2009年9月高級口譯筆試部分 閱讀

Section 2 passage 4

這篇文章是社工網(socialworker.org)于2009年2月24日發布的, 來自于Mark Steel的專欄之中, 由于Mark本身是一個喜劇演員,我們在他的字里行間里看到了幽默的火花。

文章是關于中年人和青年人之間不同觀念的碰撞，即年輕人并非“apathetic”冷漠，而中年人也曾年輕過，當時的他們也并非那樣的“radical”。這于我們當今流行的“80后”，“90后”話題異曲同工。

文章的第二段到第四段表述了中年人之中非常矛盾的心態，無論年輕人是否關注社會，用心于社會，那些中年人似乎永遠是不滿意的，似乎印證了那句歌詞“原來你什么都不想要”。

從第六段到第八段，作者站在了年輕人這一邊，以愛丁堡大學等為例子，說明了現在的年輕人也同樣重返了思想和沖勁的。然而，到了第九段，他又筆鋒一轉，尖銳地指出，許多的學生行為是“the demands were impossible to meet”。

第十段和第十一段，談及了學生revolt的社會影響，作者以相當風趣的口吻委婉地說明了學生的游行示威會給整個社會帶來極大的震動，因為學生們已不再是游離于社會之外的孩子，而早已長成為推動社會進步，左右社會運轉的中堅力量了。

1 Before anyone writes off today's students as apathetic, they should consider what the new wave of student occupations has begun to accomplish.

2 ONE OF the many upsetting aspects to being in your forties is hearing people your own age grumbling about "young people" the way we were grumbled about ourselves. Old friends will complain, "Youngsters today have no respect like we did," and I'll think: "Hang on. I remember the night you set a puma loose in the soft furnishings section of Pricerite's."

3 There's also a "radicals" version of this attitude, a strand（觀點） within the middle-aged who lament how today's youngsters "Don't demonstrate like we did," because "we were always marching against apartheid種族隔離or for the miners, but students these days don't seem bothered."It would seem natural if they went on: "The bloody youth of today; they've no disrespect for authority. In my day you started chanting and if a copper gave you any lip (冒犯)you gave him a clip round the ear, and he didn't do it again. We've lost those values somehow."

4 You feel that even if they did come across a mass student protest they'd sneer: "That isn't a proper rebellion, they've used the Internet. You wouldn't have caught Spartacus rounding up his forces by putting a message on Facebook saying 'Hi Cum 2 Rome 4 gr8 fite 2 liber8 slaves lets kill emprer lol.'"

5 It doesn't help that many of the student leaders from the sixties and seventies ended up as ministers or journalists, who try to deny they've reneged on their principles by making statements such as: "It's true I used to run the Campaign to Abolish the British Army, but my recent speech in favor of invading every country in the world in alphabetical order merely places those ideals in a modern setting."

6 Also it's become a tougher prospect to rebel as a student, as tuition fees force them to work while they're studying. But over the last two weeks students have organized occupations in 29 universities, creating the biggest student revolt for 20 years. In Edinburgh, for example, the demands were that free scholarships should be provided for Palestinian students, and the university should immediately cancel its investments with arms companies.

7 So the first question to arise from these demands must be: what are universities doing having links with arms companies in the first place? How does that help education? Do the lecturers make an announcement that, "This year, thanks to British Aerospace, the media studies course has possession of not only the latest digital recording equipment and editing facilities, but also three landmines and a Tornado bomber"?

8 THE OCCUPATIONS involve students selecting an area of the university, then staying there, day and night, and organizing a series of events and worthwhile discussions while the authorities pay security guards to stand outside and scowl（怒容）. Warwick University, for example, organized an "Alternative Careers Fair," in which, presumably, if someone was brilliant at maths, the careers adviser would say to them, "I suggest you become an accountant for a Peruvian guerrilla游擊隊員 army. They're looking for people who can reliably file their tax returns before the deadline, as they're in enough trouble as it is."

9But the extraordinary part about this wave of student protest is that in most universities, the authorities, having spent the first week insisting the demands were impossible to meet, have now backed down. So dozens of Palestinians, who these days seem to be minus a university in Gaza for some reason, will have places here. And several universities are reviewing their connections to the arms trade. University College London, for example, could be severing its link to the arms company Cobham.

10 Presumably this will spark outrage from predictable sources, who'll yell: "We don't pay our taxes so that students can go round selflessly helping people who've been bombed. We fund their education so they can get a degree in business studies and cock up (ruin) the global economy. If these layabouts二流子 can't buckle down, it's time we cut off the funding we're not giving them and send them out to work in a job that no longer exists!"

11 And there's another impact of a modern student revolt, which makes it even more threatening than similar protests in the sixties. Because most students now have to work to fund their course, a protest like this will not only infuriate their authorities, it will also bring every pizza delivery company and chicken nuggets shop to its knees(俯首稱臣) at the same time.