《CATTI Level 1 Translation (Sample)》.pdf

英语一级笔译实务试卷 Section 1 Translation Part 1 English-Chinese Translation (英译汉) (30 points) Translate the following passage into Chinese. The Travels of Marco Polo was conceived in a prison cell in Genoa, Italy, in 1298. A few years earlier Polo had returned to the West after an epic journey that lasted some 24 years. He then saw action in a naval battle between the Venetian and Genoese fleets, and was captured. It was in jail that he met and befriended Rustichello of Pisa, a well-known writer and collector of Arthurian romances. Their collaboration yielded a book that would give Europe its first authoritative account of the Middle and Far East, in particular China, and reveal the presence of a vast empire and advanced civilization far greater than anything Europeans could achieve or even imagine. More than 100 copies of that long-lost original exist, many dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. There is no definitive manuscript, however, and all existing versions have been embellished, doctored or censored by the Christian establishment over the years. Modern editions are thus collations and translations of imperfect copies. This murky history helps explain why the book describes what the Venetian could not possibly have seen, and overlooks sights that any traveler to China must have witnessed – like the Great Wall, foot-binding and chopsticks. Skeptics say that Polo never ventured to China and that he and Rustichello used second-hand information from other travelers, especially Arab traders. Certainly, there is no hard historical evidence that Polo actually visited all the places he describes. But most of the detail has since been corroborated by historians and geographers, confounding