2017年翻译资格考试中级笔译模拟题
英译汉 Passage 1
LONDON — From Elizabeth I to Elizabeth II, England was an empire. No more.
Brexit has turned the twilight years of the reign of Elizabeth II into the final chapter in the history of Great Britain. What its partisans, celebrating with flag-waving in the street, tearfully called “Independence Day” will unravel the role that England has played since the 16th century as a great power, along with the City of London’s reign as a financial capital of the world.
After Elizabeth I ascended to the throne in 1558, her merchant-venturers began an imperial quest. By Elizabeth II’s birth, Britain’s empire spanned nearly a quarter of the globe.
Brexit’s fantasy of revived greatness — “taking back control” — will achieve the opposite. England’s wish to withdraw from its union with Europe appears now to have made inevitable Scotland’s eventual withdrawal from its union with England. It has also placed in doubt the status of Northern Ireland, where a majority also voted against leaving the European Union.
Why did England choose this? The key is not sovereignty but a rejection of ethnic change.
“It’s not England anymore,” people told me as I traveled around the country covering the referendum. In Tonbridge and Grantham, in Romford and Witney, this is what I heard, hundreds of times: “We don’t recognize our country anymore.”
At her coronation in 1953, Elizabeth II also became the reigning monarch of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). The nonwhite population of Britain then was probably less than 20,000. Over 70 percent of British workers were manual laborers.
Before World War II, only three waves left a demographic trace on this “island nation”: Huguenots from France and the Netherlands in the 16th century, Irish immigration in the mid-19th century and Jewish immigration in the later decades. The numbers were always small. Huguenots numbered about 1 percent of London’s population; Irish immigration, even at its 19th-century peak, amounted to less than 3 percent of the population of England and Wales.
So the most striking historical trend of Elizabeth II’s reign has been a sudden ethnic transformation of Britain. Remain campaigners argue that it was areas with low immigration that voted most heavily for Brexit. This misses the large flow of white British families from diverse cities to such areas and misunderstands them. People were voting against their town turning into London; they were voting against becoming an immigrant nation.
On my travels, I thought often of the writer J. G. Ballard. The English are a funny old lot, he said: They “talked as if they’d won the war but acted as if they’ve lost it.”
And now the dreamers, unwitting, sickened with nostalgia, have torn down that last, threadbare vestige of Great Britain. This is the queen of England’s England no more.
英译汉 Passage 2
Which would lead to greater happiness — the money or the time?
For a research project, we put this question to more than 4,000 Americans of different ages, income levels, occupations and marital and parental status. In a paper in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, which we wrote with our student Uri Barnea, we found that most people valued money more than time. Sixty-four percent of the 4,415 people we asked in five surveys chose money.
Is money the right choice? We had also asked our survey respondents to report their level of happiness and life satisfaction. We found that the people who chose time were on average statistically happier and more satisfied with life than the people who chose money.
So money may turn out to be the wrong choice.
But maybe this result simply shows that the people who chose money are more financially constrained and therefore less happy. To check this, we also asked respondents to report their annual household income along with the number of hours they work each week (to measure how much time they have).
We found that even when we held constant the amount of leisure time and money respondents had (as well as their age, gender, marital status, parental status and the extent to which they valued material possessions), the people who chose time over money were still happier. So if we were to take two people who were otherwise the same, the one who chose time over money would be happier than the one who chose money over time.
Our research isn’t claiming that having more of either resource is better or worse for happiness. Other research examines the relationship between wealth and happiness and suggests, for example, that more income is positively related to happiness up to a certain point ($75,000, in the United States) and that life satisfaction continues to increase with income beyond that point.
In our pursuit of happiness, we are constantly faced with decisions both big and small that force us to pit time against money. Of course, sometimes it’s not a choice at all: We must earn that extra pay to make ends meet. But when it is a choice, the likelihood of choosing more time over more money — despite the widespread tendency to do the opposite — is a good sign you’ll enjoy the happiness you seek.
汉译英 Passage 1
经济运行缓中趋稳、稳中向好。国内生产总值达到74.4万亿元，增长6.7%，名列世界前茅，对全球经济增长的贡献率超过30%。居民消费价格上涨2%。工业企业利润由上年下降2.3%转为增长8.5%，单位国内生产总值能耗下降5%，经济发展的质量和效益明显提高。
就业增长超出预期。全年城镇新增就业1314万人。高校毕业生就业创业人数再创新高。年末城镇登记失业率4.02%，为多年来最低。13亿多人口的发展中大国，就业比较充分，十分不易。
改革开放深入推进。重要领域和关键环节改革取得突破性进展，供给侧结构性改革初见成效。对外开放推出新举措，“一带一路”建设进展快速，一批重大工程和国际产能合作项目落地。
经济结构加快调整。消费在经济增长中发挥主要拉动作用。服务业增加值占国内生产总值比重上升到51.6%。高技术产业、装备制造业较快增长。农业稳中调优，粮食再获丰收。
汉译英 Passage 2
此次论坛以“共同的记忆，共赢的发展”为主题，体现了我们对历史遗产的倍加珍视，对沿线各国共同发展的美好愿景，对世界和平发展的责任担当。
古丝绸之路是历史留下的伟大财富，“一带一路”倡议是一项充满东方智慧、致力于共同繁荣发展的中国方案。中国是“一带一路”的倡导者和推动者，但建设“一带一路”是大家共同的事业。中国倡议共建“一带一路”，是编织互利共赢的合作网络，而不是搞势力范围;是鼓励百花齐放，而不是一枝独秀;是提倡共同发展，而不是搞零和游戏;是各方携手并进的阳光大道，而不是某一方的私家小路。中国热诚欢迎沿线国家积极参与，也张开臂膀欢迎五大洲朋友共襄盛举。
