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In a damp, dungeon-like cell beneath a crumbling military fortress in northeast Queens, Dr. Waheed Bajwa and his team were counting sleeping mosquitoes and trying to divine the future.
在皇后区东北部，一座破败的军事堡垒底部有一个潮湿的地牢般的小房间，在这个房间里，瓦希德·巴杰瓦博士和他的团队正在清点熟睡中的蚊子，并试图预测未来。
Soon the mosquitoes would awaken and secrete rafts of goo into puddles of standing water and lay hundreds of eggs onto them that would hatch into larvae that would feed and grow up and mate and lay eggs of their own -- until sometime in late summer one of their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughters would bite a sparrow infected with West Nile virus and then, perhaps, a human. But that day was months off.
很快，蚊子就会醒来，把大量粘液分泌到静止的水坑里，并产下数以百计的卵，这些卵会孵化成幼虫，这些幼虫会觅食、长大、交配，然后产下自己的卵，直到夏末的某个时候，这些蚊子的一个曾曾曾曾曾曾曾孙女会叮咬一只携带西尼罗病毒的麻雀，然后可能会再去叮咬一个人类。但这要在几个月之后才会发生。
On this balmy morning in mid-February, Dr. Bajwa, a mild-mannered, methodical, relentless medical entomologist who has spent 21 years heading the city Health Department's Office of Vector Surveillance and Control, was hoping to find signs that the coming summer would be merciful.
巴杰瓦博士是一位气质温和、有条不紊、坚持不懈的医学昆虫学家，他作为纽约市卫生局病媒监测和控制办公室的主管，已经在此工作了21年。在二月中旬的一个温暖的早晨，巴杰瓦博士希望找到一些迹象，表明今年会有一个仁慈的夏天。
Last year saw the highest number of human West Nile cases since 1999, when the virus first appeared in the Western Hemisphere in Queens and killed four New Yorkers.
自1999年西尼罗病毒首次出现在西半球的皇后区并导致四名纽约人死亡以来，去年是该病毒病例数量最多的一年。
Now, in the city's 25th year living with the virus, Dr. Bajwa was chasing the goal he had never achieved: to make it through an entire New York summer without a single human case of West Nile.
现在，在纽约与西尼罗病毒共存的第25年，巴杰瓦博士正在追求一个他从未实现过的目标：让纽约在整个夏季不出现一例人类感染西尼罗病毒病例。
Dr. Bajwa's war against mosquitoes and West Nile is waged by air and ground, from the swamps of Staten Island to the manholes of the Upper West Side.
巴杰瓦博士在空陆两地对蚊子和西尼罗病毒宣战，涉及区域从斯塔滕岛的沼泽延伸到上西区的下水道检查井。
In the dripping cell in Queens, Dr. Bajwa pointed a flashlight at the 300 mosquitoes clinging to the ceiling of Entrance 1, Room 3 of the city's official mosquito hibernaculum. Then he pronounced the early results encouraging: "If we would have come last year, there would be thousands actually in one single room."
在不断滴水的皇后区小房间里，300只蚊子趴在1号入口处3号房间的天花板上，这里堪称纽约的官方蚊子冬眠室，巴杰瓦博士用手电筒照着这些蚊子。然后他表示初步结果令人振奋："我们要是去年来这里，一个房间里就会有上千只蚊子。"
New York City, with its 5,600 acres of wetlands, 150,000 storm drains and miles of ancient sewer tunnel, is a sprawling mosquito paradise.
纽约市有5600英亩湿地、15万条雨水下水道和数英里长的老旧污水下水道，这座城市就是一个杂乱庞大的蚊子天堂。
It is home to 47 species of Culicidae, including two that were first recorded in the United States in Dr. Bajwa's 2018 study, "A Taxonomic Checklist and Relative Abundance of the Mosquitoes of New York City."
这里有47种蚊科动物，其中两种在美国首次被记录于巴杰瓦博士2018年的研究论文《纽约市蚊子分类清单和相对丰度》。
The paper revealed that 21 new species had taken up residence here since the last survey in the 1930s. There are bluish mosquitoes, golden mosquitoes, striped mosquitoes, spotted mosquitoes, mosquitoes with apt species names like Aedes excrucians and Aedes vexans.
论文显示，自二十世纪三十年代进行的上一次调查以来，已有21个新种来到纽约。其中有蓝色蚊子、金色蚊子、条纹蚊子、斑点蚊子，以及有贴切名字的蚊子，如刺痛伊蚊和刺扰伊蚊。
But none preoccupy Dr. Bajwa as much as the most common species, Culex pipiens, the northern house mosquito. It's the biggest source of West Nile infection in New York.
但最让巴杰瓦博士感到忧心忡忡的是一种最常见的蚊子：尖音库蚊。这是一种北方的家蚊，也是纽约市西尼罗病毒最大的传染源。
