2012年河南省翻译竞赛真题.doc

2012年河南省翻译竞赛翻译竞赛英译中参赛原文Over-regulated AmericaThe home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written regulationAmericans love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down childrens lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end “too big to fail” by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long. Just one bit, the “Volcker rule”, which aims to curb risky proprietary trading by banks, includes 383 questions that break down into 1,420 subquestions.Hardly anyone has actually read Dodd-Frank. Those who have struggle to make sense of it, not because so much detail has yet to be filled in: of the 400 rules it mandates, only 93 have been finalised. So financial firms in America must prepare to comply with a law that is partly unintelligible and partly unknowable. Flaming water-skisDodd-Frank is part of a wider trend. Governments of both parties keep adding stacks of rules, few of which are ever rescinded. Republicans write rules to thwart terrorists, which make flying in America an ordeal and prompt legions of brainy migrants to move to Canada instead. Democrats write rules to expand the welfare state. Barack Obamas health-care reform of 2010 had many virtues, especially its attempt to make health insurance universal. But it does little to reduce the systems staggering and increasing complexity. Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour. Next year the number of federally mandated categories of illness and injury for which hospitals may claim reimbursement will rise from 18,000 to 140,000. There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming water-skis.Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The governments drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congresss last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.Complexity costs money. Sarbanes-Oxley, a law aimed at preventing Enron-style frauds, has made it so difficult to list shares on an American stockmarket that firms increasingly look elsewhere or stay private. Americas share of initial public offerings fell from 67% in 2002 (when Sarbox passed) to 16% last year, despite some benign tweaks to the law. A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. Its a wonder the jobless rate isnt even higher than it is.A plea for simplicityDemocrats pay lip service to the need to slim the rulebook Mr Obamas regulations tsar is supposed to ensure that new rules are cost-effective. But the administration has a bias towards overstating benefits and underestimating costs (see article). Republicans bluster that they will repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and abolish whole government agencies, but give only a sketchy idea of what should replace them.America needs a smarter approach to regulation. First, all important rules should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis by an independent watchdog. The results should be made public before the rule is enacted. All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses, so that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.More important, rules need to be much simpler. When regulators try to write an all-purpose instruction manual, the truly important dos and donts are lost in an ocean of verbiage. Far better to lay down broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them. Legislators should pass simple rules, and leave regulators to enforce them.Would this hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats? Not if they are made more accountable. Unreasonable judgments should be subject to swift appeal. Regulators who make bad decisions should be easily sackable. None of this will resolve the inevitable difficulties of regulating a complex modern society. But it would mitigate a real danger: that regulation may crush the life out of Americas economy.选自The Economist, Feb 18th-24th, p8翻译竞赛中译英参赛原文“悦读”的“姿势”从一定意义说，一个民族的发展史就是它的阅读史，一个人亦如此。在德国，孩子从出生就有婴儿书陪伴。当然这些书大都是塑料书或者是布做的，孩子可以把书带进浴缸，看小书漂浮。这是孩子阅读的第一块基石。犹太人将阅读置于很高的地位。他们会在书上涂一层蜂蜜，让孩子生下来就知道书是甜的；他们还喜欢将书放在枕边和过道上，可随时翻阅。有资料说，每4500个犹太人就拥有一个图书馆。以读书为乐已经深深融入犹太人的血液里，也使他们在人类历史长河中光芒四射。据统计，从1901年至今，全世界共有800多人获得诺贝尔奖，有犹太人血统的就占了近1/4，而犹太人数量不到世界人口的3。中华民族也是一个酷爱读书的民族。唐代刘禹锡的诗句“数间茅屋闲临水，一盏秋灯夜读书”，让人感受到阅读时的闲适与宁静。“青灯有味似儿时”，是南宋陆放翁追念儿时读书的情景。至于流传千古的“凿壁偷光”、“囊萤映雪”等典故，“头悬梁，锥刺股”式的苦读，那种对书的迷恋让人心生敬畏。将中外读书情形做一番比较，不免让人心生遗憾：有时我们过于强调“苦学”而忽略了“乐学”，过于强调“正忽略了“随性阅读”，过于强调读书的“功利性”而忽略了它的“功能性”。这就使得阅读难以融入到我们的血液中，难以成为我们生活的一部分，而过于浓烈的功利色彩亦极有可能将知识庸俗化，将读书引入歧途。就以读书的姿势为例，其实大可不必讲究。古人“三上”（马上、枕上、厕上）读书法看似有些不雅，实则领略到了读书的真谛。而今，公园里的“晨读”、公交车上的“走读”、倚床挑灯的“夜读”，无不是一道道美丽风景。正如有人所说，“先要把读书看得很平常，才可以读书真正意义上的读书是随性而读，是与生命相伴始终。”只有把读书当作平常之事，融入我们的生活之中，才会真正领略“读书是福”的意境。阅读的身体姿势也许并不重要，但心灵的姿势却不可或缺。这种“心灵的姿势”，既是对求知的渴望，对经典的敬畏，也是对读书选择性的把握。时下，信息爆炸，各种书刊铺天盖地，人们常常为选择什么样的书而苦恼。喜欢读书是一种态度，而能否善于读书则是一种能力。读理论之书，打牢“基本功”；读经典之书，占领“制高点”；读大家之书，开阔“大视野”；读哲学之书，掌握“金点子”让心灵俯就于经典，让灵魂与灵魂对话，自能积累底蕴、提振精神、修身明理、洞悉人生，滋养自己的精神世界，领悟时代使命，并进而笃行之。朗读手册中有一句话：“阅读是消灭无知、贫穷和绝望的终极武器。”世界上很难有东西永恒，作为精神财富的文字却是特例。“俯而读，仰而思”，走进书香世界，扑下身子亲近文字，本身就是一种姿势，一种世界上最美的姿势，一种能给民族和我们每个人带来希望的姿势。选自人民日报，2012年4月23日，第4版 作者：向贤彪参考译文英译汉答案Over-regulated America过度管理的美国The home of laissez-faire is being suffocated by excessive and badly written RegulationAMERICANS love to laugh at ridiculous regulations. A Florida law requires labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down childrens lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licences. The list goes hilariously on.美国人喜欢嘲笑自己荒唐的法规。福罗里达州的一条法规需要标签，如果标签消失了，公众必须写报告。联邦铁路管理部门坚持，所有的火车必须在车头印个“F”以便于辨认哪边是头哪边是尾。在马里兰州的贝塞斯达，官僚主义的好事者已经关闭了儿童柠檬水摊位，因为这些富有事业心的孩子们没有营业执照。这些事情都在最可笑法规的榜单之上。But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively. America is meant to be the home of laissez-faire. Unlike Europeans, whose lives have long been circumscribed by meddling governments and diktats from Brussels, Americans are supposed to be free to choose, for better or for worse. Yet for some time America has been straying from this ideal.但美国的繁文缛节可不是件玩笑事儿。问题不在于那些明显荒唐的法规，而在于那些看上去合理加在一起却变成了负担的法规。美国本来就应该是个放任主义的国家。和欧洲不同，那些国家长久在政府干预和布鲁塞尔的绝对命令之下，美国人不管怎样应该是有自由选择的权利的。然而在一段时间内，美国已经偏离了这个理想。Consider the Dodd-Frank law of 2010. Its aim was noble: to prevent another financial crisis. Its strategy was sensible, too: improve transparency, stop banks from taking excessive risks, prevent abusive financial practices and end “too big to fail” by authorising regulators to seize any big, tottering financial firm and wind it down. This newspaper supported these goals at the time, and we still do. But Dodd-Frank is far too complex, and becoming more so. At 848 pages, it is 23 times longer than Glass-Steagall, the reform that followed the Wall Street crash of 1929. Worse, every other page demands that regulators fill in further detail. Some of these clarifications are hundreds of pages long. Just one bit, the “Volcker rule”, which aims to curb risky proprietary trading by banks, includes 383 questions that break down into 1,420 subquestions.看看2010年通过的多德-弗兰克法案。它旨在防止另一个金融危机发生，动机是高尚的。它的策略也是合理的：提高银行透明度以防止它们风险过高，也防止金融机构交易泛滥然后监管部门抓住了某个庞大而蹒跚的金融机构，然后导致了多米诺骨牌式的毁灭，最后以整个金融体系大而不倒收场。（这个句子好像没有翻译正确。）这份报纸及时地报道了这些内容，并且我们也会继续。但是多德-弗兰克法案太复杂了，而且正变得更加复杂。这个法案有848页，长度足足是格拉斯-斯蒂格尔法案的23倍，那次的改革以1929年华尔街危机收场。Hardly anyone has actually read Dodd-Frank, besides the Chinese government and our correspondent in New York. Those who have struggle to make sense of it, not least because so much detail has yet to be filled in: of the 400 rules it mandates, only 93 have been finalised. So financial firms in America must prepare to comply with a law that is partly unintelligible and partly unknowable.除了中国政府和我们的纽约记者以外，再也想不出谁会去读多德-弗兰克法案了。即便读过，人们还在纠结这项法案含义，这是因为这项法案还有很多很多的内容需要填充：在它提议400项条例中，只有93条最终实施。所以美国的金融行业必须要做好准备来遵守一项莫名其妙而不可认知的法规。Flaming water-skis激昂的水上滑行Dodd-Frank is part of a wider trend. Governments of both parties keep adding stacks of rules, few of which are ever rescinded. Republicans write rules to thwart terrorists, which make flying in America an ordeal and prompt legions of brainy migrants to move to Canada instead. Democrats write rules to expand the welfare state. Barack Obamas health-care reform of 2010 had many virtues, especially its attempt to make health insurance universal. But it does little to reduce the systems staggering and increasing complexity. Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour. Next year the number of federally mandated categories of illness and injury for which hospitals may claim reimbursement will rise from 18,000 to 140,000. There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming water-skis.多德-弗兰克法案只是大潮流的一部分。政府的两个党派还在继续堆积条例，而这些条例几乎没有被撤销过。共和党们创作条例来阻挠恐怖分子，这让在美国上空飞行变成了一项严峻的考验，并促使聪明的移民军团搬去了加拿大。民主党们创作条例来扩张这个国家的福利。巴拉克奥巴马的2010年医疗体系改革就有非常多的优点，特别是它意图将医疗保险达到全民覆盖。但是它对这个摇摆而不断复杂的医疗体制几乎没什么作用。美国花在每个病人的一个小时中，至少要用30分钟的时间来应付文书工作，有些时候就是整整一个小时。下一年中，联邦授权的医院可申报赔偿的疾病和伤病分类，将从18,000升高到140,000个。其中有9项类别与鹦鹉导致的伤害有关，有3项和激昂的水上滑行引起的皮肤烧伤相关。Two forces make American laws too complex. One is hubris. Many lawmakers seem to believe that they can lay down rules to govern every eventuality. Examples range from the merely annoying (eg, a proposed code for nurseries in Colorado that specifies how many crayons each box must contain) to the delusional (eg, the conceit of Dodd-Frank that you can anticipate and ban every nasty trick financiers will dream up in the future). Far from preventing abuses, complexity creates loopholes that the shrewd can abuse with impunity.使得美国法案变得如此复杂的有两种力量。一种叫傲慢。很多立法者好像认为他们制造的法案能包罗万象。举例来说它们不仅涵盖了令人讨厌的法案（比如说卡罗拉多的一项托儿所法案提议就指明了每个盒子中必须要装有多少只蜡笔），还涵盖了妄想的法案（比如人们对于多德-弗兰克法案就可以有很多种猜测，在未来阻止每个下流的金融家耍阴谋诡计看来要成为一个梦想了）。这完全不是滥用职权的问题，法律的过度复杂会导致漏洞产生，并被那些精明的人滥用而他们根本不用承担法律责任。The other force that makes American laws complex is lobbying. The governments drive to micromanage so many activities creates a huge incentive for interest groups to push for special favours. When a bill is hundreds of pages long, it is not hard for congressmen to slip in clauses that benefit their chums and campaign donors. The health-care bill included tons of favours for the pushy. Congresss last, failed attempt to regulate greenhouse gases was even worse.另一种使得美国法律复杂化的力量叫做游说。美国政府倡导微观管制，所以很多活动都导致了利益集团为其争取特别利益的动机。当一项法案由几百页长的时候，那国会议员们就可以轻而易举地在法案中塞进一些有利于他们密友或是竞选资助者的条款。上文提到的医疗法案就包涵了这些固执己见者几吨重的利益。而国会最终不能够管理温室气体使得情况变得更糟。（这两句翻译的好像也不对）Complexity costs money. Sarbanes-Oxley, a law aimed at preventing Enron-style frauds, has made it so difficult to list shares on an American stockmarket that firms increasingly look elsewhere or stay private. Americas share of initial public offerings fell from 67% in 2002 (when Sarbox passed) to 16% last year, despite some benign tweaks to the law. A study for the Small Business Administration, a government body, found that regulations in general add $10,585 in costs per employee. Its a wonder the jobless rate isnt even higher than it is.越复杂越费钱。萨班斯-奥克斯利法案，一项旨在阻止类似于安然事件发生的法案，使得公司在美国上市变得非常艰难，于是它们开始需求别的市场或者是保持私有的状态。尽管这项法案对法律体系有些好处，但美国的首次公开发行股票的份额从2002年的67%跌倒去年的16%。一项对政府机构的小型公司管理部门的研究表明，平均来看每个工人需要增加10,585美元的费用以成立这些法案。失业率没有比现在的水平更高，真是一个奇迹啊！A plea for simplicity恳请简化Democrats pay lip service to the need to slim the rulebookMr Obamas regulations tsar is supposed to ensure that new rules are cost-effective. But the administration has a bias towards overstating benefits and underestimating costs. Republicans bluster that they will repeal Obamacare and Dodd-Frank and abolish whole government agencies, but give only a sketchy idea of what should replace them.民主党们要简化法律制度，只是嘴上说的好听，奥巴马这个法规沙皇应该保证每项新法规都是成本-效益最大化的。但是这个政府却偏执地夸大条款的好处而忽略它带来的成本。共和党们夸下海口，他们将撤除奥巴马医改和多德-弗兰克法案，废除这个政府机构，但对于取代现在的将会是什么，只是轻描淡写一番。America needs a smarter approach to regulation. First, all important rules should be subjected to cost-benefit analysis by an independent watchdog. The results should be made public before the rule is enacted. All big regulations should also come with sunset clauses, so that they expire after, say, ten years unless Congress explicitly re-authorises them.管理美国需要一个更明智的方法。首先，所有重要的法规都需要一个独立的监管人做出成本-效益分析。在法规制定前，这个结果应该公诸于众，所有大型的条例必须有日落条款，这样它们就会在，比如说十年内到期，那时候国会在决定是不是要让它们继续生效。More important, rules need to be much simpler. When regulators try to write an all-purpose instruction manual, the truly important dos and donts are lost in an ocean of verbiage. Far better to lay down broad goals and prescribe only what is strictly necessary to achieve them.更重要的是，法规要简化。当立法者试图写出一个全能的安装手册时，那些真正重要的“必须”和“不准”就会沉没在茫茫的废话海洋中。最好就是放下那些广阔的目标，而只规定那些为了达到目标而必须进行的事情。Legislators should pass simple rules, and leave regulators to enforce them. Would this hand too much power to unelected bureaucrats? Not if they are made more accountable. Unreasonable judgments should be subject to swift appeal. Regulators who make bad decisions should be easily sackable. None of this will resolve the inevitable difficulties of regulating a complex modern society. But it would mitigate a real danger: that regulation may crush the life out of Americas economy.立法者也应该只通过简单的法案，并且让监管者实施。这会使得过多的权力转移到未选举的官僚主义者的身上吗？除非他们变得更负责任。不合理的判断应该受制于迅速的呼吁声。解雇做出糟糕决定的监管者也必须变得容易起来。所有这些都不能完全解决这些管理一个复杂现代社会带来的难题。但是至少它能够缓解一个真正的危险，那就是，这些复杂的法律规章可能会摧毁美国经济的寿命。中译英答案The “Posture” of “Enjoying Reading”The history of a nations development, in a sense, is that of her reading. It is so true for a person, too.In Germany, kids, since they were born, are accompanied by baby books, most of which, of course, are made of plastic or cloth; they can bring the books into bath tube and see small books floating. This is the first foundation stone of kids reading.Jewish people think highly of reading. They lay a coat of honey on books to let kids know since they came into the world that books are sweet; they also like to put books at bedside and in the corridor so that they can read them at any time. As the data shows, there is one library for each 4500 Jewish people. Reading for enjoyment has deeply integrated into their blood and enabled them to shine in the long history of human beings. According to the statistics, since 1901 to the present there have been around the world 800 odd Nobel Prize winners, almost one quarter of whom are of Jewish descent; Jewish people, however, account for less than three thousandths of the world population.Chinese nation is also keen on reading. The couplet from a poem written by Liu Yuxi, poet of Tang dynasty, goes, “Surrounded by water are several tranquil cottages, in which I read by the dim lamp at night”, which gives us a leisurely and peaceful impression of reading. “The oil lamp seems as interesting as that in my childhood”, as Lu Fangweng, (also known as Lu You, poet of South Song dynasty) recollected reading in his childhood. As for literary quotations that had been passed down through the ages like “bore a hole on the wall to make use of the neighbors light to study”,“read by the light of bagged fireflies or the reflected lightof snow” and assiduous study by “tying hair on the house beam and jabbing side with a needle to keep awake”, the love of books is much revered. It would naturally ma