发布时间 : 星期五 文章英汉互译更新完毕开始阅读
(5)总的来说，得出这种结论是有一定程度把握的，但是必须具备两个条件：能够假定这个孩子对测试的态度和与他相比较的孩子态度相同；他也没有因为缺乏其他孩子已掌握的有关知识而被扣分。 6. 1993年试题
(1) The method of scientific investigation is nothing but the expression of the necessary mode of working of the human mind; it is simply the mode by which all phenomena are reasoned about and given precise and explanations. There is no more difference, but there is just the same difference, between the mental operations of a man of science and those of an ordinary person, as there is between the operations and methods of a baker or of a butcher weighing out his goods in common scales, and the operations of a chemist in performing a difficult and complex analysis by means of his balance and finely graded weights. (2) It is not that the scales in the one case, and the balance in the other, differ in the principles of their construction or manner of working but that the latter is a much finer apparatus and of course much more accurate in its measurement than the former.
You will understand this better, perhaps, if I give you some familiar examples. (3) You have all heard it repeated that men of science work by means of induction and deduction, that by the help of these operations, they, in a sort of sense, manage to extract from nature certain natural laws, and that out of these, by some special skills of their own, they build up their own theories. (4) And it is imagined by many that the operations of the common mind can be by no means compared with these processes, and that they have to be acquired by a sort of special training. To hear all these large words, you would think that the mind of a man of science must be constitute differently from that of his fellow men; but if you will not be frightened by the terms, you will discover that you are quite wrong, and that all these terrible apparatus are being used by yourselves every day and every hour of your live.
There is a well-known incident in one of Moliere's plays, where the author makes the hero express unbounded delight on being told that he had been talking prose (散文） during the whole of his life. In the same way, I trust that you will take comfort, and be delighted with yourselves, on the discovery that you have been acting on the principles of inductive and deductive philosophy during the same period. (5) Probably there is not one here who has not in the course of the day had occasion to set in motion a complex train of reasoning, of the very same kind, though differing in degree, as that which a scientific man goes through in tracing the causes of natural phenomenon.
(1) 科学研究的方法只不过是人类思维活动的必要表达方式，也就是对一切现象进行思索并给以精确而严谨的表达方式。
(2) 并不是说面包师或卖肉的人所用的磅秤在构造原理或工作方式上和化学家所用的天平存在差异，而是说与前者相比较，后者是一种更精密得多的仪器，因而在计量上必然更准确得多。
(3) 我们都多次听说过，科学家是用归纳法和演绎法工作的，他们用这些方法，在某种意义上讲，力求从自然界找出某种自然规律，然后根据这些规律，用自己的某种非同一般的本领，建立起他们的理论。
(4) 许多人认为，普通人的思维活动根本无法和科学家的思维过程相比，他们并认为这些思维过程必须是经过某种专门训练才能掌握。
(5) 这里大概不会有人在一整天里没有机会进行一连串复杂的思考活动，这些活动与科学家在探索自然现象原因时所经历的思考活动，尽管复杂程度不同，但在类型上是完全一样的。
7. 1994年试题
According to the new school of scientists, technology is an overlooked forces on expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge. (1) Science moves forward, they say, not so much through the insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniques and tools. (2) In short, a leader if the new school contends, “the scientific revolution, as w call it, was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions.” (3) Over the years, tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovation have largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science. The modern school that hails technology argues that such masters as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and inventors such as Edison attached great importance to, and derived great benefit from, craft information and technological devices of different kinds that were usable in scientific experiments.
The centerpiece of the argument of a technology-yes, genius-no advocate was an analysis of Galileo's
role at the start of the scientific revolution. This wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put earth at the center of all heavenly motions. (4) Galileo's greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the first person to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sun rather than around the earth. But the real hero of the story, according to the new school of scientists, was the long evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eyeglasses.
Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs. genius dispute. (5) Whether the Government should increase on the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or vice versa (反之） often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.
(1) 他们（新学派科学家）说，科学的发展与其说源于天才伟人的真知灼见，不如说源于改进了的技术和工具等更为普通的东西。
(2) 新学派的一位领袖坚持说：“简而言之，我们所称谓的科学革命，主要是指一系列器具的改进、发明和使用，而这些改进、发明和使用使科学家发展的范围无所不及。”
(3) 工具和技术本身作为根本性创新的源泉多年来在很大程度上被历史学家和科学思想家们忽视了。
(4) 伽利略最光辉的业绩在于他在1609年是第一个把新发明的望远镜对准了天空的人，以证实行星是围绕太阳旋转而不是围绕地球旋转的。
(5) 政府究竟是减少对技术经费的投入来增加对纯理论科学的经费投入，还是相反，这往往取决于把问题的哪一方面看作是驱动的力量。 8. 1995年试题
The standardized educational or psychological tests that are widely used to aid in selecting, classifying, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress.
(1) The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.
All informed prediction of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance: school grades, research productivity, sales records, or whatever is appropriate. (2) How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.
Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. (3) Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the evidence from experience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.
(4) In general, the tests work most effectively when the qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. (5) For example, they do not compensate for gross social inequality, and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstance.
(1) 把标准化测试作为抨击的目标是错误的，因为在抨击这类测试时，批评者不考虑其弊病来自于人们对测试不甚了解或使用不当。
(2) 这些预测在多大程度上为后来的表现所证实，这取决于所采用信息的数量、可靠性和适应性，以及解释这些信息的技能和才智。
(3) 因此，在某一特定的情况下，究竟是采用测试还是采用其他种类的信息，或是两者同时使用，须凭有关相对效度的经验依据而定，也取决于诸如费用和有无来源等因素。
(4) 一般地说，当所要测定的特征能精确地界定时，测试最为有效；而当所要测定或预测的东西不能明确地界定时，测试的效果则最差。
(5) 例如，测试并不弥补明显的社会不公，因此它们不能说明一个物质条件差的年轻人，如果在较好的环境下成长的话，会有多大的才干。
9. 1996年试题
The difference in relative growth of various areas of scientific research have several causes. (1) Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs. Others are reasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent self-accelerating. Some, however, are less reasonable processes of different growth in which preconceptions of the form of scientific theory ought to take, by persons in authority, act to alter the growth pattern of different areas. This is a new problem probably not yet unavoidable: but it is a frightening trend. (2) This trend began during the Second World War, when several governments came to the conclusion that the specific demands that a government wants to make of its scientific establishment cannot generally be foreseen in detail. It can be predicted, however, that from time to time questions will arise which will require specific scientific answers. It is therefore generally valuable to treat the scientific establishment as a resource or machine to be kept in functional order. (3) This seems mostly effectively done by supporting a certain amount of research not related to immediate goals but of possible consequences in the future.
This kind of support, like all government support, requires decisions about the appropriate recipients of funds. Decisions based on utility as opposed to lack of utility are straightforward. But a decision among projects none of which has immediate utility is more difficult. The goal of the supporting agencies is the praisable one of supporting “good” as opposed to “bad” science, but a valid determination is difficult to make. Generally, the idea of good science tends to become confused with the capacity of the field in question to generate an elegant theory. (4) However, the world is so made that elegant systems are in principle unable to deal with some of the world's more fascinating and delightful aspects. (5) New forms of thought as well as new subjects for thought must arise in the future as they have in the past, giving rise to new standards of elegance.
(1) 在这些原因中，有些完全是自然而然地来自社会需求，另一些则是由于科学在一定程度上自我加速而取得特定进展的必然结果。
(2) 这种趋势始于第二次世界大战期间，当时一些国家的政府得出结论：政府要向科研机构提出的具体要求通常是无法详尽预见的。
(3) 给某些与当前目标无关但将来可能产生影响的科研以支持，看来通常能有效地解决这个问题。 (4) 然而，世界就是如此，完美的体系一般而言是无法解决世上某些更引人入胜的课题的。 (5) 同过去一样，将来必然会出现的新的思维方式和新的思维对象，给完美以新的标准。 二、英译汉补充练习 Passage 1
One of the earliest and fastest-growing applications of space technology is the communications satellite ,which relays wide-band radio and television signals between widely geographical points. (1) Prior to the advent of this technology, elaborate and costly chains of microwave towers were the sole practical means for passing the line-of-sight radio and TV signals over the curvature of the earth. In this process, signal quality is degraded at each relay point, channel capacity is severely limited and acute scheduling problems are encountered because it is not feasible to relay more than one program
at a time to distant points. Moreover, there is no way to bridge oceans with wide-band signals by means of microwave relay. (2) Distant points like Alaska and Hawaii could not share the television service enjoyed on the continental mainland of the United States as long as terrestrial microwave was the sole means of wide-band communication.
The communications satellite has changed all this. The U. S. public television network has leased relay capacity in a commercial satellite. Western Union's WESTAR, and 149 of its 163 member stations are building 10-meter receiving antennas to accept educational and other programs from a central originating station located near Washington, D.C. When the antennas are all in place by the end of this year, the public network will abandon ground microwave and relay exclusively upon the space link. (3) Two years later, the public
radio network will be similarly interconnected by means of smaller (45 meters) receiving antennas. The shift to the communications satellite will sharply increase the capacity and flexibility of the public network to carry educational and other material. (4) Previously limited to the relay of a single television channel at one time, the network will now be able to disseminate four instructional programs simultaneously by satellite. Member stations will be able to select any two of the programs, one for immediate use and one that can be recorded for later use. (5) This will substantially relieve the scheduling problems which limited the flexibility of the public broadcasting network when it was dependent upon ground microwave relay.
(1) 在这种技术出现之前，如果要将无线电的信号传送过地球弯曲的部分，唯一可行的方法是利用精细复杂而耗费巨大的一连串的微波塔。
(2) 以前在陆上微波仍为宽带通讯的唯一方法时，像阿拉斯加和夏威夷等遥远的地方就不能分享美国大陆所享有的电视服务。
(3) 两年以后，公营无线电网也将以较小（4.5米）的接受天线作类似的互联。
(4) 以前限于每次转播一个电视频道，现在公营电视网可经由卫星同时播送四个教学节目。
(5) 这一转变可大大缓解时间安排上的问题。公营广播网以前在依赖地面微波转播时，时间安排的问题曾使公营广播网的灵活性受到限制。 Passage 2
Oil occurs almost exclusively in sedimentary rocks. In fact, the major petroleum deposits of the world occur in basins of extremely thick accumulation of sediments. (1) This association apparently results not only from the fact that sedimentary rock provide a logical place for oil to accumulate but also because the oil forms in sediments.
The term oil refers to naturally occurring liquid hydrocarbons. Associated gaseous hydrocarbons are referred to as natural gas. The exact mode of formation of petroleum has puzzled geologists for many years. (2) Many facts, however, point almost inescapable to the conclusion that oil is formed by the decay of animal, and possibly some plant, remains in a reducing environment in sedimentary deposits.
Most oil is simply not produced from the rocks in which it formed . This statement can be demonstrated in two ways. First, most petroleum deposits occur in relatively “clean” (uncemented) quartz or quartz of sands tones which could never have contained enough organic material to form the amount of petroleum which they now hold; (3) and second, the rocks which are now forming and which appear to contain small amounts of hydrocarbon capable of developing into oil are generally rocks which are not characteristic of reservoirs for petroleum deposits. Most of the rocks in which oil appears to be forming in modern sediments are fine-grained somewhat shays and could not be effective as reservoirs. (4) Oil, therefore, must migrate from its source to a suitable reservoir rock in which it can flow easily enough to be produced through an oil well. This migration of oil from source to reservoirs is obviously a topic of considerable interest to geologists. (5) If the mechanics of migration are fully known and if source rocks can be identified in sedimentary sequences, then it may be possible to predict the occurrence of reservoir rocks and hence the location of economic petroleum deposits.
(1) 显然，这种共生关系不只是由于沉积岩为石油的贮积提供了合乎逻辑的产地，而且因为石油形成于沉积物之中。 (2) 但是许多事实都几乎不可避免地集中到这样的结论上，即石油是在沉积物还原环境中由动物遗骸，可能还有一些植物的遗骸的分解所形成的。
(3) 第二，目前正在形成，并似乎含有少量可能发育成石油的碳氢化合物的岩石，通常都没有石油储油层的特征。 (4) 因此，石油肯定是从其源岩转移到适合储油岩中，在这里，它十分顺畅地流动，从而才能通过油井提取出来。 (5) 如果我们已经完全了解石油转移的机制，而且还能够从沉积岩系中鉴别出源岩，那么我们就有可能预测油岩的产生，从而确定出有经济意义的石油矿床的位置。
Passage 3
First if one considers thinking to be a uniquely human endeavor and intelligence to be a uniquely human attribute, then, by definition, this process and attribute cannot be associated with a computer or other mechanical or artificial system.
(1) On the other hand, it has been argued that if there is some fundamental physical limitation in the ability to compute, process, decide, judge, and think which applies to the creation of machine intelligence,