英文翻譯練習一

英文翻譯練習一

　　Directions: Read the underlined sentences carefully, and then translate them into Chinese. You may check your answers after you finish them.

　　Passage One

　　If women are mercilessly（無情地）exploited year after year, they have only themselves to blame. Because they tremble at the thought of being seen in public in clothes that are out of fashion, they are always taken advantage of by the designers and the big stores. Clothes which have been worn only a few times have to be put aside because of the change of fashion. When you come to think of it, only s women is capable of standing in front of a wardrobe （衣櫃） packed full of clothes and announcing sadly that she has nothing to wear.

　　Changing fashions are nothing more than the intentional creation of waste. Many women spend vast sums of money each year to replace clothes that have hardly been worn. Women who cannot afford to throw away clothing in this way, waste hours of their time altering the dresses they have. Skirts are lengthened or shortened; neck-lines are lowered of raised, and so on.

　　No one can claim that the fashion industry contributes anything really important to society. Fashion designers are rarely concerned with vital things like warmth, comfort and durability（耐用）. They are only interested in outward appearance and they take advantage of the fact that women will put up with any amount of discomfort, as long as they look right. There can hardly be a man who hasn’t at some time in his life smiled at the sight of a woman shaking in a thin dress on a winter day, or delicately picking her way through deep snow in highheeled shoes.

　　When comparing men and women in the matter of fashion, the conclusions to be drawn are obvious. Do the constantly changing fashions of women’s clothes, one wonders, reflect basic qualities of inconstancy and instability? Men are too clever to let themselves be cheated by fashion designers. Do their unchanging styles of dress reflect basic qualities of stability and reliability? That is for you to decide.

　　Passage Two

　　For some time past it has been widely accepted that babies-and other creatures-learn to do things because certain acts lead to “rewards”; and there is no reason to doubt that this is true. But it used also to be widely believed that effective rewards, at least in the early stages, had to be directly related to such basic physiological “drives”（生理欲望）as thirst or hunger. In other words, a baby would learn if he got food or drink or some sort of physical comfort, not otherwise.

　　It is now clear that this is not so. Babies will learn to behave in ways that produce results in the world with no reward except the successful outcome.

　　Papousek began his studies by using milk in the normal way to “reward” the babies and so teach them to carry out some simple movements, such as turning the head to one side or the other. Then he noticed that a baby who had had enough to drink would refuse the milk but would still go on making the learned response with clear signs of pleasure. So he began to study the children’s responses in situations where no milk was provided. He quickly found that children as young as four months would learn to turn their heads to right or left if the movement “switch on” a display of lights-and indeed that they were capable of learning quite complex turns to bring about this result, for instance, two left or two right, or even to make as many as three turns to one side.

　　Papousek’s light display was placed directly in front of the babies and he made the interesting observation that sometimes they would not turn back to watch the lights closely although they would “smile and bubble（發出咯咯聲）” when the display came on. Papousek concluded that it was not primarily the sight of the lights which pleased them, it was the success they were achieving in solving the problem, in mastering the skill, and that there exists a fundamental human urge to make sense of the world and bring it under intentional control.

　　Passage Three

　　A breakthrough（突破）in the provision of energy from the sun for European Economic Community (EEC) could be brought forward by up to two decades, if a modest increase could be provided in the EEC’s research effort in this field, according to the senior EEC scientists engaged in experiments in solar energy at EEC’s scientific laboratories at Ispra, near Milan.

　　The senior West German scientist in charge of the Community’s solar energy program, Mr. Joachim Gretz, told journalists that at present levels of research spending it was most unlikely that solar energy would provide as much as 3% of the Community’s energy requirements even after the year 2000. But he said that with a modest increase in the present sums, devoted by the EEC to this work it was possible that the breakthrough could be achieved by the end of the next decade.

　　Mr. Gretz calculates that if solar energy only provided 3% of the EEC’s needs, this could still produce a saving of about a billion pounds in the present bill for imported energy each year. And he believes that with the possibility of utilizing more advanced technology in this field it might be possible to satisfy a much bigger share of the Community’s future energy needs.

　　At present the EEC spends about $2.6 millions a year on solar research at Ispra, one of the EEC’s official joint research centres, and another 3 millions a year in indirect research with universities and other independent bodies.

　　Passage Four

　　The black robin （知更鳥）is one of the world’s rarest birds. It is a small, wild bird, and it lives only on the island of Little Mangere, off the coast of New Zealand. In 1967 there were about 50 black robins there; in 1977 there were fewer than ten. These are the only black robins left in the world. The island has many other birds, of course, of different kinds, large and small; they seem to multiply very happily.

　　Energetic（有力的，積極的）steps are being taken to preserve the black robin-to guard those remaining and to increase their number. Detailed studies are going on, and a public appeal for money has been made. The idea is to buy another island nearby as a special home, a “reserve”, for threatened wild life, including black robins. The organizers say that Little Mangere should then be restocked with the robin’s food-it eats only one kind of seed-and so renewed for it. Thousands of the required plants are at present being cultivated in New Zealand. The public appeal is aimed at the conscience of mankind, so that the wild black robin willl not die out and disappear from the earth in our time at least.

　　In the earth’s long, long past hundreds of kinds of creatures have evolved, risen to a degree of success-and died out. In the long, long future there will be many new and different forms of life. Those creatures that adapt themselves successfully to what the earth offers will survive for a long time. Those that fail to meet the challenges will disappear early. That is Nature’s proven method of operation.

　　The rule of selection-“the survival of the fittest” is the one by which man has himself arrived on the scene.

　　Life seems to have grown too tough for black robins.　
　
　　參考譯文:

　　1. 時裝設計者很少關心衣服的暖和、舒服、耐用這些至關重要的問題。設計者在只對衣服的外觀感興趣的同時，利用了這樣一個事實：即女人只要（穿上衣服）顯得好看，就會忍受任何巨大的不舒適。

　　2. 巴帕薩克推斷，根本不是光源信號點使這些嬰兒感到欣喜，而是在解決難題、掌握技巧中所取得的成功令他們高興，因而斷定人類具有認識世界和有意識地控制世界的基本欲望。

　　3. 但他說，隨著歐共體對這一研究工作所提供的資金數量在現有基礎上適度增加，這種能源的供給在下一個十年後期是有可能取得突破的。

　　4. 那些能成功地適應地球所給予的一切的生物將長久地生存下來。那些不能適應生活挑戰的生物在世界上將會很快滅絕。這是被證實了的大自然運行的方法。