十日又问
来源分析: 文章来源于An Outline of American History,《美国历史纲要》,是一本历史学方面的专著。考研翻译曾经在1999年考过历史学方面的话题,当初考的是历史学科建立方面的争论,关于历史研究方法论的。今年的考题与1999年那篇历史学文章的试题相比,简单太多。但是与2014年考研翻译试题相比,难度倒是上升了不小。 真题如下,大家参考: Within the span of a hundred years, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, a tide of emigration -one of the great folk wanderings of history-swept from Europe to America. 46) This movement, impelled (命题人改写为driven) by powerful and diverse(命题人删除了这两个词)motivations, built a nation out of a wilderness and, by its nature, shaped the character and destiny of an uncharted continent. 47) The United States is the proct of two principal forces-the immigration of European peoples with their varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics and the impact of a new country which modified these distinctly European cultural (命题人删除了这三个词)traits. Of necessity, colonial America was a projection of Europe. Across the Atlantic came successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others who attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world. 48) But, inevitably,(命题人删掉了这个词) the force of geographic conditions peculiar to America, the interplay of the varied national groups upon one another, and the sheer difficulty of maintaining old-world ways in a raw, new continent caused significant changes. These changes were graal and at first scarcely visible. But the result was a new social pattern which, although it resembled European society in many ways, had a character that was distinctly American. 49)The first shiploads of immigrants bound for the territory which is now the United States crossed the Atlantic more than a hundred years after the fifteenth- and sixteenth-century explorations of North America. In the meantime, thriving Spanish colonies had been established in Mexico, the West Indies, and South America. These travelers to North America came in small, unmercifully overcrowded craft. During their six- to twelve-week voyage, they subsisted on meager rations. Many of the ships were lost in storms, many passengers died of disease, and infants rarely survived the journey. Sometimes tempests blew the vessels far off their course, and often calm brought interminable delay. To the anxious travelers the sight of the American shore brought almost inexpressible relief. Said one chronicler, "The air at twelve leagues' distance smelt as sweet as a new-blown garden." The colonists' first glimpse of the new land was a vista of dense woods. 50)The virgin forest with its profusion (命题人把这个词改为richness) and variety of trees was a veritable (命题人把这个词改为real) treasure-house which extended over 1,300 miles from Maine in the north to Georgia (命题人把这个部分改为:from Maine all the way down to Georgia) in the south. Here was abundant fuel and lumber. Here was the raw material of houses and furniture, ships and potash, dyes and naval stores.