Ⅲ　翻译练习

（I）技巧练习

将下列句子翻译成中文。

1.There is no work unless there is motion.

2.There can be no doubt that the second 50 years of powered flight holds a challenge more forbidding,though no less interesting.

3.In the presence of 5% carbon dioxide,carbon monoxide becomes twice as toxic as it is alone.

4.The liquid was diluted with water to five times its original volume.

5.Friction is not always a disadvantage.In many instances it is highly important.

6.As rubber prevents electricity from passing through it,it is used as insulating material.

7.Ocean-going ships,equipped with the radar,are safe from collision with other ships or ice-bergs.

8.Without virtual memory,a simple task like editing a large file becomes tedious or even impossible to perform.

9.It is important to become familiar with the outstanding physical and chemical properties of plastics so you can make wise selection for their use.

10.Higher temperatures are associated with greater melting rates.

（II）篇章翻译练习

1.The ancient frozen dome cloaking Greenland is so vast that pilots have crashed into what they thought was a cloud bank spanning the horizon.Flying over it,one can scarcely imagine that this ice could erode fast enough to raise sea levels dangerously anytime soon.

Along the flanks in spring and summer,however,the picture is very different.With a lengthening string of warm years,a lacework of blue lakes and rivulets of melt water have been spreading ever higher on the ice cap.The melting surface darkens,absorbing up to four times as much energy from the sun as unmelted snow,which reflects sunlight.Natural drainpipes,called moulins,carry water from the surface into the depths,in some places reaching bedrock.The process slightly,but measurably,lubricates and accelerates the grinding passage of ice toward the sea.

Most important,many glaciologists say,is the breakup of huge semi-submerged clots of ice where some large Greenland glaciers,particularly along the west coast,squeeze through fjords as they meet the warming ocean.As these passages have cleared,this has sharply accelerated the flow of many of these creeping,corrugated,frozen rivers.

All of these changes have made many glaciologists a little nervous these days.Some say they fear that the rise in seas in a warming world could be much greater than the estimate of about two feet,or 60 centimeters,in this century once made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (seas rose less than a foot in the 20th century).The panel’s assessment did not include factors known to contribute to ice flows,but not understood well enough to estimate with confidence.All the panel could say was,“Larger values cannot be excluded.”

A scientific scramble is under way to clarify whether the erosion of the world’s most vulnerable ice sheets,in Greenland and West Antarctica,can continue to accelerate.The effort involves field and satellite analyses and sifting for clues from past warm periods.

It is too early to reassure that all will stabilize,and similarly there is no way to predict a catastrophic collapse.But things are definitely far more serious than anyone would have thought five years ago.

2.Are condoms and birth control pills more cost effective than windmills and solar panels as tools to curb global warming?

Yes,and by a wide margin,contends Thomas Wire,a postgraduate researcher at the London School of Economics and author of a recent study asserting that family planning is nearly five times more cost effective in mitigating global warming emissions than green energy technologies like wind and solar power.

“It’s always been obvious that total emissions depend on the number of emitters as well as their individual emissions—the carbon tonnage can’t shoot down,as we want,while the population keeps shooting up,” Roger Martin,chairman of the Optimum Population Trust,the British environmental group that sponsored the study,said in a statement.“The taboo on mentioning this fact has made the whole climate change debate so far somewhat unreal.”

Yet at the recent Copenhagen climate summit—which failed to produce any binding resolution on curbing global warming emissions—population control was again the solution that dared not speak its name.

It is easy to see why.Population control measures like China’s one-child policy,and forced sterilization campaigns by various countries during the 20th century,have led many to associate such efforts with racism and totalitarianism.Powerful institutions like the Roman Catholic Church continue to oppose contraception on religious grounds.

Yet while population control remains sidelined in official climate talks,the number of prominent voices calling for its recognition as an issue of concern is mounting.The United Nations Population Fund’s most recent annual report explicitly linked slower population growth with reduced greenhouse-gas emissions.

In December,a group of more than 60 members of Congress wrote to Peter R.Orszag,director of the Office of Management and Budget,urging the Obama administration to improve financing for family planning efforts,in part because of climate concerns.

“Family planning and reproductive health should be part of larger strategies for climate change mitigation and adaptation,” said the letter,signed by several prominent Democrats.“Slower population growth will make reductions in global greenhouse gas emissions easier to achieve.”

Leading scientists,like Martin Rees,head of the Royal Society,Britain’s academy of science,also assert that population growth must be constrained in order to successfully confront global warming.

But while fewer births will almost certainly result in less global warming emissions,some argue that population control will be less important for its impact on emissions than as an adaptation strategy for developing countries.There,growth rates are highest and the impacts of climate change—from rising sea levels to increased droughts and floods—are likely to be the most severe.

Despite the obvious challenges,little research has focused on the intersection of demographics and climate change,states a recent World Health Organization study.

“The relevance of demographic trends to adaptation to climate change has meanwhile remained almost entirely unexplored by the scientific literature,” wrote Leo Bryant,the lead researcher on the study.