北京科技大学211翻译硕士英语2013年考研真题

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北京科技大学2013年硕士学位研究生入学考试试题

试题编号： 211 试题名称： 翻译硕士英语

适用专业： 翻译(专业英语)

I. Vocabulary and Structure (30 points, 1 point each, 60 minutes)

Directions: Beneath each sentence there are four words or phrases marked A, B, C, and D. Choose the answer that best completes the sentence. Write your answers on your answer sheet.

1. Ruth wanted to be transferred to another department, but her application was _____ because her own department is understaffed.

A. turned down B. turned over C. turned away D. turned off

2. Helen’s been neglecting her homework lately. I’ll _____ with her parents about it.

A. have words B. have a word C. have the word D. have the last word

3. The reality of governance is rarely ______; institutions do not operate according to mechanical laws, but they evolve organically.

A. noble B. static C. inconsistent D. documented

4. A position that requires public speaking would be very difficult for one as _____ as he.

A. amiable B. vivacious C. reticent D. decent

5. The commission asked that the administration’s 90-day ban on federal funds for human cloning _____ indefinitely.

A. to be extended B. to extend C. be extended D. being extended

6. There is talk of the government _______ a new tax relief scheme for families with more than three children.

A. bringing in B. bringing off C. bringing about D. bringing on

7. The nurses asked the local union to ______ their strike by signing a letter of support.

A. comply B. undermine C. endorse D. isolate

8. I could not but _____ very much delighted with several modern epitaphs, which are written with great elegance of expression.

A. being B. be C. to be D. was

9. ______ more societies are geared to retirement at around 65, companies have a looming problem of knowledge management.

A. Given that B. Provided C. Unless D. While

10. The organization gives help and support to people in need, as well as _____ money for local charities.

A. raises B. raising C. raise D. to raise

11. The development of containers, possibly made from bark or the skins of animals, although it is a matter of ______, allowed the extensive sharing of forage food in prehistoric human societies.

A. conjecture B. fact C. record D. conspiracy

12. Most people choose a lawyer on the basis of such _____ considerations as his cost, his field of expertise, and the fees he charges.

A. humanistic B. irrelevant C. personal D. pragmatic

13. It cannot be denied that the existing resources on earth will be depleted, but scientists are hesitant to ______ the inevitability of that day, convinced that new energies can be found in the near future.

A. recede B. exceed C. concede D. precede

14. There has been nothing good on television for weeks. Good programs are _______.

A. more or less B. far and between C. on and off D. here and there

15. Fred is a(n) ______ complainer— as soon as one problem is solved, he will come up with another.

A. affluent B. prudent C. moderate D. chronic

16. Rita turned her ______ of being lost in the desert into good fortune by selling the story to a movie studio.

A. ordeal B. pessimism C. retort D. patron

17. Psychologists maintain that the nature of human beings entails a strong need to _____ their free time; idleness can be as stressful as activity.

A. endanger B. preserve C. consume D. organize

18. At age 10, my cousin still has a _____ belief in Santa Claus; she becomes upset at any suggestion that he doesn’t exist.

A. sedentary B. inquisitive C. tenacious D. superfluous

19. They ______ each other, making a perfect couple. He is rich but doesn’t care about money; she is poor but cares about it a lot.

A. complement B. fabricate C. implement D. validate

20. People anticipated that vertical flight transports would carry millions of passengers as _______ today.

A. the airliners do B. do the airliners C. the airliners did D. did the airliners

21. Rumors, embroidered with detail, live on for years, neither denied nor confirmed, until they become accepted as fact even among people not known for their _____.

A. insight B. introspection C. obstinacy D. credulity

22. Imposing steep fines on employers for on-the-job injuries to workers could be an effective ______ creating a safer workplace, especially in the case of employers with poor safety records.

A. alternative B. addition C. incentive D. deterrent

23. Her ______ should not be confused with miserliness, as long as I have known her, she has always been willing to assist those who are in need.

A. frugality B. diffidence C. intolerance D. apprehension

24. Observable as a tendency of our culture is a _______ of belief in psychoanalysis: we no longer feel that it can solve out emotional problems.

A. defence B. confrontation C. divergence D. withdrawal

25. The prospects of discovering new aspects of the life of a painter as thoroughly studied as Vermeer are not, on the surface, _______.

A. unpromising B. encouraging C. daunting D. challenging

26. The history of film reflects the ________ inherent in the medium itself: film contains still photographs to represent continuous motion and, while seeming to present life itself, can also offer impossible and dreamlike unrealities.

A. biases B. constraints C. liabilities D. paradoxes

27. The notion that cultural and biological influences equally determine cross-cultural diversity is _____ by the fact that, in countless aspects of human existence, it is cultural programming that overwhelmingly accounts for cross-population variance.

A. confirmed B. illustrated C. discredited D. disapproved

28. Dominant interests often benefit most from ________ of governmental interference in business, since they are able to take care of themselves if left alone.

A. centralization B. authorization C. intensification D. elimination

29. As the world has moved into a scientific age, the origin of herbal medicine in many countries remains _____ in mystery and often sounds fantastic to those trained in modern science.

A. shrouded B. hidden C. covered D. hindered

30. We can scarcely afford to neglect airport security in light of the recent terrorist actions, but as a reliable critic has pointed out, the cost of actually implementing these measures remains a _______ expense.

A. feasible B. prohibitive C. suitable D. negligible

II. Reading Comprehension (40 points, 2 points each, 60 minutes)

Section I

Directions: In this section there are two reading passages followed by multiple choice questions. Read the passages and then write your answer on your answer sheet.

Passage One

When Ford’s River Rouge Plant was completed in 1928 it boasted everything it needed to turn raw materials into finished cars: 100,000 workers, 16m square feet of factory floor, 100 miles of railway track and its own docks and furnaces. Today it is still Ford’s largest plant, but only a shadow of its former glory. Most of the parts are made by sub-contractors and merely fitted together by the plant’s 6,000 workers. The local steel mill is run by a Russian company, Severstal.

Outsourcing has transformed global business. Over the past few decades companies have contracted out everything from mopping the floors to spotting the flaws in their internet security. TPI, a company that specializes in the sector, estimates that $100 billion-worth of new contracts are signed every year. Oxford Economics reckons that in Britain, one of the world’s most mature economies, 10% of workers toil away in “outsourced” jobs and companies spend $ 200 billion a year on outsourcing. Even war is being outsourced: America employs more contract workers in Afghanistan than regular troops.

The latest TPI quarterly index of outsourcing (which measures commercial contracts of $25m or more) suggests that the total value of such contracts for the second quarter of 2011 fell by 18% compared with the second quarter of 2010. Dismal figures in the Americas (i.e. mostly the United States) dragged down the average: the value of contracts there was 50% lower in the second quarter of 2011 than in the first half of 2010. This is partly explained by America’s gloomy economy, but even more by the maturity of the market: TPI suspects that much of what can sensibly be outsourced already has been.

Miles Robinson of Mayer Brown, a law firm, notes that there has also been an uptick in legal disputes over outsourcing. In one case EDS, an IT company, had to pay BSkyB, a media company, £318m ($469m) in damages. The two firms spent an estimated £70m on legal fees and were tied up in court for five months. Such nightmares are worse in India, where the courts move with Dickensian speed. And since many disputes stay out of court, the well of discontent with outsourcing is surely deeper than the legal record shows.

Some of the worst business disasters of recent years have been caused or aggravated by outsourcing. Eight years ago Boeing, America’s biggest aeroplane-maker, decided to follow the example of car firms and hire contractors to do most of the grunt work on its new 787 Dreamliner. The result was a nightmare. Some of the parts did not fit together. Some of the dozens of sub-contractors failed to deliver their components on time, despite having subcontracted their work to sub-sub-contractors. Boeing had to take over some of the subcontractors to prevent them from collapsing. If the Dreamliner starts rolling off the production line towards the end of this year, as Boeing promises, it will be billions over budget and three years behind schedule.

Outsourcing can go wrong in a colorful variety of ways. Sometimes companies squeeze their contractors so hard that they are forced to cut corners. (This is a big problem in the car industry, where a handful of global firms can bully the 80,000 parts-makers.) Sometimes vendors overpromise in order to win a contract and then fail to deliver. Sometimes both parties write sloppy contracts. And some companies undermine their overall strategies with injudicious outsourcing. Service companies, for example, contract out customer complaints to foreign call centres and then wonder why their customers hate them.

When outsourcing goes wrong, it is the devil to put right. When companies outsource a job, they typically eliminate the department that used to do it. They become entwined with their contractors, handing over sensitive material and inviting contractors to work alongside their own staff. Extricating themselves from this tangle can be tough. It is much easier to close a department than to rebuild it. Sacking a contractor can mean that factories grind to a halt, bills languish unpaid and chaos mounts.

None of this means that companies are going to re-embrace the River Rouge model any time soon. Some companies, such as Boeing, are bringing more work back in-house, in the jargon. But the business logic behind outsourcing remains compelling, so long as it is done right. Many tasks are peripheral to a firm’s core business and can be done better and more cheaply by specialists. Cleaning is an obvious example; many back-office jobs also fit the bill. Outsourcing firms offer labour arbitrage, using cheap Indians to enter data rather than expensive Swedes. They can offer economies of scale, too. TPI points out that, for all the problems in America, outsourcing is continuing to grow in emerging markets and, more surprisingly, in Europe, where Germany and France are late converts to the idea.

Companies are rethinking outsourcing, rather than jettisoning it. They are dumping huge long term deals in favour of smaller, less rigid ones. The annualized value of “mega-relationship” worth $100m or more a year fell by 62% this year compared with last. Companies are forming relationships with several outsourcers, rather than putting all their eggs in few baskets. They are signing shorter contracts, too. But still, they need to think harder about what their core business is, and what is peripheral. And above all, newspaper editors need to say no to the temptation to outsource business columns to cheaper, hungrier writers.

1. The Ford’s River Rouge Plant case is introduced in the first paragraph to _____.

A. indicate the prevalence of outsourcing

B. lament over the past glory of the plant

C. explain Boeing’s adoption of a similar model

D. expose the weakness of its business model

2. Which of the following statements about outsourcing is correct?

A. Outsourcing in all markets has encountered difficulties.

B. Outsourcing, if well operated, can help reduce the costs.

C. Recession is the major cause for less outsourcing in America.

D. The outsourcing boom will go on indefinitely in spite of problems.

3. Currently companies in America have the following concerns EXCEPT_____.

A. low quality of subcontracted products and services

B. the saturated outsourcing market

C. drastic increase of disputes over outsourcing

D. the necessity of reforming outsourcing model

4. Which of the following solutions is NOT suggested in the passage?

A. Develop several outsourcers to reduce potential risks.

B. Sign short-term and flexible contracts with outsourcers.

C. Rebuild the department to do the job once outsourced.

D. Identify businesses appropriate for outsourcing.

5. The underlined word “peripheral” in paragraph 8 is closest in meaning to _____.

A. indispensable B. temporary C. essential D. secondary

Passage Two

Of all the methods of communication invented by humanity over the centuries, none has disseminated so much information so widely at such high speeds as the internet. It is both a unifying force and a globalizing one. But, its very ubiquity makes it a localizing one too, because it is clearly not the same everywhere, either in what it provides or how it is operated and regulated.

The smartphone has liberated its users from the PC on his desk, granting him access on the go not just to remote computers and long-lost friends on the other side of the world but also to the places around him. If he lives in a city, as most users do, then his fellow city-dwellers and the buildings, cars and streets around them are throwing off almost unimaginable quantities of valuable data from which he will benefit. And although communications across continents have become cheap and easy, physical proximity to others remains important in creating new ideas and products—especially (and perhaps ironically) for companies offering online services. You cannot (yet) have a coffee together online.

This simultaneously more localized and more globalized world will be more complicated than the world of old. Different rules will continue to apply to different countries’ bits of cyberspace. Gartner’s Mr. Prentice thinks that three basic forces will shape the mobile internet, the transport of data across it and the content available on it: politician’s demand for control; (most) people’s desire for freedom; and companies’ pursuit of profit. It is possible to imagine scenarios in which one of these forces comes out on top. But it is more likely, says Mr. Prentice, that different combinations of the three forces will prevail in different places.

What seems certain is that life online will become more local without becoming any less global. With a smartphone in your hand you can find out more, if you want to, about what is going on immediately around you. The next bus goes in five minutes. The coffee shop across the street, where you haven’t been for a few weeks, is offering you a free cappuccino. Those cushions you looked at online are available in the department store around the corner. The smartphone could even help revive the high street if people knew that they could take home today what Amazon could not deliver until tomorrow.

None of this will reduce the scope or the appetite for catching up with friends, news and stories from far away. “The truth is that three things will go on at once,” says Danny Miller, an anthropologist at UCL. There will continue to be “unprecedented opportunities for homogenization and globalization”, but there are also “possibilities for great localization”—including services such as Foursquare. Lastly, there will be a new localism, thanks to an internet full of local differences that are not confined to particular places. For example, Trinidadians use Facebook in a distinctive way to reflect local concepts of scandal and gossip. But because more than half of Trinidadian families have at least one member living abroad, this form of use is not tied to Trinidad; it could just as easily be adopted by Trinidadians living in London or Toronto.

A further prediction is that, as people rely more on connected devices to explore the physical world, digital information will have a growing influence on how they see the physical realm and on how they move through it. Mr. Gramham and Mr. Zook, with Andrew Boulton, also of the University of Kentucky, begin a forthcoming paper by imagining a young woman’s progress through Dublin on a Saturday night—a kind of digital “ Ulysses”. She checks texts and tweets from her boyfriend (where is he?), passes a bar (a favorite band once played here) and looks up a review of a restaurant (seems good). But the city she sees has been digitally constructed for her. Her boyfriend sends her a text to arrange a meeting place. She knows about the band because her past online searches have prompted her smartphone to provide the details. And the restaurant review is nothing more than the sum of other people’s opinions, delivered electronically.

And this is harmless, even helpful, but there is a darker side to it. Eli Pariser, an American journalist, has written of a “filter bubble” in which people are presented only with ideas and opinions that their past online behavior suggests they are likely to agree with. As they make their digital way through the physical realm, something similar may happen. Being steered away from areas of high crime late at night is no bad thing. But not being pointed towards a museum or a club because you haven’t been anywhere like it before may be a missed opportunity. Standing in front of a monument and being given a version of history that reinforces your prejudice closes rather than opens the mind.

Yet on the whole it is surely a good thing for the digital and the physical worlds to become increasingly interwoven. They are complements, not substitutes for each other. The digital overlay will, in effect, allow people to see not only through walls (what’s in that shop?) and around corners (is there a taxi nearby?) but even through time (what happened here in 1945?). Each realm on its own is fascinating; together they are irresistible.

6. The passage is mainly about _______.

A. the impact of smartphones upon life online

B. the globalization brought about by the internet

C. the interaction between the digital and physical worlds

D. the development of localism in the era of the globalization

7. According to the passage, which of the following statements is correct?

A. The digital world may shape people’s perception of the physical world.

B. Indulgence in the digital world may cause delusion about the reality.

C. Connected devices have turned people’s life from local to global.

D. Smartphones reduce people’s interest in getting information from far away.

8. The case of a woman’s trip in Dublin in paragraph 6 is presented to _______.

A. illustrate the function of smartphones in cities

B. predict the influence of digital information upon physical life

C. explain the new findings of some scholars

D. mimic the life delineated in the novel Ulysses

9. The following factors EXCEPT ______ contribute to the localism in life online.

A. easy exploration of the local environment

B. increasingly distinctive local services

C. localized regulations regarding the internet

D. adherence to the local culture and customs

10. The underlined word “ubiquity” in the first paragraph is closest in meaning to _______.

A. Uniqueness B. Strength C. Universality D. Accessibility

Section II

Directions: Read the following two passages and answer in COMPLETE SENETNECES the questions which follow the passages. Write your answers in the corresponding space in your answer sheet.

Passage Three

The BBC has long dominated Britain’s media, but in recent years it has got even bigger, both absolutely and relatively. Many serious broadsheet and local newspapers are dying. Tabloid newspapers have been shamed by a phone-hacking scandal, and are likely to endure stricter oversight in future. The corporation gets £3.6 billion ($5.7 billion) a year from a licence fee levied on every household that watches television, and is therefore invulnerable to the vagaries of the media market, while the technological change that has caused other media outlets to shrivel has given the BBC new scope for expansion. It has huge online presence and a proliferation of digital television channels and radio stations. With a staff of around 23,000, it is the largest broadcaster in the world.

The BBC makes good use of some of this money. Its documentaries, serious radio output (such as “Today”) and website are excellent. Although polls show trust in it is declining, the reputations of other great British institutions, such as Parliament and the City, have fallen further still. The BBC remains respected around the world and is a handy tool for projecting British interests—cheaper and cleaner than bombs.

Yet Britons’ attention has drifted to other entertainments. The BBC’s share of British viewing time has dropped from over a half three decades ago to under a third today as pay-television and free multichannel services have grown. Britons have noticed. According to a YouGov survey in 2010, 60% regard the licence fee as poor value for money. And the decline of private-sector media outlets raises questions about the impact of the BBC’s public subsidy. The Guardian, for instance, might make a go of being a British-based global online, leftish news provider, were it not for the state-funded competition.

The BBC’s size is a problem not just for the competition but for the organization itself. Its bloated management means that those at the top do not know what’s going on at the bottom, and stunts creativity. Few of its dramas or comedies are world-beaters (“Downton Abbey”, a current hit, is made by an American-owned independent studio and broadcast on ITV). Even in news, recent big stories, such as phone-hacking and MP’s expenses, have been broken by impoverished newspapers, not the sluggish state-backed monolith. Editors should edit— and be responsible for it— not report to compliance officers.

The radical solution would be to get rid of a lot of the BBC. Public broadcasting should focus on areas where the market does not provide— expensive things such as investigative journalism and foreign reporting, serious radio, some areas of arts and science broadcasting— and forget about the prime-time entertainment shows and sports where the BBC spends taxpayers’ money bidding up stars’ wages. A smaller, more focused organization would find it easier to take risks and innovate.

The BBC’s defenders say that, without popular fodder like “Strictly Come Dancing”, audiences would shrink, and the licence fee become impossible to defend. It probably would; and a good thing too, since it is a regressive tax. Public-service broadcasting should be paid for by the Treasury, through a long-term grant made by a self-perpetuating independence body that kept it at arm’s length from politicians.

A better objection to a complete overhaul now is that politicians have no appetite for such a radical solution, and the BBC needs a set of fixes quickly. One useful change would be to split the job of director-general into those of chief executive and editor-in-chief. The first would be a manager, charged with making the monolith more efficient; the second would be a journalist, charged with producing accurate, hard-hitting stories— and refocusing the output on quality.

Britons are naturally resistant to radical ideas. As the 20th century showed, that is, by and large, a good thing. The danger, though, is that unreformed organizations wither and die, or implode. The media business is one of Britain’s strengths. If it is to stay that way, the BBC needs to change.

11. How has the BBC “grown even bigger, both absolutely and relatively”?

12. What difficulties is the BBC confronted with, according to the passage?

13. What is the purpose of the author mentioning “Downton Abbey” and other big stories in paragraph four?

14. What suggestions have been put forward in the passage to address the current situation of the BBC?

15. What is the main idea of the passage?

Passage Four

For half a century an influential group of Western linguists, led by Noam Chomsky, have argued that language is an innate human faculty, the product of a “language organ” in the mind. Other prominent “innatists” include Steven Pinker, an evolutionary psychologist and author of “The Language Instinct”, and Derek Bickerton, a linguist at the University of Hawaii and developer of a “bioprogramme” theory of language. Innatists believe that all languages share fundamental features. And linguistic innatism is part of a wider debate about just how much of human nature is wired into the brain.

Daniel Everett, a linguist at Bentley University in Massachusetts, disagrees on both innatism and the fundamental similarity of languages. He spent years learning tiny languages in forbidding jungle villages, experiences he recounted in his 2008 memoir, “Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes”. In his new book, “Language: The Cultural Tool”, Mr. Everett moves away from narrow linguistic anthropology to broad theory. He argues that language is not the product of a “language organ” but an extension of general intelligence.

Instead of unfolding in the same way in Paris and Papua New Guinea, languages are crafted by their speakers to meet their needs. He cites the Pirahii, the Brazilian Amazonian group he has spent the longest time living with. There are no numbers beyond two in Pirahii because, Mr. Everett argues, they have no money, engage in little barter trade, do not store food for the future and do not think about the distant past. This “living for the moment”, which the Pirahii enjoy (they think Western life sounds dreadful), shapes their language.

That different cultures have different words is unsurprising. It is when these differences affect cognition (the Pirahii cannot do maths, for example) that things get interesting. But Mr. Everett’s most controversial argument, and his biggest challenge to linguistic innatism, is about grammar.

Mr. Chomsky has argued that “recursion” is the key feature of all human language. This is the embedding of smaller units inside bigger ones: a subordinate clause is a kind of recursion, embedding a sentence in a bigger one. Mr. Everett says that the Pirahii lack grammatical recursion, and that even if recursion is universal (Piraha use it in stories if not within sentences), this does not prove the existence of the language organ. Information is naturally organized with smaller bits nesting inside larger ones. That nearly all humans would find this linguistically useful is little different than widely varying societies independently inventing the bow and arrow— it is simply useful, and no proof of an instinct. True instincts, like turtles making their way to the sea or ducklings bonding with their mothers, require no learning. Language does. Animals do not truly excel in their deployment of basic instincts, whereas some humans clearly use language much better than others.

But Mr. Everett, in trying to reach a popular audience while making an argument aimed at professional linguists, makes some awkward compromises. He cites a paper by other researchers claiming to have found that there are no features that are common to all languages, an argument that is crucial to his thesis. But he does not give enough detail for the reader. Later he even contradicts himself, saying that all languages have nouns and verbs.

He argues that differences between societies lead to profound differences between languages, but fails to drive the point home fully. The Wari people use the word “hole” or “vagina” as the ordinary word for “wife”. Could this be denigrating of women? Or, since the birth canal is the point of departure for human life, could it be a way of praising them? Mr. Everett is not sure. Or take Banawa, another Amazonian language, in which the default gender of an unknown person or mixed group of people is feminine, not masculine as in most languages. The Banawa also practice rigid gender segregation, even whipping young girls bloody after their first menstruation. Could the unusual gender-assignment of Babawa be a product of this gender-segregated Banawa society? “The only answer at present is, ‘Perhaps’,” he writes. Even the lack of grammatical recursion in Piraha, Mr. Everett’s key piece of evidence that it is culture that creates language, cannot tell the whole tale. Similar tribal cultures have languages bristling with recursion.

Mr. Everett thinks it possible that culture influences grammar, but he is not sure. He acknowledges that conjecture about what causes linguistic differences has been a staple of much irresponsible amateur linguistics. It is hard to work out where culture has affected language, where language affects culture and cognition (a hot topic of psycholinguistic research), and where the differences are unrelated. Mr. Everett has taken a shot across the innatists’ bow, and an impressively modest and reasoned one given that Mr. Chomsky once called him a charlatan. His case is not wholly proven, but it deserves a serious reading, and a response beyond name-calling.

16. According to the passage, what are the major differences between Noam Chomsky and Daniel Everett regarding language?

17. What conclusion does Daniel Everett draw from the fact that the Pirahii do not have numbers beyond two?

18. How do Noam Chomsky and Daniel Everett explain respectively the phenomenon that information is organized with small units inside larger ones?

19. What is the weakness of Daniel Everett’s argument in his new book, according to the author of the passage?

20. What is the author’s attitude towards the debates between Daniel Everett and Noam Chomsky?

III. Writing (30 points, 60 minutes)

The following is an excerpt quoted from a newspaper. Write a composition of about 400 words about the phenomenon indicated and your opinion about it.

Fewer and fewer native Chinese learn to produce characters in traditional calligraphy. Instead, they write their language with a computer, the same way most westerners do. And not only that, but they use the Roman alphabet to produce Chinese characters: type in wo and Chinese language-support software will offer a menu of characters pronounced wo; the user selects the one desired. With less and less need to recall the character cold, they are forgetting them.

资料来源：北京科技大学研究生院官网

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