2013年考研英语复习资料：读译参考

英语自学网

　　Selling the sage of Qufu
        　　推销孔圣人(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jul 6th 2006 | TOKYO
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　THE old man would surely be proud. This week some 300 representatives, from 35 different countries, gathered in Beijing's Great Hall of the People for the first-ever Confucius Institute conference. (1)This was no philosophical pow-wow[1], but the world's largest-ever conference on teaching Chinese as a foreign language. Confucius Institutes are China's answer _______① the Alliance Fran aise, Germany's Goethe Institut and the British Council, and officials hope they will help meet a growing global demand for Chinese-language education.
        　　孔老夫子肯定会感到自豪。本周，来自35个国家的近300名代表在北京人民大会堂召开了首届孔子学院大会。这不是一次讨论哲学思想的会议，而是迄今为止最大的一次研究对外汉语教学的大会。孔子学院的意义如同法兰西联谊会、德国歌德学院和英国文化协会，中国官员希望它将有助于满足全球对汉语教学日益增长的需求。

kyfive

        　　Come to sunny Colombia
        　　到阳光明媚的哥伦比亚来吧!(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 29th 2006 | CIUDAD PERDIDA, COLOMBIA
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　MENTION Colombia, and most people think of cocaine, kidnappings and guerrilla violence. (1)These have served to keep all but the most danger-loving tourists away for decades. But under álvaro Uribe, Colombia's president since 2002, violence has fallen steadily and many parts of the country have become safe. Now the government is trying to r_______① conventional images of Colombia with different ones: white-sand beaches, colonial cities, jungle-clad mountains and placid coffee farms.
        　　一说起哥伦比亚，大多数人都会想到可卡因、绑架案和游击队。几十年来，除了那些特别喜欢冒险的人之外，几乎所有游客都对这里望而却步。不过，在2002年上任至今的哥伦比亚总统阿尔瓦罗 乌里韦治下，暴力事件已经稳步减少，大部分地区都已变得安全。政府现在正努力改变哥伦比亚的传统形象，给人们呈现一派迥然不同的景象：洁白的沙滩，殖民时代风格的都市，丛林密布的山岳，还有那静谧的咖啡庄园。

kyfour

        　　A stilted story
        　　踩高跷的故事(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 29th 2006
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　IF THERE were a Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Ants, Matthias Wittlinger of the University of Ulm, in Germany, would probably be top of its hate list. The reason is that Dr Wittlinger and his c________① have, as they report in this week's Science, been chopping the feet off ants. And not only that. They have been making other ants walk around on stilts.
        　　假如有一个皇家防止残害蚂蚁协会的话，德国乌尔姆大学的马提亚 威特林格可能会首当其冲地成为其憎恨对象。这是因为威特林格博士和他的同事们在本周《科学》杂志上报道说他们砍去了一些蚂蚁的脚。这还不算，他们还让别的蚂蚁踩着高跷走路。
        　　Saharan desert ants of the genus Cataglyphis have to travel long distances to discover food in their i________②, sandy environment. How they find their way home once they have done so is a mystery. Ants in more temperate climates often lay down chemical trails, but Cataglyphis, apparently, does not. Like honeybees and ancient mariners, they can n_______③ by the sun, so they know the general direction in which to travel. But, also like ancient mariners (who knew their latitude, but not their longitude), such solar reckoning cannot tell them when to stop.
        　　撒哈拉沙漠的箭蚁不得不在贫瘠的沙质环境中长途跋涉寻找食物。它们找完食物后如何返回蚁巢却一直是个谜。温和气候环境下的蚂蚁往往会在路途中留下化学记号，可箭蚁显然不会。它们跟蜜蜂和古代海员一样，可以通过日照导航，从而知道出行的大致方向。但是也跟古代海员一样(他们只会辨认纬度不会辨认经度)，这种根据太阳测算位置的方法无法告知它们该在何时结束行程。

kytwo

        　　Brothers in arms
        　　袍泽之情(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 29th 2006 | TORONTO
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　RAY BLANCHARD, a researcher at Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, was reviewing some data a few years ago when he noticed something odd: gay men seemed to have more older brothers than straight men.
        　　几年前，多伦多毒瘾与心理健康中心研究员雷 布朗夏尔在回顾一些数据时注意到一个奇怪的现象——同性恋男子的哥哥似乎比异性恋男子多。
        　　Intrigued—and sceptical—he decided to investigate. He recruited 302 gay men and the same number of heterosexual controls and inquired about their families. How many siblings[1] did they have, _______① what sex, and how had the births been spaced? How old had their parents been when they had had them? Dr Blanchard found that only one detail seemed to predict sexual orientation: the more elder brothers a man had, the more likely he was to be gay. (1)Neither elder sisters nor younger siblings of either sex had any effect, but each additional elder brother increased his chance of being gay by about 33% from the population average of one man in 50.
        　　由于对此感到好奇和怀疑，他决定做个调查。他招募了302名同性恋男子和一样多的异性恋男子，并问及一些与家庭有关的问题：有几个兄弟，几个姐妹，前后出生间隔多长时间?出生时父母多大年龄?布朗夏尔博士发现，预示性取向的似乎只有一个细节：哥哥越多，成为同性恋的可能性就越大。姐姐以及弟妹的数量对某人的性取向没有任何影响。一般而言，平均50个男人中就有1人可能成为同性恋，每多一位哥哥，此人成为同性恋的可能性就增加33%左右。

kythree

        　　Ulterior motives
        　　居心叵测(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 22nd 2006 | OTTAWA
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　IN ONE of the more shameful episodes of its past, Canada imposed a hefty head tax _______① all Chinese immigrants in 1885, then banned their entry altogether from 1923 to 1947. For the 15,000 or so Chinese men who had come to build Canada's transcontinental railway and the many more that came thereafter, it became first prohibitively expensive and then impossible to send for their wives and children.
        　　1885年，加拿大开始向所有华人移民征收沉重的人头税，后来又在1923年至1947年间完全禁止华人移民入境，这是该国历史上发生的较不体面的事件之一。对于到加拿大修建横跨大陆铁路(即太平洋铁路)的大约15000名以及其后到来的更多中国男子而言，要想把他们的妻小接到加拿大，先是代价高得令其望而却步，后来连一点可能也没有了。
        　　_______② decades, Canadians of Chinese descent have demanded an apology and redress[1]. Successive federal governments ignored them, apologising to various other groups, including 14,000 Japanese-Canadians, who also received C$21,000 each for their internment and property expropriation during the second world war. Fearing this might open the floodgates, a Liberal government declared in 1994 that the past was the past and that no further compensation would be forthcoming.
        　　数十年来，加拿大华裔一直要求道歉和赔偿，可继任的各届联邦政府都置之不理，倒是向其它许多种族进行了道歉，其中包括14000名日裔加拿大人，并给每人发放了21000加元，作为对其在二战时期身遭拘禁和财产被征用的赔偿。由于担心一发不可收拾，1994年自由党政府宣布，过去归过去，以后不会再有进一步的赔偿了。

kythree

        　　Blogging off
        　　走出博客(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 15th 2006 | NEW YORK
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　“I LOVE Microsoft and Microsoft did not lose me,” protested Robert Scoble, a little too loudly, on his blog last week, in a bid to end feverish speculation in the blogosphere about why, exactly, he had decided to leave Microsoft. The software g_______①'s “technical evangelist”, Mr Scoble has become the best-known example of a corporate blogger. On his blog, called Scobleizer, which he started in 2000, he writes about Microsoft's products, and has sometimes criticised them fiercely—(1)thereby both establishing his credibility and, by its willingness to tolerate him, helping to humanise his employer.
        　　“我热爱微软，微软也没有失去我。”罗伯特 斯考伯上周在他的博客上义正词严地说。他这么说是希望博客界不要再对他为何决定离开微软妄加臆测。作为这一软件巨头的“技术专员”，斯考伯先生已经成为企业博客最知名的典范。他的博客名叫Scobleizer，始建于2000年，主要写一些与微软产品有关的文章，有时候也会对其提出严厉批评——如此一来，不但树立了他的声望，也藉微软对他的宽容大度体现了微软的人性化。

kytwo

        　　Bad news about bad guys
        　　关于坏蛋的坏消息(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 15th 2006 | WASHINGTON, DC
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　AMERICANS worry about crime. In a big country with hyperactive media, any sensational horror is quickly broadcast from coast to coast, making many people n______①. Last year, for example, after a teenager shot dead ten people in and around a Minnesota high school, pollsters asked a sample of Americans how likely it was that a similar massacre might occur in their own town._________________________. (近四分之三的人说“很有可能”或“大概会”。)
        　　美国人为犯罪发愁。在一个媒体极为活跃的大国，任何骇人听闻的恐怖事件很快就能广为人知，让许多人紧张不安。比如说，去年一位少年在明尼苏达一所中学里及其周边地区开枪打死10人之后，民调者对美国人进行了随机抽样调查，询问类似的杀人案件在他们当地发生的可能性有多大，近四分之三的人说“很有可能”或“大概会”。

kyone

        　　Busy signal
        　　信号忙(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 8th 2006
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　LONDON responded to terrorist attack on July 7th ______① true Blitz1 style: rescuers were heroic, and ordinary citizens showed compassion and fortitude. (1)Or so the politically correct version goes. A report this week from the London Assembly2 takes a sterner line. In fact, radios failed to work, medical supplies were lacking, some ambulances arrived inexplicably[1] late and traumatised people were left to wander off.
        　　伦敦方面应对7月7日恐怖袭击时的情景跟当年遭遇德军闪电般空袭时如出一辙：救援人员英勇无比，平民百姓富有同情心而且不屈不挠。从政治角度来看，这么做大概无可非议。不过，伦敦议会本周发表的一份报告则较为苛刻地指出了其中存在的问题，比如无线电通讯不畅，医疗支援不足，有的救护车还莫名其妙地姗姗来迟，以至于受伤群众无人过问。

kysix

        　　Time's mortuary
        　　时代的殓房(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 1st 2006
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　WHAT was the 20th century's most distinctive feature? It is a historians' parlor game[1], but there can be no definitive answer. For some, it would be getting men to the moon, discovering penicillin, splitting the atom or some other great scientific a________①. For others, it would be the fastest and most sustained period of economic growth in history. Or the end of the age of empires, which had dominated the politics and economics of the world for centuries. For Niall Ferguson, however, only this last description comes close and even then only as background. In his view, the century's most distinctive feature was violence: the slaughter, and not only in war, of millions upon millions of people. His new book seeks to describe and, as far as possible, explain why this happened.
        　　二十世纪最鲜明的特征是什么?这是一个历史学家们讨论的问题，但可能谁也无法准确回答。有的人认为是人类登月、发现青霉素、原子裂解以及其它一些伟大的科学成就，而有的人则认为是史上经济增长速度最快、最稳定的时期，也有人认为是统治世界政治经济数百年的帝国时代的终结。然而，对于尼尔 弗格森而言，只有最后一种说法才是最贴切的，也只有这一点才是值得参考的时代背景。在他看来，二十世纪最鲜明的特征就是暴力——不计其数的人惨遭屠戮，而且不仅仅因为战争。他新近出版的著作就是要寻求记述并尽可能阐明这一切发生的原因。

kytwo

        　　Deadly beauty
        　　致命美景(陈继龙 编译)
        　　Jun 8th 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO
        　　From The Economist print edition
        　　KEVIN HINES, a manic-depressive, was 19 and in one of his weekly downswings on an o_______① Monday morning in 2000. He went to the nearby Golden Gate Bridge to kill himself mostly because, with only a four-foot (1.2-metre) railing to leap, “I figured it was the easiest way.” He dived over, but flipped and hit the water at 75mph with his feet first. His legs were crushed, but he somehow stayed conscious and started paddling[1] with his u_______② body until the Coast Guard fished him out.
        　　凯文 海因斯是一个19岁的躁狂抑郁症患者。在2000年一个天气阴沉的星期一早晨，他像往常一样感到浑身不得劲。于是，他走到附近的金门大桥，之所以选择在那里了断余生，主要是因为只需要翻过一排四英尺(1.2米)高的栏杆，“我觉得这样自杀最简单。”他越过栏杆，纵身跳下，但在空中翻了几个跟头之后，他的脚先碰到了水面，腿摔折了，不过意识还有些清醒，于是上身开始用力扑腾，直到海岸巡逻队队员把他捞上岸。