雷天放口译教程13单元重点练习

The Indian Ocean Tsunami that took place at the end of 2004 drove the whole world into shock and grief. It swept many countries along Indian Ocean like Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, leading to nearly 300 thousand deaths, among whom 100 thousand deathswere Indonesian. Numerous families lost their folks in this unexpected disaster. The number of people who suffered directly or indirectly reached 5 million. The international society efficiently organized rescue and donation for the disaster-stricken areas. The donation from the Chinese government and the public reached over 1.2 million RMB. In the 21th century, this kind of tremendous tragedy did make people reflect on the reasons why the catastrophe would take place, and how we could avoid it. So that people carried out an extensive discussion and analysis about it.

First, it’s the punishment by nature for the improper behavior of human being. The primary cause of this severe disaster was that people built a great deal of houses alongthe coast and destroy the natural environment. Although earthquakes and their accompanying tsunami is the normal natural phenomena, the fact that a tsunami caused tens of thousands of deaths could not totally attribute to the nature for the places that human should not have occupied. In order to attract tourists, plenty of hotels and restaurants have been built tightly along the seashore, which undoubtedly increased the risks that people might be suddenly hit by tsunami. Some experts put it that the coral reef and the mangroves growing in the shallow water areas could protect people from being hit. However in the past two to three decades, people have fished and shrimped as well as logged the seaside mangroves in great quantity, for which they suffered a heavy loss.

Second, the lack of the preventive and warning mechanisms make people unprepared and unprotected. This disaster was caused by the earthquake, but what made people suffered a lot was the tsunami instead of the earthquake. The earthquake had taken place two hours before the tsunami, which could be felt in many areas. If there was a pretty effective preventive and warning mechanism ahead of time, the local people could have enough time to escape, so that the number of casualty and the loss could decrease in some way.

After the catastrophe, leaders from some countries made speeches to urge the international society to take preventive measures together and make the greatest efforts to minimize the loss cause by this kind of natural disaster. People should learn from the disaster and hold responsible for the protection of the global environmentaltogether. The governments of relevant countries should join together to establish a preventive and warning mechanism as soon as possible. The international society should learn from the disaster and find out the loopholes and enhance the awareness and education of the public about how to escape when the earthquake and tsunami took place. Though we could not avoid such similar natural disaster, as long as the whole world works together and make joint efforts, we can certainly minimize the loss caused by the disaster.