大学英语口译课文.doc

Lesson one Text A Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning! I am very happy to be here for the opening of the XVI international AIDS Conference,which we are honored to host in Canada this year. This conference will give us a wonderful opportunity to form a lasting bond of fellowship. I would like to extend our warmest welcome to all of you who have traveled from far and wide. Your efforts will remind us that life is our most precious possession and that we need to find a planet-wide approach if we are to have any hope of protecting it. I would even go so far as to say that we need to globalize our efforts to fight the threat of AIDS;a kind of globalization, with the sole purpose of saving lives, gives us the opportunity to rethink the world in the spirit of a true global community. I can still recall the fear, the hostility felt by some when we first began to hear about AIDS some twenty-five years ago. And when I heard people around me saying that this disease was the result of deviant behaviour, a punishment against those who are condemned, I could barely contain my anger. AIDS brought with it a shame that could not be named. But as we now know, AIDS knows no boundaries, nor has it any regard for our prejudices or the ways in which we ostracize and abandon one another. Is that not reason enough to put those prejudices to rest and come together to fight this universal threat? AIDS is now the fourth leading cause of death in the world. AIDS indiscriminately strikes children, women, and men; AIDS devastates national economies; AIDS destabilizes communities around the world. Take for example sub Saharan Africa, where the situation is the most alarming. Just over one tenth of the worlds population lives in that area, including nearly 64 per cent of all people living with HIV. Two million of them are children under the age of fifteen. The situation is dire. We must act now. We cannot remain indifferent to the devastating attack that the AIDS is taking. Those of us who