汉英翻译篇章练习

汉英翻译篇章练习

Practice 1

近读报纸，对国内名片和请柬的议论颇多，于是想起客居巴黎时经常见到的法国人手中的名片和请柬，随笔记下来，似乎不无借鉴之处。

在巴黎，名目繁多的酒会、冷餐会是广交朋友的好机会。在这种场合陌生人相识，如果是亚洲人，他们往往开口之前先毕恭毕敬地用双手把自己的名片呈递给对方，这好像是不可缺少的礼节。然而，法国人一般却都不大主动递送名片，双方见面寒喧几句甚至海阔天空地聊一番也就各自走开。只有当双方谈话投机，希望继续交往时，才会主动掏出名片。二话不说先递名片反倒有些勉强。

法国人的名片讲究朴素大方，印制精美，但很少有镶金边儿的，闪光多色的或带香味儿的，名片上的字体纤细秀丽，本人的名字也不过分突出，整张纸片上空白很大，毫无拥挤不堪的感觉。

Practice 2

我想,教师要给学生的,是一把开启知识宝库的钥匙,而不是把

学生的脑子变成一个容器。教师的工作是启发学生,通过自己的思考、实践、试验去求得知识,鼓励他们大胆提出问题和不同意见。经过研讨,得出自己的结论,而不是由教师包办代替。

我喜欢那些爱提“怪”问题的学生。提不出问题的,不能算是好学生。

其实,学习就是一个不断出错误和改正错误的过程。年轻人要学,我们自己也要学。一句话,教育是要使人从无知变成有知,从愚

昧变成聪明,从野蛮变成文明,而不是相反。

就说这流行音乐吧,我就不如年轻人懂得多。我有个习惯,自己不懂得东西，绝不轻易反对,而是努力去学懂它。

你看吧,大街上姑娘们大声谈笑,我行我素；小伙子也穿红戴绿。中国人胆子大起来了，不那么缩头缩脑了。你还能拿年轻人头发长短、裤脚大小来衡量谁是好学生谁是坏学生吗？

Practice 3

我所追求的幸福

在西方流传着一句据说是来自古老中国的谚语，只是我在中国从未听说

过：“如果你想要几小时的幸福，就去喝醉酒；如果你想要三年的幸福，就

去结婚；如果你想要一辈子的幸福，就去做个园丁。”他们对园丁能一辈子

幸福的解释是：“做有用的事，与自然融合，对身体的锻炼和每天都会有新

的喜悦。”

我看到过一份美国某大学对“幸福”的研究课题报告，对幸福下的定义

是：“主观地感到适意的程度”，具体地说是“对自己的生活感到有意义，

满意和舒适的一种积极的状态”。这种感觉应当是有持续性的。

许多人以为休闲是很大的幸福，但调查显示：大部分感到幸福的人是在

工作中，是那些因工作而特别忙碌的人而不是有太多休闲时间的人。幸福不

意味着“得到我想要的东西”，而是“想要我们得到的东西”。人有时不

珍惜自己已经有的却总去想那些得不到的东西。就像有些男人宁愿想象出五

十个梦中情人而不和他身边那一个女人实实在在地生活。

幸福是一种使两者平衡的游戏：我们已有的和我们想要的，即愿意和可

能性之间的。最后他们得出的结论：“幸福的人是一个有远大目标同时不忘

记自己是生活在现在的人；一个选择对自己的才能和可能性有挑战的人；一

个对自己的成绩和社会承认感到骄傲的人；一个自尊、自爱、自由和自信的人；一个有社会交往也能享受人际关系的人；一个乐于助人并接受帮助的人；

一个知道自己能承受痛苦和挫折的人；一个能从日常生活小事上感到乐趣的人；一个有爱的能力的人。”

看到这些，我真觉得我很接近于一个幸福的人了。

Practice 4

根据卡内基〃麦伦大学(Carnegie Mellon University) 的研究，使用因特网可能会导致心理健康程度下降。

两年的研究表明，上网次数多的人与较少的人相比，即使是一周仅上网几小时也会经常地感觉到沮丧和孤独。使用因特网似乎确实诱发了人们的不良感觉。

研究人员对这些结果困惑不解，因为这与他们的预料截然相反。他们预测，和看电视相比，从社交角度来说，上网可能更健康一些，因为网络允许使用者选择自己需要的信息并且和别人进行交流。

研究者推测说，上网使人减少了和家人及朋友共度的时光，这也许可以解释他们心理健康状况下降的原因。和面对面的交谈相比，这种见不着面、看不见人的“虚”的交流可能会使人从心理上缺乏满足感，人们通过这种交流结下的友谊也不会太深。还有一种可能是，网民通过因特网所了解到的广阔世界使得他们对自己的生活不那么满意了。

“然而，重要的是不要忘记这与技术本身是无关的，”这项研究的发起人之一、心理学家、英特尔公司的克里斯汀〃赖利(Riley)说，“问题在于如何使用因特网。”

英译汉篇章练习

Passage 1

Three New Yorks

There are roughly three New Yorks. There is , first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulences as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter—the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something.

Of these three trembling cities the greatest is the last—the city of final destination, the city that is a goal. It is this third city that accounts for New York’s high-strung disposition, its poetic deportment, its dedication to the arts, and its incomparable achievements.

Commuters give the city its tidal restlessly; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion. And whether it is a farmer arriving from Italy to set up a small grocery store in a slum, or a young girl arriving from a small town in Mississippi to escape the indignity of being observed by her neighbors, or a boy arriving from the Corn Belt with a manuscript in his suitcase and a pain in his heart, it makes no difference; each embraces New York with the fresh eyes of an adventurer, each generates heat and light to dwarf the Consolidated Edison Company1[1]

Passage 2

My Garden

Jack Lee leaned back in his garden chair, twirled a glass of champagne and said: “My garden is the ideal place to have breakfast. There are very few days of the year when I can’t sit out here in the sun at 7 am.”

1[1] Consolidated Edison, Inc. is one of the largest investor-owned energy companies in the United States. The company provides a wide range of energy-related products and services to its customers.

Jack, until recently chairman of the South Australian Film Corporation, first visited Australia to direct films such as the original A Town Like Alice. With his Australian wife, Isabel, he has lived in the same Woollahra house for 20 years.

The first part of the house was built in 1842, added to in 1860 and again in 1890. It has had an interesting and, at times, chequered career. According to legend, the house was bought by the Earl of Jersey, a one-time Governor of NSW2[2], for his

2[2] NSW refers to New South Wales, Australia.

Passage 5

Versatile Man

It is, perhaps, no accident that many of the outstanding figures of the past were exceptionally versatile men. Right up until comparatively recent times, it was possible for an intelligent person to acquaint himself with almost every branch of knowledge. Thus, men of genius like Leonardo da Vinci or Sir Philip Sidney engaged in many careers at once as a matter of course. Da V inci was so busy with his numerous inventions that he barely found the time to complete his paintings; Sidney, who died in battle when he was only thirty-two years old, was not only a great soldier, but a brilliant scholar and poet as well. Both these men came very near to fulfilling the Renaissance ideal of t he “universal man”, the man who was proficient at everything.

Today, we rarely, if ever, hear that a musician has just invented a new type of submarine. Knowledge has become divided and sub-divided into countless, narrowly-defined compartments. The specialist is venerated; the versatile person, far from being admired, is more often regarded with suspicion. The modern world is a world of highly-skilled “experts” who have had to devote the greater part of their lives to a very limited field of study in order to compete with their fellows. With this high degree of specialization, the frontiers of knowledge are steadily being pushed back more rapidly than ever before. But this has not been achieved without considerable cost. The scientist, who outside his own particular subject is little more than a moron, is a modern phenomenon, as is the man of letters who is barely aware of the tremendous strides that have been made in technology. Similarly, specialization has indirectly affected quite ordinary people in every walk of life. Many activities which were once pursued for their own sakes, are often given up in despair: they require techniques, the experts tell us, which take a life-time to master. Why learn to play the piano, when you can listen to the world’s gre atest pianists in your own drawing-room? Little by little, we are becoming more and more isolated from each other. It is almost impossible to talk to your neighbor about his job, even if he is engaged in roughly the same work as you are. The Royal Society in Britain includes among its members only the most eminent scientists in the

mistress. And, for a while, it suffered the fate of many Victorian mansions by becoming a boarding house for 30 people.

country. Y et it is highly disconcerting to find that even here, as one of its Fellows put it, at a lecture only 10% of the members can understand 50% of what is being said!

Passage 6

The destruction of our natural resources and contamination of our food supply continue to occur, largely because of the extreme difficulty in affixing legal responsibility on those who continue to treat our environment with reckless abandon. Attempts to prevent pollution by legislation, economic incentives and friendly persuasion have been met by lawsuits, personal and industrial denial and long delays - not only in accepting responsibility, but more importantly, in doing something about it.

It seems that only when government decides it can afford tax incentives or production sacrifices is there any initiative for change. Where is industry's and our recognition that protecting mankind's great treasure is the single most important responsibility? If ever there will be time for environmental health professionals to come to the frontlines and provide leadership to solve environmental problems, that time is now.

We are being asked, and, in fact, the public is demanding that we take positive action. It is our responsibility as professionals in environmental health to make the difference. Y es, the ecologists, the environmental activists and the conservationists serve to communicate, stimulate thinking and promote behavioral change. However, it is those of us who are paid to make the decisions to develop, improve and enforce environmental standards, I submit, who must lead the charge.

We must recognize that environmental health issues do not stop at city limits, county lines, state or even federal boundaries. We can no longer afford to be tunnel-visioned in our approach. We must visualize issues from every perspective to make the objective decisions. We must express our views clearly to prevent media distortion and public confusion.

I believe we have a three-part mission for the present. First, we must continue to press for improvements in the quality of life that people can make for themselves. Second, we must investigate and understand the link between environment and health. Third, we must be able to communicate technical information in a form that citizens can understand. If we can accomplish these three goals in this decade, maybe we can finally stop environmental degradation, and not merely hold it back. We will then be able to spend pollution dollars truly on prevention rather than on bandages.

Today it is peaceful and well-tended; just minutes from the City, the garden is quiet, spacious and private.

In the early morning, Jack likes to listen to the sounds of the garden. The trees are full of birds. Wind bells chime faintly in a lemon tree and, if the wind is in the right direction, he can hear the faint rumble of the first plane landing.

Passage 3

Lateral Thinking

Edward De Bono

A father is busy putting decorations on to the Christmas tree but as quickly as he puts them on his two-year-old son pulls them off. He is about to put the child in a play pen when his wife suggests that it might make more sense to put the tree in the

play-pen and leave the child outside. Instead of keeping the child away from the tree one can keep the tree away from the child. Lateral thinking involves moving sideways to look at things in a different way. Instead of fixing on one particular approach and then working forward from that the lateral thinker tries to find other approaches.

Y ou cannot dig a hole in a different place by digging the same hole deeper. A committee that is convinced that parking meters are the only way to control city parking will spend its time deciding what meters to use, where to put them and how to patrol them. A lateral thinker would look at other approaches: letting people park anywhere they liked so long as they left their headlights on; giving people licences which would allow them to park free in town only one day a week and so encouraging car sharing; visible licences that the motorist would pay for if he wanted to park anywhere in town.

Our thinking traditions are very firmly based on logical thinking in which we start off with a certain way of looking at things and then see what we can deduce from that. This can be called vertical thinking since it involves building on what is accepted as traditional. V ertical thinking is for using ideas and lateral thinking is for changing them.

Most of our thinking does not take place at the logical stage but at the perceptual stage which precedes this. Lateral thinking is to do with changing perceptions and finding new ways of looking at things. Lateral thinking is the practical process of creativity. There are various deliberate techniques such as the use of stepping stones (produced, for instance, by reversing the usual situation). Lateral thinking turns

creativity into a tool. In a patterning system such as the mind provocation is as important as analysis—and more important for changing ideas.

(作者爱德华?德?波诺为英国剑桥大学教授，横向思维之父)

(Translate the underlined part)