Part 1
Translation from English into Chinese 2 hours
Read the following two passages.
Translate them into Chinese.
Write your answers on this paper.
You may use the additional paper for any rough work but you must copy your answers onto this paper.
Passage 1
The Atlantic Alliance Needs Tending
The U.S. and Europe. These days, they bicker almost like a couple whose long marriage is in danger of unraveling. The litany of misunderstandings and mutual resentment seems to be growing. From the death penalty to steel tariffs, from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to military spending, there is an abyss between American and European positions on innumerable issues.
Each side feels the other isn’t shouldering enough of the burdens facing both. The Europeans see an unbending posture, from the Bush Administration’s protecting inefficient U.S. steel companies to its threats to take out Iraq’s Saddam Hussein—alone, if necessary. U.S. policymakers, for their part, are losing patience with Europeans’ inability to get serious about defence spending. The war in Afghanistan has brought home the reality that much of Europe has fallen behind in military technology. And Washington is annoyed at Europe’s feckless attempts at economic reforms. As a result, Europe couldn’t play the role of economic locomotive to help pull the U.S. out of its downturn in 2001. This year, Europe is set to grow less than the U.S. once again.
Relationships in trouble can be fixed, and this one had better be. In a world increasingly fraught with danger, European leaders must commit themselves to bigger military budgets or risk being marginalised by the U.S. military machine. The $ 45.1 billion hike in military spending the Bush Administration is pushing for next year is $12.1 billion more than the entire defence budget of France. The U.S. could help by opening up more of its vast military market to European partners. And Washington should realise that in many global challenges a smart multilateral approach can be much more effective than unilateralism.
A world in which the U.S. and Europe go off on their own, in which the Atlantic alliance is reduced to mere lip service to ideals long since abandoned, is a frightening one.
Passage 2
New Technologies
Some new technologies are frightening from the start, and the need to establish political controls over their development and use is obvious to all. When the first atomic bomb was detonated at Alamogordo, New Mexico, in the summer of 1945, not one of the witnesses to this event failed to understand that a terrible new potential for destruction had been created. Nuclear weapons were thus from the very beginning ringed with political controls: Individuals could not freely develop nuclear technology on their own or traffic in the parts necessary to create atomic bombs, and in time, nations that became signatories to the 1968 nonproliferation treaty agreed to control international trade in nuclear technology.
Other new technologies appear to be much more benign, and are consequently subject to little or no regulation. Personal computers and the Internet, for example, promised to create wealth, increase access to information, and foster community among their users. People have had to look hard for downsides to the information revolution. What they have found to date are issues like the so-called “digital divide” (i.e., inequality of access to information technology) and threats to privacy, neither of which qualify as earth-shaking matters of justice or morality. Despite occasional efforts on the part of the world’s more statist societies to try to control the use of information technology, it has blossomed in recent years.
Biotechnology falls somewhere between these extremes. Transgenic crops and human genetic engineering make people far more uneasy than do personal computers or the Internet. But biotechnology also promises important benefits for human health and well-being. When presented with an advance like the ability to cure diabetes, it is hard for people to articulate reasons why their unease with the technology should stand in the way of progress. It is easiest to object to a new biotechnology if its development leads to a botched clinical trial or to a deadly allergic reaction to a genetically modified food. But the real threat of biotechnology lies in the possibilities of human cloning, “designer babies”—eugenic selection for intelligence, sex, and personality—and eventually, the end of the human species as such.
Part 2
Translation from Chinese into English 2 hours
Read the following two passages.
Translate them into English.
Write your answers on this paper.
You may use the additional paper for any rough work but you must copy your answers onto this paper.
Passage 1
引导农民向城市转移
中国有12多亿人口，农民占了9亿多。尽管农村社会在进一步分化，但农村人口却没有减少，反而在增加。据中国社科院调查，与1978年相比，1999年农民增加了800多万人。一份研究报告指出，“没有城市化的发展，农村、的农业和农民的问题也不可能得到有效解决。过去人们常讲，农民问题归根到底是土地问题，这个问题已经基本解决了。现在的农民问题是就业问题。”因此，调整城乡社会结构，加快城市化的步伐，改变城市化严重滞后于工业化的状况，应是当务之急。一些经济学家估计，到2005年，中国农村剩余劳动力将上升至两亿人，这一庞大人口需要城市来吸纳。
转移庞大的农村人口，仅靠大城市显然是远远不够的，因为大城市的就业压力普遍较重。一些专家认为，农村人口转移的出路还是应以小城镇为主。城镇居民的生活支出、的子女的教育投入等都比农民高出许多，城镇提供的就业机会也远比农村多。
