大学英语泛读第4册句子翻译

Genius and the Craftsman
1. So it is with the reader who comes upon an outstanding story: spellbound, he takes it to his heart, no question asked.
(当读者读到一部杰出的小说时，他也会这样如痴如狂，欲将小说字字句句刻骨铭心，绝不会提出任何问题。)
2. …there is more to a story's life than the body of words which carries it into the world.
(除那将小说带到世上的文字主体之外还有更多的因素才能构成小说的生命。)
3. …it does not begin with writing, but with conception in the dark of the mind.
(小说并不始于写作，而始于在隐密的内心深处的构思。)
4. genius is not the exclusive property of the master craftsman
(天赋并非艺术家独有的特性）
5. Mastery is genius afoot.
(高超的技艺是天赋的显现。）
6. While genius is a natural part of our mental equipment, like perception, memory, and imagination, craftsmanship is not.
（天赋正如理解力、记忆力和想象力一样是我们的精神禀赋中天然的一部分，而技艺却不是。）
7. If the stories that rise within us are to emerge and flourish, each must be provided with a strong, handsome body of words, and only sound craftsmanship can provide this.
(如果要使在我们内心深处浮现的故事跃然纸上，并光彩照人，那么，每个故事都须有感染力极强的优雅文笔。只有功底深厚的技艺才能使我们做到这一点。)
8. …it may depend on the individual, as so much does in writing.
(这可能取决于个人，而写作中很多事都取决于个人。）
9. airy tracery of beauty given form
（这种飘渺的美就交织成了典雅的形式）
10. Thus variously laden, we move through life.
(我们就这样背负着各种记忆渡过一生。)
11. … now and then an experience, often slight, prizes the memory and seizes upon one of those live, expectant impressions of long age…
(时而,一个小小的体验撬开了记忆之门，抓住了这些虽已年代久远，却依然栩栩如生，呼之欲出的印象。)
12. letting it cool in between times
(在将其搁置一旁冷一段时间)
13. No matter how far short of the mark you fall, it is never failure…
(不论你的工作成果如何不如人意, ... 这绝不是失败。)
14. Things which slip past the eye in rereading leap at you and demand attention.
(在反复阅读的过程中掠过眼前的事物向你跳跃着以求引起注意。)
15. Such expert knowledge of this one story gives you control…
(对这部小说的彻底理解给你以控制力...)
The Population Surprise
1. The big surprise of the past twenty years is that in not one country did fertility stop falling when it reached the replacement rate － 2.1 children per woman.
(过去二十年最令人吃惊的事情是，没有一个国家当其出生率降到人口置换率水平时——每个妇女生育2.1个子女——就停止下降了。)
2. World populatio

n was growing by two percent a year in the 1960s; the rate is now down to one percent a year, and if the patterns of the past century don't change radically, it will head into negative numbers.
(在六十年代，世界人口每年只增长2%，现在这一比率已降到每年1%。而且要不是上个世纪[19世纪]生育模式发生了根本性变化的话，这将会导致人口的负增长。)
3. As long ago as September of 1974 Scientific American published a special issue on population that described what demographers had begun calling the "demographic transition" from traditional high rates of birth and death to the low ones of modern society.
(早在1974年9月，《美国科学》杂志发行了一份人口研究专号，描述了人口学家所称的"人口过渡期"的情况，即从传统的高出生率和死亡率转到现代社会的低出生率和死亡率。)
4. The experts' assumption that population would stabilize because birth rates would stop falling once they matched the new low death rates has not been borne out by experience.
(专家们推测出生率一旦同新的低死亡率达到平衡后就会停止衰减，所以人口能够保持稳定，这种推测没有得到经验的证实。
5. In the United States fertility has been falling for 200 years (except for the blip of the Baby Boom3), but partly because of immigration it has stayed only slightly below replacement level for twenty-five years.
(美国二百多年来生育率一直在下降[除了二战过后出现的短暂的生育高峰期]，但是在某种程度上受移民的影响，在25年里它只略低于人口置换率。)
6. World population can be stable only if fertility rates around the world average out to 2.1 children per woman.
(只有世界范围内的出生率能达到平均每位妇女生育2.1个子女，世界人口才可能稳定。)
7. Much bigger changes in share are possible for smaller groups if they can maintain their difference from the average for a long period of time.
(对于一些较小的人口群体来说，如果他们长时间内与平均出生率保持差距，那么他们所占世界人口的份额可能会产生更大的变化。)
8. If they do, and fertility rates start to climb, fertility is no more likely to stop climbing at an average rate of 2.1 children per woman than it was to stop falling at 2.1 on the way down.
(如果是这样，那么出生率就会攀升。而且在达到每位女性生育2.1个子女这样一个平均水平后会停止上升的可能性并不比降到2.1后会停止下降的可能性大多少。)
Food Fight
1. Over the past decade, genetically modified (GM) food has become an increasingly common phenomenon as scientists have rewoven the genes of countless fruits and vegetables, turning everyday crops into über-crops able to resist frost, withstand herbicides and even produce their own pesticides.
(在刚刚过去的十年中，随着科学家们对许多蔬菜和水果中基

因的改变，这些人们每天食用的作物已经变成超级作物，这些作物能够防霜冻，抵抗除草剂，甚至它们本身就能杀虫，因此转基因食物已迅速成为普遍现象。)
Withstand: remain undamaged or unaffected by.
2. Sales of GM seeds rose in value from $75 million in 1995 to $1.5 billion last year, and the crops they produce are turning up not only on produce shelves but also in processed foods from cookies to potato chips to baby food.
(基因作物种子售出的总值从1995年的七百五十万增加到去年的十亿五千万，并且他们生产的作物不仅出现在直接生产的产品中而且出现在加工食品中，从饼干到薯条到婴儿食品。)
3. But many people question whether it's a good idea for fallible human beings to go mucking about with the genes of other species.
(但是，许多人提出疑问：让容易犯错的人类摆弄其他物种的基因是否是个好主意。)
4. It's one thing if a scientific experiment goes wrong in a lab, they say, but something else entirely if it winds up on your dinner plate.
(他们说如果实验室里的科学实验做错了，那是一回事。但如果它最终出现在你的饭桌上，那又是另外一回事。)
5. While that may be, the fact remains that the U.S. Congress may address a labeling bill of its own later this year, and some private groups are threatening lawsuits to force the issue.
(事情也许会是这样，但事实还是美国国会今年晚些时候会制定他们自己的商标法案，而一些私人团体正在威胁要诉诸法律迫使制定这 条法案。)
6. "The farmers in France are right," observes Dennis Democrat from Cleveland, Ohio, who stumbled across the GM-food issue this year, and is turning it into something of a cause.
(俄亥俄州克利夫兰的丹尼丝?德莫克利特说，“法国的农民是对的，没有什么比食物跟人类的关系更密切。”他今年碰到了转基因食物这件事，正把它当成一件事业来做。)
7. Monsanto, which produces the hugely popular herbicide Roundup, has made just as big a hit with its line of genetically modified crops that are immune to the Roundup poison
(蒙生特公司生产了颇受大众欢迎的除草剂Roundup，他们的转基因作物的生产线也非常轰动。因为这种转基因作物对Roundup毒有免疫作用)
8. Such souped-up plants are understandably popular with farmers, for whom even a slight increase in yield can mean a big increase in profits.
(可以理解这种经过加工而更加吸引人的植物深受农民欢迎，因为对他们来说产量的细微增长就意味着利润的大幅增加。)
9. Two years ago, chief executive Robert Shapiro gambled big on biotech, spinning off the company's chemical division to focus on the new science.
(两年前，首席执行长官罗伯特?夏皮罗在生物科技上下了大赌注，他将几个部门合并成立一个化工部门，专门开发新

产品。)
10. For now, the most GM foes can hope to push through an agri-friendly Congress is a proposal for voluntary labeling that biotech companies would be free to honor or ignore.
(到目前为止，转基因产品的反对者至多是让亲农业的国会通过一项提议，允许生物技术公司自己选择是标注还是不标注。)
Toy Story
2.They can see through "marketing hyperbole".
他们并能看穿“广告的夸张”。
Revision Time Goes Online
1.They mark the first and the last of Paula's written GCSE exams.
（这两个日子标志着波拉的普通教育证书第一门和最后一门考试。）
3.When exams were invented so too was revision, but two inventions have transformed the way we prepare.
(自从发明了考试，就发明了复习，但两项发明改变了我们准备考试的方法。)
4. It received almost 750 000 hits each week in mid-March, and expects to double that number this month.
（3月中旬该网址每周接受750000次点击，而且本月有望该数字加倍。）
6.Paula Kelly is sanguine about online revision.
(波拉?凯利对网上复习持乐观态度。)
9.We want our online materials to draw in students who are in danger of being turned off learning but also to allow more ambitious students to approach the whole curriculum at their own pace.
（我们希望网上的资料能吸引那些有对学习失去兴趣的危险的学生，也能让较有抱负的学生根据自己的速度接触全部课程。”）
Postmortem with Strings
1. Down on the brick floor of the University of Maryland's Davidge Hall, a noted professor of medicine is about to perform a most unusual postmortem.
(在马里兰州立大学戴威基大厅里砖铺的地面上，一位著名的医学教授正准备进行一次极为奇特的尸检。)
2. Their succor amounted to a blood-letting and a few cold compresses.
(他们的救助方法无非是放血或用冷敷布降温。)
3. The diagnosis － death by rabies － was topped off, appropriately enough, with a monologue from Poe's story "The Black Cat".
(最后的诊断结果为,他死于狂犬病，用选自坡所著的《黑猫》中的一段独白作为诊断的结束语很恰如其分。)
4. Rheumatic fever is triggered by an invading bacterium that elicits antibodies from the immune system.
(风湿热的形成是由于细菌入侵诱发免疫系统产生抗体。)
5. One could say that the epidemic was immaterial to his death, that it was coincidental
(人们可以说那场流行病对他的死因并不重要，那只是巧合而已。)
The Archaeologists Who Wouldn't Dig
1. By plotting the locations of ceramics, stone tools and other artifacts that weathered out of the soil across wide areas, PRAP determines large-scale patterns of human activity.
(散布在大范围区域内的陶器、石具和许多其它文物风化到土地表层，通过弄清它们的具体位置，PRAP确定了大规模的人类活动方式。)
Plot: mark

the position of.
2. The Pylos I was looking for turned out to be a short but terrifying taxi ride away: fourteen kilometer north of town, along the Bay of Navarino and then several hundreds yards abruptly uphill, to the beak of a sharp ridge called Ano Englianos.
(要到达我所寻找的皮勒斯，需要再乘坐出租车。这是一段虽短却极为艰难的旅途，出城北行14公里，经过那瓦利诺海湾，然后沿着突兀的山坡爬行数百码，爬上被称作阿诺?恩格利诺斯的陡峭山脊顶部。)
Turn out: prove to be.
3. Collected and plotted, the age-sorted sherds pile up electronically around certain sites, indicating peaks of activity and population.
（这些搜集和整理的按年代划分的陶器碎片经过电子计算机处理，标在一些场地周围，表明人类活动和人口的高峰点。而调查就是要找到这样的模式。）
4. Those explosions set off the first of what pollen and soil samples show were four waves of dramatic environmental change, which gradually wiped out the native vegetation and stripped away most of the topsoil.
(这些膨胀引起花粉样本和土壤样本所展示的四个激进环境变化浪潮中的第一个——渐渐地抹去原有的植被，侵蚀掉大部分的表层土。)
Strip away: remove the covering.
Is Weather Getting Worse
1. In less than 24 hours, more than 70 hellholes of wind rampaged though Oklahoma and Kansas, killing 49 and causing more than $1 billion in damages.
(在不到24小时时间内，七十多个“地狱”风暴在俄克拉何马和堪萨斯洲横行肆虐，造成49人死亡以及十多亿美圆的损失。)
2. That doesn't mean that you can indict weird weather in your neck of woods as proof.
(这并不意味着你可以用某区域的怪异天气作为控诉的证据。)
3. If they crank up the resolution by 50 percent to focus on an area half that size, they pay for it in computing time - a calculation that took 10 days to perform might now need three months.
（如果它们想研究一半大小的区域，提高50% 的解析率， 那么代价就是计算时间。先前十天的计算现在也许要一个月。）
4. Heat will hasten ocean evaporation, and because hot air can hold more moisture, it could all be whisked away to rain more upon our heads.
(热量将加快海水的蒸发，因为热空气能携带更多的湿气，会给我们头上带来更多的降水。)
5. Within months came another, stronger piece of real-world data, nailed down by one of the men caught in that January snowstorm.
(几个月后又得到一份来自现实世界、更有力的数据，一位亲身经历了那场一月暴雪的人使这份数据更确切。)
Nail something down: identify something precisely.
6. Contrasting cool ocean currents in the Pacific can usher in the opposite phase, La Nina, which tends to dry out the southwestern and the South Central States.
(与此相反的太平洋寒流会引起一种相反的状

况，拉尼娜现象。拉尼娜现象会给西南部和中南部各州带来干旱。)
Usher in: cause or mark the start of something new.
Personal Names
1. In an anthropological account of any tribe, the manner of its giving of personal names is often thought of sufficient importance or inclusion, and so we may fittingly attempt an appraisal of such habits among the Americans.
(在任何民族的人类学研究中，取名的习俗往往非常重要，而且包含许多内容。因此，我们可以对美国人的取名习俗作一番研究。)
Appraisal: an act of assessing.
2. The old theory that he took the name of his master seems to have little foundation, as is evidenced by the failure of the names of the great slave-holding families to be very common among Negroes.
(过去的理论认为黑人用的是自己主人的姓，这似乎站不住脚。因为拥有大量奴隶的家族的姓并没有成为黑人中的常见姓。)
3. Sometimes this has resulted from a desire to escape from a real or fancied stigma of association with a foreign background.
(有时是想摆脱外国背景的耻辱，这种耻辱或者是现实存在的，或者只存在于想象中。)
4. On the other hand, this leveling process has failed to eliminate very many names, and the number of names in Great Britain or any other country.
(同时，这种拉平的过程并没有使大量的姓消失，也没有减少英国或其他国家姓的数量。)
Why People Work
1. It's not difficult to understand the tarnished reputation. Historically, work has been associated with slavery and sin, compulsion and punishment.
　(因此工作受到贬低这一点就不难理解。历史上，工作一直同奴役、罪孽、强制和惩罚联系在一起。)
2. We've watched programmers and engineers work fifteen and eighteen hours at a stretch, seven days a week, when a job really got tough and they knew that a crucial deadline had to be met, or when a major project would fall unless some tough problems were solved.
　(我们还观察到，有时程序设计师和工程师会在工作中遇到很大困难，而工作必须如期完成，而有时一项大的工程面临着流产，除非他们能解决某个棘手的问题，这时他们就会连续工作15到18个小时，每周工作7天。)
3. They enjoyed "making it," - winning despite difficult odds; proving their capacities against the outsiders: nature, a competitor, a complex problem; mastering something new every day.
(他们喜欢“成功”的感觉——克服巨大的困难而胜利；证明自己应付外界(自然、竞争对手、或一个复杂的问题)的能力；每天都掌握新的东西。)
4. And this sense of belonging to an accomplished work group that both outsiders and insiders recognize can handle itself with extreme virtuosity is one of the distinctive satisfactions of the world of work.
(一个成功的团体技术精湛，成绩卓著，得到了团体内外的认可。而

归属于这样一个成功团体的感觉就构成了现实工作中的一种特殊的满足感。)
5. And the work group also gently pressures its members to learn how to adjust to one another so that the "rough edges" are worked off because people know they must do certain things with and through one another each day.
　(而且团队也对每个成员有一些压力，使得他们学会相互适应，磨掉各自的“棱角”，因为他们知道自己每天都必须与他人协作并通过相互的努力来完成工作。)