English into Chinese

I am trying to practice translating English pharases into Chinese. I welcome you to critique my translation, suggest a different translation, or leave me an English phrase to challenge my translation skill.

• I swear to tell the truth, the whole true, and nothing but the truth.

1. 我鄭重的宣誓，我必言無不實，言無不盡。

• To err is human; to forgive, divine.

1. 人非聖賢，孰能無過；倘能諒人，即屬聖賢。

• The ultimate test of the impact of an individual or a group of individuals is two fold: whether the world they left is qualitatively different than that they inherited and what contribution they made to that change.

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• We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms: freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear. --- 1/1/1941; Franklin D. Roosevelt; the Depression still lingered, Hitler's threat was growing.

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• We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but rather a habit. -- Aristotle

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• Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. --William Shakespeare

1. 有些人的偉大是天生的，有些是努力得來的，有些是時勢造成的.
2. 有人天縱英名，有人創造時勢，有人是時勢所造。

• Anyone who says they never had a chance never took a chance.

1. 自認運氣不佳的人一定是從不冒險的。
2. 從不冒險的人總是埋怨運氣不好。
3. 從不冒險的人總是埋怨時不我與。
   

• “The time to read is any time: It is the only art which can be practiced at any hour of the day or night, whenever the time and inclination comes, that is your time for reading; in joy or sorrow, health or illness.”-- Holbrook Jackson

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• “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” -- Benjamin Franklin

1. 你若情願放棄基本自由以求苟安，你就不配享有自由與平安。

• "Don't be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends." --Richard Bach

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• “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” --- Charles Darwin

1. 最能在生存競爭中脫穎而出的不是那最強悍的物種，也不是那最聰明的，而是那最能適應環境之變牽者。
   

• "To be sane in a mad time is bad for the brain, worse for the heart." --from a poem by Wendell Berry. Challenge from jeffy.

1. 眾人皆狂我獨醒令人心碎欲狂。

Chinese to English

I am trying to practice translating Chinese phrases into English. I welcome you to critique my translation, suggest a different translation, or give me a Chinese phrase to challenge me.

• 海闊縱魚躍，天空任鳥飛

＝＞ Let your mind be as wide as an ocean where fishes can jump at will; let your heart be as broad as the sky where birds can fly with no bound.

• 從大處著眼，從小處著手

＝＞ Plan with the big picture in mind, act from small steps.

• 不入虎穴焉得虎子

＝＞ Risk nothing, gain nothing.

• 其急如風，其徐如林，侵掠如火，不動如山

＝＞ Swift as wind, resourceful as forest, invade like fire, unmovable as mountains.

The Alands and the Falklands

Reference: “Cultures and Organizations—Software of the Mind” by Geert Hofsteede; ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

The Aland islands are a small archipelago halfway between Sweden and Finland; as part of Finland they belonged to the Tsarist Russian empire. When Finland declared itself independent from Russia n 1917 the majority of the 30,000 inhabitants of the islands wanted to join Sweden, which had ruled them before 1809. The Finns then arrested the leaders of the pro-Swedish movement. After emotional negotiations in which the newly created League of Nations participated, all parties, in 1912, agreed to a solution in which the islands remained Finnish but with a large amount of regional autonomy.

The Falkland islands are also a small archipelago disputed by two nations: the United Kingdom which has colonized the islands since 1833 and nearby Argentina which claims rights on them since 1767 and has tried to get the United Nations to support its claim. The Falklands are about 8 times as large as the Alands but with less than 1/15 of the Alands number of inhabitants: about 1800 poor sheep farmers. The Argentinean military occupied the islands in April 1982 whereupon the British sent an expeditionary force, which chased off the occupiers, at the cost of (officially) 725 Argentinean and 225 British lives and enormous financial expense. Besides, the economy of the islands has been further damaged because it cannot develop without trade relations with the Argentinean hinterland.

Today, the Falklands remain a disputed territory needing constant British subsidies and military presence; the Alands have become a prosperous part of Finland, attracting many Swedish tourists.

Longitude & Latitude & International Date Line

A key geographical question throughout the human experience has been, "Where am I?" In classical Greece and China, attempts were made to create logical grid systems of the world to answer this question. The ancient Greek geographer Ptolemy created a grid system and listed the coordinates for places throughout the known world in his book Geography. But it wasn't until the middle ages that the latitude and longitude system was developed and implemented. This system is written in degrees.

Latitude
• When looking at a map, latitude lines run horizontally.
• Latitude lines are also known as parallels since they are parallel and are an equal distant from each other. Each degree of latitude is approximately 69 miles (111 km) apart; there is a variation due to the fact that the earth is not a perfect sphere but an oblate ellipsoid (slightly egg-shaped).
• Degrees latitude are numbered from 0° to 90° north and south. Zero degrees is the equator, the imaginary line which divides our planet into the northern and southern hemispheres. 90° north is the North Pole and 90° south is the South Pole.
The Equator
• The equator is located at zero degrees latitude.
• The equator divides the planet into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.
• The equator runs through Indonesia, Ecuador, northern Brazil, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Kenya, among other countries.
• It is 24,901.55 miles (40,075.16 kilometers) long.
• On the equator, the sun is directly overhead at noon on the two equinoxes - near March and September 21.
The Tropic of Cancer
• The Tropic of Cancer is located at 23.5° North of the equator.
• It runs through Mexico, the Bahamas, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, and southern China.
The Tropic of Capricorn
• The Tropic of Capricorn lies at 23.5° South of the equator.
• It runs through Australia, Chile, southern Brazil (Brazil is the only country that passes through both the equator and a tropic), and northern South Africa.

Longitude
• The vertical longitude lines are also known as meridians. They converge at the poles and are widest at the equator (about 69 miles or 111 km apart).
• Zero degrees longitude is located at Greenwich, England (0°). The degrees continue 180° east and 180° west where they meet and form the International Date Line in the Pacific Ocean.
• Greenwich, the site of the British Royal Greenwich Observatory, was established as the site of the Prime Meridian by an international conference in 1884.
• The Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude and the line of longitude opposite the Prime Meridian (near the International Date Line) at 180 degrees longitude that divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The Eastern Hemisphere consists of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia while the Western Hemisphere includes North and South American.
• Some place the boundaries between the hemispheres at 20° West and 160° East so as to not run through Europe and Africa.
• The International Date Line divides Two Days on the Earth's Surface

The International Date Line
• While the equator divides the earth into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, it is the Prime Meridian at zero degrees longitude and the line of longitude opposite the Prime Meridian (near the International Date Line) at 180 degrees longitude that divides the earth into the Eastern and Western Hemispheres.
• The Eastern Hemisphere consists of Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia while the Western Hemisphere includes North and South American. Some place the boundaries between the hemispheres at 20° West and 160° East so as to not run through Europe and Africa.
• The International Date Line divides Two Days on the Earth's Surface.
• While the world is divided into 24 time zones, there has to be a place where there is a difference in days, somewhere the day truly "starts" on the planet.
• Thus, the 180° line of longitude, exactly one-half way around the planet from Greenwich, England and 0° longitude is approximately where the International Date Line is located. Cross the line from the east to the west and a day is added. Cross from west to the east and a day is subtracted.
• Without the International Date Line, people who travel west around the planet would discover that when they returned home, it would seem as though an extra day had passed. This situation actually happened to Magellan's crew when they returned home after their circumnavigation of the earth.

• The International Date Line is not a straight line, either. Since its beginning, it has zigzagged to avoid spitting apart countries into two days. It bends through the Bering Strait to avoid placing far northeastern Russia in a different day than the rest of the country. Unfortunately, tiny Kiribati was split. In 1995 the island country of Kiribati decided to move the International Date Line. Since the line is simply established by international agreement and there are not treaties or formal agreements associated with the line, most of the rest of the world followed Kiribati and moved the line on their maps. Most recent maps show the change and you'll see the big panhandle zigzag which keeps Kiribati all within the same day. Now eastern Kiribati and Hawaii, which are located in the same area of longitude, are a whole day apart.

The Three Laws of Robotics

1. A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

From Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D., as quoted in I, Robot.
In Robots and Empire (ch. 63), the "Zeroth Law" is extrapolated, and the other Three Laws modified accordingly:

0-th. A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

Unlike the Three Laws, however, the Zeroth Law is not a fundamental part of positronic robotic engineering, is not part of all positronic robots, and, in fact, requires a very sophisticated robot to even accept it.

Asimov claimed that the Three Laws were originated by John W. Campbell in a conversation they had on December 23, 1940. Campbell in turn maintained that he picked them out of Asimov's stories and discussions, and that his role was merely to state them explicitly

Culture

• Ref: “Strategic Learning” by William G. Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management

Culture is probably the most misunderstood and mismanaged part of the business system—and arguably the most important success factor of all.

Culture expresses itself through specific values and observable behaviors.

In a particular society, culture is a set of beliefs and behaviors that persist over time because they help that society solve its problems. (whether social, economic, or political). Every society has an elaborate system of rewards and penalties designed to ensure that supportive behaviors continue and that that destructive behaviors are extinguished.

• "Cultures and Organizations--Software of the Mind" by Geert Hofstede ISBN: 0-07-029307-4

This word (Culture) has several meanings, all derived from its Latin source, which refers to the tilling of the the soil.
"Culture (One)": In most Western languages "culture" commonly means "cilivlization" or "refinement of the mind" and in particular the results of such refinement, like education, art, and literature. This is "culture in the narrow sense".
"Culture (Two)": Culture as mental software, however, corresonds to a much broader use of the word which is common among social anthropologists.
Social (or cultural) anthropology is the science of human societies, in particular (although not only) traditional or "primitive" ones. In social anthropology, "culture" is a catchword for all those patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting ... Not only those activities supposed to refine the mind, but also the ordinary and menial things in life: greeting, eating, showing or not showing feelings, keeping a certain physical distance from others, making love, or maintaining body hygiene.
"Culture (Two)" is always a collevtive phenomenon, because it is at least partly shared with people who live or lived within the same social environment. It is the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one group or categrory of people from another.

• Claude Levi-Strausse, the grand old man of French anthropology:

Cultural relativism affirms that one culture has no absolute criteria for judging the activities of another cultrure as "low" or "noble". However, every culture can and shouold apply such judgment to its own activities, because its members are actors as well as observers.

Light & Electromagnetic Wave

James Clerk Maxwell enshrined the wave theory when he successfully conjectured a connection between light, electricity, and magnetism. He came up with equations that described the behavior of electric and magnetic fields, and when they were combined they predicted electromagnetic waves. He found that these electromagnetic waves had to travel at a certain speed: approximately 186,000 miles per second, which is the speed of light.

Light is the visible manifestation of a whole spectrum of electromagnetic waves. This includes what we now call AM radio signals (wavelength = 300 yards), FM radio signals (wave length = 3 yards), and microwaves (3 inches). As the wavelengths get shorter (i.e. the frequency of the wave increases), they produce the spectrum of visible light, ranging from red (25 millionths of an inch) to violet (14 millionths of an inch). Even shorter wavelengths produce ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and gamma rays. When we speak of "light" and the "speed of light," we mean all electromagnetic waves, not just the ones that are visible to our eyes.