3月上海高级口译考试真题及答案(阅读)

3

月上海高级口译考试真题及答案（阅读）

上半场阅读理解第一篇：

本文选择《经济学人》杂志

2013

年

9

月

23

日。译文来自网络。

原文链接：

een-thirties,

when

companies

were

first

required

to

reveal

those

figures.

More

recently,

rules

have

made

companies

detail

the

size

and

the

structure

of

compensation

packages

and

have

enforced

transparency

about

the

kinds

of

comparisons they rely on to determine salaries. The business press, meanwhile, now

rigorously tracks executive pay. The result is that shareholders today know far more

about

C.E.O.

compensation

than

ever

before.

There

’

s

only

one

problem:

even

as

companies are disclosing more and more, executive pay keeps going up and up.

这一段开头黑体部分为我们提示了一个关键字：

disclosure.

由此可以看出本文

的话题 是从收入差距说开去，转向

CEO

的收入披露机制。

This isn

’

t a coincidence: the drive for transparency has actually helped fuel the

spiralling salaries. For one thing, it gives executives a good idea of how much they can

get away with asking for. A more crucial reason, though, has to do with the way boards

of directors set salaries. As the corporate- governance experts Charles Elson and Craig

Ferrere

write

in

a

recent

paper,

boards

at

most

companies

use

what

’

s

called

“peer

benchmarking.”

They

look

at

the

C.E.O.

salaries

at

peer

-group

firms,

and

then

peg

their

C.E.O.

’

s

pay

to

the

fiftieth,

seventy-fifth,

or

ninetieth

percentile

of

the

peer

group

—

never lower. This leads

to the

so- called Lake Wobegon effect: every C.E.O.

gets treated as above average. With all the other companies following the same process,

salaries

ratchet

inexorably

higher.

“Relying

on

peer

-group

comparisons,

the

way

boards do, mathematically guarantees that pay is going to go up,” Elson told me.

本段讲到越是披露高管们的收入，他们就越能要求更高的收入。

On top of this, peer-group comparisons aren

’

t always honest: boards can be too

cozy

with

C.E.O.s

and

may

tweak

the

comparisons

to

justify

overpaying.

A

recent

study by the labor economist Ron Laschever shows that boards tend to include as peers

companies that are bigger than they are and that pay their C.E.O.s more. The system is

also skewed by so-

called “leapfroggers,” the few C.E.O.s

in a given year who, whether

by innate brilliance or by dumb luck, end up earning astronomical salaries. Those big

paydays reset the baseline expectations for everyone else.

段首句是主题句：高管们可能还会想方设法隐瞒自己高增长的 收入。

This isn

’

t just an American problem. Elson notes that, when Canada toughened its

disclosure

requirements,

executive

salaries

there

rose

sharply,

and

German

studies

have found something similar. Nor is it primarily a case of boards being helplessly in

thrall to a company

’

s executives. Boards are far more independent of management

than

they

used

to

be,

and

it

’

s

notable

that

a

C.E.O.

hired

from

outside

a

company

—

who

therefore

has

no

influence

over

the

board

—

typically

gets

twenty

to

twenty-five per cent more than an inside candidate. The real issues are subtler, though

no less insidious. Some boards, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, remain

convinced

of

what

Elson

calls

“superstar

theory”:

they

th

ink

that

C.E.O.s

can

work

their magic anywhere, and must be overpaid to stay. In addition, Elson said, “if you

pay below average, it makes it look as if you

’

d hired a below-average C.E.O., and

what board wants that?”

这个问题并不局限于美国，而是国际化的。

Transparent pricing has perverse effects in other fields. In a host of recent cases,

public disclosure of the prices that hospitals charge for various procedures has ended

up driving prices up rather than down. And the psychological causes in both situations

seem similar. We tend to be uneasy about bargaining in situations where the stakes are

very high: do you want the guy doing your neurosurgery, or running your company, to

be offering discounts? Better, in the event that something goes wrong, to be able to tell

yourself that you spent all you could. And overspending is always easier when you

’

re

spending someone else

’

s money. Corporate board members are disbursing shareholder

funds; most patients have insurance to foot the bill.

收入披露在其他领域中也会引起一系列不良反应。

Sunlight is supposed to be the best disinfectant. But there

’

s something na

瘀攀

about

the

new

S.E.C.

rule,

which

presumes

that

full

disclosure

will

embarrass

companies enough

to restrain executive pay. As Elson told me, “People who can ask to

be paid a hundred million dollars are beyond embarrassment.” More important, as long

as the system for setting pay is broken, more disclosure makes things worse instead of

better. We don

’

t need more information. We need boards of directors to step up and set

pay themselves, instead of outsourcing the job to their peers. The rest of us don

’

t get

to live in Lake Wobegon. C.E.O.s shouldn

’

t, either.

本文得 出的结论是，

SEC

的规则的潜台词是，完全披露收入将会是各 大公司

不愿提高高管的薪水。

上半场阅读理解第三篇：

本文讲述全球人口增长问题。文章第一段提出了

Sir David Attenborough

的悲

观看法：

100

年后的世界会出现各种问题，

所以我们 今天的人类一定要做好准备，

尽力逆转。第二段用数字列举了人口增长的趋势。第三、四 两段讨论了解决人口

增长问题的

conventioanal wisdom.

第五段提出非洲的新生儿死亡率大幅增加。

第

六段中，作者根据以上内容提出，世界人口停止增长的日期应该早于

2070

年。

而且无论如何，读者无需为人口增长过快担忧 。第七段分析了耕地和动物分布状

况，同样得出了无需杞人忧天的结论。最后一段赞扬了 非洲的进步会为人类生存

环境的改善加分。

题目解析：

第一题问作者为什么要提出

Sir David Attenborough

的悲观看法。

第二题围绕

birth control

的种种细节。

第三题要求考生解释词汇：

as night follows day

的意思。

第四题是新问法：四个说法中哪一 个与另外三个不同

?

相当于

NOT

TRUE

体

型。

第五题主旨题

上半场阅读理解第四篇：

本文开头便指出

Help to buy

政策等同于

help to vote

，由此可知，该篇文章属于

政治类。本文主人公

George Osborne

提出一项

help to buy