2017年翻译资格考试中级笔译实务模拟试题（七）
【英译汉】
In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.
In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.
Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family —they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension
【参考译文】
在一些社会，人们因为所谓的一些家庭原因而想要拥有孩子：传宗接代，光宗耀祖，讨好祖辈;使得有关家庭的宗教礼仪得以正常传承。这些原因在现代世俗化社会，似显苍白，而在其他地区，它却曾一度构成并确实仍在构成强有力的原因
此外，还有一个家庭原因与下列范畴不无共通之处。这便是，生儿育女可以维系，改善婚姻;可以拴住丈夫或者使妻子不再无所事事;修复或者是重振婚姻;多子多孙，以为家庭幸福唯有此法。而这一点由其反面得以彰显：在某些社会，无法生儿育女(或者是、无法生育儿子)对于婚姻而言，是一个隐患，还可以作为离婚的现成借口。
后代对于家庭这一体制本身的意义远非如此。对于大多数人来说，只有夫妇二人并不是真正意义上的一个家庭——他们需要孩子去丰富这个二人世界，赋予这二人世界。真正意义上的家庭性质，并从后代子孙那里获得某种回报。孩子需要家，而家庭似乎也需要孩子。家庭作为一个独一无二的社会机构，至少在原则上，能在这样一个变化多端、到处都是敌对的世界能给予我们一定的安全感，慰藉。保证以及价值取向上。于大多数人而言，就字面意义上来说，也不需要一个人来维系并存在，并使其代代生息。
