翻譯社提供以下資訊
英文翻譯練習三
Passage One
Anybody over 70 who was brought up in a country village or town finds the social customs of young people today strangely familiar. In the 1800’s, it was normal to have boys and girls pair off in a more or less stable fashion, and such pairing often ended in marriage.
Why have the younger people reverted so sharply to the ways of an earlier era and simpler society? There seems to be no clear-cut answer. The cause of the change has often been considered to be the Second World War, but this reversion was well under way before 1939. The niw social customs may be related to the Great Depression when a boy putting out money for a girl on dance, movies, or the like wanted to be sure of some return on his investment. It is also true that the fiercely competitive social life of the twenties meant that a popular girl had a very good time indeed.
But the majority of girls were not popular. They dreaded being neglected in parties. It may be that the less popular girls were the ones who slowly created the present democratic system, under which any girl with a steady is just as well off as any other girl with a steady .Since each boy wants a steady, too, and since the number of boys and girls are about equal, everybody seems better off at present. On the other hand, girls would insist that the new system was created by the boys who are aggressive, possessive, and jealous of all rivals.
Passage Two
It remains to be seen whether the reserves of raw materials would be sufficient to supply a world economy which would have grown by 500%. South-East Asia alone would have an energy consumption five times greater than that of Western Europe in 1970. Incidentally, if the underdeveloped countries started using up petrol at the same rate as the industrialized areas, then world reserves would already be exhausted by 1985.
All this only goes to show just how important it is to set up a plan to conserve and divide up fairly natural resources on a world-wide scale.
This is a matter of life and death because world population is exploding at an incredible rate. By the middle of the next century population will expand every year by as much as it did in the first 1500 years after Christ. In the southern, poor, parts of the globe, the figures are enough to make your hair stand on end. Even supposing that steps are taken to stability world population in te next 50 years, the number of inhabitants per square kilometer will increase by from 4 in the United States to 140 in South-East Asia. What can we do about it?
In the first hypothesis we do nothing. By the year 2000, the southern parts of the world then have a population greater than the total world population today. Calcutta would have 60 million inhabitants. It is unthinkable.
Alternatively, we could start acting right now to bring births under control within 15 years so that population levels off. Even then the population in the southern areas would not stop growing for 75 years.
Passage Three
One of the most interesting paradoxes in America today is that Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, is now engaged in serious debate about what a university should be, and whether it is measuring up.
Like the Roman Catholic Church and other ancient institutions, it is asking-still in private rather than in public-whether its past assumptions about faculty, authority, admissions, courses of study, are really relevant to the problems of the 1980’s.
Should Harvard-or any other university-be an intellectual sanctuary, apart from the political and social revolution of the age, or should it be a laboratory for experimentation with these political and social revolutions, or even an engine of the revolution? This is what is being discussed privately in the big houses of faculty members around the Harvard Yard.
The issue was defined by Walter lippmann a distinguished Harvard graduate, several years ago.
“If the universities are to do their work, ” he said, “they must be independent and they must be disinterested--- They are places to which men can turn for judgements which are unbiased by partisanship and special interest. Obviously, the moment the universities fall under political control, or under the control of private interest, or the moment they themselves take a hand in politics and the leadership of government, their value as independent and disinterested sources of judgement is weakened --- ”
This is part of the argument that is going on at Harvard today. Another part is the argument among the students that a university is the keeper of our ideals and morals, and should not be “disinterested” but activist in bringing the nation’s ideals and actions together.
Harvard’s men of today seem more troubled and less sure about personal, political and academic purpose than they did at the beginning. They are not even clear about how they should debate and resolve their problems, but they are struggling with them privately, and how they come out is bound to influence American university and political life in the 1980’s.
Passage Four
American’s genius with high technology may have put men on the moon, but there is growing skepticism about its ability to solve human problems closer to home.
In fact, a subtle but significant shift from purely technological solutions is already under way as scientists argue openly for new directions in research.
A growing number of scientists insist that answers to the world’s problems will not come from a flahier array of electronics and machines. Instead, as they see it, solutions must evolve from a better understanding of the humans that drive the system and from a fuller appreciation of the limits and potential of the earth’s resources.
What this means is an increased emphasis on the life and earth sciences, on sociology, psychology, economics and even philosophy.
More and more of the best minds in science, particularly young researchers, are being drawn into these developing fields.
All this is not to say that technological creativity will not play a critical role in solving energy and food shortages, or answers to environmental difficulties will not come from further advances in the same technologies that may have helped cause the problems.
Where the real challenge lies, in the view of the new type of scientists, is in finding ways to produce goods to meet the world’s needs, using less of the raw materials that are becoming scarce.
參考譯文:
1. 人們一直認為造成這種變化的原因是第二次世界大戰，可是這種復古現象在1939年以前就明顯地出現了。
2. 如果世界經濟真的以五倍於現有的速度在增長，那麼原材料的儲備是否能充分滿足其需求，尚不得而知。
3. 他們甚至不清楚該怎樣爭論和解決問題，但他們正私下地在對付這些問題。其結果將必定影響八十年代的美國大學和政治生活。
4. 所有這一切並不是說，技術創造力在解決能源和糧食短缺方面起不了關鍵性的作用， 也不是說，技術也許在造成環境問題方面曾起過推波助瀾的作用，所以它們本身的進一步發展，提供不了解決這一問題的答案。
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