VOA慢速英语:Golden Gate Bridge Still Shines After 75 Years

The Golden Gate Bridge is celebrating its seventy-fifth anniversary. The bridge opened to vehicle traffic on May twenty-eighth, nineteen thirty-seven. Since then, more than two billion vehicles have crossed the world famous structure between San Francisco and Marin County, California. As many as one hundred twelve thousand cars make the trip each day.
金门大桥正在庆祝75周年，这座大桥于1937年5月28日通车，自此，有20多亿辆车通过这座著名建筑在芝加哥和加州马林县间穿过。每天有11.2万辆汽车从这里经过。The Golden Gate Bridge had the longest suspension span in the world, at the time it was built. The suspended roadway stretches one thousand two hundred eighty meters between the bridge’s two tall towers. Today it still rates among the top ten longest bridge spans in existence.
金门大桥是当时世界上跨度最长的桥，大桥两座高塔之间的悬浮路面长达1280米。今天仍是现存的十大长桥之一。

Mary Currie works for the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District. She says the bridge is one of the most extraordinary engineering projects of all time.
Mary Currie在金门大桥、高速路和交通区位部门工作，她说这座大桥一直是最出色的工程项目之一。

MARY CURRIE: “The Golden Gate Bridge is an engineering marvel certainly, and it gets award after award after award for what it means in civil engineering and structural engineering. It’s also a place where things happen first. For example, we were the first suspension bridge to have to change the roadway deck.” 
MARY CURRIE：“金门大桥当然是工程上的奇迹，它以其土木工程和建筑工程上的卓越获得了一个又一个奖项。这座大桥还见证了很多第一次，比如，这是第一座改变公路桥的吊桥。”

The Golden Gate Bridge is named after the Golden Gate Strait. That narrow passage of water connects the San Francisco Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Joseph Strauss was the chief engineer of the Golden Gate Bridge project. Work began in nineteen thirty-three. The project took four years to complete.
金门大桥因金门海峡而得名，这条窄窄的水域连接旧金山湾到太平洋。Joseph Strauss是金门大桥项目的首席工程师，这项工程开始于1933年，耗时4年时间完成。

The bridge is two thousand seven hundred eighty-eight meters long from one end to the other. It is twenty-seven meters wide. Two large cables pass over the top of the bridge’s towers. These structures stand two hundred twenty seven meters above water and one hundred fifty two meters above the road. Each cable holds more than twenty-seven thousand five hundred strands of wire.
这座大桥两头之间的距离是2788米，宽27米。两根巨大的绳索越过桥塔，整个工程离水面227米，离路面152米。每根绳索由2750多股金属丝组成。

Two hundred fifty pairs of vertical suspender ropes connect the support cables to the suspension bridge. This is part of what enables the bridge to move up and down by nearly five meters.
250对垂直悬挂的绳索连接支持绳索与吊桥，这部分结果使得大桥可以上下移动约5米。

The Golden Gate Bridge weighed eight hundred eleven million five hundred thousand kilograms when it was completed in nineteen thirty-seven. The San Francisco Chronicle newspaper called the finished project, “a thirty-five million dollar steel harp!”
金门大桥1937年完工时，重量为81.15万吨。《旧金山纪事报》称这项完工的项目为“价值35百万美元的钢铁竖琴。”

Architect Irving Morrow gets credit for the bridge’s bright orange color. The Navy wanted the bridge painted in yellow and black. The Air Force had suggested red and white.
建筑师Irving Morrow因把大桥设计为明亮的橘黄色而著名，海军希望将大桥染成黄色和黑色，而空军建议染成红色和白色。

MARY CURRIE: “But we were fortunate that Irving Morrow knew that that color would blend with the environment, it would contrast with the ocean and the air above, and it would also allow the art deco styling to really stand out.”
MARY CURRIE：“但幸运的是，欧文•莫罗因明白橘黄色与环境能融为一体，并与海洋和天空的颜色形成对比，同时大桥的装饰派艺术风格也更加突出。”