新东方：2013上海秋季高级口译笔试阅读答案解析（上）

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        　　Q1-Q5
　　Plans for one of Britain's biggest housing developments, of 5,000 homes worth hundreds of millions of pounds, may have to be abandoned because of the presence of nightingales, the birds which sing in the night and have long been a favorite of poets.The case, which centers on a disused army site in Kent, presents the conflict between the need to build new houses and people's wish to preserve Britain's threatened countryside and wildlife in its sharpest possible form. It is likely to lead to a bitter struggle.
　　首段以例证开篇可直接跳过，在第二段中追踪"a bitter struggle".
　　The site at Lodge Hill, Chattenden, on the Hoo peninsula north of Chatham, has been earmarked by Medway District Council for what is in effect a new town, which besides its enormous housing quota is intended to provide 5,000 new jobs. The main developers are to be Land Securities, Britain's biggest commercial property company.Yet last year scientists discovered that Lodge Hill is probably the best site in the country for the nightingale, which is rapidly disappearing from Britain - its numbers have dropped by more than 90 per cent in the last 40 years.Today the case came to a head when Natural England, the Government's wildlife watchdog, declared Lodge Hill to be a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) because of its nightingale population, which means that development will be much more difficult, and may ultimately be impossible.
　　第二段主题句在Yet之后的划线句子，提到这个即将被开发的地区是夜莺的栖息地，而这种鸟类的数量在英国正急剧减少。红色字体部分为考点：come to a head: 时机成熟，濒临危急关头；炉火纯青
　　The move provoked a furious response from Medway Council, which said it was "deeply unhappy" and was considering its options."This is very disappointing news to receive from unelected quangocrats at Natural England," said the leader of the Conservative-controlled council, Rodney Chambers. "As a local authority we are eager for this scheme, which is on Government-owned land, to progress and deliver the houses and jobs we badly need."He added: "What hope does the country have of beating the economic downturn when infrastructure and housing projects like this are being stalled all over the country by the Government's own agencies?" Land Securities also said it was disappointed with the decision.
　　本段首句提示这场运动引起了激烈的反响（划线句），之后使用引文进行说明如何激烈。
　　However, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds gave the decision its full backing. "Natural England is right to designate Lodge Hill as a SSSI in the face of extreme economic pressure," said Martin Harper, the RSPB director of conservation. "We think it is time for Medway Council and Land Securities to go back to the drawing board and think about where they should build their houses."
　　本段首句为主题句。皇家鸟类保护协会全力支持。
　　The case is likely to raise strong feelings because the nightingale is one of Britain's most beloved birds, famed for the midnight song which males sing to attract females, from mid-April to June, after their migratory return from Africa.So many poets have written about it, in many countries and civilisations from the classical world onwards, that it has been called "the most versified bird in the world". In English literature, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Clare and most famously, John Keats, all wrote nightingale poems.
　　本段主题句在段首处：本案引起了社会对夜莺的极大热爱。红色字体部分为考点：在文学作品中出现最多的鸟类。
　　But in England - the nightingale is not found in the rest of Britain - the bird has been undergoing a remorseless decline. The latest estimate is that its population dropped by 52 per cent between 1995 and 2010, yet an examination of earlier records by the British Trust for Ornithology has suggested that over the last 40 years, the bird's population has actually fallen by more than 90 per cent.In a recent paper, scientists from the BTO said the nightingale would have been placed on the Red List of birds of conservation concern if this figure had been known about when the list was last revised.
　　第六段主题句在段首，强调形势严峻。
　　The bird's range is steadily contracting and the nightingale is now concentrated mainly in the south-east corner of England, especially in the counties of Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Surrey and Sussex.It was known that Lodge Hill held nightingales, but its real importance was not discovered until last year, when the BTO carried out a national nightingale survey. It was found the core of the site held 69 singing males, and in total the figure was 84.
　　本段主题句在段首，也是考点。
　　BTO scientists estimate that Lodge Hill contains about 1.3 per cent of the total national nightingale population, which the survey provisionally estimated to be between 6,250 and 6,550 pairs."If there is a better nightingale site in Britain, we don't know of it," said the BTO's Dr Chris Hewson.Mr Harper said: "Lodge Hill is probably one of the most important sites in the country for nightingales. We expect more than 80 singing males to return to this site in less than a month ready for the breeding season, and they need to have a secure home to come back to." (773words)
            
            

enone

        　　Q6-Q10
　　HISTORY casts a long shadow. Many of the first bacteria to be discovered were agents of disease, and that is how most people perceive bacteria to this day, even though less than 1% of them are pathogens. Something similar is turning out to be true of viruses, as Marilyn Roossinck of Pennsylvania State University told the AAAS meeting in Boston. Dr Roossinck works on plant viruses and she has assembled evidence suggesting a lot of such viruses are harmless to their hosts, and in some cases may actually be beneficial.
That has implications for biology. It also has implications for agriculture.
　　首段以例证开头结尾划线句子引出两种影响：生物方面；农业方面。
　　Plant viruses come in two varieties: acute and persistent. Acute viruses pass from plant to plant, and often cause recognizable symptoms of disease. Persistent viruses are passed by a plant to its offspring in its seeds, rather than from one grown plant to another. They persist at low levels in a plant and rarely cause recognizable adverse symptoms. Scientific research concentrates on acute viruses, for obvious reasons. But this has created an impression that most plant viruses are acute. Dr Roossinck suspected that was not true and decided to find out. Using the tools of modern genetics, she searched thousands of plant species in two locations (one in Oklahoma and one in Costa Rica) for viral RNA. Like its cousin, DNA, RNA molecules are long strands. Unlike DNA, which is usually double-stranded, RNA is usually single-stranded. Except in viruses, where it also has two strands. That makes viral RNA easy to isolate and identify, which Dr Roossinck did.
　　 本段首句为主题：植物病毒分为急性和慢性两种。虽然大部分科学研究主要集中在急性植物病毒上，但是R医生确认为事实并非如此。
　　She found thousands of new viruses in her trawl, and their mixture was strikingly different from that of known plant viruses. The viral world is divided into families, and, as far as is known, all members of a given family are either acute or persistent. Though most of the viruses in Dr Roossinck's net were new to science, their RNA gave away which family they belonged to. Around half, it turned out, were persistent viruses. Previous data had suggested that figure was less than 1%.What benefits these viruses might confer is hard to determine, because in most cases all members of a plant species are infected, so no virus-free individuals exist to make the comparison. But Dr Roossinck has come across some examples of viruses that do help their hosts.
　　本段关键词在首句划线部分：几千种新发现的植物病毒与其他已知植物病毒有很大差异。
　　One discovery was the result of an experiment that attempted to use a virus to smuggle a gene into a plant, called Nicotiana benthamiana, that is widely used in botanical experiments. She and her colleagues found by chance that the virus conferred resistance to drought on this plant, and further experiments with a related virus showed that was true of 15 other plant species, too.These viruses, admittedly, are acute. But she also has an example of a beneficial persistent virus. Her examination of a grass species growing in the hot and hostile environment of a geyser field in Yellowstone park showed that its heat tolerance was conferred by a virus that lives in a fungus which is, itself, symbiotic with the grass: no virus, no heat tolerance.
　　本段内容与上一段结尾衔接，具体解释some examples of viruses that do help their hosts.
　　Dr Roossinck is now doing experiments in Costa Rica to look at virally induced heat tolerance in a range of plants and hopes to extend these in order to disentangle the advantages to their hosts of other sorts of persistent viruses. That would help to illuminate a view which is held by a rapidly increasing number of biologists, that many creatures (humans included) rely on symbiosis, rather than being self-sufficient. In the human case the symbionts are gut bacteria that help to process food, and also to regulate physiology.
　　本段介绍R医生目前正在进行的试验。
　　Dr Roossinck's work may have applications, too. Plant breeders and genetic engineers have been trying for years to confer drought-resistance on crops. Her studies suggest they are using the wrong approach. Instead of trying to improve the crops' own genes they should be looking at the crops' viruses and, paradoxically from the traditional point of view about viruses, actually infecting plants with new viral strains rather than doing everything in their power to keep crops virus-free.
　　本段讲到医生的研究成果有何应用。
　　（经济学人）
            
            

entwo

        　　Q11-Q15
　　A Florida mother was arrested this month for allegedly stabbing her two sons' bullies in the back with box cutters. News reports stated that after calming down an altercation between her sons and a group of boys, the mother reignited the situation and attacked the boys, sending two to the hospital. Last year, a teenage boy posted something nasty and hurtful in response to a teenage girl's Facebook posting. The girl was distraught, contemplated hurting herself and complained to her mother that she had been bullied. This caused the mother to become distraught. A short time later, police say, the mother saw the boy in a mall and took matters into her own hands, literally. She allegedly choked him.
　　首段叙述事实，一位母亲捅死了在学校欺负自己儿子的孩子。另一位母亲也用暴力方式对帮女儿报复欺负她的人。
　　But the reaction among many to the news reports was that the story was about a heroic mother seeking vengeance against a terrible bully on behalf of her victimized daughter, not an adult choking a child. Although these two examples are extreme reactions to alleged bullying, many of us are overreacting to childhood aggression in less-extreme, everyday circumstances. It is not uncommon for adults to define even minor difficulties between children, such as being left out of social situations, as bullying. This is fundamentally changing the way we understand childhood. We hear a lot about bullying - on the playgrounds, in schools, in the media. As a culture, we are infuriated with the bullies and terrified for the victims, and rightly so when it is appropriate. But the idea that childhood today is full of bullies is misleading. We do have a problem, but it's not with our children. It's with us, the adults.
　　本段讲到这位母亲的行为在很多人看来并无不当。结尾句说，社会的问题主要并不在于孩子，而是成年人。
　　Today we see children as being either dangerous villains or helpless victims, but the truth is kids haven't changed that much in the past generation. I have worked as an educator and a clinician in schools for 25 years, and I can attest that children are not meaner, nastier or more aggressive than they used to be. Nor are they more fragile. Admittedly, digital media amplifies some of their mistakes and pours salt into wounds, but the behavior and reactions aren't new. What's new is our reaction to childhood aggression - and our increasing impatience with children and readiness to label them when they make certain mistakes or experience pain.
　　本段的两处划线位置互相呼应：孩子的本性并没有大的改变，有所变化的是我们对于儿童的态度--当他们犯错误的时候粗暴的对待他们。
　　What caused this shift? In a word, Columbine, but not for the reasons many believe. Dave Cullen, in his book "Columbine," wrote that after the 1999 Colorado school massacre, the media crafted the explanation that shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had been bullied. They apparently hadn't been, but the nation - fearing a repeat of the tragedy - adopted a zero-tolerance attitude toward many normal, albeit painful, aspects of childhood behavior and development, and defined them as bullying.
　　本段讲述这种变化的根源：Columbine。有很多其实可以算做正常的行为也被看做是欺凌行为。
　　As a result, behaviors such as social exclusion, persistent unfriendliness and a nasty remark on Facebook have become intolerable acts that cause grave victimization. We now react to the children who commit these acts with a degree of intolerance that we wouldn't consider in other areas of their lives, and we assume that when children feel pain as a result of such mistakes, they will be scarred for life.
　　正因为如此，有些轻微的问题渐渐对社会酿成了大祸。
　　Can you imagine if we called children stupid when they made mistakes in math? Or if we assumed they'd never recover when they fell off their bikes? This is how we're essentially reacting every time we label children bullies or victims for making typical childhood mistakes or when they feel any hurt in a relationship. And we're doing this with an unprecedented degree of abandon.
　　本段仍然延续上文的观点。有些一般性的行为也被定义成凌虐。
　　Stanford professor and author Carol Dweck explains that labels create something called a "fixed mind-set," which limits how children learn and perceive themselves, and how we perceive them. Think about it: The mother in the box-cutter case allegedly initiated her assault after the situation had cooled off - fueled, no doubt, by the thought that the boys deserved it because they were bullies. And chances are the mother in the choking incident would have had a hard time justifying her behavior if the boy was someone who had simply made a mistake. But once he was labeled a bully, all bets were off. She and her daughter became victims and were therefore absolved of all responsibility for examining their own behavior.
　　这些过度定义的行为使得孩子们出现了一种思维定势。
　　This is not just a question of semantics. Our penchant for labeling children in situations such as these, and our increasingly fixed mind-set about their behavior, is a real threat to their welfare. As soon as children are labeled bullies, this seems to give us permission to unleash on them a degree of anger and scorn that is frightening. As for the ones we label victims, we keep them identified with their pain and deny them the opportunity to develop true resilience.We must admit that our approach to childhood aggression is flawed. Our children are not worse than they used to be, nor are they less resilient. But we adults seem to be. Instead of being so quick to label them, we must teach them how to deal with their aggression and pain appropriately and to develop compassion, impulse control and resilience in their relationships. And we must learn to do the same.（《纽约时报》，866字）
　　文章结尾指出：随便给孩子们身上贴标签，使其形成思维定势，才是对社会的最大威胁。
            
            

enone

        　　Q16-Q20
　　（原文欠奉）
　　本文主题是欧洲经济复苏。
　　首段以欧盟内部的一句流行语开头：正是欧洲共同体的成立将欧洲从另一场战争中拯救了出来。近日，卢森堡总理接受采访时又重申了欧洲一体的观点。作者也正是在第一段中反对这位总理的观点。
　　第二段通过引文说明了这位总理的观点。
　　第三段进行驳斥。作者认为欧洲并不会再次陷入战争(another state-to-state conflagration).
　　第四段讲到当今的政治家主要是在贩卖希望(sell hope),媒体也难辞其咎。
　　第五段讲到德国人还是没有意识到，他们的经济已经被南欧国家劫持了。
　　第六段讲到欧洲人对待德国的态度已经发生了变化。
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