[四级] 英语四级翻译练习题 第001----005组

英语四级翻译练习题 第003组
 



"We're using the wrong word", says Sean Drysdale, a desperate doctor from a rural hospital at Hlabisa in northern KwaZulu-Natal. "This isn't an epidemic, it's a disaster". A recent UNICEF report, which states that almost one-third of Swaziland's 900,000 people are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, supports this diagnosis. HIV is spreading faster in southern Africa than anywhere else in the world. But is anyone paying attention? (1) Despite the fact that most of the world's 33.5 million HIV/AIDS cases are in sub-Saharan Africa--with an additional 4 million infected each year--the priorities at last week's Organization of African Unity summit were conflict resolution and economic development. (2) Yet the epidemic could have a greater impact on economic development--or, rather, the lack of it--than many politicians suspect. While business leaders are more concerned about the Y2K millennium bug than the longterm effect of AIDS, statistics show that the workforce in South Africa, for example, is likely to be 20% HIV positive by next year. Medical officials and researchers warn that not a single country in the region has a cohesive government strategy to tackle the crisis.

(3) The way managers address AIDS in the workplace will determine whether their companies survive the first decade of the 21st century, says Deane Moore, an actuary(保险统计家 ) for South Africa's Metropolitarn Life insurance company. Moore estimates that in South Africa there will be 580,000 new AIDS cases a year and a life expectancy of just 38 by 2010. "We'll be back to the Middle Ages," says Drysdale, whose hospital is in one of the areas in South Africa with the highest rates of HIV infection. "The graph is heading toward the vertical. And yet people are still not taking it seriously." 


The surging rate of AIDS and the drop in life expectancy have already helped drag down South Africa 13 Places to 101 out of the 174 countries on the United Nations Development Programme's survey of living standards. The U.N.D.P. noted that, at current infection rates, South Africa could lose about 20% of its workforce to AIDS within the next six or seven years.

Many companies in South Africa are already losing 3% of their workforce to the disease, says Alan Whiteside, director of health, economics and HIV/AIDS research at the University of Natal. There are 2.2 million AIDS orphans in southern Africa, he said at a World Economic Forum conference in Durban earlier this month. (4) "In south Africa we talked of a lost generation because of apartheid, but our next lost generation will be due to children orphaned by AIDS. Levels of HIV infection at antenatal (出生前的)clinics are "truly horrendous," says Whiteside--they're now 22.8%. Even more serious is the rapid increase in the disease among girls aged 15 to 19, a trend indicating that AIDS prevention programs are having little effect.

Most southern African countries are simply too poor to supply more than basic health services, let alone medicines, to confront the crisis. Patients in some government hospitals in Harare have to supply their own bedding, food, drugs and, in some cases, even their own nurses (5) Zimbabwe's flail domestic economy depends to a large extent on informal enterprises and small businesses, many of which are imploding as AIDS takes its toll on owners and employees. "The ripple effect is devastating," says Harare AIDS researcher Renee Loweuson.

参考答案　

1.尽管世界上3350万艾滋病病毒携带者／患者中的大多数人都生活在非洲撒哈拉沙漠以南地区——每年还有另外400万人感染艾滋病病毒，但上周召开的非洲统一组织首脑会议的主要议题却仍是解决冲突和发展经济。
2.然而这一流行病对于经济发展，或者更确切地说对于经济发展目前所缺乏的因素产生的影响比许多政治家想像的更大。
3.南非大都市人寿保险公司保险统计员迪恩莫尔认为，管理人员在工作场所如何对待艾滋病将决定他们的公司在21世纪的头几年能否继续存在。
4.在南非，囚种族隔离我们有过失落的一代，新的失落的一代将是因艾滋病而变为孤儿的一代。
5.津巴布韦薄弱的国民经济在很大程度上依赖于非正式企业和小型商业，而随着艾滋病夺去雇主和雇员的生命，许多企业都自身难保。 
英语四级翻译练习题 第004组
 



In the long period from 1500 to 1800,  nation-states were all influenced by a set of ideas known as mercantilism(重商主义). (1) Mercantilist doctrine and institutions were important because they were held by practical businesspeople and heads of state who strongly influenced public policy and institutional change.

The primary aim of mercantilists was to achieve power and wealth for the state. To generate an inflow of gold or silver through trade, the value of exports should exceed the value of imports. And the state could attain great power only if political and economic unity became a fact. (2) If all the materials necessary to foster domestic industry were not available, they could best be obtained by establishing colonies or friendly foreign trading posts from which such goods could be imported. And a strong merchant marine could carry foreign goods, thereby helping to secure favorable trade balances. (3) Mercantilists believed that these means of achieving national power could be made effective by the passage and strict enforcement of legislation regulating economic life.

(4) Almost as soon as Virginia tobacco began to be shipped in commercial quantities to England, King James I levied a tax on it while agreeing to prohibit the growth of competing tobacco in England. Taxes, regulation, and subsidies were all used as mercantile policies, but the primary ones that affected the colonies were the Navigation Acts.

In 1640s, Americans had slipped into the habit of shipping their goods directly to continental ports, and the Dutch made great inroads into the carrying trade of the colonies. After the Restoration, England was in a position to enforce a strict commercial policy, beginning with the Navigation Acts of 1660 and 1663. Despite the continued modifications to these acts by policy changes, it is sufficient to note three primary categories of trade restriction:

(5) All trade of the colonies was to be carried  were English built and owned, commanded by an English captain, and manned by a crew of whom three-quarters were English.

All foreign merchants were excluded from dealing directly in the commerce of the English colonies. They could engage in colonial trade only through England and merchants resident there.

Certain commodities produced in the colonies could be exported only to England (essentially any destination within the Empire). These "enumerated" goods included sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, ginger, and various dyewoods.

参考答案　

1.重商主义学说与制度之所以重要是因为它们被具有影响力的商人和政府首脑们信奉，而正是这些人强有力地影响着国家公共政策与制度的变革。
2.如果促进国内产业发展所需的物资难以获得，则最好是通过建立殖民地或友好的国外商栈来进口。
3.重商主义者认为，这些增强国力的手段可以由通过并严格执行规范经济生活的法规来实现。
4.几乎在弗吉尼亚的烟草刚开始大批运往英国时，英王詹姆士一世便对此征税，同时同意禁止在英国竞争性地种植烟草。
5.凡殖民地的贸易，其所用船只必须是英国制造和拥有，船长和至少3／4的船员也必须是英国人。

英语四级翻译练习题 第005组
 



Though deciphering the entire human genetic blueprint is still a few years away, scientists have begun laying claim to the stretches of DNA whose codes they have succeeded in cracking. In recent  have flooded the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with applications for thousands of genes and gene fragments--and they have stirred a lot of controversy in the process.

(1) The biggest problem with patenting genes is that while scientists have at least a general idea of what specific strands of genetic coding do, often it's just that--general. Investigators do sometimes succeed in isolating a single, crisp gene with a single known function. Often, however, researchers trying to map genes get no further than marking off fragmentary stretches of DNA that may be thousands of bases in length. (2) These so-called expressed sequence tags may have real genetic information embedded in them, but determining where those nuggets are and what their structure is takes more digging.

Geneticists have lately been filing patent applications for these ESTs anyway, figuring that it's best to protect their turf now and go spelunking(探索洞穴) around in it later. In a science that prizes precision above all else, this can be an odd way to do business. "I would guess that in many cases the scientists didn't even examine all the material," says Bruce Lehman, commissioner or the Patent and Trademark Office.

Not only can such filings be sloppy genetics, they can also be bad business. EST applications may lead to so-called submarine patents, claims that are made today and then vanish, only to reappear when some unsuspecting scientist finds something useful to do with genes hidden in the patent. To prevent this, Lehman requires that EST applications include no more than 10 genetic sequences. Each 10 after that requires a separate application--and a separate filing fee. "Companies will now have an incentive to file more selective applications," says Lehman.

(3) More troubling than determining how to patent the genome is the larger question of whether anyone ought to be laying claim to human DNA at all. This is partly an economic issue. If the entire genetic schematic(图表) is preemptively owned by the research  now, where is the incentive for independent scientists--often sources of great innovation to work on it later? Licensing cost, warns Jeffrey Kahn, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, could hold medical progress hostage. (4) Patenting proponents insist that an equally persuasive argument could be made that the large genome-mapping groups need patent protection to make their work worthwhile to them.

Stickier than the economic question is the ethical one. Most of us reflexively shrink from the idea of anyone's owning the rights to any part of the human form. Besides, if the first anatomist to spot, say, the pancreas(胰) was not granted title to it, why should modem genome-mapping scientists be able to claim even a single gene? As Kahn points out, "You could patent a system for mining gold from ore. We don't let people patent the gold". (5) That kind of argument is grounded not in law but in the very idea of what it means to be human an issue that even the highest federal court is not likely to settle.

参考答案
　
1.申请基因专利的最大问题就是当科学家们对于基因编码的特定股起什么作用至少有一个大体想法时，它常常就只是大体上的。
2.这些所谓的已表达的序列标签可能携带有真正的基因信息，但确定这些小块在什么地方及它们的结构是什么样子需要更多的挖掘探究。
3.比确定如何申请基因组专利更令人烦恼的是一个更大的问题——任何人到底该不该对人类DNA提出专利要求。
4.专利申请者的支持者坚持说，他们可以提出同样有说服力的理由，即进行基因组绘制工作的大型团体需要专利保护以使他们的工作对他们来说是值得的。
5.这种论点不是立足于法律，而是立足于对做人意味着什么的理解上——这是一个连联邦最高法院都不太可能解决的问题。