完整版英语专业八级翻译练习题

英语专业八级翻译练习题

1．英译汉

（1）

Possession for its own sake or in competition with the rest of the neighborhood would have been Thoreau's idea of the low levels. The active discipline of heightening one's perception of what is enduring in nature would have been his idea of the high. What he saved from the low was time and effort he could spend on the high. Thoreau certainly disapproved of starvation, but he would put into feeding himself only as much effort as would keep him functioning for more important efforts.

Effort is the gist of it. There is no happiness except as we take on life-engaging difficulties. Short of the impossible, as Yeats put it, the satisfaction we get from a lifetime depends on how high we choose our difficulties. Robert Frost was thinking in something like the same terms when he spoke of The pleasure of taking pains. The mortal flaw in the advertised version of happiness is in the fact that it purports to be effortless.

We demand difficulty even in our games. We demand it because without

difficulty there can be no game. A game is a way of making something hard for the fun of it. The rules of the game are an arbitrary imposition of difficulty. When someone ruins the fun, he always does so by refusing to play by the rules. It is easier to win at chess if you are free, at your pleasure, to change the wholly arbitrary rules, but the fun is in winning within the rules. No difficulty, no fun.

梭罗所理解的低层次，即为了拥有而去拥有，或与所有的邻居明争暗斗而致拥有。他心目中的高层次，则是这样一种积极的人生戒律，即要使自己对自然界永恒之物的感悟臻于完美。对于他从低层次上节省下来的时间和精力，他可将其致力于对高层次的追求。勿庸置疑，梭罗不赞成忍饥挨饿，但他在膳食方面所投入的精力仅果腹而已，只要可确保他能去从事更为重要的事务，他便别无所求。

殚精竭虑，全力以赴，便是其精髓所在。除非我们愿意直面那些需要我们全身心投入的艰难困苦，否则便不会有幸福可言。正如叶芝所言，除却某些不可能的情形，我们于人生中所获取的满足皆取决于我们在多高的境界中选择我们所愿意面对的艰难困苦。当罗伯特·弗罗斯特言及以苦为乐时，他内心所思，大体如此。商业广告中所宣扬的那种幸福观，其致命的缺陷就在于这样一个事实，即它宣称，一切幸福皆唾手可得，不费吹灰之力。

即便于游戏之中，我们也需要有艰难困苦。我们之所以需要它，因为设若没有困难，便断无游戏可言。游戏即是这样一种方式，为了享受其中的情趣而人为地使事情变得不那么轻而易举。游戏中的种种规则，便是将困难武断地强加于人。当有人将情趣摧毁殆尽时，他总是因为拒不按游戏规则行事而使然。这犹如下棋；

如果你随心所欲、心血来潮地去更改那些全然武断的游戏规则，这样去赢棋当然会更加容易。但下棋的情趣则在于，应在规则的限定范围内赢取胜利。一言以蔽之，没有艰难，断无情趣。

（2）

In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons:

to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.

In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.

Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of

the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family -they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.

在某些社会中，人们希望拥有孩子是出于所谓的家庭原因：传宗接代，光宗耀祖，博取祖辈的欢心，使那些涉及到整个家族的宗教仪式得以发挥其应有的作用。此类原因在现代世俗化的社会中似显苍白，但它们在其他地方曾一度构成并确实仍在构成强有力的理由。此外，有一类家庭原因与下列类别不无共通之处，这便是：生儿育女是为着维系或改善婚姻：能拴住丈夫或者使妻子不致于无所事事；修复婚姻或为婚姻注入新的活力；多子多孙，以为家庭幸福，惟系于此。这一点更可因其相反情形而得以凸现：在某些社会中，无法生儿育女（或无法生育男孩）于婚姻而言可构成一种威胁，并可作为离婚的一个顺理成章的（或现成的）缘由。除了所有这一切以外，还有一个原因，那就是后代对于家庭这一体制本身所具有的深远意义。对许多人来说，夫妇两人尚不足以构成一个真正意义上的家庭--夫妻需要孩子来丰富其两人小天地，赋予该小天地以真正意义上的家庭性质，并从子孙后代身上获取某种回报。

孩子需要家庭，但家庭似乎也需要孩子。作为一种社会体制，家庭以其特有的方式，至少从原则上说，可在一个变幻莫测、常常是充满敌意的世界中让人从中获取某种安全、慰藉、保障，以及价值取向。于大多数人而言，这样的一个家庭基础，即使从其表层意义上来讲，也需要不至一个人来维持其存在，并使其世代相