09级英汉基础翻译练习.docVIP

09级 英汉基础翻译练习 Passage 1 San Francisco San Francisco, open your Golden Gate, sang the girl in the theatre. She never finished her song. That date was 18th April, 1906. The earth shook and the roof suddenly divided, buildings crashed to the ground and people rushed out into the streets. The dreadful earthquake destroyed the city that had grown up when men discovered gold in the deserts of California. But today the streets of San Francisco stretch over more than forty steep hills, rising like huge cliffs above the blue waters of the Pacific Ocean. The best way to see this splendid city, where Spanish people were the first to make their homes, is to take one of the old cable cars which run along the nine main avenues. Fares are cheap; they have not risen, I’m told, for almost a hundred years. You leave the palm trees in Union Square --- the heart of San Francisco --- and from the shop signs and the faces around you, you will notice that in the city live people from many nations --- Austrians, Italians, Chinese and others --- giving each part a special character. More Chinese live in China Town than in any other part of the world outside China. Here, with Chinese restaurants, Chinese post-boxes, and even odd telephone-boxes that look like pagodas, it is easy to feel you are in China itself. Fisherman’s Wharf, a place all foreigners want to see, is at the end of the ride. You get out, pause perhaps to help the other travelers to swing the cable car on its turntable (a city custom), and then set out to find a table in one of the gay little restaurants beside the harbor. As you enjoy the fresh Pacific seafood you can admire the bright red paint of the Golden Gate Bridge in the harbor and watch the traffic crossing beneath the tall towers on its way to the pretty village of Tiberon. Passage 2 NY City Seeks to Expand Lower-Cost Units The City Council yesterday approved the first major overhaul of the most popular tax break for apartment building developers, adopting a