2006年9月高级口译真题(8)

英语自学网

　　Questions 4-6
　　When pastor Ken Baugh announced he'd be devoting eight consecutive Sundays to analyzing The Da Vinci Code in the run-up to its film release, he knew some members of his Southern California megachurch would be skeptical. But Baugh also knew that many of his congregants had read the book and that many more would see the movie. "Dan Brown did the church a favor," Baugh says. "He forced people who call themselves followers of Christ to investigate what that really means."
　　Baugh is hardly alone. Evangelical leaders have attempted to seize on Brown's success as an opportunity to reinforce the faith of believers and to win new souls. In the three years since the book's release, evangelical writers and thinkers have produced a flurry of books, study guides, and DVDs to counter Dan Brown's fiction. "This movie will be a major cultural phenomenon, so discussions about Jesus and the church will happen," says Robert Johnston, a professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary. "The only question is whether the church will be a part of the conversation."
　　Turnabout. To be sure, evangelical leaders have been critical of The Da Vinci Code. "This has all the evidence of something cooked up in the fires of hell," evangelical radio broadcaster James Dobson said on Focus on the Family. It's because the book and fihn pose such a threat, many evangelicals say, that it warrants a strong response. "We're making the best of a situation that is going to do a lot of damage," says Erwin Lutzer of Chicago's Moody Church and author of The Da Vinci Deception. "When you are faced with a dam that seems to be breaking, you can't prop it up by saying, ‘We're going to stand against it.'"
　　It's a remarkable turnabout from the outcry that greeted Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, in 1988, when Campus Crusade for Christ called for a boycott. Rather than boycott The Da Vinci Code, Campus Crusade has retained popular evangelical speaker Josh McDowell, author of The Da Vinci Code: A Quest for Answers, to challenge Brown's assertions. "I don't recommend people go to the movie, but 90 percent of them will," says McDwell. "The guy is a phenomenal writer, and I can't take that away from him."
　　The reaction represents a shift within the evangelical community. "Five years ago, there might have been more of a backlash against this film," says Calvin College Prof. William Romanowski. "But movies like The Passion of the Christ changed attitudes ... evangelicals are now trying to penetrate the mainstream media."
　　Sony Pictures, which is distributing The Da Vinci Code, has created an online forum for religious leaders to discuss the film, the davincidialogue.com. Sony may be betting that even critical comments will generate buzz, but evangelicals say they also stand to benefit. "The real history of Christianity ... is far more complex" than in The Da Vinci Code, writes the Christian Broadcasting Network's Gordon Robertson. "[It's] filled with enough flesh and blood to make it a better story than the one Dan Brown invented."  (512 words)
　　4. What is pastor Ken Baugh's attitude towards the novel The Da Vinci Code? What does he mean by saying that "Dan Brown did the church a favor"?
　　5. Why did the author mention Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ? What is the change in the evangelical community's reaction to The Da Vinci Code?
　　6. Paraphrase the two sentences from the passage:
　　a) "The only question is whether the church will be a part of the conversation."(para.2)
　　b) "The guy is a phenomenal writer, and I can't take that away from him."(para.4)
            
            

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　　Questions 7-10
　　As they do every week, the 90 members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity at Oregon State University file into their dining halt for a very different kind of frat party. The rows of scrubbed and pressed young men sit down to eat under the watchful eye of the brother who is acting as manners chair. No swearing is permitted. Napkins on laps are required. Small bites are urged instead of gulps. Scofflaws must do penalty push-ups or pay a fine into the piggy bank in the middle of each table.
　　Call it the new fratiquette, but these weekly civility sessions are just a small part of a growing reform movement led by SigEp, the country's largest fraternity. As colleges continue to crack down on binge drinking, hazing and general hooliganism, some fraternities are redefining the Greek experience in order to save it.
　　Oregon State's is among the 256 SigEP chapters nationwide that have adopted the Balanced Man Program, an intensive four-year fraternity experience created 13 years ago by concerned SigEp leaders to shift the center of life in the houses from beer-soaked blowouts to activities that promote healthy living and self-respect. To eliminate hazing, the program does away with the pledge system-all recruits are equal members from Day One. Alcohol is allowed, but booze-free activities are encouraged.
　　The SigEps of Oregon State were a long way from such genteel pursuits just five years ago. At a school that offers a degree in fermentation sciences, the SigEps of old stood out for their love of inebriation. "When 1 got here in 2001, it was awful," says Mike Powers, 20, a senior. "Drugs were coming in, grades were falling. There were nothing but monster parties." The chapter hit bottom that fall when a single party resulted in a whopping $195,000 in fines for 26 separate counts of providing alcohol to minors. The house needed a fresh start, which led to a purge of partyers in which a third of the brothers left the chapter. "We needed to get rid of the cancers of the frat," says Powers.
　　Today the chapter, reorganized under the Balanced Man Program, has rebounded. Membership is almost back to prepurge levels, and last summer the chapter won a national SigEp award that placed it in the top 15% in academics and community service of all chapters in the country.
　　But the frat makeovers have their detractors. In the rush to save fraternity life, some say, SigEp and the Balanced Man Program may be ruining it. "Some of my best experiences in college were stupid things I did with my friends, usually involving alcohol," says Kevin Stange, whose SigEp chapter at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was frequently in trouble with the national organization when he was a student in the late 1990s and which eventually closed for several years. "We never went too far, though," says Stange. "And the real reason people join frats is to have fun. Balanced Man doesn't address that." Online chat rooms like greekchat.com are ablaze with debate about the changes. As one SigEp who clearly missed the etiquette lessons wrote, "The [Balanced Man Program] has effectively cut the balls [off] our fraternity."
　　The number of new SigEp recruits has increased 11% since 1999. Insurance premiums, which have a habit of rising when frat boys burn down their houses or fall off their balconies, have gone down the past members has reached the 3.0 mark, which is two years. The average GPA for SigEp's the highest of all fraternities.
　　Following SigEp's lea& other national fraternities have rolled out similar programs, from Sigma Alpha Epsilon's True Gentleman to Beta Theta Pi's Men of Principle. According to some members, there's an unexpected bonus from all these reforms: women seem to like them. "They can go to 21 other fraternities to get drunk," says Oregon State SigEp member Cameron Saffer. "Here you find respectful young men."  (651 words)
　　7. Give a brief introduction of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.
　　8. Explain the beginning sentence of paragraph 4 "The SigEps of Oregon State were a long way from such genteel pursuits just five years ago."
　　9. What does the author mean by saying that "the frat makeovers have their detractors" (para.6)?
　　10.  Why does the author mention the change of "insurance premiums" at the end of the passage? What does it tell us?
实习编辑：褚萍湘