专八改错真题02年-12年

2012年

The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely. The argument has been going since at least the first (1) ______ century B.C. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, many writers

fav ored certain kind of “free” translation: the spirit, not the letter; the(2) _______ sense not the word; the message rather the form; the matter not (3) _______

the manner. This is the often revolutionary slogan of writers who (4) _______ wanted the truth to be read and understood. Then in the turn of 19th(5) _______ century, when the study of cultural anthropology suggested that

the linguistic barriers were insuperable and that the language (6) _______ was entirely the product of culture, the view translation was impossible (7) _______ gained some currency, and with it that, if was attempted at all, it must be as (8) _______ literal as possible. This view culminated the statement of the (9) _______ extreme “literalists” Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nobokov.

The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, the

nature of the readership, the type of the text, was not discussed. Too

often, writer, translator and reader were implicitly identified with

each other. Now, the context has changed, and the basic problem remains. (10) _______ 2011年

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew

that when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about 1__________ seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so

with the conscience that I was outraging my true nature and that 2___________ soon or later I should have to settle down and write books. 3___________

I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years 4__________

on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For

this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed

disagreeing mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my 5___________ schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and

holding conversations with imaginative persons, and I think from 6_________

the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of 7________ being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words

and a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created 8________

a sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure 9________

in everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious — i.e. seriously 10________ intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and

boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first

poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.

2010年

So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally

complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is,

every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say 1_____________ the things their speakers want to say. 2_____________ There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive 3_____________ peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all

groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or

psychology or the cultivation of rice . Whereas this is not the 4_____________ fault of their language. The Eskimos , it is said, can speak about

snow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in 5_____________ English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of those

sometimes miscalled 'primitive') is inherently more precise and

subtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect 6_____________ in English, a show of unexpected 'primitiveness'. The position is

simply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar 7____________ environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms 8____________ for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in which

Englishwas habitually used made such distinction as important. 9_____________ Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language

could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture

or cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos' life. 10____________

09年

The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passes

from one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference (1)_______ between school lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse,

learnt in early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the (2)__________ little listener has grown up, and has children of their own, or even (3)__________ grandchildren. The period between learning a nursery rhyme and

transmitting it may be something from twenty to seventy years. With (4)________ the playground lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed (5)________ on within the very hour it is learnt; and in the general, it passes ( 6)__________ between children of the same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon

for the difference in age between playmates to be more than five

years. If ,therefore, a playground rhyme can be shown to have been

currently for a hundred years, or even just for fifty, it follows that it (7)_______ has been retransmitted over and over; very possibly it has passed (8)_______ along a chain of two or three hundred young hearers and tellers, and

the wonder is that it remains live after so much handling, (9)_______ to let alone that it bears resemblance to the (10)_______

2008年

The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is a

very natural one, and in result language has played a prominent ____1____

part in national moves. Men have often felt the need to cultivate ____2____

a given language to show that they are distinctive from another ____3____

race whose hegemony they resent. At the time the United States ____4____

split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals that

independence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a ____5____ different language from those of Britain. There was even one ____6____ proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew. Others favoured

the adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things would

certainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English ____7____ and made the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyone ____8____ knows, the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory

solution of carrying with the same language as before. ____9____ Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown the world ____10____ that political independence and national identity can be complete

without sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a common

language.

07年

From what has been said, it must be clear that no one can

make very positive statements about how language originated.

There is no material in any language today and in the earliest 1__________ records of ancient languages show us language in a new and 2__________ emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language 3_________ originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the 4__________ necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remote

tribes, no ancient records, providing evidence of

a language with a large proportion of such cries5__________ than we find in English. It is true that the absence

of such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in6__________ other grounds too the theory is not very attractive.

People of all races and languages make rather similar

noises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that 7___________ such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmen

and Malaysians whose languages are utterly different,

serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference 8___________ between these noises and language proper. We may

say that the cries of pain or chortles of amusement

are largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, 9____________ whereas language proper does not consist of signs

but of these that have to be learnt and that are 10___________

wholly conventional.

2006年

We use language primarily as a means of communication with

other human beings. Each of us shares with the community in which we

live a store of words and meanings as well as agreeing conventions as 1________ to the way in which words should be arranged to convey a particular 2_______ message: the English speaker has in his disposal vocabulary and a 3_______ set of grammatical rules which enables him to communicate his 4_______ thoughts and feelings, in a variety of styles, to the other English 5_______ speakers. His vocabulary, in particular, both that which he uses active-

ly and that which he recognises, increases in size as he grows

old as a result of education and experience. 6________ But, whether the language store is relatively small or large, the system

remains no more than a psychological reality for the individual, unless

he has a means of expressing it in terms able to be seen by another 7_________ member of his linguistic community; he bas to give the system a

concrete transmission form. We take it for granted the two most 8__________ common forms of transmission-by means of sounds produced by our

vocal organs (speech) or by visual signs (writing). And these are 9__________ among most striking of human achievements. 10__________

2005年

The University as Busines

A number of colleges and universities have announced steep

tuition increases for next year much steeper than the current,

very low rate of inflation. They say the increases are needed because

of a loss in value of university endowments heavily investing in common 1 ______ stock. I am skeptical. A business firm chooses the price that maximizes

its net revenues, irrespective fluctuations in income; and increasingly the 2 ______ outlook of universities in the United States is indistinguishable from those of 3 _____ business firms. The rise in tuitions may reflect the fact economic uncertainty 4_____ increases the demand for education. The biggest cost of being

in the school is foregoing income from a job (this is primarily a factor in 5 ______ graduate and professional-school tuition); the poor one's job prospects, 6 _______ the more sense it makes to reallocate time from the job market to education,

in order to make oneself more marketable.

The ways which universities make themselves attractive to students 7 ______ include soft majors, student evaluations of teachers, giving students

a governance role, and eliminate required courses. 8 _________ Sky-high tuitions have caused universities to regard their students as

customers. Just as business firms sometimes collude to shorten the 9 ______ rigors of competition, universities collude to minimize the cost to them of the

athletes whom they recruit in order to stimulate alumni donations, so the best

athletes now often bypass higher education in order to obtain salaries earlier

from professional teams. And until they were stopped by the antitrust authorities,

the Ivy League schools colluded to limit competition for the best students, by

agreeing not to award scholarships on the basis of merit rather than purely

of need-just like business firms agreeing not to give discounts on their best 10 ______ customer.

2004改错

One of the most important non-legislative functions of the U.S Congress

is the power to investigate. This power is usually delegated to committees - either standing committees, special committees set for a specific (1) ______ purpose, or joint committees consisted of members of both houses. (2)______ Investigations are held to gather information on the need for

future legislation, to test the effectiveness of laws already passed,

to inquire into the qualifications and performance of members and

officials of the other branches, and in rare occasions, to lay the (3)______ groundwork for impeachment proceedings. Frequently, committees

rely outside experts to assist in conducting investigative hearings (4)______ and to make out detailed studies of issues. (5)______ There are important corollaries to the investigative power. One

is the power to publicize investigations and its results. Most (6)______ committee hearings are open to public and are reported (7)______ widely in the mass media. Congressional investigations

nevertheless represent one important tool available to lawmakers (8)______ to inform the citizenry and to arouse public interests in national issues. (9)________ Congressional committees also have the power to compel

testimony from unwilling witnesses, and to cite for contempt

of Congress witnesses who refuse to testify and for perjury of

these who give false testimony. (10)______ 2003改错

Demographic indicators show that Americans in the postwar

period were more eager than ever to establish families. They quickly

brought down the age at marriage for both men and women and brought

the birth rate to a twentieth century height after more than a hundred (1)______ years of a steady decline, produc ing the “baby boom.” These young (2)______ adults established a trend of early marriage and relatively large

families that went for more than two decades and caused a major (3)______ but temporary reversal of long-term demographic patterns. From

the 1940s through the early 1960s, Americans married at a high rate (4)______ and at a younger age than their Europe counterparts. (5)______ Less noted but equally more significant, the men and women who (6)_______ formed families between 1940 and 1960 nevertheless reduced the (7)________ divorce rate after a postwar peak; their marriages remained intact to

a greater extent than did that of couples who married in earlier as well (8)________ as later decades. Since the United States maintained its dubious (9)_________ distinction of having the highest divorce rate in the world, the

temporary decline in divorce did not occur in the same extent in (10)________ Europe. Contrary to fears of the experts, the role of breadwinner and homemaker was not abandoned.

2002改错

There are great impediments to the general use of a standard in pronunciation

comparable to that existing in spelling (orthography). One is the fact that

pronunciation is lear nt…naturally? and unconsciously, and orthography is learnt 1._____ deliberately and consciously. Large numbers of us, in fact, remain throughout our lives quite unconscious with what our speech sounds 2______ like when we speak out, and it often comes as a shock when 3______

we firstly hear a recording of ourselves. It is not a voice we recognize at once, 4_______ whereas our own handwriting is something which we almost always know. 5_____

We begin the …natural? learning of pronunciation long before we start learning

to read or write, and in our early years we went on unconsciously 6._____ imitating and practicing the pronunciation of those around us

for many more hours per every day than we ever have to spend 7._____ learning even our difficult English spelling. This is …natural?, 8._____ therefore, that our speech-sounds should be those of our immediate circle;

after all, as we have seen, speech operates as a means of holding a community 9._____ and giving a sense of' belonging'. We learn quite early to recognize a …stranger?,someone who speaks with an accent of a different community-perhaps only a few miles far. 10._______