专业硕士翻译练习

翻译练习

一、综合运用翻译方法，将下列英语句子译成汉语。

1. Genetically modified food is food—either a plant or animal—that has been altered

in the laboratory by scientists.

转基因食物（无论是植物还是动物）是科学家在实验室里改变了基因的食物。

2.To sum up, while a financial crisis may force a couple to pull together, realizing a

fortune may cause a couple to squabble about things that were not debatable before.

The difference can lead to separate lives, and sometimes to divorce.

总之，当遇到经济上的困难时可能会促使夫妻齐心协力，但到致富之后可能会引起一些原来不会因为一些琐事而争吵的麻烦，这样或导致夫妻分居，有时甚至导致离婚。

3.Dying patients especially—who are easier to mislead an most often kept in the

dark—can then not make decisions about the end of life: about whether or not they should enter a hospital, or to have surgery; about where and with whom they should spend their remaining time; about how they should bring their affairs to a close and leave.

尤其是濒临死亡的病人，他们最容易受骗，把自己蒙在鼓里，因此不能做出任何决定，是否需要入住医院，是否要动手术，将在何处与何人度过自己的余生，如何处理以后的生活事务，然后告别人生。

4.Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; writing an exact man.

读书使人充实，讨论使人机智，写作使人准确。

5.Inorganic chemistry is linked closely to geology, mineralogy, and metallurgy;

organic chemistry to physiology, biochemistry, and biology in general.

一般来说，无机化学是和地质学，矿物学和冶金学紧密联系在一起的；而有机化学则是和生理学，生物化学和生物学联系在一起的。

6.The new American Secretary of State has proposed a world conference on food

supplies.

美国新任国务卿建议召开世界食品资源问题会议。

7.Federally funded training and free back-to-school programs for laid-off workers are

under way, but few experts believe they will be able to keep up with the pace of the new technology.

为失业工人提供的联邦政府资助的培训和免费重返学校的计划都在实施中，然而在专家中几乎没有人认为这些计划能跟得上现代新技术的发展步伐。

8.As the century drew to a close, the potential for human invention and

understanding appeared boundless. Scientific understanding expanded daily, from the fundamental building blocks of matter to the source code of all life to the origins, and perhaps the eventual demise, of the universe.

到了上世纪末，人类的发明和认识似乎没有止境。从物质的基本构成单位到一切生命体的遗传密码，从宇宙的起源也许到宇宙的最终完结，人类对科学的认识逐步扩大。

9.The internet was an amazing new tool for sharing information, yet it was also a

powerful means for finding information that was intended to be private, including government and military secrets, the source codes to proprietary software, and even

a neighbor’s social security number.

互联网是资源共享方面令人吃惊的新工具，可它也是获取本应保护国家机密，军事机密，商业软件（指非开放源代码软件）的源代码，甚至邻居的社会保险号码的强有力的工具。

10.Many an individual, moreover, has formed an intimate relationship with his or her

computer, spending long hours in its close company, often to the exclusion of human contact. Though the computer could not express its desire for monogamous union, its acknowledgment of a secret password, its ability to keep secrets that it shares only with its operator, and its instantaneous compliance would signal its faithfulness and obedience.

许多人都与他或她的电脑形成紧密的联系，花费了很长的时间与他的电脑亲近（长时间和他的电脑贴身相伴），常常排斥与他人接触。尽管电脑不能表达他们与主人“一夫一妻制”的愿望，但是它能确认密码，保持它与操作者共享的秘密以及它的立即服从都标志着他的忠诚和顺从。

11.There is some evidence that the experience of greater shortages of energy during

the 1970s caused Americans to place more emphasis on conservation. For example,

a poll taken at the end of the decade showed that 66% of Americans agreed with the

statement:”I’m not unhappy about the possibility of shortages because I know it will encourage me to use everything efficiently and not wastefully.”

有证据显示，20世纪70年代美国人所经历的更严重的能源短缺迫使美国人重视资源保护。例如，70年代末的一项民意调查显示，有66%的美国人赞同这一说法“我并不会因为可能的资源短缺而不高兴，因为我知道这将促使每一件物品的使用效率，并减少浪费”

12. Everywhere, spring brings the blessed reassurance that life goes on, that death is

no more than a passing season. The plan never falters; the design never changes.

春在每一个角落里传递着慰勉的福音，告诉人们生命在继续，死亡不过是短暂的片刻。生命的程序永远不会停滞，生命的构设永远不会改变。

二、综合运用翻译方法，将下列段落或短文译成汉语。

1. Both doors and lattices were open; and yet, as it usually the case in a coal district, a

fine, red fire illumined the chimney; the comfort which the eye derives from it, renders the extra heat endurable. But the house of Wuthering Heights is so large, that the inmates have plenty of space for withdrawing out of its influence; and, accordingly, what inmates there were had stationed themselves not far from one of the windows.

2. Today’s sugar-coated television science shows would have totally turned me off

when I was a child, and perhaps they turn children off today—those who, like me, are tempted by mystery, those who prefer a black-and white diagram to a full-color, shiny set of photographic images that brilliantly capture the surface of some phenomenon but convey nothing of what is hidden behind the scenes.

3. Man is, at one and the same time, a solitary being and a social being. As a solitary

being, he attempts to protect his own existence and that of those who are closest to him, to satisfy his personal desires, and to develop his inborn abilities. As a social being, he seeks to gain the recognition and affection of his fellow human beings, to share in their pleasures, to comfort them in their sorrows, and to improve their

conditions of life.

4. Paradox of Our Times

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences but less time; we have more degrees, but less common sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicines, but less wellness.

We drink too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too little and lie too often. We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life; we’ve added years to life, not life to years.

We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We’ve conquered outer space, but not inner space. We’ve split the atom, but not our prejudice; we write more, but learn less; plan more, but accomplish less.

We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lowers morals. We build more computers to hold information, to produce more copies, but have less communication. We are long on quantity, but short on quality.

There are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men and short character; more kinds of food, but less nutrition; two incomes, but more divorce; fancier houses, but broken homes.

5. Peace of mind is something I think about every day. It’s great to have confidence when stepping out my front door that I will be able to move around the local environment without fear and return home safely.

But peace of mind depends on mutual trust from every citizen that as we walk the streets and conduct our personal affairs we hold the same basic vies and values about maintaining a civil society.

Every time a violent crime or terrorist act is perpetrated on unsuspecting victims, when a sniper starts shooting or bomb explodes, our collective peace of mind is eroded, along with our willingness to trust all the unknown people with whom we share sidewalks, shopping malls, and other public spaces…

Forgive my wishful thinking, but you don’t have to look far in this world to see how cultural creativity and dynamism evaporate when people are forced to devote most of their time and energy to self-defense.

Peace of mind can’t be measured. All I know for sure is that I appreciate every moment I have it. And I am alarmed whenever I get the feeling it may be steadily slipping away.

6. The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind; it is simply the mode by which all phenomena are reasoned about and given precise and exact explanation. There is no more difference, but there is just the same kind of difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between

the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graded weights. It is not that the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working; but that the latter is a much finer apparatus and of course much more accurate in its measurement than the former.

You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar examples. You have all heard it repeated that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, manage to extract from Nature certain natural laws, and that out of these, by some special skill of their own, they build up their theories. And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special training. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constituted differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be frightened by terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your lives. There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere’s plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period.

三、将下列应用文译成汉语。

1. Directions for Automatic Teller Machine (ATM)

Please follow these procedures in order to make a machine withdrawal form your City Bank checking or savings accounts:

1. Insert your card face up into the card slot on the machine teller.

2. Enter your six-digit identification number on the machine teller.

3. Press the withdrawal button for checking or the button for saving.

4. Enter the amount of withdrawal, either fifty or one hundred dollars on the

numbered buttons, and wait for your receipt to be printed.

5. Remove your card from the slot. The drawer will open with receipt and your

cash withdrawal in fifty-dollar packets.

All customers are limited to two withdrawals in one twenty-four-hour period.

2.To Let or for Sale

Two-storied furnished house, 1805 Pinewood Avenue, western suburbs, 1,250 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 1 living room, 1 dining room, private garage. Rent $950 per month. Sale $125,000. Tel. 223566 office time.