2013年5月二级笔译实务真题
1. 英译汉第一篇：节选自The New York Times，原文标题为：Ancient Arab Shipwreck Yields Secrets of Ninth-Century Trade
原文地址：http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/arts/08iht-singshow08.html
For more than a decade, archaeologists and historians have been studying the contents of a ninth-century Arab dhow that was discovered in 1998 off Indonesia’s Belitung Island. The sea-cucumber divers who found the wreck had no idea it eventually would be considered one of the most important maritime discoveries of the late 20th century.
The dhow was carrying a rich cargo — 60,000 ceramic pieces and an array of gold and silver works — and its discovery has confirmed how significant trade was along a maritime silk road between Tang Dynasty China and Abbasid Iraq. It also has revealed how China was mass-producing trade goods even then and customizing them to suit the tastes of clients in West Asia.
“Shipwrecked: Tang Treasures and Monsoon Winds,” at the new, lotus-shaped ArtScience Museum designed by Moshe Safdie, presents items from the Belitung wreck. Curated by the Asian Civilisations Museum here and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, the show is expected to travel to museums around the world over the next five to six years.
“This exhibition tells us a story about an extraordinary moment in globalization,” said Julian Raby, director of the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. “It brings to life the tale of Sinbad sailing to China to make his fortune. It shows us that the world in the ninth century was not as fragmented as we assumed. There were two great export powers: the Tang in the east and the Abbasid based in Baghdad.”
Until the Belitung find, historians had thought that Tang China traded primarily through the land routes of Central Asia, mainly on the Silk Road. Ancient records told of Persian fleets sailing the Southeast Asian seas but no wrecks had been found, until the Belitung dhow. Its cargo confirmed that a huge volume of trade was taking place along a maritime route, said Heidi Tan, a curator at the Asian Civilisations Museum and a curator of the exhibition.
Mr. Raby said: “The size of the find gives us a sense of two things: a sense of China as a country already producing things on an industrialized scale and also a China that is no longer producing ceramics to bury.” He was referring to the production of burial pottery like camels and horses, which was banned in the late eighth century. “Instead, kilns looked for other markets and they started producing tableware and they built an export market.”
2. 英译汉第二篇：同样节选自The New York Times，原文标题为：E.U. Signals Big Shift on Genetically Modified Crops
原文地址：http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/10/business/energy-environment/10green.html
Madeira is more than 500 kilometers from the African coast and is officially one of the “outermost regions” of the European Union. Despite that far-flung status, Madeira catapulted into the center of the Union’s agricultural and environmental affairs last year when Portugal asked the European Commission for permission to impose an unprecedented ban on growing biotech crops there.
Last week, the commission quietly let the deadline pass for opposing Portugal’s request, allowing Madeira, which is one of Portugal’s autonomous regions, to become the first E.U. territory to get formal permission from Brussels to remain entirely free of genetically modified organisms. Madeira now will probably go ahead and implement the ban, a spokeswoman for the Portuguese government said Friday.
Individual European countries and regions have banned certain genetically modified crops before. Many consumers and farmers in countries like Austria, France and Italy regard the crops as potentially dangerous and likely to contaminate organically produced food. But the case of Madeira represents a significant landmark, because it is the first time the commission, which runs the day-to-day affairs of the European Union, has permitted a country to impose such a sweeping and definitive rejection of the technology.
The Madeirans’ main concerns focused on preserving the archipelago’s biodiversity and its forest of subtropical laurel trees. Such forests, known as laurisilva, were once widespread on the European mainland but were wiped out thousands of years ago during an earlier period of climate change. That has left Madeira with “much the largest extent of laurel forest surviving in the world, with a unique suite of plants and animals,” according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which named the Madeiran laurisilva a World Heritage Site in 1999. The forest also is a growing attraction for tourists, who make up a significant portion of Madeira’s earnings.
In seeking to ban biotechnology on Madeira, the Portuguese government told the commission that it would be impossible to separate crops containing genetically engineered material from other plant life. The “risk to nature presented by the deliberate release of GMOs is so dangerous and poses such a threat to the environmental and ecological health of Madeira, that it is not worthwhile risking their use, either directly in the agricultural sector or even on an experimental basis,” the Portuguese told the commission.
3. 汉译英第一篇：
稀土是不可再生的重要自然资源，在经济社会发展中的用途日益广泛，如光学、电子信息、航空航天、核工业等尖端科技领域。目前我国的稀土储量占世界的30%，却长期以来供应了国际97%的市场需求。
我国的稀土储量全球最高。2010年，中国稀土储量达到3600万吨，占到全球稀土储量的36.4%。同时中国也是全球最大的稀土生产国，中国稀土矿产量达到12.9万吨，占到全球产量的97%。
中国稀土行业的快速发展，为全球稀土供应作出了重要贡献。但同时也为此付出了巨大代价。由于稀土资源的稀缺性和开采高污染性，全球稀土储量国许多厂都关闭了，直接从中国进口稀土。
目前，我国稀土私采乱挖、浪费资源等情况依然猖獗。一些私采乱挖的矿山，稀土开采的吨回收率甚至只有5%，稀土资源被大量浪费，并由此引发巨大环境问题。我们需要制定相关政策，减少稀土资源的过度开采。在稀土的开采、生产、出口等环节综合采取措施，加大资源和环境保护的力度，努力促进稀土行业持续健康发展。
4. 汉译英第二篇：节选自2011年全国人大常委会工作报告
中国特色社会主义法律体系的形成，总体上解决了有法可依的问题。在这种情况下，有法必依、执法必严、违法必究的问题就显得更突出、更紧迫。这也是广大人民群众和社会各方面普遍关注的问题。因此，我们要采取以下措施，切实保障宪法和法律的有效实施。
一要维护宪法和法律的权威和尊严。一切国家机关、武装力量、各政党、各社会团体、各企事业单位都必须遵守宪法和法律，任何组织或者个人都不得有超越宪法和法律的特权。
二要坚持依法行政和公正司法。国家行政机关要严格按照法定权限和程序办事，加快建设法治政府。国家审判机关、检察机关要依法独立公正行使审判权、检察权，维护社会公平正义。
三要增强全社会的法律意识和法治观念。让各级领导干部和国家机关工作人员带头遵守宪法和法律，善于运用法律解决现实生活中的实际问题，让广大人民群众懂得依法按程序表达利益诉求、解决矛盾纠纷，用法律武器维护自身的合法权益。
