Section 1 English-Chinese Translation (50 points)
Translate the following two passages into Chinese.
Passage 1
Apple may well be the only technical company on the planet that would dare compare itself to Picasso.
In a class at the company's internal university, the instructor likened the 11 lithographs that make up Picasso's The Dull to the way Apple builds its smartphones and other devices. The idea is that Apple designers strive for simplicity just as Picasso eliminated details to create a great work of art.
Steven P. Jobs established the Apple University as a way to inculcate employees into Apple's business culture and educate them about its history, particularly as the company grew and the technical business changed. Courses are not required, only recommended, but getting new employees to enroll is rarely a problem.
Randy Nelson, who came from the animation studio Pixar, co-founded by Mr. Jobs, is one of the teachers of "Communicating at Apple." This course, open to various levels of employees, focuses on clear communication, not just for making products intuitive, but also for sharing ideas with peers and marketing products.
In a version of the class taught last year, Mr. Nelson showed a slide of The Bull, a series of 11 lithographs of a bull that Picasso created over about a month, starting in late 1945. In the early stages, the bull has a snout, shoulder shanks and hooves, but over the iterations, those details vanish. The last image is a curvy stick figure that is still unmistakably a bull.
"You go through more iterations until you can simply deliver your message in a very concise way, and that is true to the Apple brand and everything we do," recalled one person who took the course.
In "What Makes Apple, Apple," another course that Mr. Nelson occasionally teaches, he showed a slide of the remote control for the Google TV, said an employee who took the class last year. The remote control has 78 buttons. Then, the employee said, Mr. Nelson displayed a photo of the Apple TV remote control, a thin piece of metal with just three buttons.
How did Apple's designers decide on three buttons? They started out with an idea. Mr. Nelson explained, and debated until they had just what was needed — a button to play and pause a video, a button to select something to watch, and another to go to the main menu.
The Google TV remote control serves as a counterexample. It had so many buttons, Mr. Nelson said, because the individual engineers and designers who worked on the project all got what they wanted.
Passage 2
Equipped with the camera extender known as a selfie stick, occasionally referred to as "the wand of narcissism," tourists can now reach for flattering selfies wherever they go.
Art museums have watched this development nervously, fearing damage to their collections or to visitors, as users swing their slicks with abandon. Now they are taking action. One by one, museums across the United States have been imposing bans on using selfie sticks for photographs inside galleries (adding them to existing rules on umbrellas, backpacks and tripods), yet another example of how controlling crowding has become part of the museum mission.
The Mirshhom Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington prohibited the sticks this month, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston plans to impose a ban. In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has been studying the matter for some time, has just decided that it will forbid selfie slicks, too. New signs will be posted soon.
"from now on ,you will be asked quietly to put it away," said Sree Sreenivasan, the chief digital officer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. "It's one thing to take a picture at arm's length, but when it is three times arm's length, you are invading someone else's personal space."
The personal space of other visitors is just one problem. The artwork is another. "We do not want to have to put all the art under glass," said Deborah Ziska, the chief of public information at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, which has been quietly enforcing a ban on selfie sticks, but is in the process of adding it formally to its printed guidelines for visitors.
Last but not least is the threat to the camera operator, intent on capturing the perfect shot and oblivious to the surroundings. "If people are not paying attention in the Temple of Dendur, they can end up in the water with the crocodile sculpture," Mr. Sreenivasan said. "We have so many balconies you could fall from, and stairs you can trip on."
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art on Thursday, Jasmine Adaos, a selfie-stick user from Chile, expressed dismay. "It's just another product," she said. "When you have a regular camera, it's the same thing. I don't see the problem if you’re careful.” But Hai Lin student from Shandong, China, conceded that the museum might have a point. "You can hit people when they're passing by," she said.
