大学英语4翻译

Unit 1If you ask me, taking a second major isn’t good for every undergraduate. In my freshman year as an English major, I took econ omics as my minor. By all odds, I was the most hardworking student in my class. But try as I might to meet the requireme nts of the two different subjects, I still couldn’t do well enough to pass all the exams.Given that the study of economics required a good command of mathematics, I had to spend so much time on math that I neglected my English major.Failing English Literature and Macro-economics in the second semester sounded the alarm for me. This was the first time I did not pass a course in my life, which had greatly sapped my confidence.Although I was not a man who would easily bow to fate, as the summer break came to a close, I decided to give up economics for fear that I would fail in both subjects. Now that I had only one subject to attend to, everything seemed to be on the right track again.Unit 2. It was not until after he had graduated from university and started to work that Zhang Lei became aware of the pleasure of reading. Reflecting on his undergraduate studies, he lamented that he, unlike his classmates who had immersed themselves in various interesting books they were able to lay hands on from the library or bookshop, had only read textbooks, none of which was really worthwhile, or could be read in one sitting. He was deprived of the privilege of gaining access to the writers’ fantastic worlds through the windows their books have opened, so to spe ak.Now he has become an avid and omnivorous reader. It is as if he wants to make up for those marvelous books he hadn’t had a ch ance to read in his university days. By now, in his spare time, he has read several hundreds of books, including novels, biographies and travel notes. He realizes that books can not only reveal to him the vista of a hopeful future and help him withstand stresses and strains, they can also help him clear up some misconceptions and discover the true meaning of the life.Unit 3What you wear seems to dictate the kind of person you are supposed to be. Take primary school and high school students for example. One of the hard and fast rules they have to observe is that they must wear uniforms at school. There is no doubt that school uniforms would not have achieved their currency without a symbolic correlation between the uniformity of clothes and the students’ conformity to some common code of conduct. However, after years of school life, there is always a backlash secretly nursed in the students’ mind against the ubiquitous uniform which suppresses the expression of individuality. To compensate for this loss, students try to hunt for more casual and popular clothes and wear them on weekends. It is not until they start university, however, that they can really enjoy the freedom of dress, an anarchy associated with the cultivation of creativity and the encouragement of the free expression of ideas and talents. But this situation won’t obtain for long. After a relatively short time of liberty, they may experience again the revived pressure of dress code as soon as they become professionals.Unit 4When it comes to the effects of the current economic downturn, the decrease of student activities is a good case in point. To enliven campus life, the university is always willing to carve out money for activities organized by student clubs and societies, but such sponsorships have been pared down this year because of huge budget cut. Apparently, student organizations need to weather their own financial crisis if they want to recover from their current state of inactiveness. Some suggest enrolling more club members, on the ground that the consequent increase of membership fees may help them get out of the difficulty.No doubt, if we have more members paying the annual fee, and if we cut back on our daily expenses, we can spare some money for organizing activities. But the bottom line is that the expenses of these activities are in proportion to the number of participants. I’m afraid this won’t be of much help. To boost student activities and to avoid going into the red, we still need to pool our ideas and come up with some other ways of raising money, in lieu of relying only on university grants and membership fees.Unit 5Our presumptions about what ideal husbands or wives are like reveal a lot about our gender expectations as well as our responses to them. If most girls want their fiancés to be tough, capable and reliable, there is no more option left for young men other than to be trained as tough, capable and reliable if they want to win girls’ heart. If they act to the contrary, they will most probably bemoan their bachelor’s status for the rest of their lives. Following the same unwritten rule, if most boys expect their fiancées to be caring, patient and faithful more than anything else, girls are prone to let on that they will become faithful wives and loving mothers even if they are not the type.Looking into such gender expectations, we may find that they are based on both physiological and social factors. It goes without saying that women arephysically prepared to bear children, whereas men are utterly unfit for the job. Therefore, a family is better-off when its male members devote their time to providing food and other necessities for it.Unit 6To make the campus safer, the university authorities recently released a new regulation that forbids any vendors from entering the campus, and the president called on the students to cooperate with the university on this matter. But the stud ents’ opposition was strong, and hundreds of them expressed their anger on the university BBS. They said that to keep vendors off campus is like deserting the students on an island, as the university was far away from the downtown and the shops on the campus did not provide enough commodities. Some claimed that it was precisely for matters of this kind that university should listen to students’ opinions and needs. Some students thought the university had got it wrong in believing that this regulation will ensure safety on campus.Shocked by the students’ reaction, the president tried to make amends for his mistake by announcing that the university will look into this new regulation again. He told students that they were entitled to live a convenient and comfortable life, but safety is just as much an important concern as that. He proposed to build a big supermarket within the campus and some convenient stores near dormitory buildings, which would certainly make students’ life much easier.Unit 7In the graduation ceremony, Thomas Clark, a veteran CTO of a renowned IT company, offers some important advice to 140 computer science majors who aspire to pursue a successful career in IT. In his opinion, information technology is not just about assembling machines and devices; it is a domain where innovation plays the key role. So naturally IT workers have to endure high pressure in their work as they need to come up with new ideas on a daily basis.But Clark also points out that the ultimate goal of IT business is profit. If you want to succeed in this business, you need to keep in mind that innovation is not synonymous with individualism. It is noticeable how many gifted young men have failed to achieve success because of their arrogance and poor communication skill. Clark emphasizes that you have to learn to cooperate with people from different departments and only thus can your talent blossom out by creating products that will be accepted by the market.Unit 8When the new national museum was completed, some citizens and architects were indignant at the appearance of a modern building amidst the most beautiful and exquisite ancient buildings of the city. There was also an outburst of criticism of its high cost of maintenance and its strange shape. Obviously, some people felt uncomfortable with such fashionable modern buildings being erected everywhere around the city. But on the other hand, many artists and citizens believed that these criticisms failed to do justice to the beauty and artistic maturity of the new museum.The debate caused by this museum forces many people to contemplate the future of those ancient buildings of the city in an age when the public increasingly worship the modern western technology and styles. With their extravagance and complexity, it is costly to build ancient buildings on a large scale. At the same time, beautiful modern buildings of western styles cannot always transcend the cultural barrier. Maybe a more moderate approach should be adopted. A careful overall plan should be made beforehand to ensure that the ancient buildings are properly preserved and the modern buildings become a harmonious part of the city.Unit 9In the last couple of decades, there have always been people who believe that simplified characters are a product of the radical reform of Chinese language, and fail to retain the essence of our traditional culture. From their point of view, it's disgraceful that so many Chinese cannot read traditional characters. Some even argue that simplified characters are a defective system of language and using them makes Chinese people dumb, and that our civilization has reached a critical stage where we have to go back to traditional Chinese characters to save our national culture.But those in favour of traditional characters are unable to provide sufficient evidence for their assertions. They also forget an important point: In ancient China the complexity of traditional characters created a rift between the educated and the uneducated, while the simplifiedcharacters had helped hundreds of millions of people become literate, and to a certain extent blurred the boundaries between the educated elite and the ordinary public. If we went back to traditional characters, it would be very likely to infringe on the majority's right to education and damage the unity of Chinese society.Unit 10In the August of last year when a tropical hurricane hit this remote fishing town, a group of young volunteers who had been working here did all they could to help the local people. As telecommunications was on the verge of breaking down and the traffic between the town and the outside world completely paralyzed, it would have been too late if they did nothing but wait for the local government's help. The volunteers found shelter for those who lost their houses, and provided basic medical service for the wounded. Their work had prevented this storm from having more disastrous effects on the residents.Their efforts also dispelled local people's doubts about them, as most of them felt that these volunteers had done a terrific job in helping them cope with the disaster. These volunteers had proved that they were worth their salt. Although they didn't have a muscular body as the local fishermen, they had strong will and determination. Their bravery in the face of hurricane showed that when gauging one's strength, you should look at not only their physical shape but also what is underneath.。