2016大学英语四级考试翻译练习四

练 习 四 　　Directions: Read the underlined sentences carefully, and then translate them into Chinese. You may check your answers after you finish them. 　　Passage One 　　Anybody over 70 who was brought up in a country village or town finds the social customs of young people today strangely familiar. In the 1800’s, it was normal to have boys and girls pair off in a more or less stable fashion, and such pairing often ended in marriage. 　　Why have the younger people reverted so sharply to the ways of an earlier era and simpler society? There seems to be no clear-cut（明确的）answer. The cause of the change has often been considered to be the Second World War, but this reversion was well under way before 1939. The niw social customs may be related to the Great Depression（经济大萧条）when a boy putting out money for a girl on dance, movies, or the like wanted to be sure of some return on his investment. It is also true that the fiercely competitive social life of the twenties meant that a popular girl had a very good time indeed. 　　But the majority of girls were not popular. They dreaded being neglected in parties. It may be that the less popular girls were the ones who slowly created the present democratic system, under which any girl with a steady is just as well off as any other girl with a steady（情侣）.Since each boy wants a steady, too, and since the number of boys and girls are about equal, everybody seems better off at present. On the other hand, girls would insist that the new system was created by the boys who are aggressive, possessive, and jealous of all rivals. 　　Passage Two 　　It remains to be seen whether the reserves of raw materials would be sufficient to supply a world economy which would have grown by 500%. South-East Asia alone would have an energy consumption five times greater than that of Western Europe in 1970. Incidentally, if the underdeveloped countries started using up petrol at the same rate as the industrialized areas, then world reserves would already be exhausted by 1985. 　　All this only goes to show just how important it is to set up a plan to conserve and divide up fairly natural resources on a world-wide scale. 　　This is a matter of life and death because world population is exploding at an incredible rate. By the middle of the next century population will expand every year by as much as it did in the first 1500 years after Christ. In the southern, poor, parts of the globe, the figures are enough to make your hair stand on end. Even supposing that steps are taken to stability（稳定） world population in te next 50 years, the number of inhabitants per square kilometer will increase by from 4 in the United States to 140 in South-East Asia. What can we do about it? 　　In the first hypothesis（假设）we do nothing. By the year 2000, the southern parts of the world then have a population greater than the total world population today. Calcutta would have 60 million inhabitants. It is unthinkable. 　　Alternatively（或）, we could start acting right now to bring births under control within 15 years so that population levels off. Even then the population in the southern areas would not stop growing for 75 years. 　　Passage Three 　　One of the most interesting paradoxes（逆说）in America today is that Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, is now engaged in serious debate about what a university should be, and whether it is measuring up. 　　Like the Roman Catholic（天主教的）Church and other ancient institutions, it is asking-still in private rather than in public-whether its past assumptions about faculty, authority, admissions, courses of study, are really relevant to the problems of the 1980’s. 　　Should Harvard-or any other university-be an intellectual sanctuary（圣坛）, apart from the political and social revolution of the age, or should it be a laboratory for experimentation with these political and social revolutions, or even an engine of the revolution? This is what is being discussed privately in the big houses of faculty members around the Harvard Yard. 　　The issue was defined by Walter lippmann a distinguished Harvard graduate, several years ago. 　　“If the universities are to do their work, ” he said, “they must be independent and they must be disinterested--- They are places to which men can turn for judgements which are unbiased by partisanship and special interest. Obviously, the moment the universities fall under political control, or under the control of private interest, or the moment they themselves take a hand in politics and the leadership of government, their value as independent and disinterested sources of judgement is weakened --- ” 　　This is part of the argument that is going on at Harvard today. Another part is the argument among the students that a university is the keeper of our ideals and morals, and should not be “disinterested” but activist in bringing the nation’s ideals and actions together. 　　Harvard’s men of today seem more troubled and less sure about personal, political and academic purpose than they did at the beginning. They are not even clear about how they should debate and resolve their problems, but they are struggling with them privately, and how they come out is bound to influence American university and political life in the 1980’s.大学英语四六级考试