一、1988~1996年硕士研究生入学考试英译汉试题
1. 1988年试题
Seated behind the front desk at a New York firm, the receptionist was efficient, stylishly dressed, the firm's newest employee had a pleasant telephone voice and a natural charm that put clients at ease. The company was pleased: Clearly, this was a person who took considerable pride in personal appearance. David King, the receptionist, is unusual, but by no means unique. (1) Just as all truck drivers and construction workers are no longer necessarily men, all secretaries and receptionists are no longer automatically women. The number of men in women-dominated fields is still small and they haven't attracted the attention that has often followed women advancing into male-dominated fields, but men are moving into more and more jobs that have traditionally been held by women.
Strictly speaking, the phenomenon is not new. For the past few decades, men have been quietly entering fields such as nursing, social works and elementary education. But today no jobs seems off-limits. Men serve coffee in offices and meals on airplanes. (2) These changes are helping to influence some of the long standing traditions about the types of work men and women can do --but they also produce some undeniable problems for the men who are entering those fields formerly dominated by women .
What kinds of men venture into these so-called women's fields? All kinds. I don't know of any define answers I'd be comfortable with," explains Joseph Pleck, Ph. D . of the Wellesley College Center for Research on women .Samo Ormont , for example ,a thirty-year-old nurse at Boston hospital ,went into nursing because the army had trained him as a medical worker. (3) "I found that work very interesting" he recalled , "and when I got out of the service it just seemed natural for me to go into something medical . I wasn't really interested in becoming a doctor ."
Thirty-five-year-old David king , an out-of-work actor ,found a job as a receptionist because he was having trouble landing roles in Broadway plays and he needed to pay the rent.
(4) In other words, men enter "female" jobs out of the same consider action for personal interest and economic necessity that motivates anyone looking for work . But similarities often end there . Men in female-dominated jobs are conspicuous. As a group, their work histories differ in most respects from those of their female colleagues, and they are frequently treated differently by the people with whom they are in professional contact .
The question naturally arises ;Why are there still approximately ninety-nine female secretaries for every one male ? There is also a more and more serious issue. Most men don't want to be receptionists, nurses, secretaries, or sewing workers. Put simply, these are not generally considered very masculine jobs . To choose such a line of work is to invite ridicule.
There was kidding in the beginning ," recalls Ormont. "Kids coming from school ask what I am , and when I say 'A nurse' , they laugh at me. I just smile and say, 'You know , there female doctors , too .'"
Still , there are encouraging signs. Years ago, male grade school teachers were as rare as male nurses. Today more than one elementary school teacher in six is male.
(5) Can we anticipate a day when secretaries will be an even mix of men and women--or when the mention of a male nurse will no longer raise eyebrows ? It's probably coming--but not very soon .
(1)正像卡车司机和建筑工人再没有必要都是男的一样， 秘书和接待员再也不一定都是 女的。
(2)这些变化正影响着长期存在的传统观念中关于男女可以干哪几类工作的看法，但这对于进入原先以妇女为主的那些领域的男人来说，无疑也带来了一些问题。
(3)他回忆说："我觉得那种工作十分有趣，当我退役时，对我来说，去干某种医务工作，似乎是极其自然的。"
(4)换句话说，男人干起了"女人干"的工作，其动机是同任何找工作干的人一样，既出于个人的兴趣，也出于经济上需要的考虑。
(5)我们能否预见这一天：那时秘书的男女各占一半或有人提到某个男人当护士时，人们不会感到吃惊。
2. 1989年试题
When Jane Mathesen started work at Advanced Electronics Inc. 12 years ago, (1) She laboured over a microscope, hand-welding tiny electronic computers and turned out 18 per hour. Now she turn tends the computerized machinery that turns out high capacity memory chips at rate of 2 600 per hour .Production is up, profits are up, her income is up and Mrs. Mathesen says the work is for less strain on her eyes .
But the most significant effect of changes AEI was felt by the workers who are no longer there. Before the computerized equipment was introduced, there were 940 workers at the plant. Now there were 121. A plant follow-up survey showed that one year after the layoffs only 38% of the released workers found new employment at the same or better wages. Nearly half finally settled for lower pay and more than 13% are still out of work. The AEL example is only one of hundreds around the country which forge intelligently ahead into the latest technology, but leave the majority of their workers behind.
(2) Its beginning obscured by unemployment caused by the world economic slow-down, the new technological unemployment may emerge as the great socio-economic challenge of the end of the 20th century. One corporation economist says the growth of " machine job replacement" has been with us since the beginning of the industrial revolution, but never at pace it is now. The human costs will be astonishing.(3) "It's humiliating to be done out of your job by a machine and there is no way to fight back, but it is the effort to find a new job that really hurts." Some workers, like Jane Mathesen, are retrained to handle the new equipment, but often a whole new set of skills is required and that means a new, and invariably smaller, set of workers. The old workers, trapped by their limited skills, often never regain their old status and employment. Many drift into marginal areas. They feel no pride in their new work. They get badly paid for it and they feel miserable, but still they are luckier than those who never find it.
The social costs go far beyond the welfare and unemployment payments make by the government. Unemployment increases chances of divorce, child abuse, and alcoholism, a new federal shows. Some experts say the problem is only temporary ( that new technology will eventually create as many new jobs as it destroys. (4) But futurologist Hymen Seymour says the astonishing efficiency of the new technology means there will be a simple and direct net reduction in the amount of labour that needs to be done. "We should treat this as an opportunity to give people more leisure. It may not be easy, but society will have to reach a new unanimity on the division and distribution of labour." Seymour says. He predicts most people will work only six hour days and four-day weeks by the end of the century. But the concern of the unemployed is for now. (5) Federally funded training and free back-to-school programs for laid-off workers are underway, but few experts believe they will be able to keep up with the pace of the new technology. For the next few years, for a substantial portion of the work force, times are going to be very tough indeed.
(1) 她吃力地伏在显微镜上干活，用手工焊制小型电子计算机，每小时能焊好18个。
(2) 尽管新技术引起的失业的初兆被世界的经济衰退所造成的失业现象所掩盖，但是新技术引起的失业现象可构成20世纪末的巨大的社会-经济难题。
(3) 被一台机器夺走你的工作是很伤自尊心的，可又无法抗衡，但真正令人伤心的是要费很大的劲才能找到新的工作。
(4) 未来学家海曼·西摩说，新技术具有的惊人效率意味着所需要的劳动力将出现一个绝对的和直接的净减数。
(5) 为失业工人提供的由联邦政府资助的培训计划和免费重返学校学习的计划目前都在实施中，但专家中几乎没人认为这些计划能跟得上新技术的发展步伐。
3. 1990年试题
People have wondered for a long time how their personalities and behaviors are formed. It is not easy to explain why one person is intelligent and another is not, or why one is cooperative and another is competitive.
Social scientists are, of course, extremely interested in these types of questions. (1) They want to explain why we possess certain characteristics and exhibit certain behavior.
There are no clear answers yet, but two different schools of thought on the matter have developed. As one might expect, the two approaches are very different from each other. The controversy is often conveniently referred to as "nature vs. nurture."
(2) Those who support the "nature" side of the conflict believe that our personalities and behavior are largely determined by biological factors. (3) That our environment has little, if anything, to do with our abilities, characteristics and behavior is central to this theory. Taken to an extreme, this theory maintains that our behavior is predetermined to such a great degree that we are almost completely governed by our instincts.
Those who support the "nurture" theory, that is, they advocate education, are often called behaviorists. They claim that our environment is more important than our biologically based instincts in determining how we will act. A behaviorists, B.F. Skinner, sees humans as beings whose behavior is a almost completely shaped by their surroundings. The behaviorists maintain that, like machines, humans respond to environmental stimuli as the basis of their behavior.
Let us examine the different explanation about one human characteristic, intelligence, offered by the two theories. Supporters of the "nature" theory insist that we are born with a certain capacity for learning that is biologically determined. Needless to say, they don't believe that factors in the environment have much influence on what is basically a predetermined characteristic. On the other hand, behaviorists argue that our intelligence levels are product of our experiences. (4) Behaviorist suggest that the child who is raised to an environment where there are many stimuli which develop his or her capacity for appropriate responses will experience greater intellectual development.
The social and political implications of these two theories are profound. In the United States, blacks often score below whites on standardized intelligence tests. This leads some "nature" proponents to conclude that blacks are biologically inferior to whites. (5) Behaviorists, in contrast, say that differences in scores are due to the fact that blacks are often deprived of many of the educational and other environmental advantages that whites enjoy.
(1) 他们想要说明，为什么我们有某些性格特征和表现出某些行为。
(2) 在这场争论中，赞成"天性"一方面的那些人认为，我们的性格特征和行为模式大多是由生物因素所决定的。
(3) 这种理论的核心是，我们的环境同我们的才能、性格特征和行为即使有什么联系的话，也是微不足道的。
(4) 行为主义的看法是，如果一个儿童在有许多刺激的环境中成长，而这些刺激物能够发展其作出适当反应的能力，那么这个儿童将会有更高的智力发展。
(5) 相反，行为主义者认为，成绩的差异是由于黑人往往被剥夺了白人在教育及其他环境方面所享有的许多有利条件。
4. 1991年试题
The fact is that the energy crisis, which is suddenly been officially announced, has been with us for a long time now, and will be with us for an even longer time. Whether Arab oil flows freely or not, it is clear to everyone that world industry cannot be allowed to depend on so fragile a base.
(1) The supply of oil can be shut off unexpectedly at any time, and in any case, the oil wells will all run dry in thirty years or so at the present rate of use.
(2) New sources of energy must be found, and this will take time, but it is not likely to result in any situation that will restore that sense of cheap and plentiful energy we have had in the times past. For an indefinite period from here on, mankind is going to advance cautiously, and consider itself lucky that it can advance at all.
To make this situation worse, there is as yet not sign that any slowing of the world's population is in sight. Although the birth-rate has dropped in some nations, including the United States, the population of the world seems sure to pass six billion and perhaps even seven billion as the twenty-first century opens.
(3) The food supply will not increase nearly enough to match this, which means that we are heading into a crisis in the matter of producing and marketing food.
Taking all this into account, what might we reasonably estimate supermarkets to be like in the year 2001?
To begin with, the world food supply is going to become steadily tighter over the past thirty years even here in the United States. By 2001, the population of the United States will be at least two hundred fifty million and possibly two hundred seventy million, and the nation will find it difficult to expand food production to fill the additional mouths. (4) This will be particularly true since energy pinch will make it difficult to combine agriculture in the high-energy American fashion that makes it possible to combine few farmers with high yields.
It seems almost certain that by 2001 the United States will no longer be a great food-exporting nation and that, if necessary forces exports, it will be at the price of belt-tightening at home.
In fact, as food items will tend to decline in quality and decreases in variety, there is very likely to be increasing use of flavoring additives. (5) Until such time as mankind has the sense to lower its population to the point where the planet can provide a comfortable support for all, people will have to accept more "unnatural food".
(1) 石油供应可能随时被切断；不管怎样，以目前这种石油消费速度，只需30年左右，所有的油井都会枯竭。
(2) 必须找到新的能源，这需要时间，而过去我们感到能源价廉而充足的情况将不大可能出现了。
(3) 食品供应的增长将赶不上人口的增长，这就意味着，我们在粮食生产和购销方面正陷入危机。
(4) 这种困境将是确定无疑的，因为能源的匮乏使农业无法以高能量消耗这种美国耕作方式继续下去，而这种耕作方式使投入极少数农民就可获得高产成为可能。
(5) 除非人类终于意识到要把人口减少到地球能为所有人提供足够的饮食的程度，否则人们将不得不接受更多的"人造食品"。
5. 1992年试题
(1) There is more agreement on the kinds of behavior referred to by the term than there is on how to interpret or classify them. But it is generally agreed that a person of high intelligence is one who can grasp ideas readily, make distinctions, reason logically, and make use of verbal and mathematical symbols in solving problems. An intelligence test is a rough measure of a child's capacity for learning, particularly for learning the kinds of things required in school. It does not measure character, social adjustment, physical endurance, manual skill, or artistic abilities. It is not supposed to--it was not designed for such purposes.(2) To criticize it for such failure is roughly comparable to criticizing a thermometer for not measuring wind velocity.
The other thing we have to notice is that the assessment of the intelligence of any subject is essentially a comparative affair.
(3) Now since the assessment of intelligence is a comparative matter we must be sure that the scale with which we are comparing our subjects provides 'valid' or 'fair' comparison. It is here that some of the difficulties which interest us begin. Any test performed involves at least three factors: the intention to one's best, the knowledge required for understanding what you have to do, and the intellectual ability to it. (4) The first two must be equal for all who are being compared, if any comparison in terms of intelligence is to be made. In school populations in our culture these assumption can be made fair and reasonable, and the value of intelligence testing has been proved thoroughly. Its value lies, of course, in its providing a satisfactory basis for prediction. N one is in the least interested in the marks a little child gets on his test; what we are interested in is whether we can conclude from his mark on the test that the child will do better or worse than other children of his age at tasks which we think require 'general intelligence'. (5) On the whole such a conclusion can be drawn with a certain degree of confidence, but only if the child can be assumed to have had the same attitude towards the test as the other with whom he is being compared, and only if he was not punished by lack of relevant information which he possessed.
(1)人们对智力那些不同表现的看法比人们对这些表现如何解释或分类的看法更为一致。
(2)批评智力测验不测孩子的性格等情况，犹如批评温度计不测风速一样。
(3)既然对智力的评估是比较而言的，那么我们必须确保，在对我们的对象进行比较时，我们所使用的尺度能提供"有效的"或"公平的"比较。
(4)如果要在智力方面进行任何比较的话，那么对所有被比较的人来说，前两个因素必须是相同的。
(5)总的来说，得出这种结论是有一定程度把握的，但是必须具备两个条件：能够假定这个孩子对测试的态度和与他相比较的孩子态度相同；他也没有因为缺乏其他孩子已掌握的有关知识而被扣分。
6. 1993年试题
(1) The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind; it is simply the mode by which all phenomena are reasoned about and given precise and explanations. There is no more difference, but there is just the same difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graded weights. (2) It is not that the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working but that the latter is a much finer apparatus and of course much more accurate in its measurement than the former.
You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar examples. (3) You have all heard it repeated that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, manage to extract from nature certain natural laws, and that out of these, by some special skills of their own, they build up their own theories. (4) And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special training. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constitute differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be frightened by the terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your live.
There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose (散文） during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. (5) Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomenon.
(1) 科学研究的方法只不过是人类思维活动的必要表达方式，也就是对一切现象进行思索并给以精确而严谨的表达方式。
(2) 并不是说面包师或卖肉的人所用的磅秤在构造原理或工作方式上和化学家所用的天平存在差异，而是说与前者相比较，后者是一种更精密得多的仪器，因而在计量上必然更准确得多。
(3) 我们都多次听说过，科学家是用归纳法和演绎法工作的，他们用这些方法，在某种意义上讲，力求从自然界找出某种自然规律，然后根据这些规律，用自己的某种非同一般的本领，建立起他们的理论。
(4) 许多人认为，普通人的思维活动根本无法和科学家的思维过程相比，他们并认为这些思维过程必须是经过某种专门训练才能掌握。
(5) 这里大概不会有人在一整天里没有机会进行一连串复杂的思考活动，这些活动与科学家在探索自然现象原因时所经历的思考活动，尽管复杂程度不同，但在类型上是完全一样的。
7. 1994年试题
According to the new school of scientists, technology is an overlooked forces on expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge. (1) Science moves forward, they say, not so much through the insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniques and tools. (2) In short, a leader if the new school contends, "the scientific revolution, as w call it, was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions."
(3) Over the years, tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovation have largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science. The modern school that hails technology argues that such masters as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and inventors such as Edison attached great importance to, and derived great benefit from, craft information and technological devices of different kinds that were usable in scientific experiments.
The centerpiece of the argument of a technology-yes, genius-no advocate was an analysis of Galileo's role at the start of the scientific revolution. This wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put earth at the center of all heavenly motions. (4) Galileo's greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the first person to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sun rather than around the earth. But the real hero of the story, according to the new school of scientists, was the long evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eyeglasses.
Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs. genius dispute. (5) Whether the Government should increase on the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or vice versa (反之） often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.
(1) 他们（新学派科学家）说，科学的发展与其说源于天才伟人的真知灼见，不如说源于改进了的技术和工具等更为普通的东西。
(2) 新学派的一位领袖坚持说："简而言之，我们所称谓的科学革命，主要是指一系列器具的改进、发明和使用，而这些改进、发明和使用使科学家发展的范围无所不及。"
(3) 工具和技术本身作为根本性创新的源泉多年来在很大程度上被历史学家和科学思想家们忽视了。
(4) 伽利略最光辉的业绩在于他在1609年是第一个把新发明的望远镜对准了天空的人，以证实行星是围绕太阳旋转而不是围绕地球旋转的。
(5) 政府究竟是减少对技术经费的投入来增加对纯理论科学的经费投入，还是相反，这往往取决于把问题的哪一方面看作是驱动的力量。
8. 1995年试题
The standardized educational or psychological tests that are widely used to aid in selecting, classifying, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress.
(1) The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.
All informed prediction of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance: school grades, research productivity, sales records, or whatever is appropriate. (2) How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.
Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. (3) Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the evidence from experience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.
(4) In general, the tests work most effectively when the qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. (5) For example, they do not compensate for gross social inequality, and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstance.
(1) 把标准化测试作为抨击的目标是错误的，因为在抨击这类测试时，批评者不考虑其弊病来自于人们对测试不甚了解或使用不当。
(2) 这些预测在多大程度上为后来的表现所证实，这取决于所采用信息的数量、可靠性和适应性，以及解释这些信息的技能和才智。
(3) 因此，在某一特定的情况下，究竟是采用测试还是采用其他种类的信息，或是两者同时使用，须凭有关相对效度的经验依据而定，也取决于诸如费用和有无来源等因素。
(4) 一般地说，当所要测定的特征能精确地界定时，测试最为有效；而当所要测定或预测的东西不能明确地界定时，测试的效果则最差。
(5) 例如，测试并不弥补明显的社会不公，因此它们不能说明一个物质条件差的年轻人，如果在较好的环境下成长的话，会有多大的才干。
9. 1996年试题
The difference in relative growth of various areas of scientific research have several causes. (1) Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs. Others are reasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent self-accelerating. Some, however, are less reasonable processes of different growth in which preconceptions of the form of scientific theory ought to take, by persons in authority, act to alter the growth pattern of different areas. This is a new problem probably not yet unavoidable: but it is a frightening trend. (2) This trend began during the Second World War, when several governments came to the conclusion that the specific demands that a government wants to make of its scientific establishment cannot generally be foreseen in detail. It can be predicted, however, that from time to time questions will arise which will require specific scientific answers. It is therefore generally valuable to treat the scientific establishment as a resource or machine to be kept in functional order. (3) This seems mostly effectively done by supporting a certain amount of research not related to immediate goals but of possible consequences in the future.
This kind of support, like all government support, requires decisions about the appropriate recipients of funds. Decisions based on utility as opposed to lack of utility are straightforward. But a decision among projects none of which has immediate utility is more difficult. The goal of the supporting agencies is the praisable one of supporting "good" as opposed to "bad" science, but a valid determination is difficult to make. Generally, the idea of good science tends to become confused with the capacity of the field in question to generate an elegant theory. (4) However, the world is so made that elegant systems are in principle unable to deal with some of the world's more fascinating and delightful aspects. (5) New forms of thought as well as new subjects for thought must arise in the future as they have in the past, giving rise to new standards of elegance.
(1) 在这些原因中，有些完全是自然而然地来自社会需求，另一些则是由于科学在一定程度上自我加速而取得特定进展的必然结果。
(2) 这种趋势始于第二次世界大战期间，当时一些国家的政府得出结论：政府要向科研机构提出的具体要求通常是无法详尽预见的。
(3) 给某些与当前目标无关但将来可能产生影响的科研以支持，看来通常能有效地解决这个问题。
(4) 然而，世界就是如此，完美的体系一般而言是无法解决世上某些更引人入胜的课题的。
(5) 同过去一样，将来必然会出现的新的思维方式和新的思维对象，给完美以新的标准。