未成年不能看的电影中国科学院大学英语速读(第二册)1-20翻译

2021年1月17日发(作者：和妹妹划船)
中国科学院大学英语速读（第二册）1-20翻译
Passage 1: Quake- proofing a house
1. Most houses and commercial structures that were constructed after 1980, when Japan’s
building code had its last revision, are still standing.日本最近一次对其建筑规范进行重大
修订是在1980年，之 后所建的大部分房屋和商业建筑至今仍完好无损。
2. Charles Scawthorn, vice president of EQE International, a San Francisco firm that
specializes in quake- resistant engineering, says that ”This is the real heart of the
seismic-hazard problem. ”
国际EQE的副总裁，San Francisco 公司的抗震工程师Charles Scawthorn说：“这（改进
现在的建筑结构）就是地震危害的核心问题。”
3. What he saw convinced him that relatively simple precaution could have prevented the
most common form of damage: the roofs and upper stories of buildings crashing down onto
lower floors.他 看到的使他相信那些相对简单的预防措施应该能够防止最常见的毁害：房
顶和上层倒塌在下面的地板上。
the traditional Japanese house, Scawthorn says, the first floor lacks interior walls that
could help support the weight of the second floor, as they would for a Western home;
Scawt horn说，传统的日本房屋缺乏用于支撑第二层楼重量的内墙，而西方房屋的内墙
则能支撑二层楼的重 量。
itting buildings to survive another Big One is still rare in Japan, but in the wake of the
Kobe tragedy it may catch on.
在日本，改造翻新建筑物使 其幸免于又一次大地震的做法仍然少见。不过，在神户地震
的悲剧后，这种做法也许会更加普遍。
Passage 2: The official language
1. Not since the first decades of the twentieth century have so many people entered the United
States.自二十世纪的前几十年以来，还从来没有这么多人进入美国。
2. But they are by no means alone.说西班牙语的这些人并不会因为在美国没有说英语而
觉得被孤立起来。
3. They argue that immigrants speaking poor English are cut off from the
mainstreamAmerica's economy, and are thus doomed to depend on the largesse of the state.
他们认为那些英语说得糟糕的移民会和主流的美国经 济脱钩，而因此注定要靠国家的慷
慨救济而生活。
4. Opponents of English as an official language say that bilingual education is a more realistic,
long-term solution for helping foreign-born Americans assimilate.
不赞成将英语作为官方语言的反对者说，双语教育对于帮助外籍美国人融入本 土是一种
更为现实长效的方案。
Passage 3: Hazard
1. Gangster movies of the old type often featured menacing threats of a “one-way ride”.
从前的黑帮影片通常会有“死路一条”的威胁恐吓。
young adult is still relatively free from life-threatening diseases, although no age level
is completely immune.尽管任何年龄段的人都不能完全免于患致命疾病，不过相对而言年
轻人还是易于避免一些 。
3. Neither cancer nor heart disease, the two most common physical conditions that threaten
life at this age level, are responsible for nearly as many deaths as the motor vehicle accident.
无论是癌症还是心脏病，即在这个年龄层最常见的危及生命的两种症状，它们所导 致的
死亡都远不及机动车事故所造成的死亡人数。
4. It may be important to add that the motor vehicle death rate begins to decline markedly
after this peak between ages twenty to twenty-four.
也许值得补充的是，在 二十到二十四岁之间，机动车事故的死亡率达到峰值，在这年龄
段之后，这一死亡率急剧下降。
5. A person, in other words, may be pronein certain respects and for a certain,
limited part of his or her lifespan.
换句话说，一个人在某些方面，在人生的某段限定的时间，也许会有＂易出事故的倾向＂。
the fact that most young-adult deaths involve a lethal intersection of person and machine (and
often alcohol as well).
无论致命事故数字背后的原因何在，我们 都难以忽略一个事实，即机器（通常还有酒精）
攸关人的生死，而这种关系使得大部分年轻人丧命。
Passage 4: Mathethtics
1. If we assume that the curriculum was reasonable, and that the new idea was but the next in
a series of learnable concepts, the feeling of utter defeat was simply not rational;
假设课程合理，新概念只是接下来一系列可以学 会的概念中的一个，那么这种彻底的挫
败感便毫无道理。
2.A common myth about the nature of mathematical ability holds that one either has or does
not have a mathematical mind.
关于数学学习能力，一个常见的谬论是，一个人要么有数学头脑，要么没有。
3. Mathematical imagination and an intuitive grasp of mathematical principles may well be
needed to do advanced research, but why should people who can do college-level work in
other subjects not be able to do college-level math as well? 对于做高 级研究的人来说，具备
数学想象力和把握数学规律的直觉是必须的，但是为什么那些能在其他科目做到大 学水
平的人，却不能做大学水平的数学工作呢？
only a few people are supposed to have this mathematical mind, part of what makes
us so passive in the face of our difficulties in learning mathematics is that we suspect all the
while we may not be one of “them”, and we spend our time waiting to find out when our
nonmathematical minds will be exposed.
既然只有少数人有这种数学头脑，我们面对数学难题时如此被动的部分原因就是，我 们
一直怀疑自己不是“他们”（有数学头脑的人）中的一员，我们花时间就是一直在等待
我们没 有数学思维被暴露的那一天。
Passage 5: American drama
1. A number of critics and literary historians have remarked that nineteenth-century American
drama is marked not only by its relative lack of quality and integrity when compared with
other types of American literature but by its lack of any national originality, any quality other
than a superficial interest in “local color” and folklore that can be considered distinctively
American.
很多评论家和文学历史学家评论说，和美 国其它类型的文学艺术相比，19世纪的美国戏
剧相对缺乏质量和完整性，不仅如此，它还缺乏民族原创 性，只在“本地特色”和民俗
上有些肤浅的兴趣，这些“本地特色”和民俗被认为是美国人特有的。
2. It seems, in reading the hundreds of surviving plays of the nineteenth century, that the best
of them were the work of more or less ingenious children who lived in a world that had done
no thinking since 1620.
克拉克说，“读了上百篇幸存 下来的19世纪的戏剧后，似乎那些最好的戏剧是或多或少
的天才儿童的作品，这些儿童生活在一个自从 1620年就没有了思想的世界里。”
3. This gulf between drama and serious literature continued well into the twentieth century,
and was actually not bridged effectively until the period after the First World War.
戏剧和严肃文学之间的鸿沟一直持续到二十世纪，实际上直到第一 次世界大战以后，它
们之间的差异才得到有效的填充/弥补。
Passage 6: Rootlessness
1. A nation of immigrants, unsurprisingly, celebrates those willing to pick up stakes and move
on:毫不奇怪的是，一个移民国家会推崇(赞美)那些敢于冒险和积极进取的人
ds of thousands of informal gathering spots that once nurtured community across the
country have disappeared.
那些成千上万的曾孕育过全国社区的非正式聚会地点，都消失了。
3. In Los Angeles we are hesitant to leave our sheltered home in order to visit friends or to
participate in cultural or entertainment events because every such outing involves a major
investment of time and nervous strain in driving long distances. 在洛杉矶，我们为了拜访朋
友或是参加文化或娱乐 活动而离开安定的家都会犹豫，因为每次远行都涉及到大量的时
间跟精力投入到长途驾驶中。
Passage 9: Science fiction
1. Like sex and a good many other natural phenomena, art must be a little disreputable to be
any good, and science fiction writing is nothing if not an art. But too much ill repute, and the
art, like sex, turns sour.
正如性以及其他诸多的自然现象一样，艺术就要引起一点点非议才 会显得有价值，科幻
小说毫无疑问就是一件艺术品。
2. The audience I write for is particularly intrigued by the notion that we can think and feel
our way into forward times, that we can open the darkly wrapped package of the future before
the allowed Christmas morning.
我的读者尤其被这样的一些观念所吸引：我们可以思考和感觉 我们通往超前时代的路，
以及我们可以在允许打开包裹的圣诞节早晨之前，来提前打开充满未知的包裹。
3. It is also a test of the writer, tougher than any other aesthetic test I know, for not only do we
go up against a tough-minded audience (in principle, at least) but reality itself.
它 也是对作者的考验，我知道它可能比任何其他艺术的考验更严峻，因为我们不但要与
心态严格的读者相左 ，而且还要违背真实世界本身。
Passage 10: High-IQ society
es in a newsletter published by the Los Angeles chapter of the high IQ society Mensa
have sparked outrage by appearing to advocate the extermination of the homeless, the
mentally retarded, the old and the infirm.高智商门 撒协会洛杉矶分会的时事通讯文章引起
人们的愤慨，文章声称应消灭流浪汉,智障人士以及老弱无依者。
2. Those people who are so mentally defective that they cannot live in society should, as soon
as they are identified as defective, be humanely dispatched.
那些人精神上有缺陷，以至于不能生活在这个社会上，所 以在他们被鉴定为有缺陷的时
候，就应该人道的结束他们的生命。
another article, attorney and Mensa member Jason Brent contended that Adolf Hitler’s
greatest offence was not the killing of 6 million Jews in the Nazi Holocaust, but “the fact that
his actions prevent a rational discussion of the creation of the master race.”在另一篇文章里，