-
1997
年考研阅读真题翻译——
BY
李剑（新东方阅读老师）
Text 1
It was 3:45 in the
morning when the vote was finally taken. After six
months of arguing and
final 16 hours of
hot parliamentary debates, Australia’s Northern
Territory became the first
legal
authority in the world to allow doctors to take
the lives of incurably ill patients who
wish to die. The measure passed by the
convincing vote of 15 to 10. Almost immediately
word
flashed
on
the
Internet
and
was
picked
up,
half
a
world
away,
by
John
Hofsess,
executive
director of th
e
Right to Die Society of Canada. He
sent it on
via
the
group’s
on-
line service, Death NET.
Says Hofsess: “We posted bulletins all day long,
because of
course this isn’t just
something that happened in Australia. It’s world
history.”
凌晨
3
点
45
分是最后的投
票表决。经过半年的争辩和最后
16
个小时的国会激烈辩论，澳
大利亚北部地区成为世界上第一个允许医生根据绝症病人的个人意愿来结束其生命的合法
地区。这一法案是以
15
票对
10
票的无可争议的结果通过的。该消息几乎同时出现在互联
网上。身处地球另一端的加拿大死亡权利协会执行主席
John Hofs
ess
在看到该消息后便通
过协会的在线服务网站“死亡之网”
发布了公告。他说：
“我们这一整天都在发布公告，因
为这件事
的意义不仅仅是澳大利亚发生的事情，而是世界的历史
”
The full import may take a
while to sink in. The NT Rights of the Terminally
Ill law has left
physicians and
citizens alike trying to deal with its moral and
practical implications. Some
have
breathed
sighs
of
relief,
others,
including
churches,
right-to-life
groups
and
the
Australian Medical Association,
bitterly attacked the bill and the haste of its
passage. But
the tide is unlikely to
turn back. In Australia
——
where an aging population, life-extending
technology and changing community
attitudes have all played their part
——
other states
are going to consider making a similar
law to deal with euthanasia. In the US and Canada,
where
the
right-
to-die
movement
is
gathering
strength,
observers
are
waiting
for
the
dominoes to start falling.
这一法案的深刻意义要得到人们的深刻理解可能还需要一段时间。
澳北州通过的晚期病人权
益法使得无论是内科医生还是普通市民都同样地力图从道义和
实际意义两方面来看待这一
问题。
有一些人感到如释重负，
而另一些人，
包括教会，
生命权利组织以及
澳大利亚医学会
成员都对这一决议进行了猛烈的抨击，
并批评如
此草率地通过决议。
但是安乐死这一潮流已
无法逆转。
在澳大利亚，
人口老龄化，
延长寿命技术和公众
态度的变化都发挥着各自的作用。
其他州也将考虑制定类似的法律法规来处理安乐死问题
。
在美国和加拿大，
死亡权利运动正
在
积蓄力量，观望者们正在等待多米诺骨牌效应。
Under the new
Northern T
erritory law, an adult
patient can request death
——
probably by
a deadly injection or pill
——
to put an end to
suffering. The patient must be diagnosed as
terminally ill by two doctors. After a
“cooling off” period of seven days, the patient
can sign
a certificate of request.
After 48 hours the wish for death can be met. For
Lloyd Nickson, a
54-year-old Darwin
resident suffering from lung cancer, the NT Rights
of Terminally Ill law
means he can get
on with living without the haunting fear of his
suffering: a terrifying death
fro
m his breathing
condition. “I’m not afraid of dying from a
spiritual point of view, but what
I was
afraid of was how I’d go, because I’ve watched
people die in the hospital fighting for
oxygen and clawing at their masks,” he
says.
根据北部地区所通过的
这项新法案，
成年病人可以要求安乐死
——
可以是通过注射致死药
剂或服用致死药片
——
来结束痛苦。
< br>但此前病人必须经由两名医生诊断为晚期病人，
然后
病人
再需经过
7
天的“冷静思考期”
，才可
在申请书上签字。
48
小时后，病人安乐死的愿望
才会得到满足。对于居住在
Darwin
市、现年
54
岁的肺癌患者
Lloyd
Nickson
来说，这个
法律意味着他可以
平静地生活下去而无须整天惧怕即将来临的痛苦：
这是由呼吸困难而产生
的令人痛苦的死亡。
“从思想上说，我现在并不害怕死，但我原来怕的是怎样死
去，
”他说，
“因为我在医院看到过病人挣扎着呼吸氧气，用手
抓挠氧气面罩时的情景。
”
Text 2
A report consistently
brought back by visitors to the US is how
friendly, courteous, and
helpful most
Americans were to them. To be fair, this
observation is also frequently made
of
Canada and Canadians, and should best be
considered North American. There are, of
course, exceptions. Small-minded
officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi
drivers are
hardly unknown in the US.
Yet it is an observation made so frequently that
it deserves
comment.
去过美国的人经常带回报告说，
大多数美国人对他们非常友善、
好客、
且他们都很乐于助人。
公正地说，
人们对加拿大和加拿大人也有这样的评论，
因而，
应当认为这是北美一个普遍的
现象。
当然也有例外。在美国，<
/p>
心胸狭隘的官员，
举止粗鲁的招待和缺乏教养的出租车司机
也并非罕见。
尽管有不如意的地方，
但因为人
们经过观察常常得出美国人好客的意见，
因而
这也就值得讨论一
番了。
For a long period of time and in many
parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome
break
in
an
otherwise
dull
existence.
Dullness
and
loneliness
were
common
problems
of
the
families
who
generally
lived
distant
from
one
another.
Strangers
and
travelers
were
welcome sources of
diversion, and brought news of the outside world.
过去很长的一段时间内，
在美国很多
地方，
旅行者的到来因暂时打破了本地人原本的单调生
活而受人
欢迎。那个时候，人们的住处彼此非常遥远，沉闷、孤独是是一个普遍的问题。因
此陌生
人和旅行者很受欢迎，
他们给当地人带来了娱乐消遣，
同时还带
来了外面世界的消息。
The
harsh
realities
of
the
frontier
also
shaped
this
tradition
of
hospitality.
Someone
traveling alone, if hungry, injured, or
ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the
nearest
cabin or settlement. It was not
a matter of choice for the traveler or merely a
charitable
impulse on the part of the
settlers. It reflected the harshness of daily
life: if you didn’t take
in the
stranger and take care of him, there was no one
else who would. And someday,
remember,
you might be in the same situation.
拓荒者的严酷生活现实也进一步促成了这一好客的传统。
人们在独自
旅行时，
如果缺少食物、
受伤或生病，
通常只能向附近的小屋或村落求助。
因而对于旅行者来说，
这不
是一个选择的
问题；
而对当地居民来说，
这也并非是想要行善的一时冲动。
这种情况反映了日常生活的严
峻性：
如果你不收留他，
那他便无处可以落脚和求助了。
请记住，
说不定有一天你也可能陷
入相同的
遭遇。
Today
there
are
many
charitable
organizations
which
specialize
in
helping
the
weary
traveler.
Yet,
the
old
tradition
of
hospitality
to
strangers
is
still
very
strong
in
the
US,
especially
in
the
smaller
cities
and
towns
away
from
the
busy
tourist
trails.
“I
was
just
traveling through, got talking with
this American, and pretty soon he invited me home
for
dinner --
amazing.” Such
observations reported by visitors to the US are
not uncommon,
but
are
not
always
understood
properly.
The
casual
friendliness
of
many
Americans
should
be
interpreted
neither
as
superficial
nor
as
artificial,
but
as
the
result
of
a
historically
developed cultural tradition.
< br>现在有很多慈善组织专门致力于帮助疲惫不堪的旅行者。
不过，
< br>热情接待陌生人的传统在美
国仍然非常流行，尤其是在远离旅游热线的小城镇。<
/p>
“我只是随便走了一圈，和这个美国人
聊了聊。没过多久，他就请
我到他家吃饭——这真是不可思议。
”来美国的旅客中碰到这种
事件的还不少，
但他们并非对这个现象都能正确理解。
很多美国
人在不经意间表现出的友好
不应被看做是表面应酬或故作姿态，而应该视为是在历史发展
中形成的一种文化传统。
As
is
true
of
any
developed
society,
in
America
a
complex
set
of
cultural
signals,
assumptions,
and
conventions
underlies
all
social
interrelationships.
And,
of
course,
speaking a language does not
necessarily mean that someone understands social
and
cultural
patterns.
Visitors
who
fail
to
“translate”
cultural
meanings
properly
often
draw
wrong conclusions. For
example, when an American uses the word “friend,”
the cultural
implications of
the word may be quite different from
those it has in the visitor’s language
and
culture.
It
takes
more
than
a
brief
encounter
on
a
bus
to
distinguish
between
courteous
convention
and
individual
interest.
Yet,
being
friendly
is
a
virtue
that
many
Americans value highly and expect from
both neighbors and strangers.
< br>同任何发达国家一样，
美国人所有的社会交往的基础是一整套复杂的文化特征，<
/p>
信念和习俗。
当然，
会讲一种语言并不意
味着就理解该语言的社会和文化模式。
不能正确
“诠释”文化含
义的旅行者经常得出错误的结论。例如，
美国人嘴里所说的“朋
友”一词所包含的文化内涵
可能与旅行者母语和文化中的“朋友”涵义大相径庭。要想分
清称呼“朋友”是出于好客的
文化习俗还是出于个人兴趣，
只靠
在公共汽车上的萍水相逢是不够的。
然而，
友好是很多美
国人推崇备至的美德，同时他们也希望自己的邻居和陌生人也能够如此。
Text 3
Technically, any substance other than
food that alters our bodily or mental functioning
is a
drug. Many people mistakenly
believe the term drug refers only to some sort of
medicine
or an illegal chemical taken
by drug addicts. They don’t realize
that familiar substances
such as
alcohol and tobacco are also drugs. This is why
the more neutral term substance
is
now
used
by
many
physicians
and
psychologists.
The
phrase
“substance
abuse”
is