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2010
年考研英语阅读理解真题
Text 1
The Amateur as Critic
Of all the changes that have taken
place in English-language newspapers during the
past quarter-century, perhaps the most
far-reaching has been the inexorable decline in
the scope and seriousness of their arts
coverage.
在过去的
25
年
英语报纸所发生的变化中，影响最深远的可能就是它们对艺术方
面的报道在范围上毫无疑
问的缩小了，而且这些报道的严肃程度也绝对降低了。
It
is difficult to the point of impossibility for the
average reader under the age of forty
to
imagine
a
time
when
high-
quality
arts
criticism
could
be
found
in
most
big-city
newspapers.
对于年龄低于
40
< br>岁的普通读者来讲，
让他们想象一下当年可以在许多大城市报
纸上读到精品的文艺评论简直几乎是天方夜谭。
Yet
a considerable number of the most significant
collections of criticism published in
the 20th century consisted in large
part of newspaper reviews.
然而，在
< br>20
世纪出版的最重要的文艺评论集中，人们读到的大部分评论文章都
是从报纸上收集而来。
To read
such books today is to marvel at the fact that
their learned contents were once
deemed
suitable for publication in general-circulation
dailies.
现在，
如果读到这些集子，
人们肯定会惊诧，
当年这般渊博深奥的内容竟然被认
为
适合发表在大众日报中。
We
are
even
farther
removed
from
the
unfocused
newspaper
reviews
published
in
England between the turn
of the 20th century and the eve of World War II,
at a time
when newsprint was dirt-cheap
and stylish arts criticism was considered an
ornament
to the publications in which
it appeared.
从
20
世纪早期到二战以前，当时的英国报纸上的评论主题广泛，包罗万象，我
们现在离此类报纸评论越来越远。
当时的报纸极其便宜，
人们把高雅时尚的文艺
批评当作是所刊登报纸的一个亮点。
In those far-off days, it was taken for
granted that the critics of major papers would
write in detail and at length about the
events they covered.
在那些遥远的年代，
各大报刊的评论家们都会不遗余力地详尽报道他们所报道的
事情，这在当时被视为是
理所当然的事情。
Theirs
was
a
serious
business,
and
even
those
reviewers
who
wore
their
learning
lightly, like
George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be
trusted to know what
they were about. <
/p>
他们的写作是件严肃的事情，
人们相信：
甚至那些博学低调不喜欢炫耀的评论家，
比如
George Bernard Shaw
和
Ernest
Newman
也知道自己在做什么。
These men believed in journalism as a
calling, and were proud to be published in the
daily press.
这些批评家们相信报刊评论是一项
职业，并且对于他们的文章能够在报纸
上发
表感到很自豪。
“
So, few authors have brains
enough or literary gift enough to keep their own
end up
in
journalism
,”
Newman wrote, “that I am tempted to
define 'journalism' as 'a term of
contempt applied by writers who are not
read to writers who are. '”
Newman
曾写道，
鉴于几乎没有作家能拥有足够的智慧或文学天赋以保证他们
在新闻报纸写作中
站稳脚跟，我倾向于把
'
新闻写作
'<
/p>
定义为不受读者欢迎的作家
用来嘲讽受读者欢迎的作家的一个
'
轻蔑之词
'
Unfortunately, these critics are
virtually forgotten.
不幸的是，这些批评家们现在实际上已被人们遗忘。
Neville
Cardus,
who
wrote
for
the
Manchester
Guardian
from
1917
until
shortly
before his death in
1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on
the game of
cricket.
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