女性问题通常得不到深入研究。这将妨碍每个人的进步。如果不了解全球半数人口的情况，就无法改善事情。更何况科技让数据收集更加简单，我们没有理由这样。
How much income did women in developing countries earn last year? How much property do they own? How many more hours do girls spend on household chores than boys? I don’t know. Neither does anyone else. The data just doesn’t exist.
发展中国家的妇女去的年收入多少?她们拥有多少财产?女孩花在家务上的时间比男孩多多少?我不知道，其他人也不知道。这些数据不存在。
The problem isn’t only that some women are missing from the record altogether. It’s also that the data we do have—data that policymakers depend on—is bad. You might even call it sexist. We like to think of data as being objective, but the answers we get are often shaped by the questions we ask. When those questions are biased, the data is too.
问题不只是数据统计忽略了部分女性，而且我们拥有的，决策者们所依据的现有数据质量很糟糕，甚至可以说是带有性别歧视的。我们通常认为数据是客观的，但我们得到的答案往往受我们提出的问题的影响。如果问题本身就带有偏见，得到的数据也会如此。
When such flawed data is all you have to go on, it’s easy to undervalue women’s economic activity—and difficult to measure whether women’s economic condition is improving.
如果我们必须以这些有缺陷的数据为依据，就容易低估女性经济活动的价值，也难以衡量女性的经济状况是否得到改善。
SURPRISE 5
You can learn a lot about processing your anger from teenage boys.
跟青少年学习愤怒管理。
When economists describe the conditions under which countries prosper, one of the factors they stress is “human capital,” which is another way of saying that the future depends on young people’s access to high-quality health and education services. Health and education are the twin engines of economic growth.
经济学家谈到经济繁荣的诸多要素，他们会强调其中的一个因素是“人力资本”。换言之，未来取决于年轻人获得优质的健康和教育服务的机会。健康和教育是经济增长的双引擎。
If sub-Saharan Africa commits to investing in its young people, the region could double its share of the global labor force by 2050, unlocking a better life for hundreds of millions of people.
如果撒哈拉以南的非洲国家能对年轻人进行投资，那么到2050年，该地区的劳动力在全球的占比会翻一番，并为亿万民众开启更好的生活。
Girls’ education, especially, is among the most powerful forces on the planet. Educated girls are healthier. They are wealthier. And their families benefit, too. The more education a woman has, the better equipped she is to raise healthy children. In fact, UNESCO estimates that if all women in low- and middle-income countries finished secondary school, child mortality in those countries would fall by about half.
尤其是女孩的教育堪称全球最强大的力量。受过教育的女孩更健康、更富裕。她们的家庭也会受益。女性受到的教育水平越多，就更能养育健康的子女。事实上据联合国教科文组织估计，在中低收入国家，如果所有女性都能读完中学，那么儿童的死亡率将会下降大约一半。
Even though the circumstances were very different, learning to deal with your anger was something we all related to. It’s an important life skill, part of becoming a mature adult.
尽管境遇千差万别，但学习控制愤怒与每个人息息相关。这是重要的人生技能，也是成为成熟的成年人的一个表现。
So it was inspiring to see these young men in such tough circumstances working on this skill much earlier than I did. They were deeply engaged in the conversation, asking each other thoughtful follow-up questions. They were facing big challenges with incredible resilience.
看到这些生活环境艰难的年轻人能比我更早学习这项技能，让我深受启发。他们深入交谈，互相问了对方一些很有见地的后续问题。他们在面对重大挑战时显示出了非凡的坚韧。
SURPRISE 6
There’s a nationalist case for globalism.
全球的也是民族的。
Nationalism is a word we’ve been hearing a lot more often these days. It’s also one of the most loaded words in our 21st-century politics. While it’s come to mean different things to different people (and carry different connotations and insinuations), at its core, nationalism is the belief that a country’s first obligation is to itself. There’s an element of that that I think many of us would agree with.
最近，我们越来越频繁地听到民族主义这个词。它也是21世纪政治领域最有深意的语汇之一。虽然不同的人有理解不同(带有不同的内涵和暗示)，但民族主义的核心是一个国家首要的义务是自己本国。我想大多数人都会认同这一点。
Bill and I love our country. We believe in what it stands for. We agree that our leaders have a duty to protect it. And for all of those reasons, we consider global engagement our patriotic duty. There is nothing about putting your country first that requires turning your back on the rest of the world.
我和比尔都热爱自己的国家，认同美国所代表的价值观，同时也赞成领导者们有责任捍卫我们的国家。正是出于这些原因，我们将推动全球合作视为我们的爱国责任。本国利益至上并不意味着对其他国家置之不理。
That’s one reason why Melinda and I are always talking about success stories. At a time when new outrages seem to dominate the headlines every day, we want to keep reminding people that life is getting better for millions of people in the world’s poorest countries, thanks in part to smart investments in health. Even if you only care about the welfare of your fellow citizens, these investments are overwhelmingly smart things to do. Progress benefits everyone.
这是我和梅琳达坚持讲述成功故事的原因之一。当每天的新闻标题都被新的负面事件占据时，我们想不断地提醒大家，全球最贫困国家的数亿人民的生活正在改善，这一定程度上归功于在健康领域的明智投资。即使你只关心本国同胞的福祉，这些投资也是非常明智的。进步会让每个人都从中受益。
SURPRISE 7
When was the modern flush toilet patented?
厕所还是一百年前的老样子。
Nearly eight years ago, Melinda and I challenged engineers and scientists around the world to reinvent the toilet. More than 2 billion people around the world lack access to a decent toilet. Their waste often ends up in the environment, untreated, killing nearly 800 children every day. And exporting rich-world sanitation solutions isn’t an option, because they require sewer systems that are too expensive to build and need a lot of water.
差不多8年前，我和梅琳达向全球各地的工程师和科学家们发出了重新发明厕所的挑战。全球迄今还有20多亿人用不上卫生的厕所。他们的粪便未经处理就进入环境，每天导致近800名儿童死亡。引进发达国家的卫生设施行不通，因为配套的下水道系统建设成本过高，而且需要大量的水资源。
So what does the next generation of toilets look like? At first glance, not that different. They don’t exactly look like something out of a sci-fi novel. They might not be the sexiest innovations in the world, but the toilets of the future will save millions of lives.
所以下一代的厕所是什么样呢?乍一看，和普通马桶区别不大，完全不像从科幻小说里出来的东西。这些厕所未必是世界上最酷的创新，但它能挽救数以百万计的生命。
They’ll also improve lives—especially for women and girls. Life without a toilet is hard for anyone, but it tends to be women and girls who suffer most.
它们还能改善生活质量，特别是对妇女和女童来说。没有厕所的生活非常艰难，但承受最多痛苦的还是女性。
SURPRISE 8
Textbooks are becoming obsolete.
课本正变得过时。
I read more than my share of textbooks. But it’s a pretty limited way to learn something. Even the best text can’t figure out which concepts you understand and which ones you need more help with. It certainly can’t tell your teacher how well you grasped last night’s assigned reading. But now, thanks to software, the standalone textbook is becoming a thing of the past. All of this is a complement to what teachers do, not a replacement.
我读过很多教材，但作为学习的一种途径，教材的作用有限。即使是最好的课本也判断不出哪些内容你已经理解，哪些内容你还需要帮助。课本肯定也无法告诉你的老师，昨晚布置的阅读作业，你掌握到了什么程度。但是现在，在软件的帮助下，单纯的课本正在成为过去。这些手段是对教师工作的补充，而非代替。
In addition to adapting to what students know, these online tools also facilitate a new approach to teaching and learning that adapts to who these students are. Put it all together, and you have students spending less for more convenient classes in which they perform better. In short, we now have the tools to redesign higher education so that it meets the needs of today’s students.
除了适应学生的学习进度，在线工具还能催生新的教学方式，根据学生的特点因材施教。把这些结合在一起，学生能花更少的钱、更方便地学习，并在课堂上取得更好的学习效果。简而言之，我们已经具备重新设计高等教育的工具，使之满足当今学生的需求。
SURPRISE 9
Mobile phones are most powerful in the hands of the poorest women.
在贫困女性的手中，手机的作用能发挥到最大。
In rich countries, mobile phones make it easier to do things we were already doing. But for the world’s most marginalized women, a mobile phone doesn’t just make their old life more convenient; it can help them build an entirely new life. That’s because connectivity is a solution to marginalization.
在发达国家，手机能让我们本来的生活更加便利。但对于世界上被最边缘化的女性而言，手机不只是让他们的旧日子更便利，而且能够帮助他们开启全新的生活。这是因为互联互通是打破边缘化的解决之道。
When I think about why it’s so important to get more mobile phones in the hands of women, I think about Nikmah, a woman I met in Indonesia last October. Nikmah told me she’d tried for years to support her three children by selling vegetables, but she never could seem to make ends meet. Her situation became even more untenable after she had to flee an abusive husband.
每次提到在女性拥有手机的重要性是，我就想起去年十月在印尼见到的Nikmah女士。她告诉我，多年来她一直靠卖菜养活她的三个孩子，但总是入不敷出。后来她离开了家暴的丈夫，她的情况就更难以维持了。
Nikmah told me, “Life is like a wheel. Sometimes you’re under, sometimes you’re on top.” For women like her who have spent so much of their lives trapped on the bottom, mobile technology creates new opportunities to fight inequity and lift themselves up. We can help women seize these opportunities by ensuring that inequity doesn’t keep them from having access to technology in the first place.
Nikmah对我说：“生活就像一个轮子，有时你被它碾下去，有时你也能站上来。”对于像她这样长期在底层生活的女性来说，移动技术让她们有了新的机会反抗不公、提升自己。我们打破不平等，确保她们最初有机会接触移动技术，帮助她们抓住这些机会。
We get asked a lot these days whether we’re still optimistic about the future. We say: Absolutely. One reason is that we believe in the power of innovation. But an even bigger reason is that we’ve seen firsthand that for every challenge we’ve written about in this letter, there are people devoting their ideas, their resources, and even their lives to solving them.
最近常有人问我们对未来是否仍然乐观。我们的回答是肯定的。其中一个原因是我们相信创新的力量。但更重要的是，我们亲眼看到，对于我们在信中谈及的每一个挑战，都有很多人在奉献着自己的智慧、资源甚至生命。
