評論
打印
First read the questions.?
37. In Japanese the work depato refers to ___.?
A. traditional Japanese stores
B. modern stores in cities?
C. special clothing stores
D. railway stores?
38. During the Meiji era depato was regarded by Japanese customers as a(n ) ___ shopping place.
A. cheap B. traditional C. fashionable D. attractive?
Now go through TEXT J quickly to answer questions 37 and 38.?
The Japanese have two words for the modern department stores that abound in large urban areas. The older word, hyakkaten, which is seldom used in daily speech, can usually be found engraved in ideographs in a building cornerstone, and i t is part of a store’s official rifle. Literally “a store with one hundred items ,” this word was coined during the late Meiji era( 1868 - 1912), when clothing stores began to expand their product lines and railroads began to build shops at major train crossings. The more recent and more commonly used word is depato (from the English ‘department store’ ). ?
These words reflect the dual nature of Japanese department stores. Words written in ideographs can impart an aura of antiquity and tradition. Frequently, a s in the case of the word hyakkaten, they suggest indigenous origin. In contrast , foreign borrowed words often give a feeling of modernity and foreignness. Many Japanese department stores actually originated in Japan several hundred years a go as dry goods stores that later patterned themselves after foreign department stores. Even the trendiest and most avant-garde of these stores practise pattern s of merchandising and retain forms of prepaid credit, customer service, and special relationships with suppliers characteristic of merchandising during the Tokygawa era (1600 — 1868). To many Japanese these large urban stores may seem like a direct import from the West, but like the word depato, they have undergone a transformation in the process of becoming Japanese.?
Throughout the Tokygawa era, Japan was closed by decree to foreign influences. During the Meiji era, however, Japan reopened to the western world; concurrently, depato emerged as large-scale merchandisers in Japan. The Meiji depato we re soon perceived by Japanese customers as glamorous places to shop because of t heir Western imports, which the Japanese were eager to see and buy. Depato also sold Japanese goods but often followed practices that people of the time considered foreign, such as letting customers wear their shoes while shopping in the store.?
A representative of the Japan Department Store Association told me that throughout their history depato have played on the Japanese interest in foreign pl aces, cultures and objects, and that to a great extent these were introduced to Japan through department stores. I suggest that in addition to this role of cultural importer depato have also been involved in the creation of domestic cultural meanings. They have made foreign customs, ideas and merchandise familiar by giving them meanings consistent with Japanese cultural practice.?
TEXT K
First read the questions.?
39. The Agency for International Development is a ___ organization.
A. new B. regional C. UN D. US?
40. According to NDS’s statistics, the number of babies the average Philipino woman bears dropped by ___ between 1960 and 1993.?
A.4.1 B.6.4 C.2.3 D.2.9
Now go through TEXT K quickly to answer questions 39 and 40.?
When representatives from 170 nations gather in Cairo next month for the third International Conference on Population and Development, they will vote on the largest population-control plan in history. It is ambitious. Not only does it call for a host of “reproductive fights” and aim to freeze world population at 7 2 billion people by 2050; it also calls for billions of dollars in new government spending on the issue-US $ 13.2 billion by the end of the century.?
Some of the plan’s provisions have already aroused opposition, most notably from Pope John Paul II. All this has been gleefully covered by the newspapers. Yet scant attention has been paid to many of the dubious social and economic assumptions that underlie the plan. In particular, it is interesting to see how the se programmes are being sold in places like the Philippines, on the front lines of the population debate. For the way the proponents of population control have gone about pushing their programmes raises serious doubts about the integrity of their studies, their ultimate value to development, and the role of foreign-aid groups.?
Although population-control measures in the Philippines never reached the coercive levels they did in India, they were not popular. This time, proponents have learned their lesson. For the past few years, they have been quietly laying the groundwork for Cairo. Rather than attack the issue head-on, it has been redefined in terms of a host of new “reproductive rights” to which the solution is invariably a government-funded initiative.?
We have just had a good taste of this in the Philippines. The National Statistics Office recently published the results of the 1993 National Demographic Survey(NDS),which happens to have been funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. It is probably mere coincidence, but the NDS report, published on the eve of the Cairo meeting, nicely supports the thrust of the Cairo Declaration. That is, it has found a connection between mothers’ and children’s health an d fertility behaviour. The implication is that large-scale government family-planning programmes are essential if health issues are to be addressed. ?
But the demographic survey seems to have been selective about what facts i t would report and connections it would make. Take the health issue. The document concludes that the high risk of infant, child and maternal mortality is associated with pregnancies where mothers are too young, too old, or have already had several children. But a discussion of poverty is missing from the list of factor s related to health. It would be difficult to deny that poverty, lack of access to safe water, poor housing, poor hygiene and unsanitary conditions all have a strong bearing on the health of the mother and child. Although the NDS collected data on housing characteristics, it did not include any data on income.?
A closer look at the fertility behaviour of the poor is important because of the extensive literature on the “replacement effect” of high infant mortality . Statistical studies in various countries show high fertility among the poor as a rational desire to have children who will survive into adulthood to help take care of them. This helps to explain why many poor women have babies at such short intervals. The 1993 NDS would have been a good opportunity to verify the validity of this behaviour in the Philippines. ?
The NDS avoided collecting data on socio-economic variables that would have a serious effect on these health issues. But, in one area, it made painstaking efforts to quantify fertility preference to derive figures for planned and unplanned pregnancies. It concluded that “if all unwanted births were avoided, the total fertility rate would be 2.9 children, which is almost 30% less than the obse rved rate. ”This, too, was used to establish an “unmet” need requiring a government programme.
Yet the NDS’s own numbers suggest that Filipinos are aware of their options . The total fertility rote——the number of babies the average woman bears over her lifetime——has dropped to 4.1 in 1993 from 6.4 in 1960. Some 61% used contraceptives, just a few percentage points short of the 65-80% rate prevailing in Europe, North America and most of East Asia. The delay of marriage by Filipinos to the age of 23 years represents a reduction of the risk of pregnancy by 19% given the 35 years of their reproductive life.?
In short, the Philippines has its problems but its people are not as ignorant as the population-control lobby would suppose. Unfortunately, this lobby has development dollars, organizational muscle and support of the media. “We’ve built a consensus about population as a global issue and family planning as a health issue,” says the UN’s Naris Sadik, host of the conference. Yes, they have. And now we know how.
PAPER TWO
PART IV TRANSLATION (60 MIN)
SECTION A CHINESE TO ENGLISH
Translate the following underlined part of the TEXT into English. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.
加拿大的溫哥華1986年剛剛度過百歲生日，但城市的發展令世界矚目。以港立市，以港興市，是許多港口城市生存發展的道路。經過百年開發建設，有著天然不凍良港的溫哥華，成為舉世聞名的港口城市，同亞洲、大洋洲、歐洲、拉丁美洲均有定期班輪，年貨物吞吐量達到8，00萬噸，全市就業人口中有三分之一從事貿易與運輸行業。
溫哥華（Vancouver）的輝煌是溫哥華人智慧和勤奮的結晶，其中包括多民族的貢獻。加拿大地廣人稀，國土面積比中國還大，人口卻不足3000萬。吸收外來移民，是加拿大長期奉行的國策。可以說，加拿大除了印第安人外，無一不是外來移民，不同的只是時間長短而已。溫哥華則更是世界上屈指可數的多民族城市。現今180萬溫哥華居民中，有一半不是在本地出生的，每4個居民中就有一個是亞洲人。而25萬華人對溫哥華的經濟轉型起著決定性的作用。他們其中有一半是近5年才來到溫哥華地區的，使溫哥華成為亞洲以外最大的中國人聚居地。
SECTION B ENGLISH TO CHINESE
Translate the following underlined part of the TEXT into Chinese. Write your translation on ANSWER SHEET THREE.
In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.
In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children (or males) is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.
Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family —they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.
PART V WRITING (60 MIN)
Some people claim that competition is more important than co-operation in the present-day society. How far do you agree OR disagree with these people? You are to write a composition of about 300 words on the following topic:
COMPETITION OR CO-OPERATION
In the first part of your writing you should present your thesis statement, and in the second part you should support the thesis statement with appropriate details. In the last part you should bring what you have written to a natural conclusion or a summary.
Marks will be awarded for content, organization, grammar and appropriacy. Failure to follow the above instructions may result in a loss of marks.
Write your response on ANSWER SHEET FOUR.
