翻译BBC的半导体纪录片《改变世界的微小矿物》
BBC的纪录片制作水平是全球是数一数二的，《蓝色星球》是最负盛名的代表作之一，而《MADE ON EARTH》系列是他们一套比较新的纪录片系列作品。
MADE ON EARTH系列总共有8部：
第一部《咖啡》。不起眼的咖啡：一种持续发展并寻找新市场的简单产品。
第二部《纸张》。全球纸业：尽管数字技术已经无处不在，但它仍在蓬勃发展。
第三部《花朵》。全球鲜花：每年有价值超过80亿美元的鲜花被切割，包装和分发。
第四部《香料》。在消费者对世界各地美食需求的推动下，全球香料产业已达150亿美元。
第五部《手提包》。手袋的生产：长期以来，高端意大利设计师一直主导着这个行业。而他们的忠实客户将为这些完美的手袋付出数千美元的代价。
第六部《威士忌》。威士忌的幕后：威士忌曾经被认为是老年人的一种饮料，但现在正在全球范围内开拓新市场。
第七部《自行车》。关注全球自行车行业如何将高端自行车带给世界各地的自行车手。
第八部《半导体》。本片名叫《改变世界的微小矿物》，讲述了关于半导体如何影响世界的内容。由BBC和联邦快递合拍制作而成。
如果有想要看视频的朋友可以前往BBC的官网免费观看。
每个视频还有对应的图文页面，这里我简单的翻译一下《半导体》的图文页面的内容。该部分内容主要讲述了半导体从原料制作到下游应用，以及终端设备的应用如何改变世界的故事。（每部分的小标题是我自己根据内容添加的）
1.半导体技术的起源和摩尔定律
From cities that never sleep to remote rural villages, one technology is changing how we live and work. From the smartphones in our pockets to the vast datacentres powering the internet, from electric scooters to hypersonic aircraft, pacemakers to weather-predicting supercomputers – inside every one of them, unseen and unsung, are tiny pieces of tech that make it all possible: semiconductors.
从不夜的城市到偏远的乡村，一项技术正在改变我们的生活和工作方式。从口袋里的智能手机到互联网的庞大数据中心，从电动摩托车到超音速飞机，从起搏器到用于天气预报的超级计算机，在每一个这些设备的内部，都有着看不见而且鲜为人知的微小的技术，正是这个技术让这些设备的功能可以实现，这就是半导体 。
These are the basic building blocks of modern computation. Semiconductor devices called transistors are the tiny electronic switches that run computations inside our computers. Scientists in the US built the first silicon transistor in 1947. Before that, the mechanics of computing had been performed by vacuum tubes, which were slow and bulky. Silicon changed everything.
半导体是现代计算机的基本组成部分。被称为晶体管的半导体设备，是在计算机内部运行计算的微型电子设备。美国科学家于1947年建造了第一个硅晶体管。在硅晶体管出现之前，计算机是由真空管完成的，但真空管的体积大而且速度慢。是硅的出现改变了一切。
Manufacturing transistors out of silicon allowed them to be made small enough to fit on a microchip, opening the gates to a rush of gadgets that have become smaller and smarter by the year. “Being able to miniaturise these transistors allows us to do things we couldn’t have imagined in previous generations,” says John Neuffer, chief executive of the Semiconductor Industry Association. “All because we can put a massive computer onto a tiny chip.”
用硅制造晶体管使得它们可以制造得足够小，小到可以适合微型的芯片，硅晶打开了一扇大门，使得这些工具变得越来越小，也越来越智能化。半导体工业协会首席执行官John Neuffer表示：“这些微型化的晶体管让我们能够进行前几代人都无法想象的工作。所有这些都是因为我们可以将集群的大型计算机安装在微型的芯片上。”
The pace of innovation was unprecedented. Chips began to be miniaturised at such a steady rate it was as if the technology was following a law. First stated about 50 years ago by Gordon Moore, co-founder of microchip giant Intel, Moore’s Law predicted that the number of transistors that you could fit on a chip would double every two years.
创新的速度是空前的。芯片开始以稳定的速度变得越来越小型化，就好像该技术在遵循某种定律一样。约50年前，芯片巨头英特尔的联合创始人Gordon Moore首先提出了摩尔定律，该定律预测芯片上可容纳的晶体管数量每两年就会翻一番。
Until very recently, Moore’s Law was proved right. Only now, when attempts to shrink transistors any smaller are bumping up against the limits of physics, has the pace of miniaturisation slowed. Early transistors could be seen with the naked eye. Now a tiny chip holds many billions of them. More than anything else, it is this exponential improvement in manufacturing that has driven the digital revolution.
直到最近几年之前，摩尔定律都被证明是正确的。而现在，当试图缩小晶体管的尺寸到物理极限时，微型化的步伐逐渐放慢了。早期的晶体管可以用肉眼看到，但是现在一个很小的芯片可以容纳数十亿个晶体管。最重要的是，制造业的这种指数级的进步推动了数字化革命。
But silicon, the element at the heart of this revolution is a surprisingly humble substance, and one of the most common on the planet. Silicon is found in minerals that make up 90% of the Earth’s crust. A technology that has spread across the world is made from one of the most ubiquitous substances on it.
硅是这场革命的核心元素，它是一种令人惊讶的卑微物质，是地球上最常见的物质之一。硅可以在构成地壳90％的矿物质中被发现。一项全球性的技术是由地球上最普遍的一种物质制成的。
Silicon feeds a $500bn (£410bn) chip industry that in turn powers a global tech economy worth an estimated $3tn. The semiconductor business has also become one of the most interlinked in history, with raw materials coming from Japan and Mexico and chips made in the US and China. The chips are then shipped around the world again to be installed in devices that end up in people’s hands in every country in the world.
硅为5000亿美元（合4100亿英镑）的芯片产业提供了动力，芯片又为价值约3万亿美元的全球科技经济提供了动力。半导体业务也已成为历史上全球化最紧密的业务之一，它的原材料来自日本和墨西哥，而芯片制造则来自美国和中国。然后，这些芯片将安装在终端设备中，再次销往全世界各地人的手中。
“The silicon that is the essence of these chips probably goes around the world two or three times,” says Neuffer. But that vast worldwide network can trace its origins to just a handful of very specific places.
Neuffer说：“作为这些芯片核心的硅，可能在世界范围内被反复运送两次或三次。” 但是，半导体的全球网络其实也可以追溯到少数几个非常特定的地方。
2.硅是半导体的核心原材料
High-end electronics require high-quality ingredients. The purest silicon is found in quartz rock and the purest quartz in the world comes from a quarry near Spruce Pine in North Carolina, US. Millions of the digital devices around the world – perhaps even the phone in your hand or the laptop in front of you – carry a piece of this small North Carolina town inside them. “It does boggle the mind a bit to consider that inside nearly every cell phone and computer chip you’ll find quartz from Spruce Pine,” says Rolf Pippert, mine manager at Quartz Corp, a leading supplier of high-quality quartz.
高端电子产品需要高质量的原料（这里让我想起了舌尖上的中国）。最纯净的硅往往来自于石英岩，而世界上最纯净的石英来自美国北卡罗来纳州云杉松附近的一个采石场。全球数以百万计的数字设备-甚至包括现在您手中的电话或您前面的笔记本电脑-都可能含有来自北卡罗来纳州这座小镇一部分。Quartz公司的矿山经理Rolf Pippert说：“几乎在每部手机和计算机芯片中都可以找到云杉松的石英，这真让我感到惊讶。”
The rocks around Spruce Pine are unique. High in silica, a silicon-containing compound, and low in contaminates, the region has been mined for centuries for gemstones and mica, a silicate used in paint. But the unearthed quartz was discarded. Then came the rise of the semiconductor industry in the 1980s and quartz turned into white gold.
云杉松周围的岩石非常独特。二氧化硅含量高，污染物含量低。该地区的岩石已经持续开采了数百年，以前主要开采宝石和云母，但随之出土的石英却被丢弃了。然而随着1980年代半导体工业的兴起，开采出来的石英变成了白金。
Now, it sells for $10,000 (£8,250) a tonne, making the Spruce Pine mine a $300m-a-year operation. Rocks extracted from the ground with machines and explosives are put into a crusher, which spits out quartz gravel. This then goes to a processing plant, where the quartz is ground down to a fine sand. Water and chemicals are added to separate the silicon from other minerals. The silicon goes through a final milling before being bagged up and sent as a powder to a refinery.
现在，它的售价为每吨10,000美元（8,250英镑），这使得云杉松矿的年营业额达到3亿美元。用机器和炸药从地面提取岩石，放入破碎机中，然后吐出石英砾石。之后将这些石英砾石送至加工厂，研磨成细砂。通过添加水和化学药品可将硅与其他矿物分离，最后再经过研磨，以袋装粉末的形式送到精炼厂。
For all the many billions of microchips in the world, only around 30,000 tonnes of silicon is mined each year. That’s less than the amount of construction sand produced each hour in the US alone. “The reserves here in the Spruce Pine area are very strong,” says Pippert. “We have decades of material. The industry will probably change before we run out of quartz.”
世界上现有着数十亿的微芯片，但硅每年的开采量仅为约30,000吨，这比在美国每小时生产的建筑用砂的量还少。“云杉松地区的硅储量非常大，”Pippert说。“我们的储量足以开采数十年。但在我们开采完石英之前，半导体行业可能会发生新的变化。”
3.如何将硅原料加工成芯片
To turn silicon powder into chips, the material is melted in a furnace at 1,400C and formed into cylindrical ingots. These are then sliced into discs called wafers, like chopping up a cucumber. Finally, several dozen rectangular circuits – the chips themselves – are printed onto each wafer in factories, such as that run by Global Foundries in New York State. From here, chips make their way to every corner of the planet.
为了将硅粉变成晶片，需要将材料在1400℃的熔炉中熔化并制成圆柱形锭。然后将它们像切黄瓜一样切成薄片，称之为晶圆。最终，几十个矩形电路（即芯片）被刻印在工厂的每个晶圆上，例如纽约州Global Foundries生产的晶圆。从这里开始，芯片进入到地球的每个角落。
“We are basically a printing press for any [electronic] device that any company would want to make,” says Chris Belfi, a clean-room engineer at Global Foundries.
“我们基本上是任何想要制造电子设备公司的印刷机。” Global Foundries的洁净室工程师克里斯·贝尔菲（Chris Belfi）说。
Chips are so tiny that dust particles or hairs can ruin their complex circuitry. To avoid contaminating the microelectronics, the vast factory floor must be sterile. An area the size of six football fields is kept thousands of times cleaner than an operating theatre and lit by a dim yellow light to prevent ultraviolet radiation from damaging some of the chemicals used in the production process. Lab workers and factory technicians conduct their business in an eerie glow, clad head to toe in white containment suits complete with masks and goggles.
芯片是如此之微小，以至于灰尘或毛发都有可能破坏它复杂的电路。所以为了避免污染微电子产品，广阔的工厂车间必须是无菌的。六个足球场大小的生产区域比手术室清洁数千倍，并且需要通过昏暗的黄光照明，以防止紫外线辐射破坏了生产过程中所使用的某些化学药品。实验室工作人员和工厂技术人员穿着白色防毒服从头到脚穿上了防护服，戴着口罩和护目镜，在这样怪异的光线中开展业务。
Inside the clean room, most operations are carried out automatically by vacuum-sealed robots, with parts whizzing between them on ceiling-mounted monorails. Depending on the design, each chip might require anywhere between 1,000 and 2,000 steps to produce it.
在洁净室内，大多数的操作都是由真空密封的机器人自动完成的，机器人之间则是由单装吊轨来完成输送。根据设计的不同，每个芯片的生产可能需要1,000至2,000个步骤才能完成。
The blank wafers that enter the factory floor cost a couple of hundred dollars apiece. When they leave, printed with billions of transistors, they are worth a hundred times more. Most of the chips Global Foundries makes end up in phones or specialist pieces of hardware called GPUs, which power video games, AI and cryptocurrency mining. Connected devices from fitness trackers to smart fridges and smart speakers – collectively known as the internet of things – are another growing family of end devices. “People want more things connected at all times,” says Belfi.
进入工厂车间的每个空白晶圆都要花费几百美元。但当它们离开工厂时，将刻印有数十亿个晶体管，价值要比进工厂时高出一百倍。Global Foundries制造的大多数芯片最终都用在了手机或GPU之中，GPU为游戏、AI和加密货币矿机提供动力。物联网是另一个不断增长的终端设备系列，包括健身手环、智能冰箱和智能音箱等产品。Belfi说：“人们希望有更多的东西可以互通互联。”
The next stage of the journey is shipping to electronics manufacturers, often overseas. “I feel extremely proud of being part of an industry that has contributed to increasing the level of connectivity between people around the world,” says Isabelle Ferain, director of central engineering at Global Foundries. “When I look at the electronic devices that we use every day, I can see the technology that we’ve worked on.”
芯片制造旅程的下一个阶段是运送到通常在海外的电子制造商。Global Foundries中央工程总监Isabelle Ferain说：“我为成为这个行业的一员而感到自豪，半导体行业为提高世界各地人们之间的连接水平做出了贡献。当我看到身边每天都在使用的电子设备时，就可以看到我们的技术。”
After planes, cars and oil, semiconductors are the US’s fourth largest export. Much of the revenue goes back into developing new products, putting the semiconductor industry on a par with pharmaceuticals as a top research-based industry. “We are changing the industry that’s changing the world,” says Ferain.
半导体仅次于飞机，汽车和石油，是美国的第四大出口商品。大部分的收入又会回到开发新产品的用途上，这使得半导体行业与制药业一样成为研究领域的顶级行业。Ferain说：“我们正在改变传统产业，并改造世界。”
It is no surprise that chip manufacturers guard their trade secrets closely. “Intellectual property is the lifeblood of the semiconductor industry,” says the Semiconductor Industry Association’s John Neuffer.
身处于研发如此重要的行业，芯片制造商会密切的保护自己的商业秘密。半导体工业协会的John Neuffer说：“知识产权是半导体工业的命脉。”
But other countries are working hard to catch up. China is the world’s largest consumer of semiconductors but only a small proportion of the chips it uses are homemade. In 2017, China imported $260bn (¥1,800bn; £210bn) worth, the country’s largest single import. It aims to be more self-sufficient, with the ambitious target of producing 40% of its own semiconductors by 2020 and 70% by 2025. A growing number of Chinese firms are producing their own chip designs.
但是其他国家正在努力的在技术上实现追赶。中国是世界上最大的半导体消费国，但它们使用的芯片中只有一小部分是自制的。2017年，中国进口了价值2600亿美元（1.8万亿日元； 2100亿英镑）的半导体，是中国最大的单一进口商品。中国的目标是自给自足，中国制定的雄伟目标是到2020年可以实现40％的半导体需求国产化，到2025年这一目标将达到70％。越来越多的中国工厂正在生产自己设计的芯片。
4.改变世界的智能手机是半导体的典型终端应用
As semiconductors have become smaller and cheaper they have become available to almost everyone. It is estimated that more than 5 billion people have mobile devices, and more than half of these are smartphones. And developing countries are now catching up.
随着半导体体积变得越来越小，成本也越来越便宜，现在几乎每个人都可以使用它们。据估计，现在有超过50亿人拥有移动设备，其中一半以上是智能手机。发展中国家现在也正在追赶。
According to surveys conducted by Research ICT Africa, a think tank focused on technology policy, the number of people aged 15 years and above in Africa who use the internet has increased from 15% in 2007 to 28% in 2017. Around two in 10 Africans now own a smartphone. “This is mainly attributed to a rapid adoption of cheaper internet-enabled devices,” says Anri van der Spuy at Research ICT Africa.
根据专注于技术政策的智囊团Research ICT Africa进行的调查显示，非洲15岁及15岁以上使用互联网的人数已从2007年的15％增加到2017年的28％。十分之二的非洲人现在拥有智能手机。“这主要归功于互联网设备越来越便宜了。”非洲研究ICT研究所的Anri van der Spuy说。
That means the impact of these technologies is now being felt even in the most rural places. Take Douglas Wanjala, a farmer in Nanyuki, a market town in Kenya, who uses a smartphone to help find buyers for his crops. “The phone has made my job very easy,” he says.
这意味着即使在大多数农村地区，也可以感受到这些技术的影响。以来自肯尼亚的Nanyuki镇的农民Douglas Wanjala为例，他使用智能手机来寻找农作物的买家。他说：“手机使我的工作变得非常轻松。”
Wanjala and his wife Gladys run a small business growing maize and potatoes on a plot of land near a river next to their home. Before he got a smartphone, the only way Wanjala could sell his crops was to take them to the market. If they didn’t sell, the produce would spoil and he would lose money. Mobile technology lets him cut out that risk. By sharing photos of his crops with potential buyers, he can negotiate a deal before his maize or potatoes are out of the ground. The buyers then come and pick up the crop themselves, rather than waiting for Wanjala to take it to market, receiving it while it is still fresh. Before he had a smartphone he had a hard time marketing his crops, he says.
Wanjala和他的妻子Gladys经营着一家小型企业，在他们家边上的一条河附近种植玉米和土豆。在他拥有智能手机之前，Wanjala出售农作物的唯一方法就是将农作物带到附近的市场去售卖。如果他们不能及时出售，农产品就会变质导致他亏损。移动技术帮他消除了这种风险。通过与潜在买家分享自己的农作物照片，他可以在玉米或土豆出土之前就达成销售协议。 然后，买主们在Wanjala将农作物带到农贸市场前就亲自来到他的农场，在他的农作物还处于新鲜状态时及时收货。他表示，在拥有智能手机之前，他在销售这方面确实过比较艰难。
Wanjala bought his phone for about 15,000 Kenyan shillings (£120) as a business investment. As well as contacting buyers, he uses his phone to keep on top of information vital to running a farm, such as the latest weather forecasts and market prices of different crops. Better access to this information is an effective way to ensure long-term food security in countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia, according to research by Fiona van der Burgt at the global weather organisation Weather Impact. Accessible and accurate weather information gives farmers an edge when deciding what to grow and when to plant it.
Wanjala以约15,000肯尼亚先令（120英镑）的价格购买了手机，这可以看做是一种商业投资。除了联系买家外，他还使用手机来掌握对经营农场至关重要的某些信息，例如最新天气预报和不同农作物的市场价格变动情况。根据来自Weather Impact的Fiona van der Burgt的研究，更好地获取天气信息是确保肯尼亚和埃塞俄比亚等国家长期粮食安全的重要方式。准确的天气信息可以帮助农民决定种植的作物种类和种植时间。
To top up his mobile data, Wanjala visits a nearby Wifi hotspot inside a converted shipping container. Away from cities, hubs like this provide a lifeline to local communities. In many countries, there is still a large divide between internet access available to those in cities and those in rural areas. But the trajectory in Sub-Saharan Africa has been promising, with Kenyan farmers becoming frontrunners in taking up mobile technologies to boost their businesses, according to research by Heike Baumüller at the University of Bonn, Germany.
Wanjala需要通过访问了一个信号枢纽来获得附近的Wifi热点。在远离城市的地方，像这样的枢纽为当地社区提供了网络的生命线。在许多国家，城市和农村地区的互联网入口仍然存在很大差距。不过，波恩大学HeikeBaumüller的研究显示，撒哈拉以南非洲地区的发展前景令人鼓舞，肯尼亚农民成为使用移动技术来帮助种植业务发展的领先者。
5.半导体正在改变世界
Kenya has the third highest internet use in Africa, with 24% of Kenyans online, according to Research ICT Africa. But other countries are being left behind. For example, in Rwanda, only 9% of people have access to the internet, the lowest number on the continent. What’s more, 77% of those with internet access live in cities.
Research ICT Africa的数据显示，肯尼亚是非洲互联网使用量排名第三的国家，肯尼亚有24％的人可以上网。但是其他非洲国家却被抛在后面。例如，在卢旺达，只有9％的人可以访问互联网，这是非洲大陆上访问量最低的国家。而这9%的人中，还有77％生活在城市中。
We need to be careful that this digital divide does not make people worse off, says van der Spuy. “Internet access is now becoming a precondition to participating in societies,” she says. Things like claiming social benefits, applying for jobs or registering children for school are all increasingly done online. And the divide is not only between urban and rural populations. Richer people are more likely to use the internet than poor people, men more likely than women, and young people more likely than old. “If you are not able to use the internet, you thus risk being left further behind.”
van der Spuy表示，我们需要小心这种数字鸿沟。她说：“现在互联网的接入已成为了参与社会的一种先决条件。”领取社会福利、申请工作或为孩子上学注册之类的事情越来越多地需要在网上才可以完成。这种鸿沟不仅存在于城乡人口之间，我们也需要看到，富人比穷人更可能使用互联网，男人比女人更可能使用互联网，年轻人比老年人更可能使用互联网。“如果您无法使用互联网，则可能会被社会抛弃。”
As semiconductor technology continues to improve and more people learn digital skills, these gaps should shrink. And smartphones can even boost the overall economy of a country. According to one estimate, for every 10 mobile phones per 100 people in a developing country GDP rises by 0.5%.
随着半导体技术的不断发展和更多人在学习数字技能，这些差距应该会缩小。智能手机甚至可以促进一个国家的整体经济增长。根据一项估计显示，发展中国家每100人中每10部手机就可以刺激GDP增长0.5％。
Rarely has a single technology had the potential to change the lives of so many. It’s a “pretty awesome” thought, reflects Neuffer, that we have been able to take something as simple as pure quartz sand and turn it into the almost infinitely intricate technology that today connects all our lives.
很少有一项技术能够改变这么多人的生活。在Neuffer看来，把简单的纯石英砂之类的东西变成如今连接我们几乎所有生活的复杂的技术是一个相当了不起的成就。
Image credits: Lion TV, Getty Images
图片来源：Lion TV，Getty Images
Graphics sources: Observatory of Economic Complexity, Pew Research Center
图形来源：Observatory of Economic Complexity，Pew Research Center
我的小结：
本纪录片的内容总体来说还是不错的，尤其对于半导体行业不太了解的一般群众而言，这是一部普及行业基本知识的好片。
BBC拍片子的水平还是值得称赞的。
半导体对世界的改变远不止智能手机而已，智能手机是TOC端最容易被看到的应用，实际上半导体在企业和工业上对世界的改变影响更加深刻和长远。这也是我国在各种被封锁的情况下仍然投入大量的财力和人力来支持半导体的国产化，这一科技现在看起来对世界的改变已经很惊人了，但未来远不止如此。