英译汉(一)
Passage 2下面你将听到联合国秘书长在英国白金汉宫的一段讲话。
Thank you, Prime Minister, for that remarkableintroduction. You have very lucidly provided thecontext for what I am about to say this morning. It’s a great honor to be invited to speak in thishistoric setting. The fact that you want to hear fromthe Secretary-General of the United Nations at thistime, and that Prime Minister Tony Blair himself suggested this public exchange of ideassuggests to me that both you and he are conscious of the remarkable moment in worldhistory that we have reached.
Indeed, today we face threats to world order and world peace of a kind and a scale that wehave not seen since the height of the Cold War. But if we can agree on ways to respondeffectively to those threats, we also have a unique opportunity to build a world that will besafer, fairer and freer, for all its inhabitants. I think you glimpsed that opportunity during theG7 finance ministers’ meeting here in London last week, with its welcome emphasis onmeasures to attack world poverty and achieve the Millennium Development Goals.
What kind of threats do I have in mind? The most obvious are terrorism and weapons ofmass destruction. Many experts tell us the question is not whether, but how soon, the two willbe combined -- and we see, for example, a “dirty bomb” detonated in central London, or someother major capital. The loss of life would be shocking, but as nothing to the social andeconomic effects. Disruption would be felt not only here but around the world.
Millions in Asia, Africa and Latin America would lose their livelihoods, because of the impacton the world economy. People in those parts of the world already face many other, moreimmediate threats -- hunger, disease, environmental degradation, corrupt and oppressivegovernment, civil and ethnic conflict -- threats to which the poor are always more vulnerablethan the rich. Africa, my own continent, has the worst problems of all. The hopes of manyAfrican countries have been blighted by HIV/AIDS, which is devastating the most productiveage-groups and the best educated social groups, slashing life expectancy, threatening toreverse decades of economic development.
I said two years ago that this might be the most decisive moment for the internationalsystem since the United Nations was founded in 1945. I still believe that. We are living througha time of danger, but also of great opportunity. The question is, will governments muster thewill to seize that opportunity, and decide on a package of reforms offering protection againstthreats of both kinds---from terrorism and WMD to poverty, hunger and disease. By tacklingthem all at once we can make sure that no one---North or South, rich or poor---will feel left out, and that everyone will feel an interest in implementing the whole package.
