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And in any species that acquired it, it would encourage you to hide your best ideas, lest somebody steal them from you.
在任何获得这种能力的物种中，它都会鼓励你隐藏最好的想法，以免有人从你那里偷走它们。
And so some time around 200,000 years ago, our species confronted this crisis.
大约在20万年前，我们人类面临着这场危机。
And we chose to develop the systems of communication that would allow us to share ideas and to cooperate amongst others.
我们选择了开发出交流系统让我们可以分享想法，与他人展开合作。
Choosing this option would mean that a vastly greater fund of knowledge and wisdom would become available to any one individual than would ever arise from within an individual family or an individual person on their own.
做出这一选择将意味着，任何个人都能获得比单独的家庭或个人所能获得的多得多的知识和智慧。
Well, language is the result.
结果语言出现了。
Language evolved to solve the crisis of visual theft.
语言的演变是为了解决视觉盗窃的危机。
Language is a piece of social technology for enhancing the benefits of cooperation -- for reaching agreements, for striking deals and for coordinating our activities.
语言是一种社会技术，可以增进合作的好处——达成共同意见，完成交易，协调我们的活动。
And you can see that, in a developing society that was beginning to acquire language, not having language would be like a bird without wings.
你可以看到，在一个开始学习语言的正在发展的社会中，没有语言就像没有翅膀的鸟。
As I said at the beginning, language really is the voice of our genes.
正如我一开始所说的，语言确实是我们基因的声音。
But, as we spread out around the world, we developed thousands of different languages.
但是，我们散落到世界各地，发展出数千种不同的语言。
Currently, there are about seven or eight thousand different languages spoken on Earth. And then another problem occurred.
目前，地球上大约有七千到八千种不同的语言。然后另一个问题出现了。
It seems that we use our language, not just to cooperate, but to draw rings around our cooperative groups and to establish identities, and perhaps to protect our knowledge and wisdom and skills from being stolen from outside.
似乎我们使用语言，不仅仅是为了合作，而且是为了围绕我们的合作群体建立联系，建立身份，也许是为了保护我们的知识、智慧和技能不被外界窃取。
And we know this because when we study different language groups and associate them with their cultures, we see that different languages slow the flow of ideas between groups.
我们之所以知道这一点，是因为当我们研究不同的语言群体并将他们与他们的文化联系起来时，我们发现不同的语言阻碍了群体之间的思想交流。
Okay, this tendency we have, this seemingly natural tendency we have, goes towards isolation, towards keeping everything to ourselves, whereas our modern world is communicating with itself and with each other more than it has at any time in its past.
好了，我们的这种倾向，这种看起来很自然的倾向，趋向于孤立，趋向于把所有的东西都留给我们自己，而我们的现代世界更多的是在和自己交流，和彼此交流，比过去任何时候都要多。
And that communication, that connectivity around the world, that globalization now raises a burden.
这种交流，这种世界各地的联系，这种全球化现在带来了负担。
Because these different languages impose a barrier, as we've just seen, to the transfer of goods and ideas and technologies and wisdom.
因为正如我们刚才看到的，这些不同的语言对商品，思想，技术和智慧的转移造成了障碍。
And they impose a barrier to cooperation. What will be the solution?
他们给合作设置了障碍。解决方案是什么?
In a world in which we want to promote cooperation and exchange, and in a world that might be dependent more than ever before on cooperation to maintain and enhance our levels of prosperity,
当前我们希望促进合作与交流，可能比以往任何时候都更加依赖合作以维持和提高我们的繁荣水平，
I think it might be inevitable that we have to confront the idea that our destiny is to be one world with one language.
我认为我们不可避免地要面对这样一个观点：我们的宿命是同一个世界，用同一种语言。
What do you think of the solution? Okay.
你认为这个解决办法怎么样？好。
In today's lecture, I have presented to you how language shapes our humanity, what kind of dilemma social learning has created, and the possible solutions to the dilemma.
在今天的演讲中，我向你们展示了语言如何塑造我们人类，社会学习创造了什么样的困境，以及可能的解决方案。
In our next lecture, I am going to talk about lingua franca and its functions.
下一讲，我将讲通用语及其功能。
