2016年上半年笔译二级实务真题试卷
必做题
1. Jane Goodall was already on a London dock in March 1957 when she realized that her passport was missing. In just a few hours, she was due to depart on her first trip to Africa. A school friend had moved to a farm outside Nairobi and, knowing Goodall’s childhood dream was to live among the African wildlife, invited her to stay with the family for a while. Goodall, then 22, saved for two years to pay for her passage to Kenya: waitressing, doing secretarial work, temping at the post office in her hometown, Bournemouth, on England’s southern coast. Now all this was for naught, it seemed.
It’s hard not to wonder how subsequent events in her life — rather consequential as they have turned out to be to conservation, to science, to our sense of ourselves as a species — might have unfolded differently had someone not found her passport, along with an itinerary from Cook’s, the travel agency, folded inside, and delivered it to the Cook’s office. An agency representative, documents in hand, found her on the dock. \\
1957年3月，简-古道尔(Jane Goodall)已站在伦敦的一个码头上，突然发现护照不见踪影了。再过几个小时，她就要出发，踏上自己的第一次非洲之旅。她的一位校友此前移居东非内罗毕郊外的一座农场，因为知道古道尔自幼梦想与非洲的野生动物为伴，所以邀请她前往家中小住。时年22岁的古道尔，为了肯尼亚之行，花了两年时间打工存钱。她做过服务员，当过秘书，还在家乡(英格兰南部沿海城市伯恩茅斯)的邮局干过临时工。现在看起来，似乎这一切都要白费了。
古道尔后来的活动在自然环境保护、科学研究以及人类对自身的认知方面有着重要作用。但是当天，要不是有人找到了她的护照，难以想象，古道尔接下来的人生轨迹将会如何。捡到的护照里夹着库克旅行社的日程安排，因此被送到了库克旅行社的办公室。旅行社一位工作人员拿着护照在码头上找到了古道尔。上个月，古道尔回想起那天发生的事情，对我说： “难以置信，太神奇了”。
古道尔到达肯尼亚后不到两个月就遇见了古生物学家路易斯-李基(Louis Leakey)。对当地的白人来说，当时的内罗毕也就是个小镇。李基在自然史博物馆当馆长，马上就在博物馆给她安排了一个工作。接下来的三年中，他花了大量时间考查她有没有从事重复性工作的能力。
路易斯-李基相信由达尔文首先提出的一项假设：人类和黑猩猩是由共同祖先进化而来的。他认为，如果仔细研究野外黑猩猩，关于这一共同祖先，我们或许可以知晓得更多。换言之，他在物色一个人，能和非洲的野生动物一起生活。一天晚上，他告诉古道尔，他知道有个地方或许能让她完成这项工作：贡贝河黑猩猩保护区，地点在英国殖民地坦噶尼喀(今坦桑尼亚)。
1960年7月，古道尔登上一艘小船，在坦噶尼喀湖温暖水域航行数小时后，抵达贡贝，在布满鹅卵石的沙滩上岸。
1964年，她的研究成果在《自然》杂志上发表，该成果证明黑猩猩会使用工具，能够用草叶把白蚁堆里的白蚁掏出来。这彻底改变了人类对自身的认识，人类不再是大自然中唯一会使用工具的物种。
古道尔用25年时间实现了自己儿时梦想，之后突然改变了职业方向，由科学家成为一名环保工作者。
解析： 本文是叙述性文章，采取倒叙手法。开篇就把镜头对准1957年的一个戏剧性的场景：古道尔丢失了前往非洲的护照，几乎前功尽弃。然后时间继续后退，讲述古道尔为实现去非洲的梦想如何努力打工挣钱。
第二段时间反复穿梭。先是回到现代，评价古道尔此行对后世的贡献。然后再回到1957年，讲述护照事件戏剧性的转机。接着回到现代，添加了古道尔本人回忆起这件事后做出的评价。
第三段到结尾按照时间顺序概括性地讲述了古道尔到达非洲后的经历、后来取得的学术成就以及人生轨迹。文章的前两段时间往返穿梭，给翻译造成一定困难，需要特别注意。
2. Scientists have found the first evidence that briny water may flow on the surface of Mars during the planet’s summer months. The confirmation of water on the surface of Mars is important and would raise a host of questions, chief among them: Where is the water coming from, and what does it mean for the prospect of life, past or present?
They found telltale fingerprints of salts that form only in the presence of water in narrow channels cut into cliff walls throughout the planet’s equatorial region. The slopes appear during the warm summer months on Mars, then vanish when the temperatures drop. Scientists suspected the streaks were cut by flowing water, but had previously been unable to make the measurements.
The salt content of the water is important because without it, the water would freeze in Mars’ bone-chilling temperatures. The water could be coming from subsurface ice, from salts attracting water from the thin Martian atmosphere or possibly bubbling up from an aquifer.
The discovery is important as it could affect thinking about whether the planet that is most like Ear
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