英语历年考研真题阅读翻译
2001 Passage 1
Specialisation can be seen as a response to the problem of an increasing accumulation of scientific knowledge. By splitting up the subject matter into smaller units, one man could continue to handle the information and use it as the basis for further research. But specialisation was only one of a series of related developments in science affecting the process of communication. Another was the growing professionalisation of scientific activity.
No clear-cut distinction can be drawn between professionals and amateurs in science: exceptions can be found to any rule. Nevertheless, the word "amateur" does carry a connotation that the person concerned is not fully integrate d into the scientific community and, in particular, may not fully share its values. The growth of specialisation in the nineteenth century, with its consequent requirement of a longer, more complex training, implied greater problems for amateur participation in science. The trend was naturally most obvious in those areas of science based especially on a mathematical or laboratory training, and can be illustrated in terms of the development of geology in the United Kingdom.
A comparison of British geological publications over the last century and a half reveal s not simply an increasing emphasis on the primacy of research, but also a changing definition of what constitutes an acceptable research paper. Thus, in the nineteenth century, local geological studies represent ed worthwhile research in their own right; but, in the twentieth century, local studies have increasingly become acceptable to professionals only if they incorporate, and reflect on, the wider geological picture. Amateurs, on the other hand, have continued to pursue local studies in the old way. The overall result has been to make entrance to professional geological journals harder for amateurs, a result that has been reinforced by the widespread introduction of referee ing, first by national journals in the nineteenth century and then by several local geological journals in the twentieth century. As a logical consequence of this development, separate journals have now appeared aimed mainly towards either professional or amateur readership. A rather similar process of differentiation has led to professional geologists coming together nationally within one or two specific societies, where as the amateurs have tended either to remain in local societies or to come together nationally in a different way.
Although the process of professionalisation and specialisation was already well under way in British geology during the nineteenth century, its full consequences were thus delay ed until the twentieth century. In science generally, however, the nineteenth century must be reckon ed as the crucial period for this change in the structure of science.
专业化可被视为针对科学知识不断膨胀这个问题所做出的反应。通过将学科细化，个人能够继续处理这些不断膨胀的信息并将它们作为深入研究的基础。但是专业化仅是科学领域内一系列影响交流过程的有关现象之一。另一现象是科学活动的日益职业化。
在科学领域内，专业与业余之间没有绝对的区分：任何规律都有其例外。但是“业余”这个词的确具有特殊的含义，那就是所指的那个人没有完全融入某个科学家群体，具体地说，他可能并不完全认同这个群体的价值观。世纪的专业化
的发展，以及随之而来的对训练的长期性和复杂性的要求，对业余人员进入科学界造成了更大的困难。特别是在以数学和实验室训练为基础的科学领域，这种倾向自然尤为明显，这可以通过英国的地质学发展过程得到证实。
对过去一个半世纪的英国地质出版物进行比较，我们不但发现人们对研究的重视程度在不断增加，而且人们对可以接受的论文的定义也在不断变化。因此，在19世纪，局部的地质研究本身就可形成一种有价值的研究；而到了20世纪，如果局部的研究能够被专业人员接受，那么它越来越倾向于必须体现或思考更广阔的地质面貌。另一方面业余人员继续以旧的方式从事局部的研究。其整体的结果是使业余人员进入专业性地质学杂志更加困难，而审稿制度的全面引进使这个结果得到加强，这一制度开始是在19世纪的全国性杂志进行，进入20世纪后也在一些地方性地质杂志实行。这样发展的必然结果是出现了针对专业读者和业余读者的不同杂志。类似的分化过程也导致专业地质学家聚集起来，形成一两个全国性的团体，而业余地质学家则要么留在地方性团体中，要么以不同方式组成全国性的团体。
虽然职业化和专业化过程在19世纪的英国地质学界中已经得到迅速发展，但是它的效果直到20世纪才充分显示出来。然而，从科学这个整体来看，19世纪必须被视为科学结构发生变化的关键时期。
2001 Passage 2
A great deal of attention is being paid today to the so-called digital divide—the division of the world into the info(information) rich and the info poor. And that divide does exist today. My wife and I lectured about this loom ing danger twenty years ago. What was less visible then, however, were the new, positive forces that work against the digital divide. There are reasons to be optimistic.
There are technological reasons to hope the digital divide will narrow. As the Internet becomes more and more commercialize d, it is in the interest of business to universalize access — after all, the more people online, the more potential customers there are. More and more governments, afraid their countries will be left behind, want to spread Internet access. Within the next decade or two, one to two billion people on the planet will be netted together. As a result, I now believe the digital divide will narrow rather than widen in the years ahead. And that is very good news because the Internet may well be the most powerful tool for combating world poverty that we've ever had.
Of course, the use of the Internet isn't the only way to defeat poverty. And the Internet is not the only tool we have. But it has enormous potential.
To take advantage of this tool, some impoverish ed countries will have to get over their outdated anti-colonial prejudice s with respect to foreign investment. Countries that still think foreign investment is an invasion of their sovereignty might well study the history of infrastructure (the basic structural foundations of a society) in the United States. When the United States built its industrial infrastructure, it didn't have the capital to do so. And that is why America's Second Wave infrastructure —including roads, harbors, highways, ports and so on —were built with foreign investment. The English, the Germans, the Dutch and the French were investing in Britain's former colony. They financed them. Immigrant Americans built them. Guess who owns them now? The Americans. I believe the same thing would be true in
places like Brazil or anywhere else for that matter. The more foreign capital you have helping you build your Third Wave infrastructure, which today is an electronic infrastructure, the better off you're going to be. That doesn't mean lying down and becoming fooled, or letting foreign corporations run uncontrolled. But it does mean recognizing how important they can be in building the energy and telecom infrastructures needed to take full advantage of the Internet.
今天，人们十分关注所谓的是信息差异问题——世界上信息资源丰富的地区和信息资源贫乏的地区之间的差异；这个差异确实存在，我和我妻子20年前就曾谈及这个临近的危险。然而，那时还不太明显的是一些抵制信息差异的、新的积极因素。实际上我们是完全有理由感到乐观的。
一些技术上的因素使我们有理由期望差异会缩小。随着互联网的日趋商业化，上网普及对商家是有利的——毕竟，上网人数越多，潜在的客户就越多。越来越多的政府，惟恐自己的国家落后，纷纷推广互联网的普及。一二十年之内，全球将有一二十亿人互联。因此，我认为在未来的数年中，信息差异将缩小而不会变大。那是好消息，因为互联网很可能成为我们消除所面临的贫困的最强有效的工具。
当然，使用互联网不是惟一消灭贫困的方法。互联网也不是我们所拥有的惟一工具，但它却有巨大的潜力。
要想利用互联网，某些贫困国家必须克服对国外投资所持的过时了的反殖民的种种偏见。那些认为外国投资是对本国主权的侵犯的国家最好还是研究一下美国的基础设施（社会的基本结构基础）建设历史。当初美国建设自己的工业基础设施时，缺乏必要的资金，因此美国的第二次浪潮基础设施——包括公路、港口，高速公路、港口城市等等——都是用国外资金建造的。英国人、德国人、荷兰人和法国人都在前英国殖民地投资。他们提供资金，美洲移民建造。想想看，现在谁拥有这一切？美国人。我想，在这件事上，像巴西或其他任何地方同样也该这样。你拥有的去建造第三次浪潮基础设施（今天主要指电子基础设施）的外国资金越多，那么你的情况就越好。这并不是说卑躬屈膝，任人愚弄，也不是对外国公司不加控制。但这的确意味着你已认识到外国公司对本国能源及通信基础设施建设的重要性，这些基础设施是充分利用互联网所必要的。
2001 Passage 3
Why do so many Americans distrust what they read in their newspapers? The American Society of Newspaper Editors is trying to answer this painful question. The organization is deep into a long self-analysis known as the journalism credibility project.
Sad to say, this project has turned out to be mostly low-level findings about factual errors and spelling and grammar mistakes, combined with lots of head-scratching puzzlement about what in the world those readers really want.
But the sources of distrust go way deeper. Most journalists learn to see the world through a set of standard template s (patterns) into which they plug each day's events. In other words, there is a conventional story line in the newsroom culture that provides a backbone and a ready-made narrative structure for otherwise confusing news.
There exists a social and cultural disconnect between journalists and their
readers, which helps explain why the "standard templates" of the newsroom seem alien to many readers. In a recent survey, questionnaire s were sent to reporters in five middle size cities around the country, plus one large metropolitan area. Then residents in these communities were phoned at random and asked the same questions.
Replies show that compared with other Americans, journalists are more likely to live in upscale neighborhoods, have maids, own Mercedese s, and trade stocks, and they're less likely to go to church, do volunteer work, or put down roots in a community.
Reporters tend to be part of a broadly defined social and cultural elite, so their work tends to reflect the conventional values of this elite. The astonishing distrust of the news media isn't rooted in inaccuracy or poor reportorial skills but in the daily clash of world views between reporters and their readers.
This is an explosive situation for any industry, particularly a declining one. Here is a troubled business that keeps hiring employees whose attitudes vastly annoy the customers. Then it sponsor s lots of symposium s and a credibility project dedicated to wondering why customers are annoyed and fleeing in large numbers. But it never seems to get around to noticing the cultural and class bias es that so many former buyers are complaining about. If it did, it would open up its diversity program, now focused narrowly on race and gender, and look for reporters who differ broadly by outlook, values, education, and class.
为什么那么多美国人不相信自己在报纸上看到的东西？美国新闻编辑协会正试图回答这个痛苦的问题。该组织正深深陷入一个长期的自我剖析过程，即新闻可信度调查项目。
遗憾的是，这次新闻机构可信度调查计划结果只获得了一些肤浅的发现，诸如新闻报道中的事实错误，拼写或语法错误，和这些低层次发现交织在一起的还有许多令人挠头的困惑，譬如读者到底想读些什么。
但这种对媒体的不信任有更深刻的根源。多数新闻记者都学着用一套标准的模式去看待世界，并把每天发生的事件纳入这种模式。换言之，在媒介机构的新闻采编室文化中存在着一套约定俗成的写作模式，为纷繁复杂的新闻报道提供了一个主干框架和一个现成的故事叙述结构。
新闻记者和读者之间存在着社会和文化方面的脱节，这就是为什么新闻编辑室的“标准模式”与众多读者的意趣相差甚远的原因。在最近一次调查中，问卷被送到了全国五座中等城市及一座大都市的记者手中，然后随机地给这些城市的居民打电话，问他们同样的问题。
结果表明，与其他美国人相比，新闻记者更有可能居住在富人区，有女佣，有奔驰车，炒股，而他们去教堂，参加支援服务，扎根社区的可能性却很小。
记者们往往属于广义的社会文化精英的一个部分，因此他们的工作往往反映了这些精英传统的价值观。读者对新闻媒介令人震惊的不信任的根源并非是报道失实或低下的报道技巧，而是记者与读者的世界观每天都发生着碰撞。
这对任何一个工业产业来说都算是爆炸性的形势，对于一个正在衰落的行业来说尤其如此。这是一个棘手的行业，却不断地雇用观点总体上使客户恼怒的雇员。然后它又出资组织研讨会和可信度调查项目，去探究为什么顾客们恼火了，为什么会有那么多人逃避新闻。但它似乎从来就没回过头来去注意那么多以前的顾客所抱怨的文化和阶级偏见。如果它能注意这个问题的话，它就应该进一步开
放其多样化项目（这个项目现在还只单纯考虑招收不同种族和性别的员工），进一步寻找那些世界观、价值观、教育水平和社会阶层各不相同的各种记者。
2001 Passage 4
The world is going through the biggest wave of mergers and a cquisition s ever witnessed. The process sweeps from hyperactive America to Europe and reaches the emerging countries with unsurpassed might. Many in these countries are looking at this process and worrying: "Won't the wave of business concentration turn into an uncontrollable anti-competitive force?"
There's no question that the big are getting bigger and more powerful. Multinational corporations accounted for less than 20% of international trade in 1982. Today the figure is more than 25% and growing rapidly. International affiliate s account for a fast-growing segment of production in economies that open up and welcome foreign investment. In Argentina, for instance, after the reforms of the early 1990s, multinationals went from 43% to almost 70% of the industrial production of the 200 largest firms. This phenomenon has created serious concerns over the role of smaller economic firms, of national businessmen and over the ultimate stability of the world economy.
I believe that the most important forces behind the massive M&A wave are the same that underlie the globalization process: falling transportation and communication costs, lower trade and investment barriers and enlarged markets that require enlarged operations capable of meeting customers' demands. All these are beneficial, not detrimental, to consumers. As productivity grows, the world's wealth increases.
Examples of benefits or costs of the current concentration wave are scanty. Yet it is hard to imagine that the merger of a few oil firms today could re-create the same threats to competition that were feared nearly a century ago in the US, when the Standard Oil trust was broken up. The mergers of telecom companies, such as World Com, hardly seem to bring higher prices for consumers or a reduction in the pace of technical progress. On the contrary, the price of communications is coming down fast. In cars, too, concentration is increasing — witness Daimler and Chrysler, Renault and Nissan — but it does not appear that consumers are being hurt.
Yet the fact remains that the merger movement must be watched. A few weeks ago, Alan Greenspan warn ed against the megamerger s in the banking industry. Who is going to supervise, regulate and operate as lender of last resort with the gigantic banks that are being created? Won't multinationals shift production from one place to another when a nation gets too strict about infringement s to fair competition? And should one country take upon itself the role of "defending competition" on issues that affect many other nations, as in the U.S. vs. Microsoft case?
世界正在经历一场前所未有的巨大的并购浪潮。这个浪潮从异常活跃的美国席卷到欧洲，并以不可比拟的威力影响到正在崛起的国家。这些国家的许多人面对这个浪潮开始忧虑：“企业合并的浪潮会不会变成一股不可控制的反竞争的力量？”
无疑，大企业正在变得更大、更强。跨国公司在1982年只占有国际贸易
不到20％的份额。而现在，这个数字上升到25％强，并且还在迅速上升。在那些对外开放并鼓励外资的国家的经济中国际分公司在国民生产中成为一个快速增长的部门。比如，在阿根廷，经过90年代初的改革之后，跨国公司在200家大型企业的工业生产中从43％增加到几乎70％。这个现象造成了人们对小型企业和民族资本的作用以及世界经济的最终稳定的严重忧虑。
我认为，推动这股巨大的并购浪潮的最主要的力量，也是推动全球化进程的力量，包括日趋下降的运输与通讯费用，较低的贸易与投资壁垒，以及市场的扩大和为满足市场需求而进行的扩大生产。所有这些对消费者来说都有益而无害的。随着生产力的提高，世界的财富也在增长。
目前证明这股合并浪潮是带来利还是弊的实例并不多。但是很难想像当今的几个石油公司的合并是否会重新造成约100年前美国标准石油公司对竞争造成的同样的威胁，那时由于人们对该公司的这种担心而导致了它最终的解散。像世界通讯这样的通讯公司合并似乎没有给消费者带来更高的价格，或者降低技术进步的速度。相反，通信的价格在迅速下降。在汽车行业，合并也同样在增加——比如戴姆勒与克莱斯勒，雷诺与尼桑的合并——但消费者看起来并未受到伤害。
但是合并运动必须受到严密监视这个事实仍然存在。就在几星期以前，格林斯潘对银行业的巨大合并发出了警告。如果合并后如此巨大的银行出现，谁来充当最终的借贷者，发挥监督、规范和运作的作用呢？当一个国家对破坏公平竞争的行为的处理过于严厉时，跨国公司会不会把它们的生产从一地转到另一地呢？在那些将会影响许多其他国家的事情中，如美国政府与微软公司的诉讼案，一个国家是否应该担负起“保护竞争”的责任呢？
2001 Passage 5
When I decided to quit my full time employment it never occurred to me that I might become a part of a new international trend. A lateral move that hurt my pride and blocked my professional progress prompted me to abandon my relatively high profile career although, in the manner of a disgraced government minister, I covered my exit by claiming "I wanted to spend more time with my family".
Curiously, some two-and-a-half years and two novels later, my experiment in what the Americans term "downshifting" has turned my tired excuse into an absolute reality. I have been transformed from a passionate advocate of the philosophy of "have it all", preach ed by Linda Kelsey for the past seven years in the pages of she magazine, into a woman who is happy to settle for a bit of everything.
I have discovered, as perhaps Kelsey will after her much-publicized resignation from the editorship of She after a build-up of stress, that abandoning the doctrine of "juggling your life", and making the alternative move into "downshifting" brings with it far greater rewards than financial success and social status. Nothing could persuade me to return to the kind of life Kelsey used to advocate and I once enjoyed: 12-hour working days, pressured deadline s, the fearful strain of office politics and the limitations of being a parent on "quality time".
In America, the move away from juggling to a simpler, less materialistic lifestyle is a well-established trend. Downshifting —also known in America as "voluntary simplicity" —has, ironically, even bred a new area of what might be termed anti-consumerism. There are a number of bestselling downshifting self-help books for
people who want to simplify their lives; there are newsletter s, such as The Tightwad Gazette, that give hundreds of thousands of Americans useful tips on anything from recycling their cling-film to making their own soap; there are even support groups for those who want to achieve the mid-'90s equivalent of dropping out.
While in America the trend started as a reaction to the economic decline — after the mass redundancies caused by downsizing in the late '80s — and is still linked to the politics of thrift, in Britain, at least among the middle class downshifters of my acquaintance, we have different reasons for seeking to simplify our lives.
For the women of my generation who were urged to keep juggling through the '80s, downshifting in the mid-'90s is not so much a search for the mythical good life —growing your own organic vegetables, and risking turning into one —as a personal recognition of your limitations.
当我决定辞去自己的全日制工作时决没有想到，自己竟成了一种新的国际性潮流的一分子。一次平级的人事调动伤了我的自尊心，并阻断了我的事业发展，这促使我放弃自己地位较高的职业，当然，就像面子扫尽的政府部长那样，我也掩饰说“我只想与家人更多的呆在一起”。
奇怪的是，大约两年半的时间我写完两部小说后，我这个被美国人称为“放慢生活节奏”的试验，却使我老掉牙的借口变成了现实。我已从一个“获得一切”哲学（琳达·凯茜过去七年中在《她》这本杂志所宣扬的）的狂热支持者，变成了一个乐于接受任何东西只要一丁点的女人。
我已经发现（由于压力过大，凯茜已多次公开宣称要辞去《她》杂志编辑的职务，在这之后她也许会有同样发现），放弃“忙忙碌碌”的生活哲学，转而过一种“放慢生活节奏”的生活所带来的回报，比经济成功和社会地位更有价值。什么也说服不了我回到过去那种凯茜所宣扬的、我也曾自得其乐的生活中去：每天12小时的工作日，压得人喘不过气来的最后期限，可怕而紧张的办公室的争权夺利，以及因为时间有限连做母亲也得“高效率”所造成的种种限制。
在美国，摆脱忙碌，转而过一种简单、不大物质化的生活已成明确趋势。具有讽刺意味的是，“放慢生活节奏”——在美国也称“自愿简单化”——甚至孕育了一个崭新的、可称之为反消费主义的生活方式。对于那些想简单生活的人来说，有许多很畅销的帮你轻松生活的自助书籍；有各种简讯，例如省钱简报，会给美国人提供成千上万条有用的点子去做事，从回收保鲜腊到自制肥皂；甚至还有一些帮助团体，帮人按90年代中期脱离传统社会的人的生活方式去生活。
在美国，这种趋势一开始是对经济衰落所做出的一种反应——出现于80年代后期缩小经济规模所引起的大量人员冗余之后——在英国，至少在我所认识的中产阶级的简化生活者中，这种趋势仍被认为与节俭政治有关联，虽然如此，然而我们有着不同的缘由去寻求使自己的生活简单化。
对我们这一代女性来说，整个80年代我们曾被迫忙碌地生活，90年代中期的简化生活与其说是寻求神话般的好生活——自己种有机蔬菜以及冒险制造有机蔬菜——倒不如说我们都认识了自身的局限。
2000 Passage 1
A history of long and effortless success can be a dreadful handicap, but, if properly handled, it may become a driving force. When the United States entered just such a glowing period after the end of the Second World War, it had a market eight times larger than any competitor, giving its industries unparalleled economies of scale. Its scientists were the world's best, its workers the most skilled. America and Americans were prosperous beyond the dreams of the Europeans and Asians whose economies the war had destroyed.
It was inevitable that this primacy should have narrowed as other countries grew richer. Just as inevitably, the retreat from predominance proved painful. By the mid-1980s Americans had found themselves at a loss over their fading industrial competitiveness. Some huge American industries, such as consumer electronics, had shrunk or vanished in the face of foreign competition. By 1987 there was only one American television maker left, Zenith. (Now there is none: Zenith was bought by South Korea's LG Electronics in July.) Foreign-made cars and textiles were sweeping into the domestic market. America's machine-tool industry was on the ropes. For a while it looked as though the making of semiconductors, which America had invented and which sat at the heart of the new computer age, was going to be the next casualty.
All of this caused a crisis of confidence. Americans stopped taking prosperity for granted. They began to believe that their way of doing business was failing, and that their incomes would therefore shortly begin to fall as well. The mid-1980s brought one inquiry after another into the causes of America's industrial decline. Their sometimes sensational findings were filled with warnings about the growing competition from overseas.
How things have changed! In 1995 the United States can look back on five years of solid growth while Japan has been struggling. Few Americans attribute this solely to such obvious causes as a devalued dollar or the turning of the business cycle. Self-doubt has yielded to blind pride. "American industry has changed its structure, has gone on a diet, has learnt to be more quick-witted," according to Richard Cavanaugh, executive dean of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. "It makes me proud to be an American just to see how our businesses are improving their productivity," says Stephen Moore of the Cato Institute, a think-tank in Washington, D.C. And William Sahlman of the Harvard Business School believes that people will look back on this period as "a golden age of business management in the United States."
一段长时间并且不费力而成功的历史可能成为一种可怕的不利因素，但若处理得当，这种不利因素也有可能转化为一种积极的推动力。二战结束后，美国恰好进入了这样的一个辉煌时期，当时，它拥有比任何竞争者大8倍的市场，这使其工业经济具有前所未有的规模经济。美国的科学家是世上最优秀的，它的工人是最富于技术的。美国的国富民强是那些经济遭到战争破坏的欧亚诸国做梦也无法达不到的。
随着其他国家日益强盛，美国的这一优势地位逐渐下降是不可避免的。从
优势地位上退出的痛苦也同样是不可避免的。到了80年代中期，面对其日益衰退的工业竞争力，美国人感到不知所措。面对国外竞争，一些大型的美国工业，如消费电子产业，已经萎缩或渐渐消失。到1987年，美国只剩下Zenith这一家电视生产商。（现在一家也没有了：Zenith于当年7月被韩国LG电器公司收购。）外国制造的汽车和纺织品正在大举进入国内市场。美国的机床工业也即将灭亡。人们曾一度感觉下一个在海外品牌面前全军覆没的似乎该轮到美国的半导体制造业了，而在新计算机时代有着核心作用的半导体正是美国人发明的。
所有这一切导致了信任危机。美国不再视繁荣为理所当然之事。他们开始相信自己的商业经营方式不灵了，也相信不久他们的收入也会因此而下降。80年代中期，人们对美国工业衰退的成因作了一次又一次的探寻。在美国人那些有时耸人听闻的发现中充满着对其他国家日益增长的经济竞争的警告之词。
情况的变化真快！1995年，当日本还在奋力拼搏的时候，美国却可以对5年的稳固发展作一回顾了。没几个美国人将这一巨变单纯归因于美元贬值或商业周期循环这些显而易见的原因。到如今，对自身的怀疑已被盲目乐观所取代。“美国的工业已经改变了结构，消除了滞胀，学会了明智”，这是哈佛大学肯尼迪管理学院行政院长理查德·卡佛纳的看法。华盛顿特区的智囊团——卡托研究院的史蒂芬·莫尔说：“看到我们的企业正在提高自身的生产率，作为一个美国人，我感到自豪。”哈佛商学院的威廉·萨尔曼相信人们将会把这一时期视为“美国企业管理的黄金时代”。
2000 Passage 2
Being a man has always been dangerous. There are about 105 males born for every 100 females, but this ratio drops to near balance at the age of maturity, and among 70-year-olds there are twice as many women as men. But the great universal of male mortality is being changed. Now, boy babies survive almost as well as girls do. This means that, for the first time, there will be an excess of boys in those crucial years when they are searching for a mate. More important, another chance for natural selection has been removed. Fifty years ago, the chance of a baby (particularly a boy baby) surviving depended on its weight. A kilogram too light or too heavy meant almost certain death. Today it makes almost no difference. Since much of the variation is due to genes, one more agent of evolution has gone.
There is another way to commit evolutionary suicide: stay alive, but have fewer children. Few people are as fertile as in the past. Except in some religious communities, very few women has 15 children. Nowadays the number of births, like the age of death, has become average. Most of us have roughly the same number of offspring. Again, differences between people and the opportunity for natural selection to take advantage of it have diminish ed. India shows what is happening. The country offers wealth for a few in the great cities and poverty for the remaining tribal peoples. The grand mediocrity of today — everyone being the same in survival and number of offspring — means that natural selection has lost 80% of its power in upper-middle-class India compared to the tribes.
For us, this means that evolution is over; the biological Utopia has arrived. Strangely, it has involve d little physical change. No other species fills so many places in nature. But in the past 100,000 years — even the past 100 years — our lives have been transform ed but our bodies have not. We did not evolve, because machines and
society did it for us. Darwin had a phrase to describe those ignorant of evolution: they "look at an organic being as a savage looks at a ship, as at something wholly beyond his comprehension." No doubt we will remember a 20th century way of life beyond comprehension for its ugliness. But however amazed our descendant s may be at how far from Utopia we were, they will look just like us.
做男人总是充满危险，出生时男女比例大约是105:100，但到了成熟期，这一比例几乎持平，而在70岁的老人中女性是男性的两倍，但是男性死亡率普遍偏高这种情况正在改变，现在男婴存活率几乎同女婴一样高。这就意味着男孩到了寻找伴侣的关键年龄将首次出现男孩过剩现象。更重要的是，又一次自然选择的机会不复存在了。50年前，婴儿（尤其是男婴）存活的机会取决于体重，过轻或过重几乎意味着必死无疑。今日体重几乎不起什么作用，因为大部分差异是由基因引起的，又一个进化的因素消失了。
进化自杀还有另一种方法：存活，但少生孩子。现在没有几个人像过去那样具有旺盛的生育力。除了在一些宗教社区之外，没有几名妇女有15个孩子。当今婴儿出生的数量同死亡年龄一样已趋于平均化，我们多数人的子女数量大致相同。人与人之间的差异和利用差异进行自然选择的机会再一次减少。印度可以说明正在发生的一切。这个国家给大城市里的少数人提供财富，而给其余的各部落民族以贫困。今天这种极其显著的平均化——每个人的生存机会和子女数量都相同——意味着与部落相比较，自然选择在印度中、上层已经失去了80％的效力。
对我们来说，这意味着进化已经结束；生物学上的乌托邦已经降临。奇怪的是，这一过程几乎丝毫没有牵涉到身体上的变化，没有其他物种充斥着自然中如此多的空间。但在过去的10万年——甚至过去的100年中，我们的生活发生了变化，但我们的身体却没变。我们没有进化。因为机器和社会替我们办了这一切。达尔文有一句话描述那些对进化一无所知的人，他们“看有机的生命如同野人看船，好像看某种完全不能理解的东西”。毫无疑问，我们将记住20世纪的生活方式，尽管对其丑陋之处不得其解，但是，不管我们的子孙后代对我们离乌托邦的理想境界还差多远感到有多么惊讶，他们的样子会同我们差不了多少。
2000 Passage 3
When a new movement in art attains a certain fashion, it is advisable to find out what its advocates are aiming at, for, however farfetched and unreasonable their principles may seem today, it is possible that in years to come they may be regarded as normal. With regard to Futurist poetry, however, the case is rather difficult, for whatever Futurist poetry may be —even admitting that the theory on which it is based may be right — it can hardly be classed as Literature.
This, in brief, is what the Futurist says: for a century, past conditions of life have been conditionally speeding up, till now we live in a world of noise and violence and speed. Consequently, our feelings, thoughts and emotions have undergo ne a corresponding change. This speeding up of life, says the Futurist, requires a new form of expression. We must speed up our literature too, if we want to interpret modern stress. We must pour out a large stream of essential words, unhampered by stops, or qualifying adjectives, or finite verbs. Instead of describing sounds we must make up words that imitate them; we must use many sizes of type and different
colored inks on the same page, and shorten or lengthen words at will.
Certainly their descriptions of battles are confused. But it is a little upsetting to read in the explanatory notes that a certain line describes a fight between a Turkish and a Bulgarian officer on a bridge off which they both fall into the river — and then to find that the line consists of the noise of their falling and the weights of the officers: "Pluff! Pluff! A hundred and eighty-five kilograms."
This, though it fulfill s the laws and requirements of Futurist poetry, can hardly be classed as Literature. All the same, no thinking man can refuse to accept their first proposition: that a great change in our emotional life calls for a change of expression. The whole question is really this: have we essentially changed?
当一场新的艺术运动形成某种时尚时，理应弄清其倡导者的目标所在，因为无论他们的准则在今天看来是多么牵强附会、不可思议，将来都有可能被视为正常的。然而，就未来派诗歌而言，情况却相当不同，因为无论未来派诗歌为何物——即使承认其理论根据可能正确，也很难称之为文学。
简而言之，未来派诗人宣称：一个世纪以来，过去的生活一直在有条件地急剧变化；现在，我们生活在一个充斥着喧嚣、暴力和快节奏的世界之中。因此，我们的感情、思想和情绪都经历了相应的变化。未来派诗人声称，这种加速的生活节奏需要一种新的表达形式。如果我们想诠释现代生活的压力，就必须加快文学发展的步伐。我们必须大量使用基本词汇，摆脱句号，修饰性形容词及限定动词的羁绊。我们不应描绘声音，我们必须造出模仿声音的词语；我们必须在同一张纸上使用不同型号和不同颜色的墨水，任意缩短或加长词语。
他们对战斗的描述确实让人很难理解。但是读到一句描写战斗的诗行的注解时，则令人有点生厌，注解中说该诗描写了一名土耳其军官和一名保加利亚军官在一座桥上发生了搏斗，结果双双从桥上掉进河中——结果，诗把他们两人落水的声音和体重写在了一起：“扑通！扑通！185公斤。”
尽管这符合未来派诗歌的规则和要求，却很难被归入文学之列。实际上，没有一个善于思考的人会拒绝接受他们的第一个观点：即情感生活的巨大变化要求表达方式也随之变化。实际问题是：我们发生了根本的变化吗？
2000 Passage 4
Aimlessness has hardly been typical of the postwar Japan whose productivity and social harmony are the envy of the United States and Europe. But increasingly the Japanese are seeing a decline of the traditional work-moral values. Ten years ago young people were hardworking and saw their jobs as their primary reason for being, but now Japan has largely fulfilled its economic needs, and young people don't know where they should go next.
The coming of age of the postwar baby boom and an entry of women into the male-dominated job market have limited the opportunities of teenagers who are already questioning the heavy personal sacrifice s involved in climbing Japan's rigid social ladder to good schools and jobs. In a recent survey, it was found that only 24.5 percent of Japanese students were fully satisfied with school life, compared with 67.2 percent of students in the United States. In addition, far more Japanese workers expressed dissatisfaction with their jobs than did their counterpart s in the 10 other countries surveyed.
While often praised by foreigners for its emphasis on the basics, Japanese education tends to stress test taking and mechanical learning over creativity and self-expression. "Those things that do not show up in the test scores —personality, ability, courage or humanity are completely ignored," says Toshiki Kaifu, chairman of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's education committee. "Frustration against this kind of thing leads kids to drop out and run wild." Last year Japan experienced 2125 incidents of school violence, including 929 assault s on teachers. Amid the outcry, many conservative leaders are seeking a return to the prewar emphasis on moral education. Last year Mitsuo Setoyama, who was then education minister, raised eyebrows when he argued that liberal reforms introduced by the American occupation authorities after World War Ⅱhad weakened the "Japanese morality of respect for parents".
But that may have more to do with Japanese life-styles. "In Japan," says educator Yoko Muro, "it's never a question of whether you enjoy your job and your life, but only how much you can endure." With economic growth has come centralization; fully 76 percent of Japan's 119 million citizens live in cities where community and the extended family have been abandoned in favor of isolate d, two-generation households. Urban Japanese have long endured lengthy commute s (travels to and from work) and crowded living conditions, but as the old group and family values weaken, the discomfort is beginning to tell. In the past decade, the Japanese divorce rate, while still well below that of the United States, has increased by more than 50 percent, and suicides have increased by nearly one-quarter.
战后日本的生产率和社会的和谐为美国和欧洲所称羡，因此漫无目标很难说是战后日本的特色。但是，日本人正在经历传统工作道德价值观的日益衰退。10年前，日本人工作勤奋，将工作视为他们存在的主要理由，但现在日本大体上已经满足了其经济需求，年轻人却不知道他们下一步的目标在哪里。
战后婴儿出生高峰期的到来及妇女进入男性主宰的就业市场，限制了青少年的发展机遇，这些青少年已经开始质疑在进好学校，找好工作，攀登日本等级森严的社会阶梯的过程中所做出的沉重的个人牺牲是否值得。在最近一次调查中发现与62.7％的美国学生相比较，只有24.5％的日本学生对学校生活完全满意。此外，与被调查的其他10个国家的工人相比，对自身工作表示不满的日本工人多得多。
虽然日本的教育因强调基础知识而经常受到外国人的赞扬，但是它往往强调考试和机械学习，而不重视创造性和自我表现。“在考分中得不到体现的那些东西——个性、能力、勇气或人性——完全被忽视，”执政的自民党教育委员会主席Toshiki Kaifu说，“对这类事情灰心丧气，致使孩子辍学、放荡不羁。”去年日本发生了2125起校园暴力事件，其中包括929起袭击老师事件。在一片抗议声中，许多保守党领导人正在力图回复到战前，强调道德教育；去年，当时任教育大臣的Mitsuo Setoyama就提出责难，他申辩说二战后美国占领当局引进的自由改革削弱了“日本人尊敬父母的道德观”。
但是，那也许与日本人的生活方式关系更大。“在日本，”教育家Yoko Muro 说，“问题绝对不是你是否喜欢自己的工作和生活，而仅仅是你能承受多大的负荷。”随着经济的发展，居住集中化也跟着来了，在日本1亿1900万人当中，足
有76％住在城市，在那里社区和几世同堂的大家庭已经成为过去，而取而代之的是单门独户的两代之家。城市里的日本人长期忍受着漫长的上下班来回路程和拥挤不堪的居住条件，随着旧的群体家庭道德观的削弱，令人不舒服的结果开始显现出来。在过去10年中，日本的离婚率，尽管仍远在美国之下，已经上升了50％，而自杀事件则上升了近1/4。
2000 Passage 5
If ambition is to be well regarded, the rewards of ambition —wealth, distinction, control over one's destiny—must be deemed worthy of the sacrifices made on ambition's behalf. If the tradition of ambition is to have vitality, it must be widely shared; and it especially must be highly regarded by people who are themselves admired, the educated not least among them. In an odd way, however, it is the educated who have claimed to have give up on ambition as an ideal. What is odd is that they have perhaps most benefited from ambition —if not always their own then that of their parents and grandparents. There is a heavy note of hypocrisy in this, a case of closing the barn door after the horses have escape d — with the educated themselves riding on them.
Certainly people do not seem less interested in success and its signs now than formerly. Summer homes, European travel, BMWs — The locations, place names and name brands may change, but such items do not seem less in demand today than a decade or two years ago. What has happened is that people cannot confess fully to their dreams, as easily and openly as once they could, lest they be thought pushing, acquisitive and vulgar. Instead, we are treated to fine hypocritical spectacle s, which now more than ever seem in ample supply: the critic of American materialism with a Southampton summer home; the publisher of radical books who takes his meals in three-star restaurants; the journalist advocating participatory democracy in all phases of life, whose own children are enroll ed in private schools. For such people and many more perhaps not so exceptional, the proper formulation is, "Succeed at all costs but avoid appearing ambitious."
The attacks on ambition are many and come from various angles; its public defenders are few and unimpressive, where they are not extremely unattractive. As a result, the support for ambition as a healthy impulse, a quality to be admired and fixed in the mind of the young, is probably lower than it has ever been in the United States. This does not mean that ambition is at an end, that people no longer feel its stir rings and promptings, but only that, no longer openly honored, it is less openly profess ed. Consequences follow from this, of course, some of which are that ambition is driven underground, or made sly. Such, then, is the way things stand: on the left angry critics, on the right stupid supporters, and in the middle, as usual, the majority of earnest people trying to get on in life.
个人的雄心如果能被正确看待的话，那么它的回报——财富、声誉、对命运的掌握——则应该被认为值得为之付出牺牲。如果雄心的传统具有生命力，那么它就应该受到广泛的推崇，尤其应该受到那些自身得到他人羡慕的人们的高度重视，当然那些接受过良好教育的人也应包括在内。然而，恰恰是那些受过良好
教育的人却不可思议地声称他们已经放弃了雄心壮志这一理想。奇怪的是他们已经从雄心壮志中获益颇多了——如果不是他们自己的雄心，那么就是他们父母的和祖父母的。这其中有着浓厚的虚伪色彩，恰如马跑后再关上马厩的门那样，而受过良好教育的人自己正骑在那些马背上。
当然，现在人们对成功及其标志的兴趣似乎并未比从前减弱，避暑别墅，欧洲旅行、宝马车——它们的位置、地名和商标可能会改变，但现在对这些东西的需求似乎并未比一二十年前减少。现在的情况是人们不能像以前那样轻易地、公开地坦陈自己的梦想，惟恐别人认为自己爱出风头、贪婪、庸俗不堪。相反我们目睹了比以前任何时候都多的虚伪景观：美国物欲主义批评家在南安普顿拥有一幢避暑别墅；激进的出版商到三星级宾馆就餐；倡导终生参与民主制的新闻记者却把自己的子女送进私立学校。对于这样的人，还有那些也许不太出色的人而言，“不惜一切代价获得成功，但避免让他人看出雄心勃勃”是对他们最好的诠释。
对雄心的攻击非常之多，出自各种不同的角度；公开为之辩解的则少之又少，虽不能说他们是完全没有吸引力的，但却未能给人们留下深刻印象。因此，在美国，作为一种健康的冲动，一种应该令人称羡并扎根于青年人心灵的品质的雄心，它所得到的支持也许比以往任何时期都低。但这并不意味着雄心已经穷途末路，人们不再感觉到它对人们的激励了，只是人们不再公开地以它为荣，更不愿公开地坦白了。当然这样就带来了很多不良后果，其中的一些后果就是雄心被赶入地下，或暗藏于胸。于是情况就成了这样：左边是愤怒的批评家，右边是愚蠢的支持者，而居中的通常是大多数认真而努力追求成功的人。