专八翻译真题

【1997年】But even in a prehistoric cave, man-kind stretched out a hand of not just to eat, drink or fight, but also to draw. The impulse towards culture, the desire to express and explore the world through imagination and representation is fundamental. In Europe, this desire has found fulfillment in the masterpieces of our music, art, literature and theatre.（物称主语）These masterpieces are the touchstones for all our efforts; they are the touchstones for the possibilities to which human thought and imagination may aspire; they carry the most profound messages that can be sent from one human to another.

【1998年】To speak of American literature, then, is not to assert that it is completely unlike that of Europe. Broadly speaking, America and Europe have kept step. At any given moment the traveler could find examples in both of the same architecture, the same styles in dress, the same books on the shelves.(增词) Ideas have crossed the Atlantic as freely as men and merchandise, though sometimes more slowly. When I refer to American habit, thoughts, etc., I intend some sort of qualification to precede the word, for frequently the difference between America and Europe (especially England) will be one of degree, sometimes only of a small degree. The amount of divergence is a subtle affair, liable to perplex the Englishman when he looks at America. He is looking at a country which in important senses grew out of his own, which in several ways still resembles his own —and which is yet a foreign country.（定语从句）There are odd overlappings and abrupt unfamiliarities; kinship yields to a sudden alienation, as when we hail a person across the street, only to discover from his blank response that we have mistaken a stranger for a friend.

【2000年】If people mean anything at all by the expression “untimely death”, they must believe that some deaths run on a better schedule than others. Death in old age is rarely called untimely—a long life is thought to be a full one.（被动语态）But with the passing of a young person, one assumes that the best years lay ahead and the measure of that life was still to be taken.

History denies this, of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of Marilyn Monroe and James Deans, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete.（增词+定语从句）Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playfully judge their own lives as failures when they pass that year. The idea that the life cut short is unfulfilled is illogical because lives are measured by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue. （被动语态）