1. What is the next item on the agenda?
    议程表上的下一项是什麽?

2. With scarcely a glance at the items, the clerk sweeps them across an aperture, where a special marking on each item is scanned by a low-powered laser beam inside the machine, connected to a remote computer.
    收款员几乎不看商品，只是把商品从机器上的孔眼处一扫而过，机器里的低能量激光对商品上的一个特殊标志进行扫描，这台扫描机与另一台电脑相联。

3. Within seconds, a small display unit on the checker´s right shows the name and price of the item; at the same time this information is printed on a strip of paper.
    瞬间功夫，在收款员右手的一个小型显示器上就显示出商品名称、价格，同时这些信息就印在了一张长纸条上。

4. The UPC is printed by the manufacturer on each grocery item — a set of thin and thick vertical stripes accompanied by a series of numbers under the stripes and a zero, centered to the left of them.
    条形码由厂家印在每一食品上——这是一组粗细不同、垂直排列的线条，线条下方有一组数字，左边有一个“0”字。

5. The first five digits of the other numbers designate the manufacturer and the second series of digits identifies the particular item.
    条形码上的前五个数代表厂家，后面的其它数字是商品代号。

6. This strip of paper will eventually list everything that the shopper has bought, what each item cost, the total price, the tax, how much money the shopper gave the checker, whether it was cash or a check, and the amount of change the shopper is to re
    这一纸条最终会列出顾客买的每件物品，物品单价、总额、应付税额、顾客实交数额、是现金还是支票、应找回数额。

7. And it occurred to me that I could not be the only person in the world for whom they were an item of imagination.
    而且我还突然想到我不可能是这个世界上唯一把这些地方看作想象中的事物的人。

8. As the grocery items moves along the conveyor belt, the checker passes each item over a glass plate in the counter top, making sure that the UPC symbols can be read by the laser beam under the glass.
    食品杂货经传送带传到收款员跟前，收款员随即将每一物品搁在柜台上的一块玻璃板上一扫，好使板下的扫描机阅读条形码。

9. Since the cashier no longer has to worry about the trying business of punching in each item, the groceries are scanned and bagged rapidly.
    因为收款员不再费事在每一物品上敲上价格，食品被扫描装袋的速度很快。

10. Gone is the time-consuming stamping of prices on each item.
    往每件商品上打价格的费时劳务从此结束了。