发布时间 : 星期四 文章大学体验英语3综合教程课文翻译Unit1-2更新完毕开始阅读
Unit 1> Caring for Our Earth Passage A
Frog Story 蛙的故事
A couple of odd things have happened lately. 最近发生了几桩怪事儿。
I have a log cabin in those woods of Northern Wisconsin. I built it by hand and also added a greenhouse to the front of it. It is a joy to live in. In fact, I work out of my home doing audio production and environmental work. As a tool of that trade I have a computer and a studio. 我在北威斯康星州的树林中有一座小木屋。是我亲手搭建的，前面还有一间花房。住在里面相当惬意。实际上我是在户外做音频制作和环境方面的工作——作为干这一行的工具，我还装备了一间带电脑的工作室。
I also have a tree frog that has taken up residence in my studio. 还有一只树蛙也在我的工作室中住了下来。
How odd, I thought, last November when I first noticed him sitting atop my sound-board over my computer.I figured that he(and I say he,though I really don’t have a clue if she is a he or vice versa) would be more comfortable in the greenhouse. So I put him in the greenhouse. Back he came. And stayed. After a while I got quite used to the fact that as I would check my morning email and online news, he would be there with me surveying the world. 去年十一月，我第一次惊讶地发现他（只是这样称呼罢了，事实上我并不知道该称“他”还是“她”）坐在电脑的音箱上。我把他放到花房里去，认为他待在那儿会更舒服一些。可他又跑回来待在原地。很快我就习惯了有他做伴，清晨我上网查收邮件和阅读新闻的时候，他也在一旁关注这个世界。
Then, last week, as he was climbing around looking like a small gray / green human, I started to wonder about him. 可上周，我突然对这个爬上爬下的“小绿人或小灰人”产生了好奇心。
So, there I was, working in my studio and my computer was humming along.I had to stop when Tree Frog went across my view.He stopped and turned around and just sat there looking at me.Well,I sat back and looked at him. For five months now he had been riding there with me and I was suddenly overtaken by an urge to know why he was there and not in the greenhouse,where I figured he’d live a happier frog life. 于是有一天，我正在工作室里干活，电脑嗡嗡作响。当树蛙从我面前爬过时，我不得不停止工作。他停下了并转过身来，坐在那儿看着我。好吧，我也干脆停下来望着他。五个月了，他一直这样陪着我。我突然有一股强烈的欲望想了解他：为什么他要待在这儿而不乐意待在花房里？我认为对树蛙来说，花房显然要舒适得多。 “Why are you here,” I found myself asking him. “你为什么待在这儿？”我情不自禁地问他。
As I looked at him, dead on, his eyes looked directly at me and I heard a tone. The tone seemed to hit me right in the center of my mind. It sounded very nearly like the same one as my computer. In that tone I could hear him “say” to me, “Because I want you to understand.” Yo. That was weird. “Understand what?” my mind jumped in. Then, after a moment of feeling this communication, I felt I understood why he was there. I came to understand that frogs simply want to hear other frogs and to communicate. Possibly the tone of my computer sounded to him like other tree frogs. 我目不转睛地盯着他，他也直视着我。然后我听到一种叮咚声。这种声
音似乎一下子就进入了我的大脑中枢，因为它和电脑里发出来的声音十分接近。在那个声音里我听到树蛙对我“说”：“因为我想让你明白”。唷，太不可思议了。“明白什么？”我脑海中突然跳出了这个问题。然后经过短暂的体验这种交流之后，我觉得我已经理解了树蛙待在这儿的原因。我开始理解树蛙只是想听到其他同类的叫声并与之交流。或许他误以为计算机发出的声音就是其他树蛙在呼唤他。 Interesting. 真是有趣。
I kept working. I was working on a story about global climate change and had just received a fax from a friend. The fax said that the earth is warming at 1.9 degrees each decade. At that rate I knew that the maple trees that I love to tap each spring for syrup would not survive for my children. My beautiful Wisconsin would become a prairie by the next generation. 我继续工作。我正在写一个关于全球气候变化的故事。有个朋友刚好发过来一份传真，说地球的温度正以每十年1.9度的速度上升。我知道，照这种速度下去，每年春天我都爱去提取树浆的这片枫林，到我孩子的那一代就将不复存在。我的故乡美丽的威斯康星州也会在下一代变成一片草原。
At that moment Tree Frog leaped across my foot and sat on the floor in front of my computer. He then reached up his hand to his left ear and cupped it there. He sat before the computer and reached up his right hand to his other ear. He turned his head this way and that listening to that tone. Very focused. He then began to turn a very subtle, but brilliant shade of green and leaped full force onto the computer. 此刻，树蛙从我脚背跳过去站在电脑前的地板上。然后他伸出手来从后面拢起左耳凝神倾听，接着他又站在电脑前伸出右手拢起另一支耳朵。他这样转动着脑袋，聆听那个声音，非常专心致志。他的皮肤起了微妙的变化，呈现出一种亮丽的绿色，然后他就用尽全力跳到电脑上。
And then I remembered the story about the frogs that I had heard last year on public radio. It said frogs were dying around the world. It said that because frogs’ skin is like a lung turned inside out, their skin was being affected by pollution and global climate change. It said that frogs were being found whose skin was like paper. All dried up. It said that frogs are an “indicator species”. That frogs will die first because of the sensitivity. 我猛然想起去年在收音机里听到的一则关于青蛙的消息，说是全世界的青蛙正在死亡。消息说因为青蛙的皮肤就像是一个内里朝外的肺，所以正在受到污染和全球气候变化的影响。据说已经发现有些青蛙的皮肤已变得像纸一样干瘪。还说青蛙是一个“物种指示器”，由于对环境敏感，这个物种会先遭灭顶之灾。
Then, I understood. 这时我明白了。
The frogs have a message for us and it is the same message that some sober folks have had for us. “There are no more choices.” We have reached the time when we must be the adults for the planet, for the sake of the future generations of humans and for frogs. 青蛙向我们传递了一个信息。一些头脑清醒的人士也曾向我们传递过同样的信息，那就是“我们别无选择。”我们已经进入了关键时刻，为了人类的子孙后代，也为青蛙，我们必须对这个星球负起主人的责任。
Because we are related. 因为我们休戚相关。
Then I understood that there are no boundaries, that there is no more time. 我还明白了我们之间没有界限，明白了时间的紧迫。
That we, for the sake of our relatives, must act now. 为了我们的亲人，我们必须马上行动起来。
And then I understood, not only why the frog was there, but, also why I am here. 于是我
明白了这只青蛙此行的目的，也知道自己在这儿该做些什么。
(736 words)
Passage B
Mission Zero 归零使命
Ray C. Anderson (July 28, 1934 - August 8, 2011) was founder and chairman of Interface, Inc., one of the world’s largest manufacturers of modular carpet for commercial and residential applications. He was “known in environmental circles for his advanced and progressive stance on industrial ecology and sustainability.” 雷?C?安德森（1934年7月28日—2011年8月8日）——是全球最大的商业和住宅用拼块式地毯制造商之一——英特飞有限公司的创始人和董事长。他因在“工业生态和可持续发展方面表现出的先进和发展的立场而闻名于环保界”。
“If it exists, it must be possible”, asserts Amory Lovins1, co-founder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute2 think tank. He is talking about my company. Fellow industrialists, I dare say, thought my ambition impossible to realize when fourteen years ago I described my aspirations for Interface Inc. to turn into what it actually is becoming today. Indeed, around then, the CEO of a major competitor looked at me in the eye, and said, “Ray, you are a dreamer.” Yet, as Amory says, “If it exists ?” “如果有其存在，就必然有其可能，”落基山研究所智囊团的联合创始人和首席科学家艾默里?洛文斯如此断言道。他说的正是我的公司。我敢说，当十四年前我描述我的志向，要把英特飞公司变成它今天正在呈现的模样时，各位实业家同人都认为我的雄心壮志根本不可能实现。事实上，一个主要竞争对手的总裁当时就瞪着我说：“雷，你是一个梦想家。”然而，正如艾默里所说，“如果有其存在......”
The “impossible” that exists today is a petroleum-intensive carpet manufacturer (for both energy and raw material) that has reduced net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 88 percent, in absolute tons, and its water usage by 79 percent since 1996, even as sales have grown by two-thirds and earnings have doubled. In 1994 Interface set out on a mission “to be the first industrial? company that, by its deeds, shows the entire industrial world what sustainability is, in all its dimensions: people, process, product, profit, and place.” Our definition of sustainability is to operate our petro-intensive company so as to take from the Earth only that which is naturally and rapidly renewable, and to do no harm to the biosphere. 今天存在的这个“不可能”是一家（在能源和原材料方面）高度依赖石油的地毯制造商，从1996年至今将温室气体净排放量减少了88%（以实打实的吨数计），用水量减少了79%，而销售额却反而增加了三分之二，收益翻了一番。英特飞于1994年开始完成一项使命，力争“成为首家生态实业公司，通过自己的所作所为向整个实业界全方位地展现可持续性发展的理念：涵盖人员、生产过程、产品、利润、地点等各个方面。”我们对持续性发展的定义是：我们这家高度依赖石油的公司，坚持其运营只从地球获取可以自然而快速再生的资源，并且不对生态造成危害。
Cumulatively, we have avoided $372 million in costs by eliminating waste, in a quest that is half way to achieving waste-free perfection by 2020. We define waste as any cost that does not add value for our customers. This translates ambitiously into doing everything right the first time,
every time. We even define energy that still comes from fossil fuels as waste, something to be eliminated. Indeed, while offsets have a critical role to play in helping Interface (and, indeed, all of us) to reach our sustainability goals, we will not achieve them until we begin to redefine fossil fuel energy in this way. Sounds incredible? Remember, “If it exists ?”. 通过消除浪费，我们已经累计降低了3亿7千2百万美元的成本，正在向2020年力争达到零浪费的完美目标迈进。我们对浪费的定义是：凡是不能给客户带来价值的花费都是浪费。这一定义雄心勃勃地转化为行动理念：做任何事情都要一开始就做对，而且每次如此。我们甚至把依然取自化石燃料的能源也定义为浪费，并作为要消除的对象。通过减少浪费而获得的补偿确实起了关键性作用，有助于英特飞（其实也包括所有公司）达到可持续发展目标；如果我们不这样重新定义化石燃料能源，我们就不可能最终实现可持续发展的目标。听上去有些不可思议？请记住，“如果有其存在......”
Indeed our belching smokestacks, our gushing effluent pipes, our mountains of waste — all completely legal — provided tangible proof that business was good. They meant jobs, orders coming in, products going out, and money in the bank. 的确，我们的烟囱烟雾腾腾，我们的管道污水喷涌，我们的废料堆积如山——所有这一切都完全合法——这是我们生意兴隆的确凿证据。这就说明有业可就，订单滚滚而来，产品源源出厂，以及利润存入银行。
That all changed with a question that came from our customers: “What is Interface doing for the environment?” We had not heard that question before, and had no good answers. For a “customer-intimate” company, this was untenable. Looking for an answer — and a determination to respond with credible, demonstrable, and measurable results and transparent accountability — set us on this course. 所有这一切都因消费者提的一个问题而改变：“英特飞对环境有何贡献？”这个问题我们以前闻所未闻，更无法交出满意的答案。对于一个善待消费者的公司而言，这是难以交代的。为寻求答案，还有决意给消费者提供一个可信、可见和可考量的结果并承担明晰的责任，我们踏上了征途。
Can taking a profitable business apartat the height of its success make business sense? The waste elimination initiative alone —and the avoided costs of $372 million over 13 years — have more than offset all the investments and expenses incurred in pursuit of our goal which we now call “Mission Zero”: zero environmental impacts by the year 2020. This has allowed the business case for sustainability to develop and become crystal clear. Costs are down, not up — dispelling a myth and exposing the false choice between the environment and the economy. 将一个处于鼎盛时期的赢利企业拆卸分解，从商业的角度看合理吗？仅消除浪费这一项行动，以及13年来因此而节约下来的3亿7千2百万美元的成本，不仅抵消而且超出了我们在追求持续发展目标方面的投资和花费总额。我们现在将此目标命名为“归零使命”：到2020年实现对环境的零影响。“归零使命”使这个可持续性发展的实业案例得以发展，并变得清澈透明。成本下降了，并非上升了，一个虚构的理念就此打破，让我们看到在环境和经济之间并非必然就是择此伤彼的虚假选择。
Amazingly, this initiative has produced a better business model, a better way to bigger and more legitimate profits. It out-competes its competitors in the rough and tumble of the marketplace, but not at the expense of the Earth or future generations. Instead it includes Earth and generations not yet born in win-win-win relationships. As validation of this, the Interface share