中国科学院大学英语速读(第二册)1-20翻译

中国科学院大学英语速读（第二册）1-20翻译

Passage 1: Quake-proofing a house

1. Most houses and commercial structures that were constructed after 1980, when Japan’s building code had its last revision, are still standing.日本最近一次对其建筑规范进行重大修订是在1980年，之后所建的大部分房屋和商业建筑至今仍完好无损。

2. Charles Scawthorn, vice president of EQE International, a San Francisco firm that specializes in quake-resistant engineering, says that ”This is the real heart of the seismic-hazard problem. ”

国际EQE的副总裁，San Francisco 公司的抗震工程师Charles Scawthorn说：“这（改进现在的建筑结构）就是地震危害的核心问题。”

3. What he saw convinced him that relatively simple precaution could have prevented the most common form of damage: the roofs and upper stories of buildings crashing down onto lower floors.他看到的使他相信那些相对简单的预防措施应该能够防止最常见的毁害：房顶和上层倒塌在下面的地板上。

4.In the traditional Japanese house, Scawthorn says, the first floor lacks interior walls that could help support the weight of the second floor, as they would for a Western home;

Scawthorn说，传统的日本房屋缺乏用于支撑第二层楼重量的内墙，而西方房屋的内墙则能支撑二层楼的重量。

5.Retrofitting buildings to survive another Big One is still rare in Japan, but in the wake of the Kobe tragedy it may catch on.

在日本，改造翻新建筑物使其幸免于又一次大地震的做法仍然少见。不过，在神户地震的悲剧后，这种做法也许会更加普遍。

Passage 2: The official language

1. Not since the first decades of the twentieth century have so many people entered the United States.自二十世纪的前几十年以来，还从来没有这么多人进入美国。

2. But they are by no means alone.说西班牙语的这些人并不会因为在美国没有说英语而觉得被孤立起来。

3. They argue that immigrants speaking poor English are cut off from the mainstreamAmerica's economy, and are thus doomed to depend on the largesse of the state.

他们认为那些英语说得糟糕的移民会和主流的美国经济脱钩，而因此注定要靠国家的慷慨救济而生活。

4. Opponents of English as an official language say that bilingual education is a more realistic, long-term solution for helping foreign-born Americans assimilate.

不赞成将英语作为官方语言的反对者说，双语教育对于帮助外籍美国人融入本土是一种更为现实长效的方案。

Passage 3: Hazard

1. Gangster movies of the old type often featured menacing threats of a “one-way ride”.

从前的黑帮影片通常会有“死路一条”的威胁恐吓。

2.The young adult is still relatively free from life-threatening diseases, although no age level is completely immune.尽管任何年龄段的人都不能完全免于患致命疾病，不过相对而言年轻人还是易于避免一些。

3. Neither cancer nor heart disease, the two most common physical conditions that threaten life at this age level, are responsible for nearly as many deaths as the motor vehicle accident.

无论是癌症还是心脏病，即在这个年龄层最常见的危及生命的两种症状，它们所导致的死亡都远不及机动车事故所造成的死亡人数。

4. It may be important to add that the motor vehicle death rate begins to decline markedly after this peak between ages twenty to twenty-four.

也许值得补充的是，在二十到二十四岁之间，机动车事故的死亡率达到峰值，在这年龄段之后，这一死亡率急剧下降。

5. A person, in other words, may be \"accident prone\" in certain respects and for a certain, limited part of his or her lifespan.

换句话说，一个人在某些方面，在人生的某段限定的时间，也许会有＂易出事故的倾向＂。 the fact that most young-adult deaths involve a lethal intersection of person and machine (and often alcohol as well).

无论致命事故数字背后的原因何在，我们都难以忽略一个事实，即机器（通常还有酒精）攸关人的生死，而这种关系使得大部分年轻人丧命。

Passage 4: Mathethtics

1. If we assume that the curriculum was reasonable, and that the new idea was but the next in a series of learnable concepts, the feeling of utter defeat was simply not rational;

假设课程合理，新概念只是接下来一系列可以学会的概念中的一个，那么这种彻底的挫败感便毫无道理。

2.A common myth about the nature of mathematical ability holds that one either has or does not have a mathematical mind.

关于数学学习能力，一个常见的谬论是，一个人要么有数学头脑，要么没有。

3. Mathematical imagination and an intuitive grasp of mathematical principles may well be needed to do advanced research, but why should people who can do college-level work in other subjects not be able to do college-level math as well? 对于做高级研究的人来说，具备数学想象力和把握数学规律的直觉是必须的，但是为什么那些能在其他科目做到大学水平的人，却不能做大学水平的数学工作呢？

4.Since only a few people are supposed to have this mathematical mind, part of what makes us so passive in the face of our difficulties in learning mathematics is that we suspect all the while we may not be one of “them”, and we spend our time waiting to find out when our nonmathematical minds will be exposed.

既然只有少数人有这种数学头脑，我们面对数学难题时如此被动的部分原因就是，我们一直怀疑自己不是“他们”（有数学头脑的人）中的一员，我们花时间就是一直在等待我们没有数学思维被暴露的那一天。

Passage 5: American drama

1. A number of critics and literary historians have remarked that nineteenth-century American drama is marked not only by its relative lack of quality and integrity when compared with other types of American literature but by its lack of any national originality, any quality other than a superficial interest in “local color” and folklore that can be considered distinctively American.

很多评论家和文学历史学家评论说，和美国其它类型的文学艺术相比，19世纪的美国戏剧相对缺乏质量和完整性，不仅如此，它还缺乏民族原创性，只在“本地特色”和民俗上有些肤浅的兴趣，这些“本地特色”和民俗被认为是美国人特有的。

2. It seems, in reading the hundreds of surviving plays of the nineteenth century, that the best of them were the work of more or less ingenious children who lived in a world that had done no thinking since 1620.

克拉克说，“读了上百篇幸存下来的19世纪的戏剧后，似乎那些最好的戏剧是或多或少的天才儿童的作品，这些儿童生活在一个自从1620年就没有了思想的世界里。”

3. This gulf between drama and serious literature continued well into the twentieth century, and was actually not bridged effectively until the period after the First World War.

戏剧和严肃文学之间的鸿沟一直持续到二十世纪，实际上直到第一次世界大战以后，它们之间的差异才得到有效的填充/弥补。

Passage 6: Rootlessness

1. A nation of immigrants, unsurprisingly, celebrates those willing to pick up stakes and move on:毫不奇怪的是，一个移民国家会推崇(赞美)那些敢于冒险和积极进取的人

2.Hundreds of thousands of informal gathering spots that once nurtured community across the country have disappeared.

那些成千上万的曾孕育过全国社区的非正式聚会地点，都消失了。

3. In Los Angeles we are hesitant to leave our sheltered home in order to visit friends or to participate in cultural or entertainment events because every such outing involves a major investment of time and nervous strain in driving long distances. 在洛杉矶，我们为了拜访朋友或是参加文化或娱乐活动而离开安定的家都会犹豫，因为每次远行都涉及到大量的时间跟精力投入到长途驾驶中。

Passage 9: Science fiction

1. Like sex and a good many other natural phenomena, art must be a little disreputable to be any good, and science fiction writing is nothing if not an art. But too much ill repute, and the art, like sex, turns sour.

正如性以及其他诸多的自然现象一样，艺术就要引起一点点非议才会显得有价值，科幻小说毫无疑问就是一件艺术品。

2. The audience I write for is particularly intrigued by the notion that we can think and feel our way into forward times, that we can open the darkly wrapped package of the future before the allowed Christmas morning.

我的读者尤其被这样的一些观念所吸引：我们可以思考和感觉我们通往超前时代的路，以及我们可以在允许打开包裹的圣诞节早晨之前，来提前打开充满未知的包裹。

3. It is also a test of the writer, tougher than any other aesthetic test I know, for not only do we go up against a tough-minded audience (in principle, at least) but reality itself.

它也是对作者的考验，我知道它可能比任何其他艺术的考验更严峻，因为我们不但要与心态严格的读者相左，而且还要违背真实世界本身。

Passage 10: High-IQ society

1.Articles in a newsletter published by the Los Angeles chapter of the high IQ society Mensa have sparked outrage by appearing to advocate the extermination of the

homeless, the mentally retarded, the old and the infirm.高智商门撒协会洛杉矶分会的时事通讯文章引起人们的愤慨，文章声称应消灭流浪汉,智障人士以及老弱无依者。

2. Those people who are so mentally defective that they cannot live in society should, as soon as they are identified as defective, be humanely dispatched.

那些人精神上有缺陷，以至于不能生活在这个社会上，所以在他们被鉴定为有缺陷的时候，就应该人道的结束他们的生命。

3.In another article, attorney and Mensa member Jason Brent contended that Adolf Hitler’s greatest offence was not the killing of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, but “the fact that his actions prevent a rational discussion of the creation of the master race.”在另一篇文章里，身为律师兼门撒成员的Jason Brent认为希特勒的最大罪行不是他在纳粹大屠杀中杀害了六百万犹太人，而是他的行为阻止了一场关于创造优势种族的理性讨论。

Passage 11: The enigmatic “Mona Lisa”

1.The theories include speculation that Leonardo may have painted two or more versions of the “Mona Lisa”, or similar portraits of two different models; that the “Mona Lisa” is not a portrait at all, but a composite of several elegant women idealized by Leonardo.

这些理论包括这样的推断：达芬奇可能画了两个或更多版本的“蒙娜丽莎”；或者是两个不同模特的相似画像；或者“蒙娜丽莎”根本不是一个真实的画像，而是由达芬奇理想化了的一些优雅女人的综合体。

2.Additionally, there is a stubborn underground of claimants in Europe and America who firmly believe that their own versions were actually painted by Leonardo.

加之，在欧洲和美国有一批顽固的申请者，他们确信自己的版本由达芬奇所画。

3.Brought to America in 1797 by William Henry Vernon, and now in a New Jersey bank vault, this portrait shows a younger, more vibrant \"Lisa\"-and with background details as perfect as in any Leonardo.这幅画于1797年被威廉·亨利·弗农带到美国，现被放在新泽西一家银行地下室，这幅画像展现了一个更加年轻，更加生机的丽莎，并且具有其他达芬奇的画一样完美的背景细节。

Passage 12: Menial jobs

1. Menial jobs are not, by and large, the starting point of a track system which leads to even better jobs for those who are able and willing to do them.

总体来说，杂务工作并不能为那些有能力和意愿去做更高级工作的人开辟职业道路。

2. The man appears to treat the job in a cavalier fashion, working and not working as the spirit moves him, as if all that matters is the immediate satisfaction of his present appetites, the surrender to present moods, and the indulgence of whims with no thought for the cost, the consequences, the future.

他们对待工作表现出一副无所谓的态度，工作与否随心情而定，仿佛只有满足此刻的欲望，顺应现在的心情和放纵一时兴起的念头才是最重要的，根本不考虑会付出何等的代价，产生什么样的后果，会有着怎样的明天。

3. To the middle-class observer, this behavior reflects a “present time orientation” – an “inability to defer gratification”.

以中产阶级视角看来，这种行为反应出一种及时行乐的人生观，即缺失延迟满足的能力

4. It is this “present-time orientation” –as against the “future orientation” of the middle-class person – that “explains” to the outsider why Leroy chooses to spend the day at the Carry-out rather than report to work；why Richard, who was paid Friday, was drunk Saturday and Sunday and penniless Monday; why Sweets quit his job today because the boss looked at him “funny” yesterday.

这种及时行乐的人生观与中产阶级未雨绸缪的人生观相反，它向局外人表明了，为什么Leroy选择整天走神而不去汇报工作；为什么Richard周五才发工资周末就酗酒花个精光；（还有）为什么Sweets会让他的老板看到他昨天出丑，以至于今天丢了工作。

5.The difference between the two men lies not so much in their different orientations to time as in their different orientations to future time or, more specifically, to their different futures.

与其说二者的区别在于对时间的取向不同，倒不如说他们对未来，更准确的说是对各自不同的未来，所持观点不同。

Passage 14: The sexist ideology

1. The results of the traditional assignment of sex roles have been easy to ascertain in all parts of the world, the status of women has been consistently inferior to that of

men.很容易发现，传统对性别分配的结果，在全球各地都是如此，即女人的地位始终低于男人。

2. Some choose to believe that this void is explained by the fact that women are inferior, that their “natural” role in life is to give birth, nurture children, and little more.

一些人选择相信这样的空缺可以用这个事实来解释，那就是女人地位低，她们的自然角色就是生孩子,养育孩子仅此而已。

3.More and more, however, it has become apparent that the void exists not because of the natural inferiority of women but because of social factors that have not allowed women to fulfill any but the most limited roles.

然而，越来越显而易见的是，有些职业之所以缺乏女性参与，并非是因为女性天生就不如男性，而是因为种种社会因素只允许女性扮演极为有限的几种角色。

4. The sexist ideology is a system of beliefs that justifies the inequality that governs the way the two sexes are treated in society.

性别歧视思想体系是信仰系统，它使不平等的待遇合理化，即决定了在社会上对待两性的方式。

5. Rather, it is that “different” has acquired the value superior/inferior and specifically that men are superior and women inferior.

甚至，这种不同还承认了等级上的高与低，具体来说，就是男性优于女性。

6.Social scientists, who saw the similarity of the condition of women to that of minorities quite some time ago, point out that, in addition to the inequality in treatment, women are physically distinct and vulnerable.

社会学家认为女人现在所处的情况与以前少数民族所处情况完全类似，同时指出：除了不平等的对待，女性在身体上是独特而脆弱的。

7.However, women are not residentially segregated, and their social distance from men is less great. In fact, women control much of the wealth of the nation, although most have inherited it from husbands of fathers.

然而，女性并不是与世隔绝的，她们与男性的社会距离并不是很大。事实上，女性掌握了社会的大量财富，尽管是从她父亲或丈夫那里继承而来的。

Passage 15: Motion

1. A variation of this effect can be very deceptive in an enclosed station like Grand Central Terminal in NY.

这种影响的多样性在封闭的环境像纽约中央火车站是很具有欺骗性的。

2.But granted the idealized conditions of a glass-calm sea and a silent ship, nothing that happens below decks--no amount of observation or mechanical experiment performed inside the ship--will disclose its velocity through the sea.

若处于风平浪静的大海且船只也无声的理想状态，甲板下发生的任何情况---船里进行的任何

观察或机械试验---都不会披露其海上航行的速度。

Passage 17: Work or relax

1. The first sentence in the 3rd paragraph.At first glance, the proposition that late-20th-century North Americans might enjoy less leisure than earlier generations seems preposterous。

初略一瞧，20世纪后期的北美人可能享受更少休闲时光的说法看上去不可思议。

2. Nor is it exclusive to the white-collar classes.也不是白领阶层所独自享有的。

Passage 18: Why vote

1. The last sentence in the first paragraph.Simply to raise the question “what if everyone felt the same way?” does not remove the lingering impression that a single person is dwarfed by the enormous number of people who do trek to the polls, especially in a national election.

很容易的提出这个问题，“如果每个人都有同样的感觉怎么办”，即使这样，一个选民在巨大的热衷选举的选民中只是九牛一毛，特别是在国家性的选举时，这个根深蒂固的想法仍不能被移除。

2. The first sentence in the second paragraph.Supporters of the ruling elite theory insist that even though voters are given a choice among candidates， their choice is restricted to a narrow range of similar-minded individuals sanctioned by the ruling elite。

精英统治理论的支持者声称即使选民拥有选举候选人的选择权，他们的选择仍然被限定在被精英统治理论所认可的一些个人里。

3. The last sentence in the third paragraph.Even if the choice is between Tweedledee and Tweedledum，Tweedledee knows that a day of reckoning is fixed by law and that minimally he or she must strive to avoid displeasing the constituents or lose the job。

即使候选人半斤八两，他们知道法律规定了到期的那天，至少他/她必须尽力避免惹怒选民或丢了官职。

Passage 19: Language

1. Herder argued against Rousseau’s view that language developed out of the “cries of nature” that humans shared with animals by citing the fundamental differences between human language and the instinctive cries of animals.

通过论述人类语言和动物的本能叫喊之间的差异，赫尔德驳斥了卢梭的观点，卢梭认为，语言是人类和动物“自然呼唤”发展而来。

2. Language is part of our essential human nature and was therefore neither invented nor handed down as a gift.语言是最基本的人类天性的一部分而且既不是被发明的也不是被作为礼物而传承下来的。

3. Even though the monogenetic theory is not widely accepted today, the universality of human language is, and can be plausibly explained by Herder’s argument that which can be called the Universal Grammar.

尽管一元论如今并没有被广泛的接受，人类的语言具有普遍性并且该普遍性被貌似正确的解释，赫尔德强调该解释可以被叫做普遍文法。

Passage 20: The SI system

1. There were angry arguments in shops in the first few days after decimalisation and some customers could not work out their bills and offered shopkeepers a handful of coins, trusting that they would not be cheated.

在十进制使用之后的开始的几年里，商店里有过非常严重的争论，并且一些顾客算不出他们该付的钱于是就给收银员一大把硬币，相信他们自己不会被收银员欺骗。

2. For cricketers, this will be almost as difficult to accept and remember as it was for people a few hundred years ago to accept that the Earth goes round the Sun.

对板球运动员来说，接受并记住它几乎和人类几百前接受地球围绕太阳转一样困难。

3. Another reason is that although the case for SI (international system of units) mainly depends on the advantages for British industry in selling goods to Europe, British’s biggest customer abroad, the United States, is not going to give up the old measurement units.

另外一个原因是，虽然采用国际度量单位主要考虑到英国工业向欧洲出售商品的便利，但是英国最大的海外客户，也就是美国，却不准备放弃原有的度量单位。