2009年05月CATTI三级笔译实务真题

2009年05月CATTI三级笔译实务真题

一、English-Chinese Translation （本大题2小题．每题30.0分，共60.0分。Translate the following passage（s） into Chinese ）

第1题

Why Is it So Difficult to Swat a Fly?

The brains of flies are wired to avoid the swatter, US researchers said on Thursday.

At the mere hint of a threat, the insects adjust their preflight stance to flee in the opposite direction, ensuring a clean getaway, they said in a finding that helps explain why flies can so easily evade swipes from their human foes.

"These movements are made very rapidly, within about 200 milliseconds, but within that time the animal determines where the threat is coming and activates a set of movements to position its legs and wings," Michael Dickinson of the California Institute of Technology said in a statement.

"This illustrates how rapidly the fly's brain can process sensory information into an appropriate motor response," said Dickinson, whose research appears in the journal Current Biology.

Dickinson's team studies this process in fruit flies using high-speed digital imaging equipment and a fancy fly swatter.

In response to a threat from the front, the fly moves its middle legs forward, leans back and raises its back legs for a backward takeoff. If the threat is from the side, the fly leans the other way before takeoff.

The findings offer new insight into the nervous system of the fly, and lends a few clues on how to outsmart them.

Dickinson, a bioengineer, has devoted his life's work to the study of insect flight. He has built a tiny robotic fly called Robofly and a 3-D visual flight simulator called Fly-O-Vision.

【正确答案】：

苍蝇为何如此难打?

上周四美国的研究员们称，苍蝇能够躲过苍蝇拍，这与其大脑反应直接相关。

即使是很微小的危险信号，苍蝇在察觉后也能迅速调整好起飞姿势，然后朝相反方向逃之夭夭，逃脱得干净利索。研究人员的这一发现有助于解释为何苍蝇能如此轻易地逃脱其人类敌人的拍打。

加州理工学院的迈克尔•迪金森在一份报告中说：“这一系列动作完成得非常迅速，只需要大约 200毫秒的时间，而仅在这段时间，苍蝇就判断出

了威胁来自何处，然后启动一套动作，调整好腿和翅膀的姿势。”

迪金森说：“这就说明苍蝇的大脑能够非常迅速地将感官信息转化为相应的动作反应指令。”他的这一研究报告在《当代生物学》期刊上发表。

迪金森的研究小组借助高速数码成像设备和一个奇特的苍蝇拍在果蝇身上就此过程展开了研究。

遇到来自正面的威胁时，苍蝇会向前移动中足，身体后倾，抬起后足朝后面飞走。如果威胁来自侧面，苍蝇则会将身体倾向另一侧，然后逃离。

这一发现为我们对苍蝇的神经系统的研究提供了新的认识，也为我们如何智胜苍蝇给出了一些线索。

作为一位生物工程学家，迪金森已将他毕生的精力致力于昆虫飞行的研究上。他研发了一款名叫Robofly的微型机器人苍蝇，以及一种名叫Fly-O-Vision 的三维可视飞行模拟器。

第2题

The Truth about the Environment

For many environmentalists, the world seems to be getting worse. They have developed a hit-list of our main fears: that natural resources are running out; that the population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat; that species are becoming extinct in vast numbers, and that the planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.

But a quick look at the facts shows a different picture. First, energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less so, since the book The Limits to Growth was published in 1972 by a group of scientists. Second, more food is now produced per head of the world's population than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third, although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are temporary-associated with the early phases of industrialisation and therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by accelerating it.

One form of pollution—the release of greenhouse gases that causes global warming—does appear to be a phenomenon that is going to extend well into