专八改错真题02年-12年

2012年

The central problem of translating has always been whether to translate literally or freely. The

argument has been going since at least the first (1) ______

century B.C. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, many writers

favored certain kind of “free” translation: the spirit, not the letter; the (2) _______

sense not the word; the message rather the form; the matter not (3) _______

the manner. This is the often revolutionary slogan of writers who (4) _______

wanted the truth to be read and understood. Then in the turn of 19

th

(5) _______

century, when the study of cultural anthropology suggested that

the linguistic barriers were insuperable and that the language (6) _______

was entirely the product of culture, the view translation was impossible (7) _______

gained some currency, and with it that, if was attempted at all, it must be as (8) _______

literal as possible. This view culminated the statement of the (9) _______

extreme “literalists” Walter Benjamin and Vladimir Nobokov.

The argument was theoretical: the purpose of the translation, the

nature of the readership, the type of the text, was not discussed. Too

often, writer, translator and reader were implicitly identified with

each other. Now, the context has changed, and the basic problem remains. (10) _______

2011年

From a very early age, perhaps the age of five or six, I knew

that when I grew I should be a writer. Between the ages of about 1__________

seventeen and twenty-four I tried to abandon this idea, but I did so

with the conscience that I was outraging my true nature and that 2___________

soon or later I should have to settle down and write books. 3___________

I was the child of three, but there was a gap of five years 4__________

on either side, and I barely saw my father before I was eight. For

this and other reasons I was somewhat lonely, and I soon developed

disagreeing mannerisms which made me unpopular throughout my 5___________

schooldays. I had the lonely child's habit of making up stories and

holding conversations with imaginative persons, and I think from 6_________

the very start my literal ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of 7________

being isolated and undervalued. I knew that I had a facility with words

and a power of facing in unpleasant facts, and I felt that this created 8________

a sort of private world which I could get my own back for my failure 9________

in everyday life. Therefore, the volume of serious — i.e. seriously 10________

intended — writing which I produced all through my childhood and

boyhood would not amount to half a dozen pages. I wrote my first

poem at the age of four or five, my mother taking it down to dictation.

2010年

So far as we can tell, all human languages are equally

complete and perfect as instruments of communication: that is,

every language appears to be well equipped as any other to say 1_____________

the things their speakers want to say. 2_____________

There may or may not be appropriate to talk about primitive 3_____________

peoples or cultures, but that is another matter. Certainly, not all

groups of people are equally competent in nuclear physics or

psychology or the cultivation of rice . Whereas this is not the 4_____________

fault of their language. The Eskimos , it is said, can speak about

snow with further more precision and subtlety than we can in 5_____________

English, but this is not because the Eskimo language (one of those

sometimes miscalled 'primitive') is inherently more precise and

subtle than English. This example does not come to light a defect 6_____________

in English, a show of unexpected 'primitiveness'. The position is

simply and obviously that the Eskimos and the English live in similar 7____________

environments. The English language will be just as rich in terms 8____________

for different kinds of snow, presumably, if the environments in which

Englishwas habitually used made such distinction as important. 9_____________

Similarly, we have no reason to doubt that the Eskimo language

could be as precise and subtle on the subject of motor manufacture

or cricket if these topics formed the part of the Eskimos' life. 10____________

09年

The previous section has shown how quickly a rhyme passes

from one school child to the next and illustrates the further difference (1)_______

between school lore and nursery lore. In nursery lore a verse,

learnt in early childhood, is not usually passed on again when the (2)__________

little listener has grown up, and has children of their own, or even (3)__________

grandchildren. The period between learning a nursery rhyme and

transmitting it may be something from twenty to seventy years. With (4)________

the playground lore, therefore, a rhyme may be excitedly passed (5)________

on within the very hour it is learnt; and in the general, it passes ( 6)__________

between children of the same age, or nearly so, since it is uncommon

for the difference in age between playmates to be more than five

years. If ,therefore, a playground rhyme can be shown to have been

currently for a hundred years, or even just for fifty, it follows that it (7)_______

has been retransmitted over and over; very possibly it has passed (8)_______

along a chain of two or three hundred young hearers and tellers, and

the wonder is that it remains live after so much handling, (9)_______

to let alone that it bears resemblance to the (10)_______

2008年

The desire to use language as a sign of national identity is a

very natural one, and in result language has played a prominent ____1____

part in national moves. Men have often felt the need to cultivate ____2____

a given language to show that they are distinctive from another ____3____

race whose hegemony they resent. At the time the United States ____4____

split off from Britain, for example, there were proposals that

independence should be linguistically accepted by the use of a ____5____

different language from those of Britain. There was even one ____6____

proposal that Americans should adopt Hebrew. Others favoured

the adoption of Greek, though, as one man put it, things would

certainly be simpler for Americans if they stuck on to English ____7____

and made the British learn Greek. At the end, as everyone ____8____

knows, the two countries adopted the practical and satisfactory

solution of carrying with the same language as before. ____9____

Since nearly two hundred years now, they have shown the world ____10____

that political independence and national identity can be complete

without sacrificing the enormous mutual advantages of a common

language.

07年

From what has been said, it must be clear that no one can

make very positive statements about how language originated.

There is no material in any language today and in the earliest 1__________

records of ancient languages show us language in a new and 2__________

emerging state. It is often said, of course, that the language 3_________

originated in cries of anger, fear, pain and pleasure, and the 4__________

necessary evidence is entirely lacking: there are no remote

tribes, no ancient records, providing evidence of

a language with a large proportion of such cries 5__________

than we find in English. It is true that the absence

of such evidence does not disprove the theory, but in 6__________

other grounds too the theory is not very attractive.

People of all races and languages make rather similar

noises in return to pain or pleasure. The fact that 7___________

such noises are similar on the lips of Frenchmen

and Malaysians whose languages are utterly different,

serves to emphasize on the fundamental difference 8___________

between these noises and language proper. We may

say that the cries of pain or chortles of amusement

are largely reflex actions, instinctive to large extent, 9____________

whereas language proper does not consist of signs

but of these that have to be learnt and that are 10___________