2002年3月英语高级口译考试笔试真题+音频+答案
SECTION 5: READING TEST (30minutes)
Directions: Read the following passages and then answer IN complete sentences the questions which follow each passage. Use only information from the passage you have just read and write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
Questions 1~3 //tr.hjenglish.com
It wasn't the abduction of his 70-year-old grandmother that led Alberto Peisach to leave Colombia. Nor was it the 1997murder of his brother-in -law during a botched kidnap attempt. It was the planned abduction of his 6-year-old son that finally persuaded the Ivy League-educated entrepreneur to pack his bags in less than 24hours and head to Miami with his wife and kids. Peisach has carved out a niche for himself in south Florida as the head of a $100 million private equity found. "A lot of my friends took bets on how soon I'd be back home, but 80percent of them have left," says Peisach. "The Colombia that I grew up in doesn't exist anymore, and anybody who's had a choice has left." //tr.hjenglish.com
Alarmed by a slumping economy and the ever-present menace of kidnapping, Colombia's best and brightest are leaving in droves. Some have settled in Spain and nearby Latin American countries, but nowhere is the exodus quite as visible as in Miami. The city's 70,000 Colombians recently overtook Nicaraguans as the largest immigrant community after Cubans. Legions of professionals are moving into affluent suburbs. Membership of Commerce has doubled in just the past 18months. The big winner from the brain drain is south Florida. "Colombians are basically subsidizing Miami," says political scientist Eduardo Gamarra.
Last year's U.S. census counted 470,000 residents of Colombian origin nationwide, but some experts put the figure closer to 600,000. The first significant wave of immigration dates back to the 1950s, when a brutal civil war forced tens of thousands to flee. Their ranks were bolstered in the 1980s by Colombians escaping the lawlessness associated with the rise of major drug cartels. But most of those earlier migrants bypassed Florida in favor of New York and New Jersey. Relatively few brought with them the First World-caliber education and experience of their recently arrived countrymen.
Not all transplants can be classified as refugees. Miami's unofficial reputation as Latin America's economic and showbiz capital has lured celebrities like pop diva Shakira and actress Sofia Vergara. And some drug traffickers are trying to blend in with their law-abiding countrymen to escape detection by authorities.
But many more are escaping the anarchy of a land where eight people are kidnapped and nearly 100 are murdered on average every single day. Abel Meza Montoya was beaten up and left for dead by men identifying themselves as supporters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia after the pool-hall owner refused to pay them protection money I April.The 55-year-old father of six ignored their warnings at first, but in June Meza finally fled the country with his youngest daughter.
The plight of such ordinary folks has inspired a two-year campaign to legalize an estimated 95,000 Colombians living illegally in America. Community leaders argue that these Colombians fear for their lives back home and should qualify for temporary protected status, a short-term reprieve from deportation. Clinton-administration officials brushed aside those pleas.But activists have enlisted the support of nearly 40 U.S. politicians in their continuing effort to buy some time for their countrymen. "There is a war being waged against civilians in Colombia financed by the sale of illicit drugs," says Juan Carlos Zapata of the Miami- based Colombian American Service Association. "As the world's biggest consumer of narcotics, the United States has a moral obligation to grant this relief." Having left their country because of politics, many Colombians show little inclination to challenge the Cuban stranglehold on power in Miami. "People who come here are low profile," explains Isaac Lee, former editor of the respected news magazine Seaman. who moved to Miami last year. "They want to live peacefully." And for these Colombians and thousands more clamoring to follow in their footsteps, Miami is the best alternative to a country that no longer offers security or hope.
1.Why does the author give the example of Alberto Peisach at the beginning of the passage?
2. Introduce briefly the three waves of Colombian immigration since the 1950S.
3. Give a brief explanation of political scientist Eduardo Gamarra' s comment that "Colombians
are basically subsidizing Miami."
Question 4~6 //tr.hjenglish.com
"Study nature, not books!" advised the great 19th century naturalist Louis Agassiz. As a boy growing up in Alabama and northern Florida, Edward Osborne Wilson did both. By day he scoured fields, forests and streams. At night he pored over books and magazines. It was an article in National Geographic ("Stalking Ants, Savage and Civilized") that launched, at the ripe age of 9, one of the great scientific careers of the late 20th century, a career that began in entomology-with a particular passion for ants- but that has since reinvented itself with remarkable frequency, expanding its scope to encompass not just the earth's smallest creatures but the whole living planet.
E.O. Wilson's scientific contributions began early. He was 13 when he discovered, in a vacant lot near the docks of Mobile, Ala., the first known U.S. colonies of fire ants, Solenopsis invicta, invaders from Brazil and Argentina known in the South as "the ants from hell."
As an assistant professor at Harvard in the late 1950s, he proposed the radical notion that ant societies are bound together by an elaborate system of chemical signals.
Meanwhile, Wilson was blazing other trails. Fascinated by ant societies, he began seeing parallels in the socials interactions of birds, lions, monkeys, apes and even humans. In a 1975 book audaciously titled Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, he charted in evolutionary terms the social architecture of a wide range of species-their breeding behavior, gender dominance, caste systems. "In a Darwinian sense," Wilson wrote, "the organism does not live for itself. Its primary function is not even to reproduce other organisms; it reproduces genes, and it serves as their temporary carrier." Wilson's Sociobiology was at once enormously influential and hugely controversial. Its first 26 chapters, which dealt with the social systems of nonhuman species, were widely praised as one of the century's signal scientific achievements. Its 27th chapter, which applied the same analysis to human behavior and culture, was harshly-and sometimes violently-attacked. Despite the mixed reaction, Wilson in this and subsequent books-culmination with Promethean Fire (1983)-accomplished something few scientists can claim. He established a new field as science. It is known to this day as sociobiology.
By that time, however, Wilson had moved on. Drawing from his deep knowledge of the earth's "little creatures" and his sense that their contribution to the planet's ecology is under appreciated, he produced what may be his most important book, The Diversity of Life（1992）. In 424 pages he describes how an intricately interconnected natural system is threatened by a manmade biodiversity crisis he calls the "sixth extinction"—the most devastating trauma since the extinction event that laid waste the dinosaurs and other creatures 65 million years ago.
He notes in Diversity that the 1.5 million species named so far by scientists represent only a tiny fraction of the tens of millions that may be out there. Wilson's prediction that 30%to 50%of all species would be extinct by the middle of the 21st century was meant to provoke—and it did. Critics rej ected the estimate as another one of his flamboyant speculations. But subsequent research has supported it. From the perspective of the biodiversity scientist, virtually all the signs are bad.
How can human society transform itself? How can we become stewards of the living world? To Wilson, what is requited is a new convergence of thought and ethics comparable to the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Now, at 72, E.O. Wilson is a senior doyen of science and, by his own admission, moving irresistibly into what he calls" the literary realm." It's not a bad place for him to be. Wilson has produced a scientific masterpiece in nearly every decade of his life. And in this time of crisis, our planet has never had more need for the observations and intuition of one of the world's great naturalists.
4. Give a brief introduction of E.O. Wilson and his research fields.
5. Why is Wilson's work Sociobiology "hugely controversial"? What is his main theory?
6. What is the major theme of his book The Diversity of Life? //tr.hjenglish.com
Questions 7~10 //tr.hjenglish.com
Think of yourself flying across the country. An engine starts sputtering; cause for alarm, sure, but the pilot does that folksy number—"Aw, shucks, little problem here"—and assures you the others can take the strain. Then a second engine goes out; the sweat trickles down your neck, but your reckon you'll make it to the ground safely. But if the third, and then the fourth, flame out
The global economy hasn't crashed just yet. But a world—wide slowdown is giving analysts everywhere a bad case of the jitters. The key reason: this, says Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, is "the first synchronized downturn since the 1980s," when high interest rates squeezed the world economy like an orange. During the last U.S. recession, 10years ago, Europe was in its post—cold war euphoria, while the Asian economies were the stuff of miracle. By the time a financial crisis declared the Asian tigers in 1997—98, the U.S. economy was in the middle of its technology boom.
This time around, both the U.S. and German economies are flatlining, while that of Japan continues its slow, downward spiral. The Japanese unemployment rate has risen to 5%, while the Nikkei stock market index last week touched lows not seen since 1984. The world's three most powerful engines are out ofjuice. Worry. //tr.hjenglish.com
Why are this year's economic woes so widespread? Blame globalization, the increase in cross—border trade and investment, that has bound the world economy closer together than ever before. In good times, globalization spreads the wealth. The astonishing growth of the U.S. economy in the lat 1990s spilled over into countries from Taiwan (which makes the microchips that power your computer) to Ireland (a prime destination for U.S. firms outsourcing manufacturing). But globalization, it turns out, has a reverse gear. Once it was plain—by last winter—that technology firms had vastly overestimated demand, the consequent retrenchment spread far beyond the Bay Area. Last week, for example, Baltimore Technologies, the j ewel in Ireland's high—tech sector, slashedjobs in an effort to achieve profitability.
Signs of global recession inevitably conjure up thoughts of the last time the whole world went to hell in a hand basket: the Great Depression of the 1930s.In truth, we're a long way from breadlines, and policymakers understand the forces that move the economy today much better than they did then. But one lesson of the 1930s is worth remembering. In an interconnected world, points out Jeffrey Garter, dean of the Yale school of management, a small spark can start a huge conflagration. In 1930 it looked as if the consequences of the 1929market crash might be contained; it was the collapse in 1931of the Austrian bank Creditanstalt that turned a market correction into a worldwide slump. Similarly, the global financial crisis of 1997—98 started with the devaluation of the Thai bath—though Thailand's whole economy is about the size of Kentucky's.
That's one reason why, after much dickering, the Administration last week signed off on an $8 billion international rescue package for Argentina (an economy about the size of North lending tax dollars paid by American plumbers and retail clerks to a country that careens from one debt crisis to the next. But in the end, as Goldman Sachs' Hormats puts it, "pragmatism triumphed over ideology." If Argentina had defaulted on its debt, investors might have pulled out of other emerging markets, triggering a real crash. In a nervous world, It's best to avoid anything that leads to a loss of confidence. Might anything else tip the mood from mere gloom to atastrophe? "A huge amount," says Yale Garten, "is hinging on the American consumer." In today's planes, one really strong engine can get you safely to your destination. But expect a bumpy ride. //tr.hjenglish.com
7. Why does the author begin the article with the description of one's flying experience?
8. Explain the sentence from paragraph 4 "But globalization, it turns out, has a reverse gear."
9. Why does the author mention the Great Depression of the 1930s?
10. What do you know about the arguments over the $8 billion international rescue package for Argentina?
SECTION 6：TRANSLATION TEST (30 minutes)
Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. //tr.hjenglish.com
历史雄辩地说明，中美之间建立在平等互利基础上的劳动分工是最为合理和实用的国际关系。中国物美价廉的制成品源源不断地走上美国超级市场的货架，而美国的农产品、 高新技术产品，连同跨国公司的资本和技术，滚滚不断地涌进中国内地。中国人民以其勤劳的双手，增进了美国的福祉，促使其产业升级换代 而北美这块广袤而又富饶的土地，也以其精华滋润和促进了中国的现代化进程。经贸合作是两国能够找到共同语言的最佳领域。以谋求共同利益来减少或淡化意识形态差异和利益冲突，过去是、今后更是双方寻求和平共处的必由之路。