VOA慢速英语:Bigger Ships, So a Bigger Panama Canal

The Panama Canal opened almost one hundred years ago. More than one million ships have passed through the waterway since nineteen fourteen.
巴拿马运河开通已近百年。自1914年以来，已有超过100万艘船穿过该运河。

The Panama Canal connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. It reduces travel by thirteen thousand kilometers. It avoids the need for ships to sail around Cape Horn at the bottom of South America.
巴拿马运河连接大西洋和太平洋，它将航程缩短了13,000公里，避免船只需要绕行南美洲的好望角。

More than forty ships pass through the canal each day -- more than fourteen thousand each year. Now, a major expansion project will permit more ships -- and bigger ships -- to pass through the canal.
每天有超过40艘船通过巴拿马运河，每年超过14,000艘。现在，一个重要的扩建项目将允许更多船舶，更大的船舶通过该运河。

Jorge Luis Quijano is the Panama Canal’s executive vice president of engineering. He told VOA's Zulima Palacio that the canal is operating at its limit.
Jorge Luis Quijano是巴拿马运河负责工程技术的执行副总裁。他告诉VOA记者Zulima Palacio，目前，巴拿马运河正极限运行着。

JORGE LUIS QUIJANO: "The present canal has a total capacity of about three hundred and forty million tons a year that it can handle, that's the maximum capacity. With the expansion we expect to double that, over six hundred million tons that we can handle in a year."
JORGE LUIS QUIJANO：“目前巴拿马运河的总运能是每年3.4亿吨，这是最大的运载能力。通过扩建，我们预计能增加一倍运能，我们每年处理的运能将超过6亿吨。”

Ships pass through a series of locks. These locks raise a ship to the level of Gatun Lake at the canal entrance on the Atlantic side. They lower the ship back to sea level on the Pacific side.
船舶会经过一系列水闸。这些水闸会将船只抬升到巴拿马运河位于大西洋出口处的加顿人工湖的高度。在太平洋一端，船只会再次下降到海平面的高度。

For years, shipbuilders limited the size of many ships so that they could fit through the Panama Canal. But now many shipping companies use bigger ships to transport more goods as a way to reduce costs.
多年来，造船者一直限制许多船只的大小，以便它们能够通过巴拿马运河。但是现在许多货运公司使用更大的船只来运送更多货物，这个是一个降低成本的好方法。

Jorge Luis Quijano says the expansion project will allow many of these larger ships to use the canal.
Jorge Luis Quijano称，该扩建项目将允许更多更大的船只借道巴拿马运河。

JORGE LUIS QUIJANO: "This new canal actually is offering a larger vessel that it can handle, with deeper draft with a longer and wider vessel."
JORGE LUIS QUIJANO：“扩建后的运河可以吃水更深，船身更长的船只通过。”

Workers are building the new locks alongside the old ones, which will remain in use. The existing locks are three hundred five meters long and thirty-three meters wide.
工作人员正在旧的水闸旁边建设新的水闸，旧的水闸将会继续使用。现有的水闸长305米，宽33米。

The new ones will be four hundred twenty-seven meters long and fifty-five meters wide. They will be able to handle ships with drafts of more than fifteen meters. Currently ships can ride only twelve meters deep in the canal.
新的水闸将是长427米，宽55米，可以允许吃水深度超过15米的船只通过。目前通过巴拿马运河的船只的吃水深度只有12米。

Engineers could not make the new locks too big. Mr. Quijano says the plans had to balance the size of the locks with the cost for ships to use the canal.
工程师不能将新的水闸扩建的太大。Quijano先生称，新的计划必须平衡水闸的大小和船只使用运河的成本。

JORGE LUIS QUIJANO: “We had to look at the optimal size of vessel that would make the return on the investment of a high value to us. So we chose what size of vessels that could actually pay for this project.”
JORGE LUIS QUIJANO：“我们不得不考虑可以使我们的投资获得最高价值回报的运河的最佳规模。因此,我们选择了恰当的规模，使获得的费用可以支付该项目的费用。”

The cost is estimated at more than five billion dollars. The new locks are set to open in twenty fourteen, the one hundredth anniversary of the Panama Canal.
工程费用超过50亿美元。新的水闸预期在2014年开通使用，也正是在巴拿马运河开通100周年。