“此外，华盛顿特区也提供高品质的住宅（high-quality housing），这也是为什么高薪家庭选择在华府居住的主因之一，”盖立森分析道，“而一般中低收入家庭，在有余力的情况下，为了孩子能够上较好的学校而选择搬离华盛顿特区，移至分布于马里兰州和弗吉尼亚州的住宅区。”
“在高收入家庭不断迁移到特区、中低阶层的家庭移出，而最贫穷的家庭又面临无处，也无力可搬的窘境时，就造成我们现在看到的，贫富悬殊的华盛顿特区，”盖立森对《华盛顿观察》周刊说到。
盖立森此处所指的华盛顿特区指的是约有56万人口的都市（District of Columbia）本身，不包括整个华盛顿大都会区（Greater Washington Metro Area），“整个华盛顿大都会区人口高达500万人，但低收入户却只往华盛顿特区集中，”他特别解释道。 “不论我们如何努力吸引商家到华盛顿特区投资，华府有一部分的低收入家庭就是无法从中受惠，没有办法得到特区独特的高薪工作机会。” 华盛顿市长办公室发言人托尼·布拉克（Tony Bullock）说，“贫富差距的背后许多复杂的原因，是不能在一夕之间就改变的。”他言谈间颇有对特区的贫富悬殊无可奈何之叹。
盖立森则认为，特区政府的确应该吸引高收入家庭到特区居住，因为这样能够带来更多税收，对市政建设有积极作用。“但同时，特区政府也应该重视穷人的权益，设立好的学校、提供健全的社会福利等等，这些市政措施都能有效地改善特区严重的贫富不均状况。”
但盖立森对未来贫富差距是否真能拉近不是十分乐观，他尤其对这波经济复苏是不是能帮助到穷人保持怀疑的态度：“布什的减税方案虽然带动了美国这波经济复苏，有工作的人和富人的确享受到不少好处，但对穷人的帮助虽然不能说是完全没有，也只能说是不如富人的获益高，”盖立森分析道，“美国一般的工薪族（working class），也就是那些做初级工作、拿最低工资、老老实实缴税的人，实在没有从布什的减税案得到太大益处。”
盖立森总结说：“美国许多城市并没有享受到美国经济好转所带来的积极价值，但华盛顿特区一直以来受到联邦政府的庇佑，它贫富悬殊的情况仍然如此严重，确实值得深入的研究和检讨。”
Topic 2（选题二）
有时候你可能知道得太多了。健康人群癌症筛查的目的是发现可治疗的小肿瘤，这似乎是值得称赞的，而事实常常也是如此。不过，有时它会导致不必要的治疗。机体自身有一套阻止小肿瘤生长的机制，对那些可用自身机制加以抑制的肿瘤采取治疗非但无益，反而可能造成危害。
以肺癌为例。纽约纪念斯隆-凯特灵癌症研究中心（Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Centre）的彼得?巴赫（Peter Bach）及其同事在本周出版的《美国医学会杂志》（Journal of the American Medical Association）上发表的一项报告中指出，用于症状出现前肺部肿瘤检测的计算机断层扫描技术（computed tomography，CT）虽深受吹捧，但它可能根本无法降低肺癌死亡率，相反会“雪上加霜”。
有关CT用于肺癌筛查的报道始于去年。康奈尔大学克劳迪娅?赫恩施克（Claudia Henschke）和她的同事报道，患者经CT早期诊断为肺癌后，长期生存率显著提高。这一报道轰动一时。她的研究发现，88%的确诊患者10年后仍有望存活。巴赫在另一研究中也发现了类似结果：94%诊断为早期肺癌的患者生存期可达4年。
尽管如此，仅凭生存期的统计数据是无法回答这样一个基本问题的：“与什么相比？”早期诊断无疑可延长生存期，但早期诊断后患者预后必须良好，否则早期诊断就几乎无任何价值。 因此，巴赫对自己的数据进行了更为彻底的分析。他根据非CT检出肺癌的研究结果建立了统计学模型，并假设其研究个体未接受CT筛查，从而对这些个体的预后进行了评估，结果令人失望。
筛查确实可以发现更多的肿瘤病例。五年中，3200人有144人检出肺癌，而预期值仅为44例。不过，尽管这些人得到早期诊断，但发展为晚期肺癌的人数并未减少，死亡人数也无显
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著下降（预期为39人，实际有38人）。考虑到早期诊断可使行肿瘤切除术的人数增加十倍（预期为11人，实际达109人），而这种手术风险又大（术后死亡率5%，此外还有20~40%的患者出现严重并发症），如此一来就有可能造成更大危害。 Section 2: 汉译英 Part A
Over the past 25 years, China has been firmly pressing ahead with the implementation of the reform program and the initiative of opening up to the outside world. With the establishment of a preliminary socialist market economy, and the nation’s economy attaining an outward-oriented perspective, the productive forces and the comprehensive national competence have been on the rising curve constantly. And various social undertakings have been developing in full swing. The living standard of the Chinese people as a whole has undergone a historical leap from a subsistence level to the level of moderate prosperity.
In the 25 years between 1978 and 2003, the annual growth rate of China's economy was running at an average of 9.4 percent, with its GDP jumping from 147.3 billion US dollars to over 1.4 trillion US dollars.
25 years ago, China’s foreign trade value and foreign exchange reserves each stood at 20.6 billion and 167 million in US dollars, but last year they shot up to 851.2 billion US dollars and 403.3 billion US dollars respectively. China has now become the sixth largest economy and the fourth largest trader in the world.
The tremendous changes in China are attributed to the fact that we have adhered to the path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics and persevered in our reform and opening endeavors, which brought into full play the Chinese people's initiative, enthusiasm and creativeness.
Though China has scored impressive achievements in its development, we must not lose sight of our problems: overpopulation, a weak economic foundation, underdeveloped productivity, highly uneven development, and the fairly sharp contradictions between the country's ecological environment and natural resources on the one hand and its economic and social development on the other.
China's per capita GDP, though reaching the record high of 1,000 US dollars last year, still ranks well behind the 100th place in the world. To realize China's modernization program and offer all the Chinese people a prosperous life there is yet an uphill battle to fight.
We have already set our vision for the first 20 years of this century, which involves the building of a moderately prosperous society of a higher standard in an all-round way for the benefit of well over one billion Chinese people. By 2020 the GDP will be quadrupled from the figure of 2000 to 4 trillion US dollars, with the per capita level averaging at 3,000 US dollars. By then the nation will be immersed in an ambience of greater social harmony with an improved quality of life for the people, featuring a more developed economy, more sound democracy, more thriving culture and more advanced science and education.
2006年11月英语二级《笔译实务》试题
Section 1: English-Chinese Translation（英译汉） Part A Compulsory Translation（必译题）
This week and next, governments, international agencies and nongovernmental organizations are gathering in Mexico City at the World Water Forum to discuss the legacy of global Mulhollandism in water - and to chart a new course.
They could hardly have chosen a better location. Water is being pumped out of the aquifer on which Mexico City stands at twice the rate of replenishment. The result: the city is subsiding at the rate of
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about half a meter every decade. You can see the consequences in the cracked cathedrals, the tilting Palace of Arts and the broken water and sewerage pipes.
Every region of the world has its own variant of the water crisis story. The mining of groundwaters for irrigation has lowered the water table in parts of India and Pakistan by 30 meters in the past three decades. As water goes down, the cost of pumping goes up, undermining the livelihoods of poor farmers.
What is driving the global water crisis? Physical availability is part of the problem. Unlike oil or coal, water is an infinitely renewable resource, but it is available in a finite quantity. With water use increasing at twice the rate of population growth, the amount available per person is shrinking - especially in some of the poorest countries.
Challenging as physical scarcity may be in some countries, the real problems in water go deeper. The 20th-century model for water management was based on a simple idea: that water is an infinitely available free resource to be exploited, dammed or diverted without reference to scarcity or sustainability.
Across the world, water-based ecological systems - rivers, lakes and watersheds - have been taken beyond the frontiers of ecological sustainability by policy makers who have turned a blind eye to the consequences of over- exploitation.
We need a new model of water management for the 21st century. What does that mean? For starters, we have to stop using water like there\levels that do not destroy our environment. The buzz- phrase at the Mexico Water forum is \it means is that governments need to manage the private demand of different users and manage this precious resource in the public interest. Part B Optional Translation（二选一题） Topic 1 （选题一）
John Kenneth Galbraith, the iconoclastic economist, teacher and diplomat, died Saturday at a hospital in Cambridge, Massachusetts。He was 97.
Mr. Galbraith was one of the most widely read authors in the history of economics; among his 33 books was \its values. He wrote fluidly, even on complex topics, and many of his compelling phrases — among them \— became part of the language.
An imposing presence, lanky and angular at 6 feet 8 inches tall, Mr. Galbraith was consulted frequently by national leaders, and he gave advice freely, though it may have been ignored as often as it was taken. Mr. Galbraith clearly preferred taking issue with the conventional wisdom he distrusted.
Mr. Galbraith, a revered lecturer for generations of Harvard students, nonetheless always commanded attention.
From the 1930\influencing both the direction of the Democratic Party and the thinking of its leaders.
He tutored Adlai E. Stevenson, the Democratic nominee for president in 1952 and 1956, on Keynesian economics. He advised President John F. Kennedy (often over lobster stew at the Locke-Ober restaurant in their beloved Boston) and served as his ambassador to India.
Though he eventually broke with President Lyndon B. Johnson over the war in Vietnam, he helped conceive of Mr. Johnson\Great Society program and wrote a major presidential address that outlined its purposes. In 1968, pursuing his opposition to the war, he helped Senator Eugene J. McCarthy seek the Democratic nomination for president.
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In the course of his long career, he undertook a number of government assignments, including the organization of price controls in World War II and speechwriting for Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson.
He drew on his experiences in government to write three satirical novels. He took on the Harvard economics department with \among others, a certain outspoken character who bore no small resemblance to himself.
At his death, Mr. Galbraith was the emeritus professor of economics at Harvard, where he had taught for most of his career. A popular lecturer, he treated economics as an aspect of society and culture rather than as an arcane discipline of numbers. Topic 2（选题二）
LAST week, Indonesia announced its 43rd human death from bird flu. It has now recorded more fatalities than any other nation, and in stark contrast to all other countries its death toll is climbing regularly. It looks as though things will get worse before they get better.
The Indonesian government claims to be committed to fighting the disease, caused by the H5N1 virus, but it does not seem to want to spend much of its own money doing so. After the international community pledged $900m in grants and slightly more in very soft loans to combat the spread of bird flu globally and to help nations prepare for a possible human flu pandemic[2], Indonesia put in a request for the full $900m—all of it in grants.
A national bird-flu commission was created in March to co-ordinate the country's response but it has yet to be given a budget. Its chief, meanwhile, has just been given a second full-time job—heading efforts to rebuild the part of Java devastated by an earthquake in May.
Observers say that the available money is being mis-spent, with the focus on humans rather than on animals. The agriculture ministry, for example, is asking for less money for next year than it got this year. This is despite hundreds of thousands of hens dying every month, to say nothing of infected cats, quails, pigs and ducks. Farmers are being compensate at only 2,000 rupiah (21 cents) per bird, well below market price, thereby discouraging them from reporting outbreaks. The country's veterinary surveillance services are inadequate. Pledges to vaccinate hundreds of millions of birds have not been met.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation is starting to establish local disease-control centres to cope with the effects of a virulent mutation, should one occur, but reckons that only one-third of the country will be covered by year's end. A bunch of international do-gooders[4] that is trying to plug some of the gaps is finding it hard to raise money. Section 2: Chinese-English Translation（汉译英） Part A
中国是农业大国，在中国成为发达国家的道路上，农业有着决定性的作用。 中国的农业应该是世界的奇迹，养活了13亿的人口，解决了世界1/5人口的吃饭问题，对中国经济的快速发展起到了坚实的保障作用。特别是始于1978年的改革开放最早从农村开始，使农业得到了进一步的发展，粮食、棉花、油料、糖料、肉类、水产品等产量均列世界第一位。中国农产品由极度短缺变为基本供给平衡，部分品种有余。但今天农村却不是改革开放的最大受益者，农业仍然处于传统农业向现代农业转变的发展阶段。
在中国， 70%左右的人口仍然要依靠这个传统的农业产业提供生存保障，近50%的社会劳动人口仍然只能从农业中得到就业机会。农业生产产值占整个国民生产总值的比率在15%左右。 因此农业的现代化在国家的整个现代化进程中，占有举足轻重的地位。“实现农业的现代化”，这是中国政府一直在坚持的农业发展方向。 Part B
维护世界和平，促进共同发展，谋求合作共赢，是各国人民的共同愿望，也是不可抗拒的当
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