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2008年11月三級筆譯實務真題
Section 1 English-Chinese Translation (英譯漢) (50 points)
LONGYEARBYEN, Norway — With plant species disappearing at an alarming rate, scientists and governments are creating a global network of plant banks to store seeds and sprouts, precious genetic resources that may be needed for man to adapt the world’s food supply to climate change.
This week, the flagship of that effort, the Global Seed Vault near here, received its first seeds, millions of them. Bored into the middle of a frozen Arctic mountain topped with snow, the vault’s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.
As of Thursday, thousands of neatly stacked and labeled gray boxes of seeds — peas from Nigeria, corn from Mexico — reside in this glazed cavelike structure, forming a sort of backup hard drive, in case natural disasters or human errors erase the seeds from the outside world.
Descending almost 500 feet under the permafrost, the entrance tunnel to the seed vault is designed to withstand bomb blasts and earthquakes. An automated digital monitoring system controls temperature and provides security akin to a missile silo or Fort Knox. No one person has all the codes for entrance.
The Global Vault is part of a broader effort to gather and systematize information about plants and their genes, which climate change experts say may indeed prove more valuable than gold. In Leuven, Belgium, scientists are scouring the world for banana samples and preserving their shoots in liquid nitrogen before they become extinct. A similar effort is under way in France on coffee plants. A number of plants, most from the tropics, do not produce seeds that can be stored.
For years, a hodgepodge network of seed banks has been amassing seed and shoot collections in a haphazard manner. Labs in Mexico banked corn species. Those in Nigeria banked cassava. Now these scattershot efforts are being urgently consolidated and systematized, in part because of better technology to preserve plant genes and in part because of the rising alarm about climate change and its impact on world food production.
“We started thinking about this post-9/11 and on the heels of Hurricane Katrina,” said Cary Fowler, president of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a nonprofit group that runs the vault. “Everyone was saying, why didn’t anyone prepare for a hurricane before? We knew it was going to happen.
“Well, we are losing biodiversity every day — it’s a kind of drip, drip, drip. It’s also inevitable. We need to do something about it.”
This week the urgency of the problem was underscored as wheat prices rose to record highs and wheat stores dropped to the lowest level in 35 years. A series of droughts and new diseases cut wheat production in many parts of the world. “The erosion of plants’ genetic resources is really going fast,” said Dr. Rony Swennen, head of the division of crop biotechnology at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, who has preserved half of the world’s 1,200 banana types. “We’re at a critical moment and if we don’t act fast, we’re going to lose a lot of plants that we may need.”
The United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, ratified in 2004, created a formal global network for banking and sharing seeds, as well as for studying their genetic traits. Last year, its database received thousands of new seeds.
A system of plant banks could be crucial in responding to climate crises since it could identify genetic material and plant strains better able to cope with a changed environment.
Here at the Global Vault, hundreds of gray boxes containing seeds from places ranging from Syria to Mexico were moved this week into a freezing vault to be placed in suspended animation. They harbor a vast range of qualities, like the ability to withstand drier, warmer climate.
Section 2 Chinese-English Translation (漢譯英) (50 points)
中國人民選擇和平發展道路，是基于中國的傳統文化、慘痛的歷史和現實 的巨大成就所作出的明智選擇。
中國是一個有5000年歷史的文明古國，有著與外來文化取長補短、兼容并 蓄的傳統。我們的祖先歷來強調“以和為貴”。歷史上，中國在對外交往中始終強 調親仁善鄰、和而不同。2000多年前，中國與周邊國家有使節往來、商品交易、 文化交流，漢朝張騫出使西域開辟了陸上“絲綢之路”。1000多年前，中國對外 交往海陸并重，盛況空前，茶葉、絲綢、瓷器等商品遠銷亞歐諸多國家；600多 年前，中國明代航海家鄭和率領艦隊“七下西洋”，足跡遍及亞非30多個國家和 地區，帶去的是先進的農耕和手工藝技術，還有精美的產品和真誠的友誼。這 樣的文化傳統決定了今天的中國必然選擇和平發展延續歷史，并融入當今世界 和平與發展的潮流。
從19世紀80年代之后的鴉片戰爭、甲午戰爭，到庚子之亂乃至20世紀30 年代的日本侵華戰爭，中國慘遭東西方列強的屠戮和極其野蠻的經濟掠奪；再 加上封建腐敗和連年內亂，中國主權淪喪、生靈涂炭、國力衰弱、民不聊生。 深重的災難、慘痛的事實使中華民族深知和平之珍貴、發展之重要。這樣的歷 史實踐形成了中國人民渴望和平、企求安定的心理，堅定了中國人民走和平發 展道路的信念。
1949年新中國成立后，我們在發展道路上艱辛探索，既經歷過成功的喜悅， 也經受過失敗的挫折。從1978年開始，中國開啟了新的征程，從計劃轉向市場， 從封閉轉向開放，從自成一體轉向融入經濟全球化，走獨立自主地建設中國特 色社會主義的道路，取得了舉世矚目的輝煌成就。實踐充分證明，堅持走和平 發展的道路是正確的，既符合中國國情，又順應時代潮流。中國將沿著這條和 平發展的道路，堅定不移地走下去。
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