期末考试英语翻译.docVIP

Lesson1 The greatest achievement of human in its long evolution from ancient hominoid ancestor to its present status is the acquisition and accumulation of a vast body of knowledge about itself，the world，and the universe. The products of this knowledge are all those things that, in the aggregate, we call “civilization”, including language, science, literature, art, all the physical mechanisms, instruments，and structures we use，and the physical infrastructures on which society relies. Most of us assume that in modern society knowledge of all kinds is continually increasing and the aggregation of new information into the corpus of our social or collective knowledge is steadily reducing the area of ignorance about ourselves，the world，and the universe. But continuing reminders of the numerous areas of our present ignorance invite a critical analysis of this assumption. 人类从古代的类人猿祖先发展到现状的及其漫长的过程中的最大成就是获取并积累了大量关于自身、世界和宇宙的知识。总的来说，我们将这种知识的所有产物称之为“文明”，包括语言、科学、文学、艺术，我们所应用的所有物理学、工具、结构，以及社会所以存的物质基础。大多数人认为，随着现代社会各种知识不断增加新信息不断积聚，我们对自身、世界、宇宙的未知正在稳步减少。但是，人类至今对诸多领域的无知使得我们要对这种观点进行批判分析。 Lesson2 Moreover，before lamenting modularization ，it is necessary to ask ourselves whether we really would prefer to return to the traditional condition of man in which each individual presumably related to the whole personality of a few people rather than to the personality modules of many. Traditional man has been so sentimentalized，so cloyingly romanticized，that we frequently overlook the consequences of such a return. The very same writers who lament fragmentation also demand freedom—yet overlook the un-freedom of people bound together in totalistic relationship. For any relationship implies mutual demands and expectations. The more intimately involved a relationship，the greater the pressure the parties exert on one another to fulfill these expectations. The tighter and more totalistic the relationship，the more modules，so to speak，are brought into play，and the more numerous are the demands we make.