历年MBA翻译真题大荟萃－每日翻译自测

往年MBA翻译真题大荟萃－每日翻译自测

(一)

  Its a rough world out there. Step outside and you could break a leg slipping on your doormat. Light up the stove and you could burn down the house. Luckily, if the doormat or stove failed to warn of coming disaster, a successful lawsuit might compensate you for your troubles. Or so the thinking has gone since the early 1980s, when juries began holding more companies liable for their customers misfortunes.

　　Feeling threatened, companies responded by writing ever-longer warning labels, trying to anticipate every possible accident. Today, stepladders carry labels several inches long that warn, among other things, that you might ― surprised! ― fall off. The label on a childs Batman cape cautions that the toy "does not enable user to fly."

　　While warnings are often appropriate and necessary ― the dangers of drug interactions, for example ― and many are required by state or federal regulations, it isnt clear that they actually protect the manufacturers and sellers from liability if a customer is injured. About 50 percent of the companies lose when injured customers take them to court.

　　Now the tide appears to be turning. As personal injury claims continue as before, some courts are beginning to side with defendants, especially in cases where a warning label probably wouldnt have changed anything. In May, Julie Nimmons, president of Schutt Sports in Illinois, successfully fought a lawsuit involving a football player who was paralyzed in a game while wearing a Schutt helmet. "Were really sorry he has become paralyzed, but helmets arent designed to prevent those kinds of injuries," says Nimmons. The jury agreed that the nature of the game, not the helmet, was the reason for the athletes injury.

　　At the same time, the American Law Institute ― a group of judges, lawyers, and academics whose recommendations carry substantial weight ― issued new guidelines for tort law stating that companies need not warn customers of obvious dangers or bombard them with a lengthy list of possible ones. "Important information can get buried in a sea of trivialities," says a law professor at Cornell Law School who helped draft the new guidelines. If the moderate end of the legal community has its way, the information on products might actually be provided for the benefit of customers and not as protection against legal liability.

（二）

Rumor has it that more than 20 books on creationism/evolution are in the publishers pipelines. A few have already appeared. The goal of all will be to try to explain to a confused and often unenlightened citizenry that there are not two equally valid cientific theories for the origin and evolution of universe and life. Cosmology, geology, and iology have provided a consistent, unified, and constantly improving account of what happened. "Scientific" creationism, which is being pushed by some for "equal time" in the classrooms whenever the scientific accounts of evolution are given, is based on religion, not science. Virtually all scientists and the majority of non-fundamentalist religious leaders have come to regard "scientific" creationism as bad science and bad religion.

　　The first four chapters of Kitchers book give a very brief introduction to evolution. At appropriate places, he introduces the criticisms of the creationists and provides answers. In the last three chapters, he takes off his gloves and gives the creationists a good beating. He describes their programmes and tactics, and, for those unfamiliar with the ways of creationists, the extent of their deception and distortion may come as an unpleasant surprise. When their basic motivation is religious, one might have expected more Christian behavior.

　　Kitcher is philosopher, and this may account, in part, for the clarity And fectiveness of his arguments. The non-specialist will be able to obtain at least a notion of the sorts of data and argument that support evolutionary theory. The final chapter on the creationists will be extremely clear to all. On the dust jacket of this fine book, Stephen Jay Gould says: "This book stands for reason itself." And so it does ― and all would be well were reason the only judge in the creationism/evolution debate.

（三）

In the last half of the nineteenth century "capital" and "labour" were enlarging and perfecting their rival organisations on modern lines. Many an old firm was replaced by a limited liability company with a bureaucracy of salaried managers. The change met the technical requirements of the new age by engaging a large professional element and prevented the decline in efficiency that so commonly spoiled the fortunes of family firms in the second and third generation after the energetic founders. It was moreover a step away from individual initiative, towards collectivism and municipal and state-owned business. The railway companies, though still private business managed for the benefit of shareholders, were very unlike old family business. At the same time the great municipalities went into business to supply lighting, trams and other services to the taxpayers.

The growth of the limited liability company and municipal business had important consequences. Such large, impersonal manipulation of capital and industry greatly increased the numbers and importance of shareholders as a class, an element in national life representing irresponsible wealth detached from the land and the duties of the landowners; and almost equally detached from the responsible management of business. All through the nineteenth century, America, Africa, India, Australia and parts of Europe were being developed by British capital, and British shareholders were thus enriched by the worlds movement towards industrialisation. Towns like Bournemouth and Eastbourne sprang up to house large "comfortable" classes who had