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The deep has long been treated as somehow separate from the surface world, a shadowy non-place populated by alien creatures. While this is partly a response to the difficulty of studying it, it also reflects an ingrained tendency.
长期以来，海底深处一直被视为与海面之上的世界不同，是奇异生物居住的阴暗非场所。虽然这在一定程度上是因为研究海底很困难，但也反映了一种根深蒂固的趋势。
As the writer Robert Macfarlane has observed, humans are creatures of the air and light, and we have often regarded the spaces beneath our feet with abhorrence, associating them with death, entombment and the unseen and unnameable.
正如作家罗伯特·麦克法兰所观察到的那样，人类是需要空气和光的生物，我们常常对脚下的空间充满厌恶，把它们与死亡、埋葬、隐形的和无法言说的事物联想起来。
And while what Macfarlane calls the underland might be a place of ritual power as well as a place of burial, the ocean's depths are more frequently equated with loss and forgetting.
虽然麦克法兰所说的地下世界可能是用于埋葬和表现仪式权力的地方，但海洋深处更经常地被等同于失落和遗忘。
Although those versed in traditional wayfinding techniques often understood the ocean in more complex ways, the idea of the deep as an unknowable non-place was also embedded in navigational practices.
虽然那些精通传统寻路技术的人通常以更复杂的方式理解海洋，但深海是一个不可知的非场所的想法同样根植于航海实践中。
For European sailors plying the waters of the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic and Indian oceans, all that really mattered was knowing where potential obstacles and risks such as reefs and sandbars lay -- a way of thinking that transformed the ocean's depths into a blank irrelevance.
对于经常在地中海、大西洋和印度洋上航行的欧洲水手来说，真正重要的是知道潜在的障碍和风险（比如珊瑚礁和沙洲）在哪里，这种思维方式把海洋深处变成了一个空白的无关紧要的地方。
It was not until the early 19th century that a more detailed scientific understanding of the deep began to take shape.
直到19世纪初，对深海更详细的科学认识才开始形成。
In part, this was a result of the growing reach of the colonial powers: as the commercial and territorial aspirations of Europeans and Americans expanded to encompass the globe, the need for more accurate and more detailed knowledge of the ocean grew as well.
一方面，这是殖民强国势力不断扩张的结果：欧洲人和美国人对商业和领土的渴望扩展到全球，于是就越来越需要对海洋有更准确、更详细的了解。
But it also grew out of the experiences of whalers, whose voyages were now taking them far out into the open waters of the Atlantic and Pacific, and leading to an appreciation of the great depths to which whales would often dive.
不过，这种认识也来自捕鲸人的经验，他们的航行已经把他们远远地带到了大西洋和太平洋的开阔水域，并使他们意识到了鲸鱼经常潜入的深海。
This interest in the deep ocean took on a new urgency in the 1850s, when British and American entrepreneurs began to lay the first submarine telegraph cables across the Atlantic. The technical challenges of these ventures demanded a more detailed understanding of the ocean floor.
19世纪50年代，当英美企业家开始铺设第一条横跨大西洋的海底电报电缆时，这种对深海的兴趣呈现出新的紧迫性。这些商业冒险的技术挑战要求人们对海底有更详细的了解。
But it was not until the Challenger expedition circumnavigated the globe on its pioneering scientific survey of the world's oceans in the 1870s that the true extent of the deep ocean finally started to emerge.
但是，直到19世纪70年代，“挑战者”号探险队环绕地球航行，对世界海洋进行了开创性的科学调查，深海的完整规模才终于开始显现。
In the north-west Pacific, where the Mariana Trench plunges downwards into the planet's crust, HMS Challenger recorded depths in excess of 8,000 metres. Perhaps even more startling to the scientists of the day, though, was Challenger's discovery of tiny shells -- and therefore living things -- more than 7,000 metres down.
在太平洋西北部，马里亚纳海沟向下直插入地球的地壳，英国皇家海军挑战者号记录的深度超过8000米。也许更让当时的科学家们吃惊的是，挑战者号在7000米深的海底发现了小贝壳，也就意味着在海底发现了生命。
