|
|
第十章
英译汉练习(二) |
Passage
12
An office is the “Brain” of a business. (1) In an
office, figures, lists and information are compiled
which tell the managers or heads of the business what is
happening in their shops or factories. These figures
guide the managers by telling them what has happened and
what is happening.
Information come into an office in all sorts of ways but
the main items of information come in regularly . (2) It
is part of the job of the clerks to collect and classify
that information and to put it into a form that it is
easily interpreted and understood. Offices collect
information, then they classify it.
This work of collection is common in an office from the
sorting of mail every morning to the accountant's work
in finding out the final figure for year's profit.
Classification always requires the arrangement of the
same kind of information, often into lists or columns.
For this work, correctness, accuracy and speed, as in
all office work, are essential.
There is no value, however, in collecting the figures
which mean nothing. Figures are guides which should help
us make decisions. (3) The interpretation of
information and of tables should tell us where success
or failure lies, where profit can be had and where
losses occur. On this kind of information and from
the known figures, a choice is made and a series of such
choices may mane a policy.
A firm which has three factories may find, for instance,
from its figures, that one factory is losing money and a
choice may lie between either a change of manager, a cut
in production, an increase in production or closure of
the factory. Whichever one of these decisions is taken
becomes the policy. (4) It is clear that a decision
leading to a policy can only be as good as the
information on which it is based.
Consequently there is a constant search for more and
more exact information.(5) Managers will want to have
all the necessary facts before they can make the best
decision and it is normal for them to seek for more and
more information.
(1)
在办公室里，人们将各种数据、表格和资料（信息）加以汇编以便让经理们或企业的主管人员了解他们的商店或工厂目前正在发生的情况。
(2)
职员们的一部分任务就是收集这种资料（信息），将它分类并填成这样的一份表格，这份表格要使这种资料（信息）易于解释，易于理解。
(3)
对资料（信息）和报表所做的解释，应能给我们显示出成败之所在，哪里有赢利以及哪里出现了亏损。
(4)
很显然，形成决策的那个决定的好坏，只能取决于它所依据的资料（信息）的好坏。
(5)
经理们必定需要在掌握一切必要的情况之后才能做出最佳的决定，对他们来说，要求得到越来越多的资料（信息）是很正常的。
Passage 13
A number of foreign words still look like foreign words;
there are often expressions which were originally used
by people who wanted to sound particularly
well-educated. (1) It was the desire to be scholarly
that brought about a wave of Latin terms which appeared
in the 16th century when the Humanist movement brought
new impetus to learning throughout Europe.
Abbreviations such as, e.g. (from the Latin meaning a
voluntary example); PS (meaning “added after the
latter has been written”); a.m. and p.m. (meaning
before noon and “after noon”) came into the language
at this time. (2) Nowadays they are so common that
most people don't even know what the letters actually
stand for, and there's certainly nothing learned about
using them today!
In addition to the words brought to English by
foreigners, there are plenty of words which the British
have collected from the countries they have settled in
all over the world. (3) There are even a few Chinese
words, which I'm sure a Chinese speaker would recognize
from the way we pronounce them: “typhoon” is a great
wind; “to kow tow” is to bow down low; a
“sampan” is a small wooden boat. Over 5000 of
the words in common use in English today are words of
foreign origin. Some of them are clearly recognizable as
foreign like “au pair” or “rendezvous”; others
now look so English that only a language historian knows
where they came from.
So English is in a state of permanent development. Both
in Britain and abroad it is gaining new words and
expressions, and dropping and changing old ones. Words
changes their meaning, and they go in and out of fashion
like hairstyles. (4) Nobody knows all the four
million words that are said to exist; a well-educated
person probably use under 200 000. (5) So don't
be surprised if you never encounter some of the
expressions that still appear in school textbooks; and
next time you hear somebody using a strange word you
haven't heard before, you can comfort yourself that
there may well be a native speaker somewhere who doesn't
know it either.
(1) 在16世纪的时候，人文主义运动促进了欧洲各国的学术运动，人们都想显示自己博学多才，从而形成了一股使用拉丁字词的潮流。
(2)
今天，这些字词用得太普遍了，大多数人甚至不大了解这些缩略字母实际代表什么，所以今天使用这些字词当然也就不能表示知识渊博了。
(3) 英文中甚至还有些中国字，
我确信中国人决不会从我们的发音听出这些原来是中国字，typhoon（飓风）来自“大风”；to
kow tow意思是“叩头”；sampan（舢板）是一只小木船。
(4) 据说英文有400万词汇，没有人能认识所有的词，一个受过良好教育的人词汇量超不过20万。
(5)
因此，如果在某些教科书里你碰到某些词组是你从未见过的，你不必惊讶。如果下次你听到有人用一个你以前从未听到过的新词，你可以这样安慰自己说，可能在什么地方有一个讲英语的本地人也不认识这个字呢！
Passage 14
Personality is to a large extent inherent(A-type parents
usually bring about A-type offspring. (1) But the
environment must also have a profound effect, since if
competition is important to the parents, it is likely to
become a major factor in the lives of their children.
One place here children soak up A characteristics is
school, which is, by its very nature, a highly
competitive institution. (2) Too many schools adopt
the 'win at all costs' moral standard and measure their
success by sporting achievements. The current
passion for making children compete against their
classmates or against the clock produces a two-layer
system, in which competitive A types seem in some way
better than their B type fellows. (3) Being too keen
to win can have dangerous consequences: remember that
Pheidippides (菲迪皮茨), the first marathon runner,
dropped dead seconds after saying: 'Rejoice, we
conquer!'
By far the worst form of competition in schools is the
disproportionate emphasis on examinations. It is a rare
school that allows pupils to concentrate on those things
they do well. (4) The merits of competition by
examination are somewhat questionable, but competition
in the certain knowledge of failure is positively
harmful.
Obviously, it is neither practical no desirable that all
A youngsters change into B's. (5) The world needs
types, and schools have an important duty to try to fit
a child's personality to his possible future employment.
It is top management.
If the preoccupation of schools with academic work was
lessened, more time might be spent teaching children
surer values. Perhaps selection for the caring
professions especially medicine, could be made less by
good grades in chemistry and more by such considerations
as sensitivity and sympathy. It is surely a mistake to
choose our doctors exclusively from A type stock. B's
are important and should be encouraged.
(1)
但是环境也一定有很大的影响，因为如果竞争对父母很重要的话，那么竞争在其孩子的生活中也很可能成为一个主要的因素。
(2) 太多的学校采取“只要能胜，再大代价也付”的道德准则，而且用拿得出成绩与否来衡量自己成功与否。
(3)
太想赢了可能会带来危险的后果，记住第一位马拉松运动员菲迪皮茨在跑到终点倒下死去之前说的一句话：“高兴吧！我们终于胜利了！”
(4)
通过考试来竞争的优点有点让人怀疑，但是明明知道会失败还去竞争，这肯定是有害无益的。
(5)
这个世界需要各种各样类型的人，而学校有一个很重要的责任，就是设法使每一个孩子的个性适合他今后可能干的工作。
Passage 15
There is certainly much work which is exceedingly
troublesome, and an excess of work is always very
painful. (1) I think, however, that, provided work is
not excessive in amount, even the dullest work is to
most people less painful than idleness. Accordingly
the more intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if
they were poor, while rich women for the most part keep
themselves busy with unnumerable trifles of whose
earth-shaking importance they are firmly persuaded.
(2) Work therefore is desirable, first and foremost,
as a preventive of boredom, for the boredom that a man
feels when he is doing necessary though uninteresting
work is as nothing in comparison with the boredom that
feels when he has nothing to do with his days. With
this advantage of work another is associated, namely
that it makes holidays much more delicious when they
come. Provided a man does not have to work so hard as to
impair his vigour, he is likely to find far more zest in
his free time than an idle man could possibly find.
The second advantage of most paid work and of some
unpaid work is that it gives chances of success and
opportunities for ambition. In most work success is
measured by income, and while our capitalistic society
continues, this is inevitable. It is only where the best
work is concerned that this measure ceases to be the
natural one to apply. (3) The desire that men feel to
increase their income is quite as much a desire for
success as for the extra comforts that a higher income
can obtain. However dull work may be, it becomes
bearable if it is a means of building up a reputation,
whether in the world at large or only in one's own
circle. Continuity of purpose is one of the most
essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and
for most men this comes chiefly through their work. In
this respect those women whose lives are occupied with
housework are much less fortunate than men, or than
women who work outside the home. The domesticated wife
does not receive wages, and no means of bettering
herself, is taken for granted by her husband (who sees
practically nothing of what she does), and is valued by
him not for her housework but for quite other qualities.
(4) Of course this does not apply to those women who
are sufficiently well-to-do to make beautiful houses and
beautiful gardens and become the envy of their
neighbors, but such women are comparatively few, and for
the great majority housework cannot bring as much as
satisfaction as work of other kinds brings to men and to
professional women.
(5) The satisfaction of killing time and of affording
some outlet, however modest, for ambition, belongs to
most work, and is sufficient to make even a man whose
work is dull happier on the average than a man who has
no work at all. But when work is interesting, it is
capable of giving satisfaction of a far higher order
than mere relief from tedium.
(1)
然而我认为，对大多数人来说，只要工作量不是过大，即使所做的工作再单调也总比无所事事好受。
(2)
因此，工作之可取首先在于它可以产生无聊厌烦感，因为当一个人做着虽枯燥乏味但却是必要的工作时所产生的无聊感与他终日无所事事而感到的无聊相比就微不足道了。
(3)
人们要求增加工资收入，既是为了得到更高的收入带来的更多的舒适，也是为了获得成功。
(4)
当然这并不包括那些很富有，可以将居室和花园布置得漂漂亮亮，引来左邻右舍羡慕赞叹的妇人们，但是这样的妇女较少，而且对大多数妇女来说，家务劳动给她们所带来的满足却不像其他工作给男人和职业妇女带来的满足那么多。
(5)
大多数工作给予人们消磨时间的满足感和帮助人们实现哪怕是微不足道的抱负的满足感，这种满足感足以使一个从事枯燥乏味工作的人比一个终日无事可做的人快乐。
Passage 16
And successful theory in the physical science is
expected to make accurate predictions. (1) Given some
well-defined experiment, the theory should correctly
specify the outcome or should at least assign the
correct probabilities to all the possible outcomes.
From this point of view quantum mechanics must be judged
highly successful. (2) As the fundamental modern
theory of atoms, of molecules, of elementary particles,
of electromagnetic radiation and of the solid state it
supplies methods for calculating the results of
experiments in all these realms.
Apart from experimental confirmation, however, something
more is generally demanded of a theory. (3) It is
expected not only to determine the results of an
experiment but also to provide some understanding of the
physical events that are presumed to underlie the
observed results. (4) In other words, the theory
should not only give the position of a pointer on a dial
but also explain why the pointer takes up that position.
When one seeks information of this kind in the quantum
theory, certain conceptual difficulties arise. For
example, in quantum mechanics an elementary particle
such as an election is represented by the mathematical
expression called a wave function, which often describes
the electron as if it were smeared out over a large
region of space.
This representation is not in conflict with experiment;
on the contrary, the wave function yields an accurate
estimate of the probability that the electron will be
found in any given place. When the electron is actually
detected, however, it is never smeared out but has a
definite position. Hence it is not entirely clear what
physical interpretation should be given to the wave
function or what picture of the electron one should keep
in mind. (5) Because of ambiguities such as this many
physicists find it most sensible to regard quantum
mechanics as merely a set of rules that prescribe the
outcome of experiments. According to this view the
quantum theory is concerned only with observable
phenomena (the observed position of the pointer) and not
with any underlying physical state ( the real position
of the electron.)
(1)
对于某项明确界定的实验，科学的理论应该正确地详述其结果，或至少应该指出各种可能结果的正确几率。
(2)
作为原子、分子、基本粒子、电磁辐射和固态物理基础的现代理论，它（量子力学）为所有这些领域提供了计算实验结果的方法。
(3)
它不但要确定一项实验的结果，而且要解释隐藏于观察结果背后的潜在物理现象。
(4)
换言之，这种理论不仅要说明仪器指针在针面上的位置，而且还要解释指针为何在那个位置。
(5)
由于这一类的不确定性，许多物理学家发现，最合理的是把量子力学当作只是一套规定实验结果的法则。
Passage 17
(1) Over the last couple of decades there have been
some important changes in the way people think about
languages and how people learn them which have led to
the development of an approach called communicative
language teaching. Communicative language teaching
is not a single, narrowly-defined methodology, rather,
it is based on a set of related principles that are
widely accepted among language teachers today.
(2) Central to the communicative approach is the
perception that language is not just a system of rules,
but “a dynamic source for creation of meaning”. This
emphasis tends to place more importance on the needs of
learners as they actually use the language than on the
abstracted study of the language itself. Grammar is not
ignored in the communicative classroom, for students
need to be able to use the grammar effectively for
others to be able to understand them. However, CLT
de-emphasizes language knowledge (being able to recite a
rule) in favour of language use (being able to construct
a correct sentence in a meaningful context).
(3) The shift in emphasis from the language itself to
the language needs of the learner in a particular
environment has led to greater flexibility in the
syllabus and an increased focus on language tasks.
Tasks are the activities that give rise to language. (4)
Ideally, these resemble the same kinds of situations
that learners would encounter in real life as they
attempt to communicate in the second language. (5) Therefore,
for a group of students whose goal is to work in hotels
where there are many English-speaking guests, an
appropriate task might be to role-play a situation
between a hotel desk clerk and a visitor wishing to book
a room. While not all language tasks can be so
directly related to student needs, at the least they
should involve the natural use of language in realistic
situations.
(1)
在过去的几十年中，人们在考虑语言的方式以及人们如何学习语言的方式上发生了一些重要的变化，这些变化导致了被称作教学法的产生。
(2) 语言不仅仅是一整套规则，而且是“创作意义的极有潜力的源泉”，这一概念是交际法的中心内容。
(3)
从强调语言本身转移到强调在特定环境下学习者对语言的需要，导致了教学计划较大的灵活性和对语言的练习更多的注重。
(4)
比较理想的情况为，这些与学习者试图用第二语言交际时在实际生活中将会碰到的同种情况相类似。
(5)
因此，对一些将来想在有许多说英语的客人的旅馆中工作的学生来说，一种适当的练习可能是把旅馆服务台职员和想定房间的客人之间的情景扮演出来。
Passage 18
Between now and the end of this century, there will be
many exciting developments and also many difficult
problems to deal with. (1) Perhaps the most urgent
problem is to provide enough food. The world's
population is expected to reach 7,000 million by the
year 2000, but already scientists have produced new and
better varieties of wheat and rice and animal. They
have also been experimenting with techniques of
cultivating plants by using mixtures of chemical
compounds and water only, and then there will be no need
for ordinary soil. (2) Another problem which the
world will face is to get rid of refuse. One solution is
to burn refuse at very high temperature in incinerators
(焚化炉）. A development of this, which may
prove very useful in the future, is to use these
incinerators to generate steam power. (3) In fact any
new source of energy will be very welcome, as there is
already a shortage of petroleum. To solve the energy
problem, scientists will probably also try to make more
use of solar energy.
The possible effects of some scientific fields, such as
lasers and cryogenics (低温学), are difficult to
imagine and both have already a number of uses. (4) The
super-cooling effects of the cryogenics which convert
liquid helium (液态氮) and other gases into 'superfluids'
and metals into 'superconductors', making them
non-resistant to electricity, could change the world in
a number of ways. The laser with its beams of strong
light, can drill a hole in diamond, and yet can be so
well controlled that it can be used in delicate eye
operations. The question is whether it will be most used
for peaceful purposes or as deadly weapon. (5) But
perhaps the most remarkable developments will occur in
space flight. One of the difficulties in the past has
been the high cost, but now the space shuttle is being
developed, and can be used a large number of times
instead of only once. Already man has been to the
moon. Perhaps by the end of the century he will have had
a close-up view of Venus or Mars.
(1)
也许最为迫切的问题是提供足够的粮食。到2000年世界人口预计将达到70亿，但是科学家们已经培育出各种小麦、稻谷和牲畜的优良品种。
(2)
世界面临的另一个问题是废物处理，有一个解决办法就是在焚化炉中用高温把废物处理掉。
(3)
事实上，由于石油已感短缺，任何新的能源都将是非常受欢迎的，要解决能源问题，科学家们也将设法更多地利用太阳能。
(4)
低温学的过冷作用将液体氮及某些气体变成“超流体”，
将某些金属变成“超导体”，
使它们没有电阻，从而可以用许多方法改变世界的面貌。
(5)
但是，最重大的发展也许将出现在宇宙飞行方面，过去最大的困难使代价太高，但现在航天飞机正在发展，这种航天飞机可以多次使用而不仅仅只使用一次而已。
Passage 19
(1) Many Americans who have bought their own
computers are now taking advantage of one of its extra
features. By hooking their machines up to the
telephone through a device called a modem these computer
users from school children to homemakers to business
executives are gaining access to what are known as
on-line information services. (2) In effect, they are
using their home computers o tap into huge pile of
information kept in giant main frame computers that may
be located thousands of kilometers away. There are
many companies offering on-line services, and they
usually charge fee both to subscribe to the information
service and for each use of the services data.
CompuServe is the oldest and largest on-line service
with 280,000 current subscribers and 8-12 thousand more
signing up each month. (3) It's actually a network of
different services and it is capable of linking computer
users all across the country and around the world.
(4) Perhaps you may wonder how CompuServe and other
companies providing computerized access to information
have affected the life style of the people who use them.
As Faith Lapadus learned from Jan Bowers, a
spokesperson for CompuServe, (5) there is no typical
CompuServe subscriber because there are so many
different kinds of computer services available.
(1)
许多自己购买了计算机的美国人正在利用着它的一项特别的功能。
(2)
实际上，他们正在把家用计算机连接到储存大量信息的巨型主机计算机上，这些计算机也许安置在几千公里以外。
(3)
这确实是一个提供各种服务的计算机网络，它能把美国和整个世界的计算机使用者们连接起来。
(4)
也许你想知道，计算机服务公司和其他用电脑提供信息的公司怎样影响了计算机使用者们的生活方式。
(5)
因为可以提供各种各样的计算机服务，因此，没有具有代表性的用户。
Passage 20
(1) Most of the people who appear most often and most
gloriously on the history books are great conquerors and
generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really
helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at
all. People think a great deal of them, so much so
that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of
the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a
general or a soldier. And I think most people believe
that the greatest countries are those that have beaten
in battle the greatest number of other countries and
ruled over them as conquerors.
(2) Animals fight, so do savages, hence to be good at
fighting is o be good in the way in which an animal or a
savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Fighting
means killing, and civilized people ought to be able to
find some way of settling their disputes rather than by
seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the
other side, and then saying that that side which has
killed most has won.
That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been
like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars
in history, in which millions of people were killed or
mutilated. (3) And while today it is true that people
do not fight and kill each other in the streets ( while,
that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the
rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life
( nations and countries have not learnt to d this yet,
and still behave like savages.
But we must not expect too much. After all, the race of
men has only just started. (4) Scientists reckon that
there has been life of some sort on the earth in the
form of jelly-fish and that kind of creature for about
twelve hundred million years; but there have been have
been men for only one million years, and there have been
civilized men for about eight thousand years at the
outside. These figures are difficult to grasp; so
let us scale them down. Suppose that we reckon the whole
past of living creatures on the earth as one hundred
years; then the hole past of man works out at about one
month, and during that month there have been
civilizations for between seven and eight hours. So you
see there has been little time to learn in, but there
will be oceans of time in which to learn better. (5) Taking
man's civilized past at about seven or eight hours, we
may estimate his future, that is to say, the whole
period between now and when the sun grows too cold to
maintain life any longer on the earth, at about one
hundred thousand years. Thus mankind is only at the
beginning of its civilized life, and as I say, we must
not expect too much.
(1)
经常且异常光荣地出现在历史书上的多数人物是伟大的征服者、将军和士兵，然而真正有助于推动文明的人通常是不被提到的。
(2)
动物彼此相斗，原始时代未开化的人也是这样，因此善于争斗就是善于做动物或者原始时代人所善于做的事情，但这不是文明或开化的表现。
(3)
尽管确实今天人们不在大街上互相争斗、厮杀，也就是说我们在日常生活中已经开始走上了遵守制度，彼此举止适度的阶段，但是许多民族和国家还没有学会这些，他们的举止和行动仍然和未开化的人一样。
(4)
科学家推断，地球上有某种生命以水母方式生存了大约12亿年，但人类历史仅仅100万年，文明的人类充其量大约8000年左右。
(5)
如果我们设想人类文明的过去经历仅仅大约7～8小时，我们可以估算出他们的未来，那就是说能估计出从今天到未来某天之间的整个时期，大约10万年，到那时太阳变得太冷了以致再不能维持地球上的生命。
Passage 21
Many people say that the British do not work hard
enough, and there may be some truth in this complaint.
Certainly for some years past production in Britain has
been in creasing much more slowly than in most other
European countries, and the lack of progress is causing
great concern. 71) Some blame the management, too
secure in the enjoyment of their privileges and expense
accounts and too well protected by their trade
associations. Others blame the workers,
overanxious to protect their jobs and to resist
laborsaving techniques. Some say that there is not
enough incentive, that if a man is successful he only
pays more taxes, that if he is lazy the unions and the
welfare state protect him. Others blame the economic
policy of the Government for not doing enough to
encourage investment in the ‘right’ directions. 72) All
these arguments have some justification; meanwhile the
complacent can point to the low rate of unemployment and
to the progress that has been made, even if its
relatively slow.
The standard working week is generally between
fortyone and fortyfour hours, though very many
workers work a few extra hours at overtime rates. 73) For
factory workers, except those on shiftwork, the
working week is often spread over five days. Monday to
Friday, with each day beginning at about 8 a.m. and
interrupted by one or two teabreaks and a longer
interval for lunch in the middle of the day. Offices
and shops are usually open from 9 a.m. to 5 or 5.30.
Since 1970 banks and most offices have stayed shut on
Saturdays. Shops have a fiveandahalfday
week, closing for the afternoon on the local ‘early
closing day’, which is Wednesday or Thursday in most
towns. Except in small towns few people can go home in
the middle of the day, as they have long distances to
travel from home to workplace; in London the journey is
for many people an hour or more each way. many large
organizations provide canteens where their staffs can
get lunch quickly and cheaply; other people mostly
provide themselves with sandwiches or have snacks in
pubs, or choose between the many types of small
restaurants that have grown up in the past few years.
74) The process whereby people find jobs, and
employers find workers, is helped by the labor exchanges
run by the Government, which were set up in 1909.
But advertisements in newspapers are very much used too,
particularly for specialist jobs. Fortunately for the
newspapers, advertisers do not use abbreviations as much
as in France and their notices are a useful source of
general information.
75) The British economic system, while nominally
capitalist, is now really a complex combination of
several systems, and pure capitalism is probably a
smaller element than in any other West European country.
Peoples’s perceptions of the system are determined
more by prejudices and myths than by facts; and terms
like ‘free enterprise’,‘competition’,‘the
workers’,‘the capitalist class’,‘monopoly
capitalism’and‘exploitation’are used with varying
and uncertain meaning, often so as to express prejudice
rather than any objective reality.
(1) 一些人(把这一点)归究于资方，说他们无忧无虑地享受其特权，大肆挥霍，并受其行业协会保护太多(以至于不思进取)。
(2)
所有这些观点都有一定道理；同时自满的人会强调低失业率和已经取得的进步，虽然这种进步相对较慢。
(3)
对工厂工人来说，除那些轮流上班的外，每周通常工作五天，从周一到周五，每天八点钟上班，中间有一两次茶点时间和中午一次较长的午饭时间。
(4)
在工人找工作和雇主招工人的过程中，他们可以得到政府开办的劳工介绍所的帮助，这种介绍所1909年就设立了。
(5)
英国的经济体制，虽名义上是资本主义，现在实际上是几种体制的综合体，它的纯资本主义成份所占的比率可能比任何其它西欧国家经济中的都小。 |
|