翻译练习1

November 10, 2010 I.Warm-up ExerciseparativesIII.ExerciseI. Warm-up ExerciseMoney spent on advertising is money spent as well as any I know of.It serves directly to assist a rapid distribution of goods at reasonable price, thereby establishing a firm home market and so making it possible to provide for export at competitive prices.By drawing attention to new ideas it helps enormously to raise standards of living.By helping to increase demand it ensures an increased need for labor, and is therefore an effective way to fight unemployment.It lowers the costs of many services: without advertisements your daily newspaper would cost four times as much, the price of your television license would need to be doubled, and travel by bus or tube would cost 20 per cent more.And perhaps most important of all, advertising provides a guarantee of reasonable value in the products and services you buy.Apart from the fact that twenty-seven acts of Parliament govern the terms of advertising, no regular advertiser dare promote a product that fails to live up to the promise of his advertisements.He might fool some people for a little while through misleading advertising. He will not do so for long, for mercifully the public has the good sense not to buy the inferior article more than once.If you see an article consistently advertised, it is the surest proof I know that the article does what is claimed for it, and that it represents good value.Advertising does more for the material benefit of the community than any other force I can think of.There is one more point I feel I ought to touch on.Recently I heard a well-known television personality declare that he was against advertising because it persuades rather than informs.He was drawing excessively fine distinctions.Of course advertising seeks to persuade.If its message were confined merely to information ––– and that in itself would be difficult if not impossible to achieve, for even a detail such as the choice of the color of a shirt is subtly persuasive –––advertising would be so boring that no one would pay any attention.But perhaps that is what the well-known television personality wants.II. ComparativesIntroduction: Comparatives1. less...thanl. Hitler’s mistakes gave Roosevelt the victory; just as at Waterloo it was less Wellington who won than Napoleon who lost.He is less a teacher than an educator.It was a curious exchange, less a debate than a quarrel between two aggressive men, Khrushchov and Nixon, each of them determined to impress the audience as more peaceful than the other.Even the dullest work is to most people less painfulthan idleness.= To most people, even the dullest work is less painful than idleness.As Dr. Johnson said in a different era about ladies preaching, the surprising thing about computers is not that they think less well than a man, but that they think at all.A. He is less a teacher than an educator.B. It was a curious exchange, less a debate than a quarrel between two aggressive men, Khrushchov and Nixon, each of them determined to impress the audience as more peaceful than the other.Even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness.As Dr. Johnson said in a different era about ladies preaching, the surprising thing about computers is not that they think less well than a man, but that they think at all.…, it was less Wellington who won than Napoleon who lost.2. no less +adj. (than)2. Those higher up on the social ladder are no less anxious. Their lives are no less empty than those of their subordinates.3. As regards our foreign policy, it is no less our interest than our duty to maintain the most friendly relations with other countries.3. No/nothing/little/more (better) than4. One can tell the difference almost at a glance for a spider always has eight legs and an insect never more than six.5. I had gone away to college by now, and was too busy working to give much more than a fleeting thought to Milltown.6. Everyone acknowledges that Newton was a great man; yet few have more than the vaguest acquaintance with his living personality.7. It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, it was nothing less than a sense of life itself.4．more than + n.8. The company of 77 gymnasts, dancers, jugglers, magicians, musicians and artists puts together something that is much more than a collection of stunts.9. I discovered that more than desire and feeling were necessary to write and I dropped the idea.5．More than + a.11. Those first shovels were more than symbolic of the start of construction of the first research laboratory.I was more than surprised that she had been telling the truth.6. more... than12. Koreans can no more agree on whether the changes have come too fast or too slowly than they can on what Korean democracy is or should be.13. If machines really thought as men do, there would be no more reason to fear them than to fear men.7.not… any more than14. There was a huge library near the riverfront, but I knew that Negroes were not allowed to patronize its shelves any more than they were the parks and playgrounds of the city.15. It was never intended by Nature, Hitler claims, that all races should be equal, any more than individuals are equal.III. Exercise1. I take the goodness of the good for granted and I am amused when I discover their defects or their vices;I am touched when I see the goodness of the wicked and I am willing enough to shrug a tolerant shoulder at their wickedness.2.Many a young person has felt that life was not worth living after a broken love-affair, only to discover a few years later that happiness was waiting, after all.3. The Law of the JunglePeople in our culture who like to think of themselves as tough-minded and realistic, including influential political leaders and businessmen as well as go-getters and hustlers of smaller caliber, tend to take it for granted that human nature is "selfish" and that life is a struggle in which only the fittest may survive. According to the philosophy, the basic law by whichman must live, in spite of his surface veneer of civilization, is the law of the jungle.The ―fittest‖ are those who can bring to the struggle superior force, superior cunning, and superior ruthlessness.The wide currency of this philosophy of the ―survival of the fittest‖ enables people who act ruthlessly and selfishly, whether in personal rivalries, business competition, or international relations, to allay their consciences by telling themselves that they are only obeying a "law of nature". But a disinterested observer is entitled to ask whether the ruthlessness of the tiger, the cunning of the ape, and obedience to the ―law of the jungle‖ are actually ev idences of human fitness to survive.7. Some Well-informed PeopleWe sometimes fall in with persons who have seen much of the world, and of the men who, in their day, have played a conspicuous part in it, but who generalize nothing, and have no observation, in the true sense of the word. They abound in information indetail, curious and entertaining, about men and things; and, having lived under the influence of no very clear or settled principles, religious or political, they speak of every one and everything, only as so many phenomena, which are complete in themselves, and lead to nothing, not discussing any truth, or instructing the hearer, but simply talking. No one would say that these persons, well informed as they are, had attained to any great culture or intellect or to philosophy.8. The English HumorHumor has been well defined as ―thinking in fun while feeling in earnest‖. The English do not approach life intellectually; they do not demand that it shall conform to some rigid mental plan; they are not convinced that the universe can be penetrated by thought; they are willing to go to work, either in politics or art, without a theory to sustain them; and when they are more practical than other races, it is not — as those races frequently conclude — because they are coldly clear-sighted and unimaginative, butbecause they do not busy themselves asking reason to find a key when instinct has already shown them that the door is wide open.9. Aloneness Is Worse Than FailureWhat is feared as failure in American society is, above all, aloneness. And aloneness is terrifying because it means that there is no one, no group, no approved cause to submit to. Even success often becomes impossible to bear when it is not socially approved or even known. This is perhaps why successful criminals often feel the need to confess, that is, to submit to the community's judgment, represented in the person to whom the confession is made. They will confess even under circumstances where this will probably, if not certainly, endanger their previous success: proof, I think, that aloneness is more intolerable than mere failure. For mere failure, provided it is found in company, can rather easily be borne; many ideologies have the function of making it possible for people to digest the worst miseries and even death. Under the sway of the ideology, they do not feel the impact oftheir failure; they are in the grip of an authority, even if it lets them down. On the other hand, one who is alone lacks this solace which can make even failure comfortable.10. Happiness Consists in LoveWho can say in what remoteness of time, in what difference of earthly shape, love first came to us as a stranger in the jungle? We, in our human family, know him through dependence in childhood, through possession in youth, through sorrow and loss in their season. In childhood we are happy to receive; it is the first opening of love. In youth we take and give, dedicate and possess--rapture and anguish are mingled, until parenthood brings a dedication that, to be happy, must ask for no return. All these are new horizons of content, which the lust of holding, the enemy of love, slowly contaminates. Loss, sorrow and separation come, sickness and death; possession, that tormented us, is nothing in our hands; it vanishes. Love's elusive enchantment, his ubiquitous presence, again become apparent; and in age we may reach ahaven that asking for nothing knows how to enjoy.。