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2012年11月英语二级《笔译实务》试题
Section 1: English-Chinese Translation（英译汉）
Part A Compulsory Translation（必译题）
Where Shakespeare Slept, or So They Say
Tucked away in this small village in Buckinghamshire County is the former Elizabethan coaching inn where William Shakespeare is said to have penned part of ”A Midsummer Night's Dream. ”
Dating from 1534, the inn, now called Shakespeare House, is thought to have been built as a Tudor hunting lodge. Later it became a stop for travelers between London and Stratford-upon-Avon, where Shakespeare was born and buried.
It was ”Brief Lives," a 17th-century collection of biographies by John Aubrey, that linked Shakespeare to the inn, saying that he had stayed there and drawn inspiration for the comedy while in the village.
One of the current owners, Nick Underwood, said the local lore goes even further: "It is
also said he appears at the oriel window on the top floor of the house on April 23 every year --the date he is said to have been born and to have died."
"In later years, the house later became a farmhouse, with 150 acres of land, but, over time, pieces were sold off," Mr. Underwood said. "In the 20th century, it was owned by two American families." Now, he and his co-owner, Roy Elsbury, have put the seven-bedroom property on the market at ￡ 1.375 million, or $2.13 million.
Despite its varied uses and renovations over the years, the 4,250-square-foot, or 395-square-meter, inn has retained so much of its original character that the organization English Heritage lists it as a Grade II* property, indicating that it is particularly important and of "more than special interest." Only 27 percent of the 1,600 buildings on the organization's register have this designation.
We knew of the house before we bought it and were very excited when it came up for sale. It is so unusual to find an Elizabethan property of this size, in this area, and when we saw it, we absolutely fell in love with it," Mr. Underwood said. "We have taken great pleasure in working on it and living here. This house is all about the history."
In addition to being the owners' home, the property currently is run as a luxury guest house, with rooms rented for ￡ 99 to ￡ 250 a night.
"Shakespeare House is a wonderful example of Elizabethan architecture," said Dean Heaviside, the national sales director of Fine real estate agency, which is representing the owners. "It has been beautifully restored and offers a unique lifestyle, which brings a taste of the past together with modern-day comfort. It is rare to find a home like this on the market."
Part B Optional Translation（二选一题）
Topic 1 （选题一）
In Greenland, Ice and Instability
The ancient frozen dome cloaking Greenland is so vast that pilots have crashed into what they thought was a cloud bank spanning the horizon. Flying over it, you can scarcely imagine that it could erode fast enough to dangerously raise sea levels any time soon.
Along the flanks in spring and summer, however, the picture is very different. For an increasing number of warm years, a network of blue lakes and rivulets of melt-water has been spreading ever higher on the icecap.
The melting surface darkens, absorbing up to four times as much energy from the sun as snow, which reflects sunlight. Natural drainpipes called moulins carry water from the surface into the depths, in some places reaching bedrock.
The process slightly, but measurably, lubricates and accelerates the grinding passage of ice towards the sea.
Most important, many glaciologists say, is the break-up of huge semi-submerged clots of ice where some large Greenland glaciers, particularly along the west coast, squeeze through fiords as they meet the warming ocean. As these passages have cleared, this has sharply accelerated the flow of many of these creeping, corrugated and frozen rivers.
Some glaciologists fear that the rise in seas in a warming world could be much greater than the upper estimate of about 60 centimeters this century made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change last year. (Seas rose less than 30 centimeters last century.)
The panel's assessment did not include factors known to contribute to ice flows but not understood well enough to estimate with confidence. SCIENTIFIC scramble is under way to clarify whether the erosion of the world's most vulnerable ice sheets, in Greenland and west Antarctica, can continue to accelerate. The effort involves field and satellite analyses and sifting for clues from past warm periods,
Things are definitely far more serious than anyone would have thought five years ago.
Topic 2（选题二）
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