实用汉英翻译课件.ppt

The Tower of Babel Once upon a time all the world spoke a single language and used the same words. As men journeyed in the east, they came upon a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. They said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks and bake them hard’; they used bricks for stone and bitumen for mortar. ‘Come,’ they said, ‘let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and make a name for ourselves; or we shall be dispersed all over the earth.’ Then the Lord came down to see the city and tower which mortal men had built, and he said, ‘Here they are, one people with a single language, and now they have started to do this; henceforward nothing they have a mind to do will be beyond their reach. Come, let us go down there and confuse their speech, so that they will not understand what they say to one another.’ So the Lord dispersed them from there all over the earth, and they left off building the city. That is why it is called Babel, because the Lord there made a babble of the language of all the world; from that place the Lord scattered men all over the face of the earth. * * Translation is as old as a language itself , probably starting from thousands years ago . It has been used as an indispensable means of mediation , a useful aid to preaching and teaching , and to the social and cultural , and commercial exchanges and mutual understanding between different peoples and different countries . It has become part of human life. The translator`s role is felt everywhere : not only in literature but also in such areas as science and technology , administration , foreign trade , cultural activities and tourism; not only in a particular country when translation or the oral form of it is called for , but also in such international bodies as the UN and the EEC where the translating and interpreting is part of routine work . The 21st century has been called “ the age of translation” , with rapid increase of economic contact and cult