99.9b上海英语高级口译资格证书第一阶段考试

SECTION 4: LISTENING TEST (30 minutes)
Part A: Note-taking and Gap-filling
Directions: In this part of the test you will hear a short talk. You will hear the talk only once.
While listening to the talk, you may take notes on the important points so that you can have
enough information to complete a gap-filling task on a separate ANSWER BOOKLET. You are
required to write ONE word or figure only in each blank. You will not get your ANSWER
BOOKLET until after you have listened to the talk.
Many changes are expected to take place in transportation ________(1) in the twenty-first
century. The present forms of transportation will be very different in design, ________(2) and
technology. The automobile 2 will remain the most important method of travelling, but it will
become totally _________(3) and have a telephone. It will be smaller and more _________(4).
Gasoline mileage 3 may rise to one hundred miles per gallon. Other methods of transportation in
cities will include __________(5) and other rapid transit 4 systems, buses and “people movers.”
__________(6) will still be the cheapest way for long-distance travelling between cities, but they
will be more ___________(7), with sleeper 5 seats, video games, ___________(8) and even
___________(9) services. Trains will change even more: they will move ___________(10) the
tracks and will probably at a speed of ___________(11) miles per hour. The airplanes of the
future will be _____________(12), faster, _________(13) and more economical, because they
will be made of _____________(14). They will carry as many as 1,000 passengers and have
computers as __________(15). In the passenger area, ____________(16) arrangements will be
more comfortable and each passenger will have a private ____________(17). So in the new
century our world will become smaller, because people will travel more ___________(18) and
___________(19) than they do today. There will be much more contact between people from
different __________(20).
Part B: Listening and Translation
Ⅰ. Sentence Translation
Directions: In this part of the test, your will hear 5 English sentences. You will hear the
sentences only once. After you have heard each sentence, translate it into Chinese and write your
version in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
(1)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
(2)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
(3)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
(4)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
(5)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
Ⅱ. Passage Translation
Directions: In this part of the test, you will hear 2 passages. You will hear the passages only
once. After you have heard each passage, translate it into Chinese and write your version in the
corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET. You may take notes while you are listening.
(1)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____
(2)___________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________________________
_______
SECTION 5: READING TEST (30 minutes)
Directions: Read the following passages and then answer IN COMPLETE SENTENCES the
questions which follow each passage. Use only information from the passage you have just read
and write your answer in the corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
Questions 1～3
Centuries of baffling legal terminology 6 will be laid to rest next week in one of the biggest
shake ups in civil court history. From Monday, people bringing cases will be known as claimants
not “plaintiffs” while a “writ 1” will become a claim form. Lay people will no longer have to
struggle with baffling Latin words and phrases in an already confusing legal system. The
changes, part of the “big bang” in civil legal procedure, are being driven by the Lord
Chancellor's Department after recommendations from Lord Wolf, the Master of the Rolls.
A spokesman for the department said “This will make the law easier to follow ,taking out
the more difficult language and replacing it with words and phrases which people can
understand.” He likened the problem to receiving a quote from a plumber 7 or builder where
those inexperienced in such matters tended to go along with the technical detail without really
understanding what is being proposed. As an illustration he added :“People don't like declaring
that they don't understand something, so that when a lawyer says they have to sign an affidavit 8 (a
written statement in the new language) they agree without knowing what it is.”
Chrissie Maher, founder 9 director of the Plain English Campaign, has been lobbying for 30
years to get the courts to simplify their language. Two thousand Plain English members will be
in court on Monday to make sure that the lawyers sick to the new language. Ms Maher said
many people who spent years involved in litigation could not understand the outcome of their
case because it was told to them in legal jargon 10. She said: “It's humiliating for people who have
to pay for the privilege of listening to lawyers.” And she added: “It cannot stop here, the
criminal courts must change now.”
Monday's changeover includes new procedures which will allow court users a “fast-track”
option for small cases and a more hands-on approach by the judges aimed at saving time and
money. Ian Magee, chief executive of the Court Service, said: “We hope the civil justice
reforms will make courts easier to use. The replacement 11 of legal and Latin terms with plain
English phrases is part and parcel of that process. Many current terms are confusing and difficult
to understand for people who do not use courts regularly and we hope the new phrases will help
people follow proceedings 12 more easily.”
For the first time, all 226 county courts in England and Wales will be closed tomorrow to
allow installation of software to accommodate the new vocabulary and the other changes.
Ian Walker, president of the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers, said that while he
welcomed the reforms he thought Monday would cause many problems for lawyers not fully
acquainted with the new procedures. “It's all very well expecting us to be proactive and
dynamic but if the technology can't deal with the changes then there will be problems.”
Some lawyers have expressed sadness at the end of a language they have spent all their
working lives getting to understand. But there will be a period of grace for those who find
difficulty in breaking old habits and cannot adjust immediately to speaking in plain English.
1. Why does the spokesman for the Lord Chancellor's Department make the comparison between
plumber / builder and lawyer?
2. Explain briefly 13 the Plain English Campaign and the major procedures of the civil justice
reforms.
3. What are the responses of lawyers to the language reform?
Questions 4～6
Legs are a funny business. Especially if you are trying to turn them on an expensive,
computerised Italian wood-working machine but do not have the skills to program it properly—
as one small Essex company found to its cost.
Until Dr. David Hall took over as director, the 20 employee Thames Gateway 14
Technology Centre—manufacturer of reproduction furniture in Loughton—was about to spend a
fortune on diamond-tipped tools to keep the machines running.
Working the machines at the wrong speeds was destroying conventional tools and the
company knew in ,but could not afford to send its staff to Italy for training.
Dr. Hall had the answer. The university of East London had technology students who were
learning exactly the computer aided design skills the company needed.
Why not let them work for the company half a day a week? They would get exposure to
employment skills, argued Dr. Hall, and at the same time solve the company's technical
problems.
The scheme was so successful that the university is building it into a final-year project, and
helped inspire a government-backed initiative in east London to encourage high-tech 15 enterprise
in the area through technology transfer.
It is hoped this move will lead to the regeneration of a region that has been badly hit by
industrial decline, high unemployment and the lack of information technology skills to support
new businesses.
The Thames Gateway Technology Centre was founded last summer with the help of a ま
7.8m government grant from the Single Regeneration Challenge Fund. It will act as an agency to
transfer technology and skills from higher education centres in London's East End to the local
community.
The centre will make available the resources and expertise 16 of three east London universities
—the University of East London, Queen Mary & Westfield College and the London Guildhall
University.
It is also working with other east London business agencies to provide start-up companies
with access to business advice, training, technology support and financial backing.
Housed at the University of East London's campus in Stratford, the centre will move to the
university's new ま40m Docklands campus opening in September, overlooking the runway of
the London City Airport.
There, 1,00 square-metre site has been set aside for a technology park, consisting of
28incubator units to house new company start-ups.
As start-ups quickly outgrow 17 the units Dr. Hall hopes they will move across to the Royal
Business Park being developed next to the university campus.
“We want technology transfer to increase jobs locally, so we are looking at applied
technology—applications which can make use of the area's large semi-skilled and unskilled
workforce, rater than importing professional jobs, as happened in the development of Canary
Wharf,” says Dr. Hall.
The truth about technology transfer, he says, is shat if you shut an academic and a business
person in a room for an eternity 18, such a transfer does not take place naturally. “We need an
intermediary that will act as a catalyst 19 for that technology transfer. The technology centre will do
that.”
Dr. Hall became the technology centre’s first director last year after 15 years working in and
running small industrial firms. Typically, he says, many start-up companies do not have any
technology capability 20. “They have a guy with a good idea who wants to get that idea to market.
What they are not doing is looking round the corner at the next product to follow and the
technology needed.”
In many areas of the country there is a pool of skilled labour they can call on later to do that.
But east London does not have that technology platform, says Dr. Hall.
4. What does the initial sentence “Legs are a funny business.” mean? What is the role of the
first paragraph in the passage?
5. Introduce briefly the Thames Gateway Technology Centre.
6. What do you know about the “technology transfer” discussed in the passage?
Questions 7～10
The national outpouring after the Littleton shootings has forced us to confront something
we have suspected for a long time: The American high school is obsolete 21 and should be
abolished.
In the last month, High school students present and past have come forward with stories
about cliques 22 and the artificial intensity 23 of a world defined by insiders and outsiders, in which
the insiders hold sway because of superficial definitions of attractiveness, popularity and sports
prowess.
Indeed, a community's loyalty 24 to the high school system is often based on the extent to
which varsity teams succeed. High school administrators 25 and faculty 26 members are often former
coaches, and the coaches them-selves are placed in a separate, untouchable category. The result
is that the culture of the inside elite 27 is not contested by the adults in the school. Individuality and
dissent are discouraged.
But the rules of high school turn out not to be the rules of life. Often, the high school
outsider becomes the more successful and admired adult. The definitions of masculinity and
femininity go through sufficient transformation 28 to make the game of popularity in high school an
embarrassment.
Given the poor quality of recruitment and training for high school teachers, it is no wonder
that the curriculum and the enterprise of learning hold so little sway over young people.
When puberty meets education and learning in the modern United States, the victory of
puberty masquerading as popular culture and the tyranny of peer groups based on ludicrous
values meet little resistance.
By the time those who graduate from high school go on to college and realize what really is
at stake in becoming an adult, too many opportunities have been lost and too much time has been
wasted. Most thoughtful young people suffer the high school environment in silence and in their
junior and senior years mark time waiting for college to begin.
But the primary reason high school doesn't work anymore, if it ever did, is that young
people mature substantially earlier in the late 20th century than they did when the high school
was invented. For example, the age of first menstruation has dropped at least two years since the
beginning of this century and, not surprisingly, sexual activity has begun earlier in proportion.
An institution intended for children in transition now holds back young adults well beyond the
developmental point for which high school was originally designed.
Furthermore, whatever constraints 29 on the presumption 30 of adulthood 31 existed decades ago
have fallen away. Information and images, as well as the real and virtual freedom of movement
we associate with adulthood, are now accessible to every 16-year-old.
Secondary education must be rethought. Elementary school should begin at age 4 to 5 end
with the sixth grade. We Americans should entirely 32 abandon the concept of the middle school
and junior high school. Beginning with the seventh grade, there should be four years of
secondary education that we may call high school. Young people should graduate at 16, not 18.
They could then enter the real world of work or national service, in which they would take a
place of responsibility alongside older adults. They could stay at home and attend junior college,
or they could go away to college.
At 16, young Americans are prepared to be taken seriously and to develop the motivations
and interests that will serve them well in adult life. They need to enter a world in which they are
not in a lunchroom with only their peers. estranged 33 from other age groups and cut off from the
game of life as it is really played.
There is nothing utopian about this idea—it is immensely practical and efficient, and its
implementation is long overdue 34. We need to face biological and cultural facts and not prolong
the life of a flawed institution that is out of date.
7. Explain the statement “the curriculum and the enterprise of learning hold so little sway over
young people.”(para. 5)
8. Why does the author suggest that American high school “Should be abolished”? Give some
of the major reasons according to the passage.
9. Why does the author suggest that “Young people should graduate at16, not 18”?
10. Explain briefly the statement “the rules of high school turn out to be the rules of life.” (para.
4)
SECTION 6: TRANSLATION TEST (30 minutes)
Directions: Translate the following passage into English and write your version in the
corresponding space in your ANSWER BOOKLET.
黄浦江纵横南北，把上海分为两部分，浦东因位于黄浦江以东而得名。本世纪20～30
年代，随着以外滩为核心的金融、商贸区的建立，外商和我国民族酱家开始把经济活动伸
向浦东地区。但黄浦江的阻隔，极大地影响了浦东的经济发展。浦江两岸形成了一边是万
商云集的十里洋场，一边是以自然农作物为主的大片农田的鲜明对照。
自1990 年中央宣布开放浦东以来，浦东新区的建设日新月异，突飞猛进。高楼大厦
如雨后春笋，拔地而地，田园风光和现代建筑交相辉映，浦东正以崭新的面貌跨入新世纪。