考研英语翻译真题解析

　　绝大多数同学在翻译部分得不到应得的分数的原因主要有两点：首先、核心单词或语法不认识、对句子理解造成障碍，第二、基本能读懂的句子又不加以复习，提高译文质量。距离考研还有不到一个月的时间，平时复习肯定要把主要精力放在改进第二点，整体策略是：简单的精益求精、较难的尽力而为。
　　It wasn’t until after my retirement that I had the time to read scientific papers in medical journals with anything like close attention. Until then, I had, like most doctors, read the authors’ conclusions and assumed that they bore some necessary relation to what had gone before. I had also naively assumed that the editors had done their job and checked the intellectual coherence and probity of the contents of their journals.
　　It was only after I started to write a weekly column about the medical journals, and began to read scientific papers from beginning to end, that I realised just how bad — inaccurate, misleading, sloppy, illogical — much of the medical literature, even in the best journals, frequently was. My discovery pleased and reassured me in a way: for it showed me that, even in advancing age, I was still capable of being surprised. I came to recognise various signs of a bad paper: the kind of paper that purports to show that people who eat more than one kilo of broccoli a week were 1.17 times more likely than those who eat less to suffer late in life from pernicious anaemia. (1) There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms. pernicious : 恶性的 malignant : 恶性的 benign : 良性的 Why is so much bad science published?
　　A recent paper, titled ‘The Natural Selection of Bad Science’, published on the Royal Society’sopen science website, attempts to answer this intriguing and important question. According to the authors, the problem is not merely that people do bad science, as they have always done, but that our current system of career advancement positively encourages it. They quote an anonymous researcher who said pithily: ‘Poor methods get results.’ What is important is not truth, let alone importance, but publication, which has become almost an end initself. There has been a kind of inflationary process at work: (2) nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago. Never mind the quality, then, count the number. It is at least an objective measure. In addition to the pressure to publish, there is a preference in journals for positive rather than negative results. To prove that factor A has no effect onwhatever outcome B may be important in the sense that it refutes a hypothesis, but it is not half so captivating as that factor Ahas some marginally positive statistical association with outcome B. It may be an elementary principle of statistics that association is not causation, but in practice everyone forgets it. The easiest way to generate positive associations is to do bad science, for example by trawling through a whole lot of data without a prior hypothesis. For example, if you took 100 dietary factors and tried to associate them with flat feet, you would find some of them that were associated with that condition, associations so strong that at first sight they would appear not to have arisen by chance.
　　Once it has been shown that the consumption of, shall we say, red cabbage is associated with flat feet, one of two things can happen: someone will try to reproduce the result, or no one will, in which case it will enter scientific mythology. The penalties for having published results which are not reproducible, and prove before long to be misleading, usually do not cancel out the prestige of having published them in the first place: and therefore it is better, from the career point of view, to publish junk than to publish nothing at all. A long list of publications, all of them valueless, is always impressive. (3) Attempts have been made to control this inflation, for example by trying, when it comes to career advancement, to incorporate somemeasure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s published papers. This is the famed citation index, that is to say the number of times a paper has been quoted else where in the scientific literature, the assumption being that an important paper will be cited more often than one of small account. (4) This would be reasonable enough if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favours. There is an important law of which government bureaucracies would take cognisance if good government were their aim: that once a method of measurement is used to set a target, it becomes so corrupted that what it measures bears no relation to what it is supposed to measure.
　　The authors of the paper quote Donald T Campbell: take cognisance of sth : 察知、注意到 The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor. A further force for corruption is the accelerating overproduction of people with higher degrees compared with the number of opportunities there are to employ them in their field. This increases yet further the pressure to publish, the majority of what is published consequently being of doubtful quality. The authors of the Royal Society paper are not optimistic about the prospect of improving the quality of research: Boiling down an individual’s output to simple, objective metrics, such as number of publications or journal impacts, entails considerable savings in time, energy and ambiguity.
　　Unfortunately, the long-term costs of using simple quantitative metrics to assess researcher merit are likely to be quite great. (5) If we are serious about ensuring that our science is bothmeaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions incentivise that kind of science. In other words, what we need is more emphasis on personal contact and even nepotism in the way careers are advanced: but tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon; lest the daughters of the Philistines rejoice…
　　题目解析
　　(1)There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense in the medical journals which, when taken up by broadcasters and the lay press, generates both health scares and short-lived dietary enthusiasms.
　　考点：there be句型、定语从句、状语从句、词义选择 结构分析：含有定语从句和状语从句的复合句 句子主干为：There is a great deal of this kind of nonsense. 此外，in the medical journals为介词短语作状语修饰主干内容，其中名词 journals 又带有一个由which引导的定语从句，which 指代 nonsense, 而定语从句中又含有一个由when引导的状语从句，从句层层包裹，形成复合句，翻译时注意理清从句间的关系。 参考译文：医学期刊中有很多类似的无稽之谈，这些说法一旦被广播公司和外行新闻媒体报道，就会引发健康恐慌和短暂的饮食热潮。
　　(2)Nowadays anyone applying for a research post has to have published twice the number of papers that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago.
　　考点：分词短语作定语、被动语态、比较结构 结构分析：含有分词结构和定语从句的复合句 句子主干为：nowadays anyone … has to have published twice the number of papers….其中，“applying for a research post”为现在分词短语作定语修饰anyone, “that would have been required for the same post only 10 years ago” 为定语从句修饰 papers, “twice the number of…” 为比较结构。 参考译文：如今，任何申请研究职位的人都必须发表两倍于10年前同一职位所需的论文数量。
　　(3)Attempts have been made to curb this tendency, for example, by trying to incorporate some measure of quality as well as quantity into the assessment of an applicant’s papers.
　　考点：被动语态、插入语、介词短语作状语、词义选择、语序调整 结构分析：本句为主谓结构的简单句 句子主干为：Attempts have been made….其中，“to curb this tendency” 和 “by…” 分别为不定式短语和介词短语作状语修饰句子主干内容，attempt : 尝试、努力，incorporate : 将...包括在内。 参考译文：人们已经做出努力来遏制这种趋势，例如，将质量和数量标准纳入申请者的论文评估中。

　　(4)This would be reasonable if it were not for the fact that scientists can easily arrange to cite themselves in their future publications, or get associates to do so for them in return for similar favours.
　　考点：状语从句、虚拟语气、同位语从句 结构分析：本句为含有状语从句的复合句 主干为：This would be reasonable…;“…that scientists can…” 为 that 引导的同位语从句解释说明fact内容。“arrange to cite ….“ 和”get associates to do so…“ 为动宾结构并列和前面名词 scientists 构成主谓宾结构，associate 的意思是“同事”，in return (for sth) : 作为（对...的）回报。 参考译文：如果不是因为科学家们可以很容易地在未来的出版物中引用自己，或者让同事为他们这样做以换取类似的好处，这将是合理的。
　　(5)If we are serious about ensuring that our science is both meaningful and reproducible, we must ensure that our institutions encourage that kind of science.
　　考点：状语从句、宾语从句 结构分析：本句为含有状语从句和宾语从句的复合句 句子主干为：…we must ensure that…其中，“if we are serious about…” 为条件状语从句，“ensuring that …”为现在分词结构作介词宾语；“…that our institutions encourage that kind of science” 为 ensure 引导的宾语从句。