MTI英语口译专业，
翻译硕士二外考得一篇完型（10）
During the first many decades of this nation’s existence, the United States was a wide-open, dynamic country with a rapidly expanding economy. It was also a country that tolerated a large amount of cruelty and pain — poor people living in misery, workers suffering from exploitation.
Over the years, Americans decided they wanted a little more safety and security. This is what happens as nations grow wealthier; they use money to buy civilization.
Occasionally, our ancestors found themselves in a sweet spot. They could pass legislation that brought security but without a cost to vitality. But adults know that this situation is rare. In the real world, there’s usually a trade-off. The unregulated market wants to direct capital to the productive and the young. Welfare policies usually direct resources to the vulnerable and the elderly. Most social welfare legislation, even successful legislation, siphons money from the former to the latter.
Early in this health care reform process, many of us thought we were in that magical sweet spot. We could extend coverage to the uninsured but also improve the system overall to lower costs. That is, we thought it would be possible to reduce the suffering of the vulnerable while simultaneously squeezing money out of the wasteful system and freeing it up for more productive uses.
That’s what the management gurus call a win-win.
It hasn’t worked out that way. The bills before Congress would almost certainly ease the anxiety of the uninsured, those who watch with terror as their child or spouse grows ill, who face bankruptcy and ruin.
And the bills would probably do it without damaging the care the rest of us receive. In every place where reforms have been tried — from Massachusetts to Switzerland — people come to cherish their new benefits. The new plans become politically untouchable.
But, alas, there would be trade-offs. Instead of reducing costs, the bills in Congress would probably raise them. They would mean that more of the nation’s wealth would be siphoned off from productive uses and shifted into a still wasteful health care system.
The authors of these bills have tried to foster efficiencies. The Senate bill would initiate several interesting experiments designed to make the system more effective — giving doctors incentives to collaborate, rewarding hospitals that provide quality care at lower cost. It’s possible that some of these experiments will bloom into potent systemic reforms.
But the general view among independent health care economists is that these changes will not fundamentally bend the cost curve. The system after reform will look as it does today, only bigger and more expensive.
As Jeffrey S. Flier, dean of the Harvard Medical School, wrote in The Wall Street Journal last week, “In discussions with dozens of health-care leaders and economists, I find near unanimity of opinion that, whatever its shape, the final legislation that will emerge from Congress will markedly accelerate national health-care spending rather than restrain it.”
Rather than pushing all of the new costs onto future generations, as past governments have done, the Democrats have admirably agreed to raise taxes. Over the next generation, the tax increases in the various bills could funnel trillions of dollars from the general economy into the medical system.
Moreover, the current estimates almost certainly understate the share of the nation’s wealth that will have to be shifted. In these bills, the present Congress pledges that future Congresses will impose painful measures to cut Medicare payments and impose efficiencies. Future Congresses rarely live up to these pledges. Somebody screams “Rationing!” and there is a bipartisan rush to kill even the most tepid cost-saving measure. After all, if the current Congress, with pride of authorship, couldn’t reduce costs, why should we expect that future Congresses will?
The bottom line is that we face a brutal choice.
Reform would make us a more decent society, but also a less vibrant one. It would ease the anxiety of millions at the cost of future growth. It would heal a wound in the social fabric while piling another expensive and untouchable promise on top of the many such promises we’ve already made. America would be a less youthful, ragged and unforgiving nation, and a more middle-aged, civilized and sedate one.
We all have to decide what we want at this moment in history, vitality or security. We can debate this or that provision, but where we come down will depend on that moral preference. Don’t get stupefied by technical details. This debate is about values.
一篇阅读（25）
Obama Loses a Round
While the jury is still out on what President Obama’s China visit has achieved for the long term, the president has most decidedly lost the war of symbolism in his first close encounter with China.
In status-conscious China, symbolism and protocol play a role that is larger than life. U.S. diplomatic blunders could reinforce Beijing’s mindset that blatant information control works, and that a rising China can trump universal values of open, accountable government.
During Mr. Obama’s visit, the Chinese outmaneuvered the Americans in all public events, from the disastrous town hall meeting in Shanghai to the stunted press conference in Beijing. In characteristic manner, the Chinese tried to shut out the public, while the U.S. unwittingly cooperated.
The final image of President Obama in China that circulated around the world is telling: A lone man walking up the steep slope of the Great Wall. The picture is in stark contrast to those of other U.S. presidents who had their photographs taken at the Great Wall surrounded by flag-waving children or admiring citizens. Maybe Mr. Obama wanted a quiet moment for himself before returning home. But a president’s first visit to the wall is a ritual that needs to be properly framed. Mr. Obama could have waited until the next visit, when he could bring the first lady and the children. Instead, he went ahead by himself to pay tribute to China’s ancient culture. In return, the Chinese offered nothing, no popular receptions, not even the companionship of a senior Chinese leader.
The trouble for the U.S. started at the town hall meeting two days earlier — a more scripted event than those organized with students for earlier U.S. presidents. There was no real dialogue, as a programmed audience, most of them Communist League Youth members, asked coached questions.
The Chinese also rejected the U.S. request for live national coverage and defaulted on a promise to live-stream the meeting at Xinhua.net, the online version of China’s state-owned news agency. Mr. Obama scored a point when he managed to address the issue of Internet freedom after the U.S. ambassador, Jon Huntsman, fielded him the question from a Chinese netizen submitted online.
Meanwhile, Chinese officials garnered from the meeting generous quotes from Mr. Obama affirming China’s achievements and America’s expressions of good will, which were turned into glowing headlines for the Chinese media. In this round of the propaganda skirmish, the U.S. scored one point while China reaped a handful.
Mr. Obama was similarly shut out from addressing the public in Beijing. At the Beijing press conference, President Hu Jintao and President Obama read prepared statements and would not take questions from reporters. “This was an historic meeting between the two leaders, and journalists should have had the opportunity to ask questions, to probe beyond the statements,” protested Scott McDonald, the president of China’s Foreign Correspondents Club, but to no avail.
In a final dash to break through the information blockade, the Obama team offered an exclusive interview to Southern Weekend, China’s most feisty newspaper, based in Guangzhou. Once again, journalists’ questions were programmed and the paper censored. In protest, the paper prominently displayed vast white spaces on the first and second page of the edition that carried the interview. Propaganda officials are investigating this act of defiance.
Only the Obama team knows for sure how they allowed themselves to be outmaneuvered. Unwittingly, the U.S. helped to produce a package of faux public events.
Pundits argued that the visitors were not supposed to impose the “American way” on China and that America needs to respect Chinese practices. The argument is both patronizing and condescending. Increasingly, the Chinese public has been clamoring for greater official transparency and accountability, while the Chinese government has been making progress on these fronts. No one in his right mind would ask Mr. Obama to lecture Beijing on human rights. But the Chinese public deserves better accounting, no less than Americans citizens.
To their credit, U.S. officials did try to get their message out online. But it was the Chinese bloggers who were most active in challenging official information control. They at least fought the good fight with growing confidence, a fight the Americans seem unable to wage effectively.
作文只给了个题目： waste not， want not（勤俭节约，吃穿不缺）（60）
2010英语翻译基础
MDGS Millennium Development Goals 千禧年发展计划
Ban Ki-moon 潘基文
國務卿 Secretary of State
雷曼兄弟(Lehman Brothers)
次贷危机subprime lending crisis
西部大开发战略strategy of western development
经济 > 中国经济
China's bubbles
A lot of things in China carry a whiff of excess. The cost of garlic is among them: wholesale prices have almost quadrupled since March. A halving of the planting area last year, and belief in the bulb's powers to ward off swine flu, provide some justification for the surge. But anecdotes of unbridled trading activity in Jinxiang county, home to China's largest garlic plant, suggest that the most likely cause is the most obvious – the abundant liquidity swilling through the system. New loans in China may top Rmb10,000bn this year, double the run-rate of the preceding years; 2010 should bring another Rmb7-8,000bn.
In the week that Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the International Monetary Fund, said asset bubbles were a cost worth paying for reviving growth through loose monetary policy, China needs to distinguish between good ones and bad ones. A bubble in garlic is small, financed by private speculators, and relatively harmless when it bursts. Bubbles in productive assets – roads, bridges, telecom lines – are also tolerable; capital has been put in place that can be exploited by somebody.
But bubbles in property – financed by banks, on non-productive assets – are doubly destructive. Zhang Xin, chief executive of Soho China, one of the country's most successful privately owned developers, believes that rampant wasteful investment in commercial property has already undermined China's long-term prospects. As for housing, which China began privatising just 11 years ago, prices rose at an annualised rate of 9 per cent between September and October – significantly higher than the ongoing 2.25 per cent one-year deposit rate and the 5.31 per cent one-year lending rate. What's more, this was the eighth successive month of above-trend growth in the national house price index. So far, attempts to arrest price rises have been minor – restrictions on second home mortgages here, loan discounts in exchange for bigger down payments there. Two years ago another eight-month hot streak was enough for authorities to start cooling in earnest. They should start again now.
中国一直在“补贴”西方？
前些日子，我翻阅一份英国报纸，看到一幅大照片，画面是相当于伦敦“王府井”的牛津街的商场购物人流，照片说明称英国消费者重返商店显示金融危机可能即将触底云云，但仔细端详，我却发现人流中有许多华人模样的脸庞，再认真研究，更觉得这些人的穿着打扮像是中国大陆人。
后来，我先后与几位英国华裔朋友谈起此事，他们一口咬定：“没错，这些人肯定是从中国大陆来的！”他们还补充说，他们在中国的朋友熟人中，就有许多人借出差或旅游之机，转战伦敦各大商场，为英国经济走出衰退“做贡献”。
最近读了中国财经评论家时寒冰的博客，发现中国消费者也在为美国经济重归繁荣“做贡献”。时寒冰最近去了一趟美国，他在博客中写道，他在洛杉矶曾经“遇到一群中国去的游客，购物之多可用疯狂来形容。在一个卖箱包的商店，几乎每个从中国去的人都买两个以上的箱子，因为，他们要装下所买的商品。他们一边挑选商品一边惊诧着：‘这里的东西怎么会比国内便宜这么多？！'我可以听出他们心中的不平衡。”
至于那些没有机会公款出国或没有实力自费旅游的普通中国人，知道这一事实后可能心里就会更不平衡了：因为他们只能无奈地接受中国物价的现实。
乍一听，你会觉得不可思议：尽管如今中国人收入不断提升，但中国人均GDP毕竟远远低于美英等西方富国，怎么能够承受比伦敦、洛杉矶还高的物价呢？其实，如果不是我本人今年也在北京工作、生活了几个月，因而对北京物价有了亲身体会的话，我也不会相信这是个事实。
别的地方我不敢说，仅仅对比一下我长期生活过的北京和伦敦。在衣、食、住、行四个方面，北京至少在“衣”、“住”两大方面比伦敦贵，至于“行”，北京的公共交通费用的确要比伦敦便宜，但在个人购车花销上，北京却比伦敦贵得多。
我这里说的“贵”，并不是相对的“贵”（即某商品价格在居民平均收入中所占的比例），而是绝对的“贵”，也就是说，如果英镑与人民币目前的兑换率是1：12，那么，在北京，房价和租房租金（至少在三环以内）、国际名车价格以及正规商场多数中档以上服装的价格，即使除以12，也比伦敦贵。
“食”的情况比较复杂，一般而言，北京超市的蔬菜水果、柴米油盐，如果除以12，要比伦敦便宜，但在相对价格上，则比伦敦贵或不相上下；北京有很多服务于外来打工者的廉价小餐馆，无论是绝对价格，还是相对价格，都比伦敦便宜，但稍微上点儿档次的餐馆，相对价格就比伦敦贵，而高档餐馆的价格，绝对价格都比伦敦贵。
更为匪夷所思的是，北京某些日常用品的价格，绝对价格也比伦敦贵。例如，伦敦超市洗发水的价格通常是一英镑左右，但北京超市洗发水通常都要卖15元人民币以上，名牌洗发水则在30元人民币以上。
时寒冰在其博客中如此描述他最近的美国之行：“到美国后才发现，美国除人工服务之外，绝大部分商品的价格（绝对价格）是低于中国的，有些商品的价差之大，有点瞠目结舌。”他对比了中国（大概指他居住的上海）和美国洛杉矶的物价：在中国一套卖3万元左右的Armani（阿玛尼）西服，在洛杉矶用四分之一甚至五分之一的钱就可以买到；宝马Z4的价格，洛杉矶的广告上标注的报价为29881美元，中国的价格，听一位朋友介绍，大致在50万元——80万元人民币之间……
寒冰说的这些国际名牌商品，大概由于进口到中国要征收很高的关税，再加上运费等等，所以，在中国卖得比西方贵并不令人吃惊（尽管贵四、五倍仍然有些不甚合理）；但那些纯属中国制造的商品，在中国卖得居然也比西方贵，就太令人费解了。
例如，美国一位研究中国经济的华裔学者就曾吃惊地发现，他在美国超市沃尔玛买到的中国大陆生产的质量不错的登山鞋，价格只有2.99美元，后来，他给一位中国经济官员打电话，讲了此事，对方不信，说在中国大陆chushou的登山鞋，“三百块人民币买的还是烂牌子，好一点的都要一千多块。”
我今年上半年住在北京，下半年住在伦敦，这种对比更鲜明、更强烈、更真实：许多同样类型的中国产品，在英国的售价确实低于中国。但为什么会出现这种怪事？
那位美国华裔学者也想知道其中的原因。他询问了一位在中国大陆投资的台湾商人，这位台湾人的解释是：“中国大陆到处是欺诈，贸易商之间拖欠货款比比皆是，生产商只有提高出厂价格才能保障自己的利润；而出口就不同了，只要你和外商签订了合约，基本上你就不用担心，美国进口商给你信用状，你可以去银行抵押贷款，生产之后你发货，钱就到手了，没有麻烦，钱少赚点，但风险也小。”
对这个解释，这位美国华裔学者相信确有其理，但仍感并非全部原因，于是，他又查阅了一些中国大陆的商业流通资料，并通过其它渠道进行了调查研究，结果发现了一个更让他吃惊的事实：从中国大陆运货到美国的运费，竟然比从广州运货到北京还便宜！原因何在？还是MOD：由于中国大陆铁路货运超负荷，流通商要想申请一个车皮的指标，运费之外的额外费用竟然高达五千到五万人民币之间；高速公路运输也不便宜，中国大陆媒体引述一位常年从广州送货到北京的司机的话说，广州到北京的高速公路，一路的过路费就有1400元人民币，除此以外，还要有大约有7000元人民币的额外费用，这个费用不是汽油费，也不是汽车修理费，而是无缘由的罚款和敲诈。
这些因MOD所造成的成本，自然也都被摊到产品价格中去了，最后由消费者埋单。看来，MOD之害，不仅体现在政治方面，也体现在经济方面。
中国MOD这些年已经意识到中国经济发展模式的弊病，所以常讲要提振内需，但效果不大，中国至今依然是一个主要依靠投资和出口拉动的经济体。中国的内需为什么提不上来？原因很多，包括缺乏医疗、养老等社会保障，但相对西方来说中国物价过高，至少也是原因之一。
而西方这么多年来通货膨胀一直保持着较低的水平，至少在那些有真知灼见的西方学者看来，是得益于来自中国的廉价商品。中国一直在为西方打工，而且是廉价打工。
上个星期，我在伦敦参加了一次新书发行讲座。这本新书的作者是两位在多年在中国经商的英国人，书名是：《China Counting》，序言中有一句话让我深以为然：“西方舆论倾向于认为，中国一直在for free乘坐西方的消费列车，但真实情况是，中国一直在补贴西方。”
然而，即使西方的政客们意识到这一真相，但面对某些利益集团的压力，他们或者出于选票得失的短期政治考虑，或者出于保护本国制造业的短视经济理由，也会筑起“反倾销”关税的大墙，挡住来自中国的“补贴”。欧美最新一波针对中国进口商品的贸易保护主义浪潮即为明证。
嗨，好一个里外不讨好、两头不受待见的“中国补贴”。
个人感觉汉译英还是很长，不过两篇都是非文学翻译，而且偏向于口译文章的风格
MTI英语口译专业，2010汉语写作与百科知识
15个选择（都记不起来了）
5个名词解释：
京师同文馆
建安风骨
食货志
吕氏春秋
以人为本
三个作文两个应用一个文学写作
会议通知
公司简介
大作文题目：环境保护
这门考得最悲剧！只有93，据说有专门的复习参考书！要考的同学一定要好好看！
