英语本科段自学考试英汉翻译教程Unit2 History.doc

Unit2 HistoryLesson 4 (E—C)Ngland Before the Idndustrial RevolutionThe contry was a place where men worked form dawn to dark, and the labourer lived not in thd sun, but in poverty and karkness. What aids there were to lighten labour were immemorial, like the mill, which was already ancient in Chaucer’s time. The Industrial Revolution began with such machines; the millwrights were the engineers of the coming age. James Brindley of Staffordshire started his self-made career in 1733 by working at mill wheels, at the age of seventeen, having been born poor in a illage.Brindley’s improvements were practical: to sharpen and step up the performance of the water wheel as a machine. It was the first multi-purpose machine for the new industries. Brindley worked, for example, to improve the grinding of flints, which were used in the rising pottery industry.Yet there was a bigger movement in the air by 1750. water had become the engineers’element, and men like Brindley were possessed by it. Water was gushing and fanning out all over the countryside. It was not simply a source of power, it was a new wave of movement. James brindley was a pioneer in the art of building canals or, as it was then called, ‘navigation’.Brindley had begun on his own account, out of interest, to survey the waterways that he travelled as he went about his engineering projects for mills and mines. The Duke of Bridgewater then got him to build a canal to carry coal from the Duke’s pits at Worsley to the rising town of Manchester…. Brindley went on to connect Manchester with Liverpool in an even bolder manner, and in all laid out almost four hundred miles of cannals in a network all over England.Two things are outstanding in the creation of the English system of canals, and they characterise all the Industrial Revolution. One is that the men who made the revolution were practical men. Like Brindley, they often had little education, and in fact school education as it then was could only dull an inventive mind. The grammar schools legally could only teach the classical subjects for which they had been founded. The universities also(there were only two, at Oxford and Cambridge) took little interest in modern or scientific studies; and they were closed to those who did not conform to the Church of England.The other outstanding feature is that the new invetions were for veryday use. The canals were arteries of communication: They were not made to carry pleasure boat, but barges. And the barges were not made to carry luxuries,but pots and pans and bales of cloth, boxes of ribbon, and all the common things that people buy by the pennyworth. These things had been manufactured in villages which were growing into towns now, away from London; it was a country-wide trade.(from J. Bronowski, The Ascent of Man)译文：工业革命前的英国在农村，人们从早到晚都得干活，劳动者并不是沐浴在阳光下，而是生活在贫困和黑暗中，那些帮助减轻劳动的机械都不知从哪个年代起就有了。

比如磨坊、在乔叟的时代就已经是古老的。

而工业革命就是从这些机械开始的。

修造磨坊的匠人就是开创新时代的工程师。

斯塔福郡的詹姆斯·布林德雷，出身于一个贫苦的农村家庭；一七三三年，他十七岁，就着手改良磨坊的车轮，从而开始了他那自我奋斗的生涯。

布林德雷所作的改良是很实际的：改善并加强水车的机械功能。

这是为新工业提供的第一部多功能机器。

例如，布林德雷努力改进燧石的碾磨过程，燧石是新兴的陶瓷工业有用的材料。

然而，到了一七五O年，一场更大的运动已经在酝酿之中。

水成了工程师们大显身手的对象，像布林德雷这样的人对它都着了迷。

水在农村到处涌流漫溢。

它不仅是一处能源，而且带来了一场新的运动。

布林德雷是开凿运河的先驱者，当时人们把开凿运河叫作navigation.布林德雷在为他的磨坊和矿井建筑工程到处奔走的时候，出于自愿和兴趣，对沿途经过的河道进行勘察。

于是布里奇瓦特公爵就让他开一条运河，以便把煤从公爵在乌斯利拥有的矿井运往新兴城市曼彻斯特……布林德雷还更加大胆地用运河把曼彻斯特同利物浦联结起来，修凿了总长为四百英里的遍布全英国的运河网。

在修建英国的运河网的过程中，有两点是非常突出的，而这两点也正是整个工业革命的特点。

首先，发动这场革命的都是些实干家。

同布林德雷一样，他们一般都没有受过什么教育。

事实上，当时那种学校教育也只能窒息人的创造性。

按规定文法学校只能讲授古典学科，这些学校的办学宗旨本来就是如此。

大学（当时只有两所，一所在牛津，一所在剑桥）对现代的或科学的学科也不怎么感兴趣；这两所大学还把不信奉英国国教的人关注在门外。

第二个突出的特点是：新发明都是为日常生活服务的。

运河是交通的动脉，开运河不是为了走游艇，而是为了通行驳船。

而驳船也不是为了运送奢侈品，而是为了运送瓦罐铁锅、成包的棉布、成箱的缎带，以及那些只花个把便士全能能买到的各式日用品。

这些物品都是在远离伦敦渐渐发展成为城镇的农村制造的。

这是一场全国范围的贸易。

（吴千之译）Lesson5(E—C)Opportunities Open in the WestThe first great rush of populationto the far west was drawn to the mountainous regions, where gold was found in California in 1848, in Colorado and Nevada 10 years later, in Montana and Wyoming in the 1860s, and in the Black Hills of the Dakota country in the 1870s. Miners opened up the country, established coummunities, and laid the foundations for more permanent seetlements. Yet even while digging in the hills, some settlers perceived the region’s farming and stock-raising possibilities. Eventually, though a few communities countinued to be devoted almost exclusively to mining, the real wealth of Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, and Califormia proved to be in the grass and soil.Cattle-raising, long an important industry in Texas, became even more floourishing after the war, when enterprising men began to drive their Texas longhorns north across the open public domain. Feeding as they went, the cattle arrived at railway shipping points in Kansas, larger and fatter than when they started. Soon this “long drive” became a regular event, and , for hundreds of kilometers, trails were dotted with herds of cattle moving northward. Cattle-raising spread into the trans-Missouri region, and immense ranches appeared in Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Dakota territory. Wstern cities flourished as centers for the slaughter and dressing of meat.Altogether, between 1866 and 1888, some six million head of cattle were driven up from Texas to winter on the high plains of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. The cattle boom reached its height by 1885, then the range became too heavily pastured to support the long drive, and was beginning to be criss-crossed by railroads. Not far behind the rancher creaked the prairie schooners of the farmers bringing their families, their draft horses, cowsm and pigs. Under the homestead Act they staked their claims and fenced them with barbed wire. Ranchmen were oustedfrom lands they had roamed without legal title. Soon the romantic “wild west” had ceased to be.(from An Outline of American History)Lesson 6(C—E)新民主主义论（摘录）五四运动是反帝国主义的运动，又是反封建的运动。