江西省翻译大赛真题.doc

江西省翻译大赛试题
江西省首届英语翻译大赛初赛试题(2009-6-7)
一、将下列短文译成汉语（50分）:
Summer Sunrises on the Mississippi Mark Twain
One can never see too many summer sunrises on the Mississippi. They are enchanting. First, there is the eloquence of silence; for a deep hush broods everywhere. Next, there is the haunting sense of loneliness, isolation, remoteness from the worry and bustle of the world. The dawn creeps in stealthily; the solid walls of the black forest soften to grey, and vast stretches of the river open up and reveal themselves; the water is smooth, gives off spectral little wreaths of white-mist, there is not the faintest breath of wind, nor stir of leaf; the tranquility is profound an infinitely satisfying. Then a bird pipes up, another follows, and soon the pipings develop into a jubilant riot of music. You see none of the birds, you simply move through an atmosphere of song which seems to sing itself.
When the light has become a little stronger, you have one of the fairest and softest pictures imaginable. You have the intense green of the massed and crowded foliage near by; you see it paling shade by shade in front of you; upon the next projecting cape, a mile off or more, the tint had lightened to the tender young green of spring; the cape beyond that one has almost lost color, and the furthest one, miles away under the horizon, sleeps upon the water a mere dim vapor, and hardly separable from the sky above it and about it. And all this stretch of river is a mirror, and you have shadowy reflections of the leafage and the curving shores and the receding capes pictured in it. Well, this is all beautiful; soft and rich and beautiful; and when the sun gets well up, and distributes a pink flush here and a powder of gold yonder and a purple haze where it will yield the best effect, you grant that you have something that is worth remembering.

二、将下列短文译成英语（50分）:
我们知道，衣食无忧仅仅是生活的一个方面。尤其是老年人，他们和青年人一样，也有文化的需要，娱乐的需要，尊严的需要，成就感的需要。他们要在生命的最后一个阶段活得更加舒心，活得更有色彩。
一天，我漫步走进了一家古董店，毫无目的地浏览着各种奇奇怪怪的古玩意儿。往店堂深处走时我突然发现此店的收银员是一位老太太。我无法知道是什么原因使这位老妇人在应该颐养天年的岁数还在充当上班族，我只知道一眼看去这位老妇人是喜欢这份工作的，而且也完全能够胜任这份工作。只见她全神贯注，手指在收银机的键盘上利索地摁动着，每结完一份帐，便会抬起头来对着顾客微微一笑，没有一颗牙的嘴笑起来有点滑稽也有点天真，但相当有趣。我不由自主地在她身边停了下来。我突然发现这位老妇人坐在收银台上和这家古董店的情调是那么的和谐，说不定正是这家商店用以招徕顾客的特殊手段。我是带着许多问号离开这家商店的，因为我觉得这位老妇人和这家古董店肯定有着一段很有意思的故事，只可惜我听不到了。

江西省首届英语翻译大赛决赛试题(2009-9-26)
一、将下列短文译成汉语（50分）:
Audrey Hepburn, An Elegant Spirit
Although she was never an ardent follower of any formal religion, my mother’s own faith endured throughout her life: her faith in love, her faith in the miracle of nature, and her faith in the goodness of life. She honored this second chance at life at every opportunity that presented itself and most of all at the end of her life, through her work for UNICEF.
Sometimes a near-death experience can free us of the shackles that life slowly trains us to wear. We come to realize what’s worth the sweat and what isn’t. Although she had no memory of her childhood near-death experience, the knowledge of it, coupled with the fertile ground of an already self-effacing nature, were the roots of the humility that graced her entire life.
I never heard her say, “I did this,” or “I’ve done that.” Toward the end of her life, throughout the UNICEF years, I would hear her say regularly, as the world listened to her, I can do very little.” I never heard her say that she liked any of her performances. When people complimented her, she would always shy away and ultimately explain how those who surrounded her were the reason for her success.
Bessie Anderson Stanley wrote, “To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends, to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition, to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.”
By Ms. Stanley’s standards, my mother’s life was a success: She was graced with good choices. The first choice she made was her career. Then she chose her family. And when we, her children, were grown and had started our lives, she chose the less fortunate children of the world. She chose to give back. In that important choice lay the key to healing and understanding something that had affected her throughout her entire life: the sadness that had always been there.
Her choices healed the sadness of a little girl who didn’t know her father for most of her life and yet who yearned and longed for that warm embrace, that reassurance that you are loved and that you matter. When I look back, that is just what she gave to Luca and me: the reassurance that we were loved and that we mattered. This was the most valuable essence, the roots that live and grow forever inside you. She truly was a wonderful mother and friend.

二、将下列短文译成英语（50分）:
2008年5月12日14时28分，我国发生了震惊世界的四川汶川特大地震，受灾地区人民生命财产和经济社会发展蒙受巨大损失。面对空前惨烈的灾难，在党中央、国务院和中央军委坚强领导下，全党全军全国各族人民众志成城、迎难而上，以惊人的意志、勇气、力量，组织开展了我国历史上救援速度最快、动员范围最广、投入力量最大的抗震救灾斗争，最大限度地挽救了受灾群众生命，最大限度地减低了灾害造成的损失，夺取了抗震救灾斗争重大胜利，表现出泰山压顶不弯腰的大无畏气概，谱写了感天动地的英雄凯歌。
我们按照以人为本、尊重自然、统筹兼顾、科学重建的原则，科学制定灾后恢复重建规划，迅速出台一系列支援灾区的政策措施，积极开展对口支援，迅速组织开展灾后恢复重建工作。在中央大力支持、灾区广大干部群众艰苦奋斗、全国人民大力支援下，城乡居民住房重建、学校医院等公共服务设施重建、基础设施恢复重建、产业重建和结构调整、历史文化保护、生态修复等方面均取得显著成绩，灾后恢复重建取得重要阶段性成果，灾区人民正大踏步走向新生活。这一切，为夺取抗震救灾斗争全面胜利奠定了坚实基础。

江西省第二届英语翻译大赛决赛试题Time limit: 150 Min
第一部分：英译汉（50分）
Street Haunting: A London Adventure (Excerpt) Virginia Woolf
No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil. But there are circumstances in which it can become supremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner. As the foxhunter hunts in order to preserve the breed of foxes, and the golfer plays in order that open spaces may be preserved from the builders, so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say: “Really I must buy a pencil,” as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter — rambling the streets of London.
How beautiful a London street is then, with its islands of light, and its long groves of darkness, and on one side of it perhaps some tree-sprinkled, grass-grown space where night is folding herself to sleep naturally and, as one passes the iron railing, one hears those little cracklings and stirrings of leaf and twig which seem to suppose the silence of fields all round them, an owl hooting, and far away the rattle of a train in the valley. But this is London, we are reminded; high among the bare trees are hung oblong frames of reddish yellow light — windows; there are points of brilliance burning steadily like low stars — lamps; this empty ground, which holds the country in it and its peace, is only a London square, set about by offices and houses where at this hour fierce lights burn over maps, over documents, over desks where clerks sit turning with wetted forefinger the files of endless correspondences; or more suffusedly the firelight wavers and the lamplight falls upon the privacy of some drawing-room, its easy chairs, its papers, its china, its inlaid table, and the figure of a woman, accurately measuring out the precise number of spoons of tea which —— She looks at the door as if she heard a ring downstairs and somebody asking, is she in?

第二部分：汉译英 （50分）

一件小事（节选）鲁迅
我从乡下跑到京城里，一转眼已经六年了。其间耳闻目睹的所谓国家大事，算起来也很不少；但在我心里，都不留什么痕迹，倘要我寻出这些事的影响来说，便只是增长了我的坏脾气，——老实说，便是教我一天比一天的看不起人。
但有一件小事，却于我有意义，将我从坏脾气里拖开，使我至今忘记不得。
这是民国六年的冬天，大北风刮得正猛，我因为生计关系，不得不一早在路上走。一路几乎遇不见人，好容易才雇定了一辆人力车，叫他拉到S门去。不一会，北风小了，路上浮尘早已刮净，剩下一条洁白的大道来，车夫也跑得更快。刚近S门，忽而车把上带着一个人，慢慢地倒了。
跌倒的是一个女人，花白头发，衣服都很破烂。伊从马路上突然向车前横截过来；车夫已经让开道，但伊的破棉背心没有上扣，微风吹着，向外展开，所以终于兜着车把。幸而车夫早有点停步，否则伊定要栽一个大筋斗，跌到头破血出了。
伊伏在地上；车夫便也立住脚。我料定这老女人并没有伤，又没有别人看见，便很怪他多事，要自己惹出是非，也误了我的路。
我便对他说，“没有什么的。走你的罢！”
车夫毫不理会，——或者并没有听到，——却放下车子，扶那老女人慢慢起来，搀着臂膊立定，问伊说：
“你怎么啦？”
“我摔坏了。”
我想，我眼见你慢慢倒地，怎么会摔坏呢，装腔作势罢了，这真可憎恶。车夫多事，也正是自讨苦吃，现在你自己想法去。
车夫听了这老女人的话，却毫不踌躇，仍然搀着伊的臂膊，便一步一步的向前走。我有些诧异，忙看前面，是一所巡警分驻所，大风之后，外面也不见人。这车夫扶着那老女人，便正是向那大门走去。
我这时突然感到一种异样的感觉，觉得他满身灰尘的后影，刹时高大了，而且愈走愈大，须仰视才见。而且他对于我，渐渐的又几乎变成一种威压，甚而至于要榨出皮袍下面藏着的“小”来。

江西省第三届英语翻译大赛决赛试题
一、 将下列短文译成汉语（50分）:
Nature and Art
Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music.
But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful—as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from the chaos glorious harmony.
To say to the painter, that Nature is to be taken as she is, is to say to the player, that he may sit on the piano…
The dignity of the snow-capped mountain is lost in distinctness, but the joy of the tourist is to recognize the traveller on the top. The desire to see, for the sake of seeing, is, with the mass, alone the one to be gratified, hence the delight in detail.
And when the evening mist clothes the riverside with poetry, as with a veil, and the poor buildings lose themselves in the dim sky, and the tall chimneys become campanili, and the warehouses are palaces in the night, and the whole city hangs in the heavens, and fairy-land is before us—then the wayfarer hastens home; the working man and the cultured one, the wise man and the one of pleasure, cease to understand, as they have ceased to see, and Nature, who, for once, has sung in tune, sings her exquisite song to the artist alone, her son and her master—her son in that loves her, her master in that he knows her.
To him her secrets are unfolded, to him her lessons have become gradually clear. He looks at her flower, not with the enlarging lens, that may gather facts for the botanist, but with the light of the one who sees in her choice selection of brilliant tones and delicate tints, suggestions of future harmonies.
He does not confine himself to purposeless copying, without thought, each blade of grass, as commended by the inconsequent, but, in the long curve of the narrow leaf, corrected by the straight tall stem, he learns how grace is wedded to dignity. How strength enhances sweetness, that elegance shall be the result.
In the citron wing of the pale butterfly, with its dainty spots of orange, he sees before him the stately halls of fair gold, with their slender saffron pillars, and is taught how the delicate drawing high upon the walls shall be traced in tender tones of orpiment, and repeated by the base in notes of graver hue.
In all that is dainty and lovable he finds hints for his own combinations, and thus is Nature ever his resource and always at his service, and to him is naught refused.
Through his brain, as through the last alembic, is distilled the refined essence of that thought which began with the Gods, and which they left him to carry out.
Set apart by them to complete their works, he produces that wondrous thing called the masterpiece, which surpasses in perfection all that they have contrived in what is called Nature; and the Gods stand by and marvel, and perceive how far away more beautiful is the Venus of Melos than was their own Eve.

二、将下列短文译成英语（50分）:
出生在天津的美国作家
岁月悠悠。一晃也是如云如烟的往事了。1981年秋，天津作家协会刚刚恢复工作，曾任美国作家联盟主席的约翰·赫赛（John Hersey）到天津来了。他是自费来中国旅游，又是特地来重温故乡之梦的。
天津怎么是赫赛的故乡呢？原来他父亲是美国传教士，曾任天津基督教青年会（YMCA :Young Men's Christian Association）干事多年；他母亲应南开中学邀请到南开中学任英语教师。随他来的翻译多说了几句，说他母亲教出了一位世界知名的人物，那就是周恩来。说他曾经玩笑地说，他是在母亲的肚皮里就已经认识这位伟大的人物了。他1914年出生在天津，11岁离开天津，回到美国。但天津一直留在他的心头，1939年和1945年都来重温过故乡之梦，这次是第三次了。
赫赛这次重温故乡之梦，做了一定的准备。随来他的翻译又多说了几句，说他在北京请人为他译读了天津作家的一些作品，对孙梨的《荷花淀》与方纪的《来访者》评价很高，这就看出他对人生和现实的态度了。
转天，我应邀到他房间去长谈。他把微型录音机放在茶几上，要把我的原话和翻译的译语都录下来。他要我介绍唐山大地震给天津带来的灾难，又要我介绍天津作家的情况，说那两次重返故乡，他都没听说过天津也有作家，特别是听到作家写作不仅拿稿费而且月月有薪金时，仿佛是一大发现，惊奇得在笔记本上做了记录。我也顺势提出一问，他又是怎么靠稿费维持生活的。他说他在作家身份之外还兼具记者和教授的两种身份。这样既保证了生活的收入，又丰富了创作的源泉，也开拓了学识的领域。他的许多小说都是从报告文学中升华出来的，还有一些作品是在教学中酝酿成熟的。

江西省第四届英语翻译大赛决赛试题(普通组)
第一部分 英译汉（50分
It’s time to plant the bulbs. But I put it off as long as possible because planting bulbs mean making space in borders which are still flowering. Pulling out all the annuals which nature has allowed to erupt in overpowering purple, orange and pink, a final cry of joy. That would almost be murder, and so I wait until the first night frost anaesthetizes all the flowers with a cold, a creaky crust that causes them to wither; a very gentle death. Now I wander through my garden indecisively, trying to hold on to the last days of late summer.
The trees are plump with leafy splendor. The birch is softly rustling gold, which is now fluttering down like an unending stream of confetti. Soon November will be approaching with its autumn storms and leaden clouds hanging above your head like soaking wet rags. Just let it stay like this, I think, gazing at the huge mysterious shadows the trees conjure up on the shining green meadows, the cows languidly flicking their tails. Everything breathes an air of stillness, the silence rent by the exuberant color of asters, dahlias, sunflowers and roses.
The mornings begin chilly. The evenings give you shivers and cold feet in bed. But in the middle of the day the sun breaks through, evaporating the mist on the grass, butterflies and wasps appear and cobwebs glisten against windows like silver lace. The harvest of a whole year’s hard work is on the trees and bushes; berries, beech mast, chestnuts, and acorns.
Suddenly, I think of my youngest daughter, living now in Amsterdam. Very soon she will call and ask “Have you planted the bulbs yet?” Then I will answer teasingly that actually I’m waiting until she comes to help me. And then we will both be overcome by nostalgia, because once we always did that together. One entire sunny autumn afternoon, when she was three and a half years old, she helped me with all enthusiasm and joyfulness of her age.
It was one of the last afternoons that I had her around, because her place in school has been already reserved. She wandered around so happily carefree with her little bucket and spade, covering the bulbs with earth and calling out “Night, night” or “Sleep night”, her little voice chattering constantly on. She discovered “baby bulbs”, “kiddie bulbs”, and “mummy and daddy bulbs”, the latter snuggling cozily together. While we were both working so industriously, I watched my kid very deliberately. She was such a tiny thing, between an infant and a toddler, with such a round little tummy.
Every autumn, throughout her childhood, we repeated the ritual of planting the bulbs together. Every autumn I saw her changing, the toddler became a schoolgirl, a straightforward realist, full of drive. Never once dreamy, her hands in her pockets; no longer happily indulging in her fantasies. The schoolgirl developed long legs, her jaw-line changed, she had her hair cut. It was autumn again that I thought “bye roses, bye butterflies, bye schoolgirl”. I listened to her stories while we painst