2010、2011、2012 考研英语二 翻译真题解析

2010考研英语二翻译真题、参考答案和来源分析

"Sustainability" has become a popular word these days, but to Ted Ning,the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured a painful period of unsustainability in his own life made it clear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed through every day action and choice.

当今，“可持续性”已经成为了一个流行的词语.但是，对特德宁来说，它对这个词有着自身的体会.在忍受了一段痛苦的、难以为继的生活之后，他清楚地认识到，以可持续发展为导向的生活价值必须通过日常的活动和做出的选择表现出来.

Ning recalls spending a confusing year in the late 1990s selling insurance. He'd been through the dot-com boom and burst and, desperate for a job, signed on with a Boulder agency.

宁回忆了在上个世纪90年代末期的某一年，他卖保险，那是一种浑浑噩噩的生活.在经历了网络经济的兴盛和衰败之后，他非常渴望得到一份工作，于是和一家博德的代理公司签了合约.

It didn't go well. "It was a really bad move because that's not my passion," says Ning, whose dilemma about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. "I was miserable. I had so much anxiety that I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said,” Just wait, you'll turn the corner, give it some time.''

事情进展不顺，“那的确是很糟糕的一种选择，因为那并非是我的激情所在，”宁如是说.可以想象，他这种工作上的窘境是由于销售业绩不良造成的.“我觉得很悲哀.我太担心了，以至于我会在半夜醒来，盯着天花板.没有钱，我需要这份工作.每个人都会说，等吧，总会有转机的，给点时间吧.”

原文：

原文是来自一份杂志，叫“experience life”，出题人做了部分改动，原文和改动的文章如下：

Sustainability has become something of a buzzword(出题人把这个单词改为popular word) these days, but to Ted Ning, the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured a painful period of unsustainability in his own life made it clear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed through everyday action and choice.

Ning, director of LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability), the Boulder, Colo.–based information clearinghouse on sustainable living, recalls spending a tumultuous（出题人把这个词改为了confusing）year in the late ’90s selling insurance. He’d been throug h the dot-com boom and bust（出题人似乎把这个词改为burst了） and, desperate for a job, signed on with a Boulder agency.

It didn’t go well. “It was a really bad move because that’s not my passion,” says Ning, whose ambivalence about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. “I was miserable. I had so much anxiety that I would pull alongside of the highway and vomit, or wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling.

I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said, ‘Just wait, you’ll turn the cor ner, give it some time.’”

Ning stuck it out for a year because he simply didn’t know what else to do, but felt his happiness and health suffer as a result. He eventually quit and stumbled upon LOHAS in a help-wanted ad for a data analyst. “I didn’t know what LOHAS was,” he says, “but it sounded kinda neat.” It turned out to be a better fit than he could have ever imagined.

At the time, the LOHAS organization did little more than host a small annual conference in Boulder. It was a forum where progressive-minded companies could gather to compare notes on how to reach a values-driven segment of consumers —the LOHAS market — who seemed attracted to products and services that mirrored their interest in health, environmental stewardship, social justice, personal development and sustainable living.

In contrast with his disastrous foray into the insurance business, Ning’s new job felt like coming home. Growing up in the foothills of the Rockies outside of Denver, he’d developed a love of the outdoors and a respect f or the earth, while his parents provided a model of social activism —the family traveled widely, and at one point his parents created and operated a nonprofit that offered microcredit loans to small businesses in Vietnam and Guatemala. He has three adopted sisters from Vietnam and Korea. He studied international relations and Chinese at Colorado University and slipped easily into the Boulder lifestyle — commuting by bike, eating organics, buying local and the rest —though he stopped short of the patchouli-and-dreadlocks phase embraced by many of his peers. (He opted instead for the university’s ski team and, after graduating, wound up coaching the Japanese development team during the Nagano Olympics in 1998.)

From his ground-level job, Ning moved quickly up the ranks in the organization, becoming its executive director in 2006. “When I got the job, LOHAS was a sleepy conference in Boulder,” says Ning. Today, the forum is booming, the organization

is expanding and the market is evolving. Ning has more than grown into the position he stumbled on in the want ads. “I don’t consider this a job. It is really more of a calling.”

Ning, 41, coordinates the conference and oversees the organization’s annual journal and Web site (https://www.360docs.net/doc/3218839497.html,), while compiling research on trends and opportunities for businesses. He also travels the country promoting —and explaining —the LOHAS concept and the burgeoning market it represents.

First identified by sociologist Paul Ray in the mid-1990s as “cultural creatives,” the U.S. market segment that embraces LOHAS today has grown to about 41 million consumers, or roughly 19 percent of American adults. But those LOHAS consumers are powerfully influencing the attitudes and behaviors of others (witness the rise of interest in yoga, all-natural products, simplicity and hybrid vehicles). Which is why LOHAS-related products now generate an estimated $209 billion annually.

“Over the last two years a green tidal wave has come over us,” says Nin g. Riding that wave, says Ning, is not about jumping on a trend bandwagon. It’s connecting with — and acting on —a set of shared, instrinsic values. “People know what is authentic. You can’t preach this lifestyle and not live it,” he says. He and his wife, Jenifer, live in a solar-powered home, raise organic vegetables in their backyard and drive a car that gets 48 miles to the gallon. He even buys carbon offsets to negate the global warming impact of his cell phone.

Ning emphasizes that there are many dif ferent ways of “living LOHAS.” Ultimately, it’s really about finding a way of life that makes sense and feels good —now and for the long haul. “People are looking internally,” he says, “asking themselves, ‘What really makes me happy?’ Is it the fact that I can go out and buy that giant flat-screen TV, or is it that I can have a quiet evening with my family just hanging out and playing a game of Scrabble?”

For Ning, it’s a no-brainer. He’ll take Scrabble every time.

Laine Bergeson is an Experience Life senior editor.

2011考研英语二翻译真题、参考答案和来源分析

Who would have thought that, globally, the IT industry produces about the same volumes of greenhouse gases as the world’s airlines do-rough 2 percent of all CO2 emissions?

全球范围内，信息技术行业与航空业产生的温室气体总量相同——约占二氧化碳排放总量的2%，这有谁曾想到过？

Many everyday tasks take a surprising toll on the environment. A Google search can leak between 0.2 and 7.0 grams of CO2 depending on how many attempts are needed to get the “right” answer. To deliver results to its users quickly, then, Google has to maintain vast data centres round the world, packed with powerful computers. While producing large quantities of CO2, these computers emit a great deal of heat, so the centres need to be well air-conditioned, which uses even more energy.

许多日常工作对环境造成的损失大得惊人.每一次谷歌搜索能释放0.2到0.7克的二氧化碳，这取决于为了获得“正确”答案你试过多少次.为了迅速向用户提供搜索结果，谷歌不得不在世界各地建立大型数据中心，安装一台台强大的计算机.这些计算机不仅产生大量的二氧化碳，还释放大量热能，因此这些数据中心需要良好的空调设备，这甚至会耗费更多的能源.

However, Google and other big tech providers monitor their efficiency closely and make improvements. Monitoring is the first step on the road to reduction, but there is much to be done, and not just by big companies.

然而，谷歌和其他大型技术供应商严密地监控其效果，并做出改进.监控是减排的第一步，仍有太多问题需要解决，并且不只是由大公司来解决.

原文：

Who would have thought that, globally, the IT industry produces about the same volume of greenhouse gases as the world's airlines do - roughly 2 per cent of all CO2 emissions?

Many everyday tasks take a surprising toll on the environment. A Google search can leak between 0.2 and 7.0 grams of CO2, depending on how many attempts are needed to get the "right" answer. At the upper end of the scale, two searches create roughly the same emissions as boiling a kettle.

To deliver results to its users quickly, Google has to maintain vast data centres around the world, packed with powerful computers. As well as producing large quantities of CO2, these computers emit a great deal of heat, so the centres need to be well air-conditioned - which uses even more energy.

However, Google and other big tech providers such as BT, IBM, Microsoft and Amazon monitor their efficiency closely and make improvements. (Google claims to be more efficient than most.) Recently, industry and government agencies from the

US, Europe and Japan reached an agreement, orchestrated by the Green Grid, an American industry consortium, on how to benchmark the energy efficiency of data centres. Monitoring is the first step on the road to reduction, but there's much more to be done, and not just by big companies.

Simple things - such as turning devices off when they are not in use - can help to reduce the impact of our love affair with all things digital. Research from the National Energy Foundation in the UK found that nearly 20 per cent of workers don't turn their PCs off at the end of

the day, wasting 1.5 billion kWh of electricity per year - which equates to the annual CO2 produced by 200,000 small family cars.

Technology could have a huge role to play in reducing energy consumption - just think of the number of car and bus journeys saved by something as simple as online banking. But the sector must still work harder to get its own house in order.

Jason Stamper is NS technology correspondent and editor of Computer Business Review

2012考研英语二翻译真题、参考答案和来源分析

When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest departure to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in the developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.

发展中国家的人们若为移民问题操心，往往是想到硅谷或发达国家的医院和大学去创造自己最辉煌的未来.英国、加拿大和澳大利亚等国给大学毕业生提供的优惠移民政策，就是为了吸引这部分人群.

Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. A big survey of Indian households in 2004 found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age of 25. The “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.

诸多研究表明，发展中国家受过良好教育的人才往往可能有移民倾向.2004年，曾针对印度家庭进行过一次大型调查，结果发现，近40%有移民倾向的人受过中学以上教育，而25岁以上的印度人只有约3.3%受过中学以上教育.“人才流失”问题长期以来一直让发展中

国家的决策者很苦恼，他们担心这种情况会危及其经济发展，夺去他们紧缺的技术人才，而这些人才本该在他们自己的大学任教，在他们自己的医院工作，为他们自己的工厂研发新产品.

原文：

WHEN people in rich countries worry about migration, they tend to think of low-paid incomers who compete for jobs as construction workers, dishwashers or farmhands. When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest decamping to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in the developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada and Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.

Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. By some estimates, two-thirds of highly educated Cape Verdeans live outside the country. A big survey of Indian households carried out in 2004 asked about family members who had moved abroad. It found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age of 25. This “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.

Many now take issue with this view (see article). Several economists reckon that the brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the effects of remittances, for the beneficial effects of returning migrants, and for the possibility that being able to migrate to greener pastures induces people to get more education. Some argue that once these factors are taken into account, an exodus of highly skilled people could turn out to be a net benefit to the countries they leave. Recent studies of migration from countries as far apart as Ghana, Fiji, India and Romania have found support for this “brain gain” idea.

The most obvious way in which migrants repay their homelands is through remittances. Workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank. In Lebanon, Lesotho, Nepal, Tajikistan and a few other places, remittances are more than 20% of GDP. A skilled migrant may earn several multiples of what his income would have been had he stayed at home. A study of Romanian migrants

to America found that the average emigrant earned almost $12,000 a year more in America than he would have done in his native land, a huge premium for someone from a country where income per person is around $7,500 (at market exchange rates).

It is true that many skilled migrants have been educated and trained partly at the expense of their (often cash-strapped) governments. Some argue that poor countries should therefore rethink how much they spend on higher education. Indians, for example, often debate whether their government should continue to subsidise the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), its elite engineering schools, when large numbers of IIT graduates end up in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. But a new study of remittances sent home by Ghanaian migrants suggests that on average they transfer enough over their working lives to cover the amount spent on educating them several times over. The study finds that once remittances are taken into account, the cost of education would have to be 5.6 times the official figure to make it a losing proposition for Ghana.

There are more subtle ways in which the departure of some skilled people may aid poorer countries. Some emigrants would have been jobless had they stayed. Studies have found that unemployment rates among young people with college degrees in countries like Morocco and Tunisia are several multiples of those among the poorly educated, perhaps because graduates are more demanding. Migration may lead to a more productive pairing of people's skills and jobs. Some of the benefits of this improved match then flow back to the migrant's home country, most directly via remittances.

The possibility of emigration may even have beneficial effects on those who choose to stay, by giving people in poor countries an incentive to invest in education.

A study of Cape Verdeans finds that an increase of ten percentage points in young people's perceived probability of emigrating raises the probability of their completing secondary school by around eight points. Another study looks at Fiji.

A series of coups beginning in 1987 was seen by Fijians of Indian origin as permanently harming their prospects in the country by limiting their share of government jobs and political power. This set off a wave of emigration. Yet young Indians in Fiji became more likely to go to university even as the outlook at home dimmed, in part because Australia, Canada and New Zealand, three of the top destinations for Fijians, put more emphasis on attracting skilled migrants. Since some of those who got more education ended up staying, the skill levels of the resident Fijian population soared.