考研英语翻译题目.pdf

第一部分英译汉全真试题UnitlAccording to the new school of scientists,technology is an overlooked force in expandingthe horizons of scientific knowledge.(71)Science moves forward,they say,nol so much Iheoughthe insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniquesand tools.(72)“In short”,a leader of the new school contends,“the scientific revolution,as wncall it,was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments thatexpanded the reach of science in innumerable directions.”(73)Over the years,tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovationhave largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science.The modern school that hailstechnology argues that such masters as Galileo,Newton,Maxwell,Einstein,and inventors suchas Edison attached great importance to,and derived great benefit from,craft information andtechnological devices of different kinds that were usable in scientific experiments.The centerpiece of the argument of a technologies,genius no advocate was an analysis ofGalileo,s role at the start of the scientific revolution.The wisdom of the day was derived fromPtolemy,an astronomer of the second century,whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at thecenter of all heavenly motions.(74)Galileos greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the firstperson to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolvearound the sun rather than around the Earth.But the real hero of the story,according to the newschool of scientists,was the long evolution in the improvement of machinery for makingeyeglasses.Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs.genius dispute.(75)Whether theGovernment should increase the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or viceversa(反之)often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.W文 都 教 育 无限精彩人生 文都铸就永恒Unit 2The standardized educational or psychological tests that are widely used to aid in selecting,classifying,assigning,or promoting students,employees,and military personnel have been thetarget of recent attacks in books,magazines,the daily press,and even in Congress.(71)The targetis wrong,for in attacking the tests,critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill informedor incompetent users.The tests themselves are merely tools,with characteristics that can bemeasured with reasonable precision under specified conditions.Whether the results will bevaluable,meaningless,or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon theuser.All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevantpast performance:school grades,research productivity,sales records,or whatever is appropriate.(72)How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount,reliability,and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which itis interpreted.Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is alwaysincomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.Standardized tests should be considered in this context.They provide a quick objectivemethod of getting some kinds of information about what a person learned,the skills he hasdeveloped,or the kind of person he is.The information so obtained has,qualitatively,the sameadvantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information.(73)Whclhnr lo use tests,other kindsof information,or both in a particular situation depends,therefore,upon the evidence fromexperience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.(74)In general,the tests work most effectively when the qualities t。be measured can bemost precisely defined and least effectively when what is to be measured o predicated can not bewell defined.Properly used,they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information aboutmany people.Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previouslyrecognized,but there are many things they do not do.(75)Foe example,they do not compensatefor gross social inequality,and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might havebeen had he grown up under morn favorable circumstances.2 Unit 3The differences in relative growth of various areas of scientific research have several causes.(71)Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs.Others arereasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent selfaccelerating.Some,however,are less reasonable processes of different growth in which preconceptions of theform scientific theory ought to take,by persons in authority,act to alter the growth pattern ofdifferent areas.This is a new problem probably not yet unavoidable;but it is a frightening trend.(72)This trend began during the Second World War,when several governments came to theconclusion that the specific demands that a government wants to make of its scientificestablishment cannot generally be foreseen in detail.It can be predicted,however,that from timeto time,questions will arise which will require specific scientific answers.It is therefore generallyvaluable to treat the scientific establishment as a resource or machine to be kept in functionalorder.(73)This seems mostly effectively done by supporting a curtain amount of research notrelated to immediate goals but of possible consequence in the future.This kind of support,like all government support,requires decisions about the appropriaterecipients of funds.Decisions based on utility as opposed to lack of utility are straight forward.But a decision among projects none of which has immediate utility is more difficult.The goal ofthe supporting agencies is the praisable one of supporting good as opposed to bad”science,buta valid determination is difficult to make.Generally,the idea of good science tends to becomeconfused with the capacity of the field in question to generate an elegant theory.(74)However,the world is so made that elegant systems are in principle unable to deal with some of Ihe worldsmore fascinating and delightful aspects.(75)New forms of thought as well as new subjects forthought must arise in the future as they have in the past,giving rise to new standards of elegance.Unit 4Do animals have rights?This is how the question is usually put.It sounds like a useful,ground-clearing way to start.(71)Actually,it isnt,because it assumes that there is an agreedaccount of human rights,which is something the world does not have.On one view of rights,to be sure,it necessarily follows that animals have none.72)Somephilosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract,as part of an exchange of dutiesW文 都 教 育 无限精彩人生 文都铸就永恒and entitlements.Therefore,animals cannot have rights.The idea of punishing a tiger that killssomebody is absurd,for exactly the same reason,so is the idea that tigers have rights.However,this is only one account,and by no means an uncontested one.It denies rights not only to animalsbut also to some peoplefor instance,to infants,the mentally incapable and future generations.In addition,it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it:howdo you reply to somebody who says I don?t like this contract?”The point is this without agreement on the rights of people,arguing about the rights ofanimals is fruitless.(73)It leads Ihe discussion to extremes at(he outset:it invites you to Ihink thatanimals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans，o)withno consideration at all.This is a false choice.Better to start with another,more fundamentalquestion:is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all?Many deny it.(74)Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in everyrelevant respect,extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice.Anyregard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistakea sentimental displacement of feelingthat should properly be directed to other humans.This view,which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood,mayseem bravely“logical.In fact it is simply shallow:the ethical equivalent of learning to crawlisto weigh others interests against one s own.This in turn requires sympathy and imagination:without which there is no capacity for moral thought.To see an animal in pain is enough,formost,to engage sympathy.(75)When that happens,il is not a mistake:it is mankinds instinct formoral masoning in action,an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.Unit5They were by far,the largest and most distant objects that scientists had ever detected:a stripof enormous cosmic clouds some 15 billion light years from earth.(71)But even more important,it was the farthest Ihat scientists had been able to look into thepast,for what they were seeing were the patterns and structures that existed 15 billion years ago.That was just about the moment that the universe was born.What the researchers found was atonce both amazing and expected:the US National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Cosmic4 Background Explorer satelliteCob-had discovered landmark evidence that the universe did infact begin with the primeval explosion that has become known as the Big Bang(the theory thatthe universe originated in an explosion from a single mass of energy).(72)The existence of the giant clouds was virtually required for the Big Bang,first putforward in the 1920s,io maintain its reign as the dominant explanation of the cosmos.Accordingto the theory,the universe burst into being as a submicroscopic,unimaginably dense knot of pureenergy that flew outward in all directions,emitting radiation as it went,condensing into particlesand then into atoms of gas.Over billions of years,the gas was compressed by gravity intogalaxies,stars,plants and eventually,even humans.Cob is designed to see just the biggest structures,but astronomers would like to see muchsmaller hot spots as well,the seeds of local objects like clusters and superclusters of galaxies.They shouldnt have long to wait.(73)Astrophysicists working with groundbased detectors at theSouth Pole and balloonbome instruments are closing in on such structures,and may report theirfindings soon.(74)If the small hot spots look as expected,that will be a triumph for ye/another scientific idea,a refinement of the Big Bang called the inflationary universe theory.Inflation says that very earlyon,the universe expanded in size by more than a trillion in much less than a second,propelled bya sort of antigravity.(75)Odd though it sounds,cosmic inflation is a scientiRcally plausibleconsequence of some respected ideas in elemenlaryparticle physics,and many astrophysicistshave been convinced for the better part of a decade that it is true.Unit 6(71)While there are almost as many definitions of histoiy as there are historians,modempractice most closely conforms to one that sees history as the attempt to recreate and explain thesignificant events of the past.Caught in the web of its own time and place,each generation ofhistorians determines anew what is significant for it in the past.In this search the evidence foundis always incomplete and scattered;it is also frequently partial or partisan.The irony of thehistorians craft is that its practitioners always know that their efforts are but contributions to anunending process.W文 都 教 育 无限精彩人生 文都铸就永恒(72interest in historical methods has arisen less through external challenge to the validity ofhistory as an intellectual discipline and more from internal quarrels among historians themselves.While history once revered its affinity to literature and philosophy,the emerging social sciencesseemed to afford greater opportunities fbr asking new questions and providing rewardingapproaches to an understanding of the past.Social science methodologies had to be adapted to adiscipline governed by the primacy of historical sources rather than the imperatives of thecontemporary world.(73)During this transfer,Iraditional historical methods were augmented by additionalmethodologies designed to interpret the new forms of evidence in the historical study.Methodology is a term that remains inherently ambiguous in the historical profession.(74)There is no agreement whether methodology refers to ths concepts peculiar to historicalwork in general or to the research techniques appropriate to the various branches of historicalinquiry.Historians,especially those so blinded by their research interests that they have beenaccused of tunnel method,frequently fall victim to the“technicist fallacy.Also common in thenatural sciences,the technicist fallacy mistakenly identifies the discipline as a whole with certainparts of its technical implementation.(75)It applies equally to iraditional historians who view history as only ihe external and inlemalcriticism of sources.And to social science historians who equate their activity with specifictechniques.Unit 7Governments throughout the world act on the assumption that the welfare of their peopledepends largely on the economic strength and wealth of the community.(71)Under modemconditions,this requires varying measures of centralized control and hence the help of specializedscientists such as economists and operational research experts.(72)Furthermore,it is obviousthat the strength of a country economy is directly bound up with the efficiency of its agricultureand industry,and that this in turn rests upon the efforts of scientists and technologists of all kinds.It also means that governments are increasingly compelled to interfere in these sectors in order tostep up production and ensure that it is utilized to the best advantage.For example,they may6 encourage research in various ways,including the setting up of their own research centers;theymay alter the structure of education,or interfere in order to reduce the wastage of naturalresources or tap resources hitherto unexploited;or they may cooperate directly in the growingnumber of international projects related to science,economics any industry,In any case,all suchinterventions are heavily dependent on scientific advice and also scientific and technologicalmanpower of all kinds.(73)Owing to the remarkable development in masscommunications,people everywhere arefeeling new wants and are being exposed to new customs and ideas,while governments are oftenforcedo introduce still birther innovations for the reasons given above.At the same time,thenormal rate of social change throughout the world is taking place at a vastly accelerated speedcompared with the past.For example,(74)in the early in industrialized countries of Europe theprocess of industrializationwith all Ihe faireaching changes in social patterns thatfollowed-was spread over nearly a century,whereas nowadays a developing nation may undergothe same process in a decade or so.All this has the effect of building up unusual pressures andtensions within the community and conse