考研英语1998 阅读及翻译.docx

《考研英语1998 阅读及翻译.docx》由会员分享，可在线阅读，更多相关《考研英语1998 阅读及翻译.docx（9页珍藏版）》请在得力文库 - 分享文档赚钱的网站上搜索。

1、1998 Passage 1 Few creations of big technology capture the imagination like giant dams. 1. Perhaps it is humankinds long suffering at the mercy of flood and drought that makes the ideal of forcing the waters to do our bidding so fascinating. But to be fascinated is also, sometimes, to be blind. Seve

2、ral giant dam projects threaten to do more harm than good. 在重大技术所创造的东西中很少能像大型水坝这样让人痴迷的。可能正是因为人类长期遭受洪水和干旱灾害的摆布才迫使人们治理江河、供我驱策的理想如此令人痴迷。但让人着迷有时也就使人盲目。有几个巨型大坝项目就有弊大于利的危险。The lesson from dams is that big is not always beautiful. 2. It doesnt help that building a big, powerful dam has become a symbol of a

3、chievement for nations and people striving to assert themselves. Egypts leadership in the Arab world was cemented by the Aswan High Dam. Turkeys bid for First World status includes the giant Ataturk Dam.建造大坝的教训是：大的未必总是美的。但这个教训也无法阻止修建高大雄伟的大坝已成为那些力争得到自我肯定的国家和人民的伟大成就的象征。埃及由于建造了阿斯旺大坝而巩固了在阿拉伯世界的领导地位。土耳其在

4、力争第一世界的努力中也包括修建阿塔特克大坝。But big dams tend not to work as intended. 3. The Aswan Dam, for example, stopped the Nile flooding but deprived Egypt of the fertile silt that floods left all in return for a giant reservoir of disease which is now so full of silt that it barely generates electricity. 但大坝不会像预期

5、的那样产生效果。以阿斯旺大坝为例，它阻止了尼罗河洪水泛滥，但也使埃及失去了洪水冲击过后留下的肥沃土壤，换回来的是这么一个疾病滋生的水库。现在这个水库积满了淤泥，几乎不能发电了。And yet, the myth of controlling the waters persists. 4. This week, in the heart of civilized Europe, Slovaks and Hungarians stopped just short of sending in the troops in their contention over a dam on the Danub

6、e. The huge complex will probably have all the usual problems of big dams. But Slovakia is bidding for independence from the Czechs, and now needs a dam to prove itself. 不过，控制水的神话还在继续。本周，在文明的欧洲腹地，斯洛伐克人和匈牙利人就为了多瑙河上的一处水坝引起争端，差点动用了军队。这个大型工程可能会出现大坝上所有的常见问题。但斯洛伐克正在要求脱离捷克而独立，现在他们需要建一个大坝来证明自己的实力。Meanwhile,

7、 in India, the World Bank has given the go-ahead to the even more wrong-headed Narmada Dam. And the bank has done this even though its advisors say the dam will cause hardship for the powerless and environmental destruction. The benefits are for the powerful, but they are far from guaranteed. 与此同时，世

8、界银行已经贷款给印度来建造问题很多的纳尔马达大坝。尽管世界银行的顾问说，该大坝将给平民带来苦难，而且也会破坏那里的环境，但世界银行已经这样做了。大坝会给有权有势者带来利益，但这种利益却没有保障5. Proper, scientific study of the impacts of dams and of the cost and benefits of controlling water can help to resolve these conflicts. Hydroelectric power and flood control and irrigation are possible

9、without building monster dams. But when you are dealing with myths, it is hard to be either proper, or scientific. It is time that the world learned the lessons of Aswan. You dont need a dam to be saved. 对于水坝的影响作用、水坝控制水流的成本和收益进行恰当而科学的研究能够有助于解决这些冲突。水利发电，治理洪水以及灌溉即使不建大型水坝也是可能的，不一定非要建大坝。但当你相信神话时就很难做到合理或

10、科学。现在是世界吸取阿斯旺大坝教训的时候了。我们不需要建一座将被拯救的大坝。1998 Passage 2 Well, no gain without pain, they say. But what about pain without gain? Everywhere you go in America, you hear tales of corporate revival. 1. What is harder to establish is whether the productivity revolution that businessmen assume they are presi

11、ding over is for real. 人们说，不劳就无获。但是，如果有劳却无获又会怎样呢？在美国，无论你走到哪里都会听到企业复苏的故事。商人们自认为的他们所领导的生产力革命是否确有其事，这一点更加难以确定。The official statistics are mildly discouraging. They show that, if you lump manufacturing and services together, productivity has grown on average by 1.2% since 1987. That is somewhat faster t

12、han the average during the previous decade. And since 1991, productivity has increased by about 2% a year, which is more than twice the 1978-1987 average. 2. The trouble is that part of the recent acceleration is due to the usual rebound that occurs at this point in a business cycle, and so is not c

13、onclusive evidence of a revival in the underlying trend. 3. There is, as Robert Rubin, the treasury secretary, says, a disjunction between the mass of business anecdote that points to a leap in productivity and the picture reflected by the statistics. 官方的统计数字却有点令人沮丧的。这些数据表明，如果把制造业和服务业合起来算，1987年以来生产力

14、平均增长1.2。这比前10年的平均增长速度略快。自1991年来，生产力每年约增长2。这比1978年1987年的平均增长速度高两倍以上。问题在于，近年发生的生产力快速增长部分是由于商业周期通常到了这时候就会出现的反弹造成的，因而它不是经济复苏已经是潜在趋势的结论性证据。正如财政部长罗伯特鲁宾所说的，生产力发生飞跃的商业传奇与统计数字所反映的情况之间存在着一种“脱节”。Some of this can be easily explained. 4. New ways of organizing the workplace all that re-engineering and downsizing

15、 are only one contribution to the overall productivity of an economy, which is driven by many other factors such as joint investment in equipment and machinery, new technology, and investment in education and training. Moreover, most of the changes that companies make are intended to keep them profi

16、table, and this need not always mean increasing productivity: switching to new markets or improving quality can matter just as much. 这其中的一些原因很容易解释。企业重组的新方法所有那些重新设计和缩小规模的做法只是对一个经济的整体生产力做出了一方面的贡献，而这种经济的发展还收到许多其他因素的驱动，如设备、机械上的联合投资，新技术，以及教育和培训上的投资。此外，公司的大部分改革是为了赢利，而达到赢利的目的不一定非要提高生产力：转入新的市场或改善产品质量也会有同样的功

17、效。Two other explanations are more speculative. First, some of the business restructuring of recent years may have been ineptly done. Second, even if it was well done, it may have spread much less widely than people suppose. 其他两种解释带有很大的猜测性。一种解释是近年来所进行的公司重组也许并未奏效。另一种则说，即使有所成效，效果也不像人们所设想的那样广泛。Leonard S

18、chlesinger, a Harvard academic and former chief executive of Au Bong Pain, a rapidly growing chain of bakery cafes, says that much re-engineering has been crude. In many cases, he believes, the loss of revenue has been greater than the reductions in cost. 5. His colleague, Michael Beer, says that fa

19、r too many companies have applied re-engineering in a mechanistic fashion, chopping out costs without giving sufficient thought to long-term profitability. BBDOs Al Rosen shine is blunter. He dismisses a lot of the work of re-engineering consultants as mere rubbish “the worst sort of ambulance-chasi

20、ng.哈佛学者，快速增长的面包连锁店Au Bon Pain的前任总裁莱昂纳多施莱辛格说，许多“重组”是粗糙的。他认为很多情况下，企业收益的损失超出了成本的降低。他的同事迈克比尔说，太多的公司已用机械的方式进行重组，在没有充分考虑到长期赢利能力的情况下降低了成本。BBDO的艾尔罗森夏恩更加直率。他把许多重组咨询专家所做的工作视为垃圾“典型的劳而无获”。1998 Passage 3 Science has long had an uneasy relationship with other aspects of culture. 1. Think of Galileos 17th-century

21、trial for his rebelling belief before the Catholic Church or poet William Blakes harsh remarks against the mechanistic worldview of Isaac Newton. The schism between science and the humanities has, if anything, deepened in this century. 科学与文化的其他方面的关系一直都很紧张。想想看，17世纪伽利略为他叛逆性的信仰而遭受天主教会的审判，还有诗人威廉布莱克对艾萨克牛

22、顿的机械的世界观所发表的尖锐批判。本世纪，（自然）科学与人文科学之间的分裂更深了Until recently, the scientific community was so powerful that it could afford to ignore its critics but no longer. As funding for science has declined, scientists have attacked anti-science in several books, notably Higher Superstition, by Paul R. Gross, a bio

23、logist at the University of Virginia, and Norman Levitt, a mathematician at Rutgers University; and The Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. 以前，科学界如此之强大以致可以对批评者置之不理但现在不同了。由于科研经费减少了，科学家出了几本书来抨击“反科学”势力，其中值得注意的有弗吉尼亚大学生物学家保罗R格罗斯和拉特格斯大学的数学家诺曼莱维特合著的高级迷信及康奈尔大学的卡尔萨根著的鬼怪世界。2. Defenders o

24、f science have also voiced their concerns at meetings such as The Flight from Science and Reason, held in New York City in 1995, and Science in the Age of (Mis)information, which assembled last June near Buffalo. 科学的捍卫者们也在一些会议上表示了他们的担忧。比如，1995年在纽约举行的“远离科学和理性”会议，以及去年6月在布法罗附近召开的“信息（迷信）时代的科学”会议。Anti-sc

25、ience clearly means different things to different people. Gross and Levitt find fault primarily with sociologists, philosophers and other academics who have questioned sciences objectivity. Sagan is more concerned with those who believe in ghosts, creationism and other phenomena that contradict the

26、scientific worldview. 显然，反科学对不同的人有不同的含义。格罗斯和莱维特主要挑那些质疑科学客观性的社会学家、哲学家和其他学者的毛病。而萨根则更关注那些相信鬼怪、上帝造物论和其他与科学世界观相左的人。3. A survey of news stories in 1996 reveals that the anti-science tag has been attached to many other groups as well, from authorities who advocated the elimination of the last remaining sto

27、cks of smallpox virus to Republicans who advocated decreased funding for basic research.1996年对新闻报道的调查表明，反科学的标签也贴在了许多其他群体上，从提倡消灭所有现存的天花病毒的官方人士到倡议削减基础研究基金的共和党人。4. Few would dispute that the term applies to the Unabomber, whose manifesto, published in 1995, scorns science and longs for return to a pret

28、echnological utopia. But surely that does not mean environmentalists concerned about uncontrolled industrial growth are anti-science, as an essay in US News & World Report last May seemed to suggest.将该词用在仇视现代文明的恐怖主义者身上，也不会引起多大争议，它在1995年公开发表蔑视科学、渴望回到前技术时代理想社会的声明。当然，这并不意味着，对不加控制的工业发展表示担忧的环境主义者也是反科学的，而

29、去年5月份刊登在美国新闻和世界报导的一篇文章似乎有此暗示。The environmentalists, inevitably, respond to such critics. 5. The true enemies of science, argues Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University, a pioneer of environmental studies, are those who question the evidence supporting global warming, the depletion of the ozone layer and

30、 other consequences of industrial growth. 毫无疑问，环境主义者要对这些批评做出反应。作为环境研究的先驱者，斯坦福大学的保罗埃利希认为，科学的真正的敌人是那些对支持全球变暖、臭氧层稀薄和工业增长带来的其他后果的证据提出质疑的人。Indeed, some observers fear that the anti-science epithet is in danger of becoming meaningless. The term anti-science can lump together too many, quite different thin

31、gs, notes Harvard University philosopher Gerald Holton in his 1993 work Science and Anti-Science, They have in common only one thing that they tend to annoy or threaten those who regard themselves as more enlightened.的确，一些观察者担心反科学这个词会失去意义。“反科学这个词可以涵盖很多截然不同的东西”，哈佛大学的哲学家杰拉尔德霍尔顿在其1993年的著作科学和反科学中写道：“它们惟

32、一的共同点就是会激怒或威胁那些自以为更有见识的人。1998 Passage 4 1. Emerging from the 1980 census is the picture of a nation developing more and more regional competition, as population growth in the Northeast and Midwest reaches a near standstill. 1980年美国人口普查显示出这样一幅图像：随着东北部和中西部人口增长近乎停止，地区间的竞争越来越激烈了。2. This development and

33、its strong implications for US politics and economy in years ahead has enthroned the South as Americas most densely populated region for the first time in the history of the nations head counting. 这一发展以及它对今后几年美国政治和经济的强大影响使南部在美国人口普查史上第一次成为人口最密集的地区。Altogether, the US population rose in the 1970s by 23

34、.2 million people numerically the third-largest growth ever recorded in a single decade. Even so, that gain adds up to only 11.4 percent, lowest in American annual records except for the Depression years. 20世纪70年代，美国人口总共增长了2320万从数字上看，这是有纪录以来10年期人口增长的第三高峰。即使如此，人口总共也只增加了11.4，除了大萧条时期，这是美国年度记录最低的增长率。Ame

35、ricans have been migrating south and west in larger numbers since World War II, and the pattern still prevails.第二次世界大战以来，美国人大量向南部和西部迁移，而且这种趋势如今仍很盛行。Three sun-belt states Florida, Texas and California together had nearly 10 million more people in 1980 than a decade earlier. Among large cities, San Di

36、ego moved from 14th to 8th and San Antonio form 15th to 10th with Cleveland and Washington DC dropping out of the top 10. 佛罗里达、得克萨斯和加利福尼亚这三个阳光充沛的地区，1980年的人口比前10年增加了近1000万。在大城市排行榜上，圣地亚哥从第14位上升到第8位，圣安东尼奥从第15位升到第10位，而克利夫兰和华盛顿特区却被挤出了前10位。Not all that shift can be attributed to the movement out of the sn

37、ow belt, census officials say. 3. Nonstop waves of immigrants played a role, too and so did bigger crops of babies as yesterdays baby boom generation reached its child-bearing years. 普查官员说，并非所有这些人口迁移都是为了离开寒冷地带。不断涌入的移民潮，还有以前“生育高峰”出生的那些孩子也已到了生育年龄，这些都发挥着作用。Moreover, demographers see the continuing shif

38、t south and west as joined by a related but newer phenomenon: More and more, Americans apparently are looking not just for places with more jobs but with fewer people, too. Some instances 而且，人口学家发现，向南部和向西部的不断迁移还伴随着一种相关却又较新的现象：越来越多的美国人显然不再仅仅寻找有更多工作机会的地方，也在寻找人口稀少的地方。例证如下： Regionally, the Rocky Mountai

39、n states reported the most rapid growth rate 37.1 percent since 1970 in a vast area with only 5 percent of the US population. 从区域上看，洛基山脉各州上报了自1970年以来最高的人口增长率37.1，而以前这片广阔的土地上的人口仅占美国总人口的5。 Among states, Nevada and Arizona grew fastest of all: 63.5 and 53.1 percent respectively. Except for Florida and

40、Texas, the top 10 in rate of growth is composed of Western states with 7.5 million people about 9 per square mile. 从各州情况看，内华达和亚利桑州是增长最快的两个州：其增长率分别为63.5和53.1。除了佛罗里达州和得克萨斯州外，处于人口增长率前10位的都是西部各州，共有750万人每平方英里约9个人。The flight from overcrowdedness affects the migration from snow belt to more bearable climat

41、es. 离开人口过度稠密区的做法影响了以前那种离开寒冷地带去气候宜人之地的趋势。Nowhere do 1980 census statistics dramatize more the American search for spacious living than in the Far West. There, California added 3.7 million to its population in the 1970s, more than any other state. 没有哪次调查比1980年美国人口普查统计更能突出显示美国人迁往最西部是为了找到更广阔的生存空间。正因为如此，

42、加利福尼亚州在70年代人口增加了370万，比其他任何州都多。In that decade, however, large numbers also migrated from California, mostly to other parts of the West. 4. Often they choose and still are choosing somewhat colder climates such as Oregon, Idaho and Alaska in order to escape smog, crime and other plagues of urbanizatio

43、n in the Golden State. 70年代也有大量的人离开加利福尼亚，大多数去了西部其他的地方。他们常常选择现在依然这样选择一些气候较冷的地区，如俄勒冈、爱达荷和阿拉斯加，为的是躲开（“金州”加利福尼亚）的烟雾、犯罪和其他城市化进程中的问题。5. As a result, Californias growth rate dropped during the 1970s, to 18.5 percent little more than two-thirds the 1960s growth figure and considerably below that of other We

44、stern states. 结果，加利福尼亚的人口增长率在70年代降到了18.5略高于60年代增长率的2/3，但大大低于西部其他各州。1998 Passage 5 Scattered around the globe are more than 100 small regions of isolated volcanic activity known to geologists as hot spots. 1. Unlike most of the worlds volcanoes, they are not always found at the boundaries of the grea

45、t drifting plates that make up the earths surface; on the contrary, many of them lie deep in the interior of a plate. Most of the hot spots move only slowly, and in some cases the movement of the plates past them has left trails of dead volcanoes. The hot spots and their volcanic trails are mileston

46、es that mark the passage of the plates. 地球上散落分布着100多个互不相连的小火山活动区，被地质学家称为热点。和世界上大多数火山不同的是，它们并不总是在构成地球表面的巨大漂流的板块之间的边界上出现；相反，许多热点处于板块较深的内部。大多数热点移动非常缓慢，有时，板块滑过这些热点便留下了死火山的痕迹。热点及其火山痕迹是板块移动的标志。That the plates are moving is now beyond dispute. Africa and South America, for example, are moving away from eac

47、h other as new material is injected into the sea floor between them. The complementary coastlines and certain geological features that seem to span the ocean are reminders of where the two continents were once joined. The relative motion of the plates carrying these continents has been constructed i

48、n detail, but the motion of one plate with respect to another cannot readily be translated into motion with respect to the earths interior. It is not possible to determine whether both continents are moving in opposite directions or whether one continent is stationary and the other is drifting away

49、from it. Hot spots, anchored in the deeper layers of the earth, provide the measuring instruments needed to resolve the question. From an analysis of the hot-spot population it appears that the African plate is stationary and that it has not moved during the past 30 million years. 板块漂移这一理论现在是毋庸置疑的。例如，以非洲和南美洲为例，由于有新的物质注入二者之间的海底