2015年考研英语翻译练习（text 4）
考研英语翻译注重考生的词汇、语法、逻辑和行文组织能力，同样也注重考生的知识面广度和深度。要想提高翻译能力不能纸上谈兵，最重要的还是要多练多总结。新东方在线小编分享翻译练习篇章及全译文解析，希望大家认真做题和理解。2015年考研英语翻译练习（text 4）
The relation of language and mind has interested philosophers for many
centuries.(61)The Greeks assumed that the structure of language had some
connection with the process of thought which took root in Europe long before
people realized how diverse language could be.
Only recently did linguists begin the serious study of languages that were
very different rom their own.Two anthropologists—linguists，Franz Boas and Edward
Sapir，were pioneers in describing many native languages of North and South
America during the first half of the twentieth century.
(62)We are obliged to them because some of these languages have since
vanished，as the people who spoke them died out or became assimilated and lost
their native languages.Other linguists in the earlier part of this
century，however，who were less eager to deal with bizarre(古怪的)data
from“exotic(外来的)”language，were not always so grateful.(63)The newly described
languages were often so strikingly different from the wellstudied languages of
Europe and Southeast Asia that some scholars even accused Boas and Sapir of
fabricating their data.Native American languages are indeed different，so much so
in fact that Navajo could be used by the US military as a code during World
WarⅡto sand secret messages.
Sapir’s pupil，Benjamin Lee Whorf，continued the study of American Indian
languages.(64)Being interested in the relationship of the language and
thought，Whorf developed the idea that the structure of the language determines
the structure of habitual thought in a society.He reasoned that because it is
easier to formulate certain concepts and not others in a given language，the
speakers of that language think along one track and not along another.(65)Whorf
came to believe in a sort of linguistic determinism which，in its strongest
from，states that language imprisons the mind，and that the grammatical patterns
in a language can produce farreaching consequences for the culture of a
society.Later，this idea became to be known as the SapirWhorf hypothesis，but this
term is somewhat inappropriate.Although both Sapir and Whorf emphasized the
diversity of languages，Sapir himself never explicitly supported the notion of
linguistic determinism.
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