本文作者是雅各布・布罗诺夫斯基，英国著名学者，编写的《人类的发展》是著名的电视系列片。本文选自第八章，由吴千之翻译。本文是典型的非文学翻译，翻译现象体现得较为明显。
The country was a place where men worked from dawn to dark, and the labourer lived not in the sun, but in poverty and darkness
在农村，人们从早到晚都得干活，劳动者并不是沐浴在阳光下，而是生活在贫困和黑暗之中。
What aids there were to lighten labour were immemorial, like the mill, which was already ancient in Chaucer's time.
那些帮助减轻劳动的机械都不知从哪个年代起就有了，比如磨坊，在乔叟的时代就已经是古老的了。
The Industrial Revolution began with such machines; the millwrights were the engineers of the coming age.
而产业革命就是从这些机械开始的。修造磨坊的匠人就是开创新时代的工程师。
James Brindley of Staffordshire started his self-made career in 1733 by working at mill wheels, at the age of seventeen, having been born poor in a village.
斯塔福郡的詹姆斯・布林德雷，出生于一个贫苦的农村家庭；1733年，他十七岁，就着手改良磨坊的车轮，从而开始了他那自我奋斗的生涯。
Brindley's improvements were practical to sharpen and step up the performance of the water wheel as a machine.
布林德雷所做出的改良是很实际的：改善并加强水车的机械功能。
It was the first multi-purpose machine for the new industries.
这是为新工业提供的第一部多功能机器。
Brindley worked, for example, to improve the grinding of flints, which were used in the rising pottery industry.
例如，布林德雷努力改进燧石的碾磨过程，燧石是新兴的陶瓷工业有用的材料。
Yet there was a bigger movement in the air by 1750.
而到了1750年，一场更大的运动已经在酝酿之中。
Water had become the engineers’element, and men like Brindley were possessed by it.
水成了工程师们大显身手的对象，像布林德雷这样的人对它都着了迷。
Water was gushing and fanning out all over the countryside. It was not simply a source of power, it was a new wave of movement.
水在农村到处涌流漫溢，它不仅是一种能源，而且带来了一场新的运动。
James Brindley was a pioneer in the art of building canals or, as it was then called, 'navigation'.
詹姆斯・布林德雷是开凿运河的先驱者，当时人们把开凿运河叫做“navigation”。
Brindley had begun on his own account, out of interest, to survey the waterways that he travelled as he went about his engineering projects for mills and mines.
布林德雷在为他的磨坊和矿井建筑工程到处奔走的时候，出于自愿和兴趣。对沿途经过的河道进行了勘察。
The Duke of Bridgewater then got him to build a canal to carry coal from the Duke's pits at Worsley to the rising town of Manchester..
于是布里奇瓦特公爵就让他开一条运河，以便把煤从公爵在乌斯利拥有的矿井运往新兴城市曼彻斯特.....
Brindley went on to connect Manchester with Liverpool in an even bolder manner, and in all laid out almost four hundred miles of canals in a network all over England.
布林德雷还更加大胆地用运河把曼彻斯特同利物浦联结起来，修凿了总长度为四百英里的遍布全英国的运河网。
Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they characterize all the Industrial Revolution.
有两点在修建英国运河网的过程中非常突出，而这两点也正是整个产业革命的特点。
One is that the men who made the revolution were practical men.
首先，发动这场革命的都是些实干家。
Like Brindley, they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind.
同布林德雷一样，他们一般都没有受过什么教育，事实上，当时那种学校教育也只能窒息人的创造性。
The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded.
按规定，文法学校只能讲授古典学科，这些学校的办学宗旨本来就是如此。
The universities also (there were only two, at Oxford and Cambridge) took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the Church of England.
大学(当时只有两所，一所在牛津，一所在剑桥)对现代的或科学的学科也不怎么感兴趣，这两所大学还把不信奉英国国教的人关在门外。
The other outstanding feature is that the new inventions were for everyday use.
第二个突出的特点是：新发明都是为日常生活服务的。
The canals were arteries of communication: They were not made to carry pleasure boats, but barges.
运河是交通的动脉，开凿运河不是为了通行游艇，而是为了通行驳船。
And the barges were not made to carry luxuries, but pots and pans and bales of cloth, boxes of ribbon, and all the common things that people buy by the pennyworth.
而驳船也不是为了运送奢侈品，而是为了运送瓦罐铁锅、成包的棉布、成箱的缎带，以及那些只花个把便土就能买到的各式日用品。
These things had been manufactured in villages which were growing into towns now, away from London; it was a country-wide trade.
这些物品都是在远离伦敦渐渐发展成为城镇的农村制造的。这是一场全国范围的贸易。
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