英文长篇文章带翻译

2017-02-27

阅读在学习者的二语学习中占有着非常重要的地位,它是学习者获得信息的主要渠道,也是帮助学习者提高其他语言技能的基础。下面是小编带来的英文长篇文章带翻译,欢迎阅读!

英文长篇文章带翻译1

古代生态系统中的线索

Science and Technology Palaeontology Remember the tooth

科技 古生物学 牙齿的痕迹

A link is made in an ancient ecosystem

古代生态系统中的线索

WHO ate whom in the food chains of the past is rarely clear.

在古代谁以吃谁为生是不清楚的。

Though it is obvious which species were predators and which prey, the subtle specialisations of feeding habit that allow many types of carnivore to co-exist are rarely preserved in the fossil record.

尽管谁是捕食者和谁是猎物是很明显的,但是专门的微妙的捕食习惯,能让多种食肉动物能够共存的资料很少有保存完好的化石记录。

Rarely, but not never.

很少有记录不表示没有。

That is why the recent discovery of a Jurassic ammonite with a shark's tooth embedded in its shell has excited palaeontologists.

这就是为什么最近发现侏罗纪菊石,连同壳上面的鲨鱼牙齿让古生物学家非常兴奋。

The ammonite in question, Orthaspidoceras, a species that thrived 155m years ago, was part of the collection of an amateur who did not realise the significance of what he had found.

发现的鹦鹉螺是,一种叫Orthaspidoceras的生活在一亿五千五百万年前的生物,化石是由业余爱好者收藏的,他没有意识到他发现的化石的意义。

Romain Vullo of the University of Rennes, however, did-and he has brought the discovery to the attention of the scientific world in the pages of Naturwissenschaften.

法国雷恩大学的Romain Vullo却明白,而他在《自然科学》杂志上的几页论文吸引了科学界的注意。

Ammonites were both predators and prey.

鹦鹉螺既是捕食者也是猎物。

They occupied a position in the Mesozoic oceans similar to that of modern squid.

他们生活在中生代的海洋中,跟现代乌贼相似。

Like squid, they were swimming tentacled molluscs-a group called the cephalopods.

跟乌贼一样,鹦鹉螺是游动的有触须的软体动物,属于头足纲动物。

Unlike squid, though, they had protective shells.

不像乌贼,鹦鹉螺有保护壳。

These shells were divided internally into gas-filled chambers.

这些保护壳的里面有充满气体的分隔小室。

The result had neutral buoyancy, allowing the animal to move (like squid) by jet propulsion.

结果就是鹦鹉螺有浮力,让其像喷气发动机推进一样的运动,这点跟乌贼一样。

Modern pearly nautiluses, whose relationship to ammonites is much debated, have a similar arrangement.

现代珍珠一样的鹦鹉螺跟远古鹦鹉螺的亲缘关系尽管还有待验证,但是现代鹦鹉螺也有类似的充气推进机制。

What ammonites-or, at least, some of them-ate became clear earlier this year when an X-ray showed a small crustacean in the jaws of a species called Baculites.

鹦鹉螺吃什么的问题今年有了答案,x光显示杆鹦鹉螺的咽喉中有小甲壳类动物的痕迹。

But what ate ammonites has never been shown in such an unambiguous manner.

但是什么吃鹦鹉螺从来没有像现在一样模棱两可。

Some ammonite fossils have tooth marks that look as though they were made by huge reptilian predators called mosasaurs.

一些鹦鹉螺化石上有牙印,看上去仿佛是巨大爬虫类捕食者比如沧龙留下的。

Some appear to have been attacked by the beaks of other cephalopods.

有些牙印似乎是被其他头足纲攻击的痕迹。

And some seem to have been bitten by sharks.

有些牙印似乎是鲨鱼留下的。

On top of that, coprolites, as palaeontologists politely describe fossil faeces, have turned up with ammonite shells in them.

最重要的是,对古生物学家礼貌地描述中的粪化石的研究表明,有些粪便中有鹦鹉螺的壳。

Based on comparisons with modern evacua, these are probably from sharks.

随着现代技术的发展,研究表明这些粪便来自于鲨鱼。

But which sharks? Dr Vullo's ammonite nails one culprit.

但是哪种鲨鱼吃鹦鹉螺呢?Vullo博士的化石标本确定了其中的一个罪魁祸首。

The tooth belongs to a species called Planohybodus.

化石中鹦鹉螺外壳上的牙齿属于一种叫做平弓鲨的物种。

And that is a surprise.

这是一个惊喜的发现。

Those modern sharks that eat shelled animals have robust teeth for crunching through hard exteriors.

觅食有壳动物的现代鲨鱼通常长着强壮的牙齿,可以咬穿坚硬的外壳。

The teeth of Planohybodus, in contrast, were slender and pointed-the sort usually associated with grasping and tearing at flesh.

相反,平弓鲨的牙齿,是那种纤细而突出的,一般让人联想到抓住和撕裂肉。

In a modern predator, that would indicate the habit of eating fish.

在现代掠食者中,拥有这种牙齿意味着习惯吃鱼。

That a shark with teeth like this would try to make a meal of an ammonite is, at first sight, odd.

长着这样牙齿的鲨鱼,会试图吃掉鹦鹉螺,美餐一顿的理论,乍一看有点古怪。

But second thoughts provide a possible explanation.

但想一想就有了合理的解释。

Ammonites' manoeuvrability would have depended crucially on their buoyancy control.

鹦鹉螺的灵活性主要建立在浮力控制上面的。

Even a small puncture to the shell, which a pointed tooth would be well able to deliver, would let the water in and cause that control to vanish.

即使是壳上的一个小洞,可能就是这样尖牙造成的,就会让水进入壳内,鹦鹉螺从而无法控制浮力。

Since ammonites could not withdraw entirely into their shells for self-defence, it would then just be a question of dragging the creature out of its chamber in order to eat it.

鹦鹉螺不能完全缩回外壳内自卫,于是就很可能就会被从外壳中拽出,成了其他生物的美食。

And for that, sharp, pointed teeth are ideal.

这样说来,锋利的尖牙是完美的武器。

英文长篇文章带翻译2

进化并不总是意味着改变

A new fossil shows that evolution does not always mean change

一个新的化石表明:进化并不总是意味着改变

WHEN a coelacanth, a type of lobe-finned fish once considered the missing link between fish and amphibians, was found off the coast of South Africa in 1938, it came as a shock to palaeontologists. Until then, the most recent traces of such a creature had been in rocks dating from the last days of the dinosaurs, 65m years ago. It was, in its way, as surprising as if a live Tyrannosaurus had been found hiding in an obscure part of Montana. Now the same experience is hitting palaeontologists again—but this time in reverse. Instead of finding a "living fossil" identical to an ancient beast, they have found a real fossil identical to a modern one.

以前人们一度认为一种叫做腔棘鱼的鳍鱼是鱼类和两栖类之间缺少的环节,1938年当腔棘鱼在南非海岸沿海被发现时,古生物学家对它的出现大感震惊。在此之前,这种动物最近的遗迹出现在6500万年前恐龙时代后期的岩层中。而它这次的出现方式,就好像一个活生生的霸王龙属被发现藏身在蒙大拿州的模糊地带一样令人惊讶。现在,同样的经历再次让古生物学家碰上了,不过这次相反。他们不是找到了一个与古兽相同的"活化石",而是找到了一个跟现代兽类相同的真正化石。

The fossil in question, a 100m-year-old specimen from north-east Brazil, belongs to the genus Schizodactylus. These are large, carnivorous, cricket-like insects whose feet splay out wildly in different directions. Modern Schizodactylus use their feet like snowshoes, to help them remain stable as they travel over sandy terrain in search of prey.

所讨论的的化石采自巴西东北部,是一亿年前的标本,属于节肢动物类。这类节肢动物是大型类似板球的食肉昆虫,其足向不同方向伸展开来。现代节肢动物在沙地爬行寻找猎物时用它们雪鞋般的脚来帮助身体保持稳定。

If the new fossil—whose discovery has just been published in ZooKeys by Sam Heads of the Illinois Natural History Survey and Léa Leuzinger of the University of Fribourg, in Switzerland—were merely similar to modern splay-footed insects, the find would not be particularly surprising: it simply demonstrates a phenomenon called evolutionary stasis, in which a specific type of body form hangs around for a long time. What is surprising is just how static Schizodactylus has been.

如果新化石(其发现刚由伊利诺斯州自然史调查的负责人山姆和瑞士弗里堡大学的李?劳伊辛格发表在《动物图谱》上)仅是类似现代的八字足昆虫,那么这个发现不会特别令人惊讶:它只是证明了一种被称为进化停滞的现象,在这种现象中特定类型的体型存留很长一段时间了。令人惊讶的是节肢动物停止进化竟有这么久了。

Evolutionary stasis is fairly common at the higher levels of the Linnaean system of biological classification (class, order and family). Natural selection hits on a good design. That design is then adopted in slightly different forms by species after species. The shelled bodies of turtles, for example, evolved between 250m and 200m years ago, while the body plans of scorpions have been around for more than 400m years. That does not mean, however, that a zoologist would mistake a 200m-year-old turtle or a 400m-year-old scorpion for any species now alive.

在林耐生物分类(类,属和门)系统的高等类别中进化停滞现象是相当普遍的。自然选择的图案都是最好的。然后,这种图案就被一个接一个的物种以略有不同的形式所采纳。例如,海龟的壳体是在2.5~2.0亿年前进化的,而蝎子的体型方案已超过4亿年的历史。然而这并不意味着一个动物学家会弄错2亿岁的海龟或是4亿岁的蝎子属于现在存活的何种物种。

What is remarkable about the new find is that it is so similar to modern animals that it can be assigned to an existing genus—the lowest level of Linnaean classification above a species—rather than just to some higher taxonomic group. That is rare indeed. Even the modern coelacanth, on closer examination, had to be put in a different genus from any known fossil.

新发现引人注目的是它与现代动物如此相似,以致它可以被列入现有生物分类种类(林奈物种以上分类的最低等),而不是只被列入某一更高等的分类组。这的确罕见。经过仔细观察,甚至就连现代腔棘鱼都必须得归类于不同于任何已知化石的种类。

Clearly the body plan of Schizodactylus is not merely good, but optimal, at least for the environment the animal lives in. Alas for Schizodactylus, the sandy deserts it prefers have retreated from north-eastern Brazil and its optimality there has vanished. But its discovery shows better what this part of the world was like 100m years ago—and also illustrates an important point about evolution that is often forgotten in biologists' understandable focus on the development of novelty. The first rule of natural selection is: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

显然,节肢动物的体型方案不仅是最好的,也是最佳的,至少对这种动物生活的环境而言是如此。唉,对节肢动物来说,它所喜爱的沙质沙漠已经从巴西东北部退却,它在那里的最佳体态已经消失。但它的发现恰好说明这部分的大千世界跟1亿年前的样子很象,也说明了进化论的一个重点,而这点在生物学家关注理解新颖性的发展时往往被遗忘了。自然选择的第一条规则是:"如果没坏,就不要修理它。"

英文长篇文章带翻译3

爱的代价 The price of love

The junta's policy of eliminating its enemies still fascinates Argentina's novelists;

军政府清除异己的政策至今仍吸引着阿根廷小说家;

Purgatory. By Tomás Eloy Martínez. Translated by Frank Wynne.

《炼狱》,Tomás Eloy Martínez著,Frank Wynne译。

An Open Secret. By Carlos Gamerro. Translated by Ian Barnett.

《公开的秘密》,Carlos Gamerro著,Ian Barnett译。

Open Door. By Iosi Havilio. Translated by Beth Fowler.

《敞开的门》,Iosi Havilio著,Beth Fowler译。

7 Ways to Kill a Cat. By Matías Néspolo. Translated by Frank Wynne.

《杀死一只猫的7种方式》,Matías Néspolo著,Frank Wynne译。

It seems appropriate now that Argentina's investigation into the fate of its desaparecidos—the 8,960 people officially known to have “disappeared” under the military dictatorship of 1976-83—was headed by a writer. Ernesto Sábato, who died in April at the age of 99, described his task as a “slow descent into hell”. Ever since “Never Again”, his 1984 report on the “dirty war”, generations of Argentine novelists have followed Sábato into the inferno.

1976-83年,在这段军事独裁时期阿根廷有8960人被官方确认为 “失踪”,对这些失踪者命运的调查,可以说走在最前沿的是一位作家。Ernesto Sábato,今年4月逝世,终年99岁,他将这项工作描述为“缓缓沉入地狱”。自从他对这场“肮脏战争”的报道《再也不会》(Never Again)于1984年发表后,一代代阿根廷小说家跟随Sábato走入这段地狱般的历史。

For Argentine society, the chapter never closes. Continuing revelations about hundreds of adopted children who were abducted with their parents, or born in custody, have resulted in DNA tests and legal challenges by a campaigning group, “Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo”. Two of these fine recent novels revisit events during the junta. The others—both exceptional debuts—focus on a disturbing present, yet are haunted by unexplained disappearances.

对于阿根廷社会来说,这一篇章永不会结束。当年数百儿童随父母一同遭到绑架,有的或出生在拘留所中,这些儿童随后被他人收养。随着他们身世不断被揭开,一个名为“五月广场祖母协会”的人权组织呼吁进行DNA鉴定,并质疑法律的公正性。最近一批优秀小说中有两部回顾了军政府时期的事件。其余几部均是杰出的处女作小说,故事围绕现代生活展开,但人们同样被不明原因的失踪事件困扰,终日惶惶不安。

Tomás Eloy Martínez (pictured above), a prominent journalist, novelist and academic who spent years in exile and died in 2010, is known for his explorations of the psychology of Peronism, among them “Santa Evita” (1995). In “Purgatory” (2008), his last novel, an Argentine cartographer in suburban New Jersey senses that her husband has returned to her, no older than when he disappeared 30 years earlier. After years of searching, she remains impervious to evidence of his death as it would confirm that her father, a cheerleading propagandist for the junta, connived in his killing. The novel alludes to the mixture of hypocrisy and collusion that characterised that period, and the banal sentimentality of its distractions—flying saucers, soap operas, fatherland and fútbol (the infamous 1978 World Cup hosted and won by Argentina). The heroine's state of denial and her ghostly and erotic delusions mirror a country still struggling with reality.

托马斯·埃洛伊·马丁内斯(Tomás Eloy Martínez)(见上图)是一位杰出的新闻工作者、小说家和学者,曾度过数年流亡生活,在2010年去世。他以庇隆主义心理学研究著称,代表作《圣埃维塔》(Santa Evita)(1995)。《炼狱》(Purgatory)(2008)是马丁内斯的最后一部小说。家住新泽西郊区的阿根廷制图师终于与丈夫重聚,但她发觉丈夫和30年前失踪时一样年轻。这些年她不停寻找,虽有证据证明丈夫的死亡,但她始终不为所动,因为这也可能证实她的父亲,一名军政府高级参谋,参与了这起谋杀。小说影射了当时社会的伪善,人与人相互勾结,精神生活和日常消遣平庸乏味——飞碟、肥皂剧、谈论国事和足球(由阿根廷举办并夺冠的不甚光彩的1978年世界杯)。小说中的女主角拒绝接受现实,终日魂劳梦断,反应出一个国家仍在与现实抗争的社会现状。

Craven complicity is at the heart of Carlos Gamerro's “An Open Secret”, a literary thriller first published in 2002 that has the makings of a classic. The perfect crime is “one committed in the sight of everyone—because then there are no witnesses, only accomplices.” A veteran of the war in the Falklands (or Malvinas as they are known in Argentina) returns in the 1990s to his hometown in the pampas to probe the disappearance in custody of a troublesome young journalist during the weekend of Diego Maradona's football debut 20 years earlier. He finds a “conspiracy of chattiness” rather than of silence, over a murder the whole town was in on.

懦弱的同谋是Carlos Gamerro小说《公开的秘密》(An Open Secret)的中心内容,该书最早出版于2002年,是一部有实力成为经典作品的惊悚小说。完美的犯罪是“众目睽睽之下的犯罪——因为这样没有目击者,只有同谋。”一位参加过福克兰群岛(阿根廷称之为马尔维纳斯群岛)战争的老兵上世纪90年代回到他在潘帕斯草原的家,对一起事件进行调查:20年前迭戈·马拉多纳首次登场比赛,就在那个周末,一个被拘留的麻烦缠身的年轻记者莫名失踪。他发现这并不是一场沉默的阴谋,而是“人人都在谈论的阴谋”,这起谋杀在全城人尽皆知。

Mr Gamerro, who was born in 1962, departs from a previous generation's reverence for eyewitness testimony and memorialising the dead. The tone is hard-boiled, its cynicism alleviated by rare lyrical flights, and the desaparecido emerges as a spoilt mama's boy and unsavoury womaniser. The “involuntary martyr” is no hero. The perspective is that of a generation seeking the unadulterated truth about their parents and grandparents during the “dirty war”—and hence their own identity. Amid the torrential self- justification of the townsfolk, from barbers to bankers, the subject becomes language itself, which is used to excuse and obfuscate. The stark epigraph is from William Burroughs: “To speak is to lie/To live is to collaborate.”

Gamerro出生于1962年,对于历史见证者的证言和对死者的纪念方式,他没有像上一代人那样完全表现出敬畏。小说语调冰冷,偶有的情感抒发使文章少了些愤世嫉俗之感。失踪者被塑造成受妈妈宠爱的男孩的形象,喜欢拈花惹草,令人反感。“非自愿的牺牲者”绝非英雄。作者将视角投向一代人追寻真相,探查“肮脏战争”期间父辈和祖父辈最真实的经历——同时这也是对自己身份的探寻。从理发师到银行家,市民们自我辩护的话语铺天盖地而来,人人自顾开脱,令真相扑朔迷离,而这部分语言也构成了小说的主体。书中令人警醒的题词源自威廉·柏洛兹(William Burroughs)的语句:“语言即谎言/生存即勾结。”

The bereaved mother in “An Open Secret” appears mad, though the madness is all around her. In “Open Door” by Iosi Havilio, who was born only in 1974, Argentina resembles an asylum. A young veterinary assistant relates how her female lover went missing. She fears that she may have seen her commit suicide off a bridge in Buenos Aires's old port. Between trips to the morgue to identify corpses, she visits a pampas village named Open Door, after the psychiatric hospital that was founded there in 1898 as an “agricultural work colony”. In the countryside she moves between two partners: an ageing gaucho—whose name is the same as his ailing horse, Jaime—and an amoral, druggie country girl with plaits.

《公开的秘密》中失去儿子的母亲显得有些精神失常,事实上这种荒诞不经充斥于她周边。《敞开的门》(Open Door)作者Iosi Havilio,是一位出生于1974年的年青作家。在阿根廷,open door被视为精神病院。故事中一个年轻的兽医助理在叙述她的女朋友失踪的情形。她似乎看到她从布宜诺斯艾利斯旧港口的一座桥上跳了下去,她很担心。在几次前往太平间辨认遗体的过程中,女主角拜访了一个潘帕斯小镇。小镇名叫敞开的门,是以1898年在此建成的精神病院得名,这里一直是“农业耕种殖民地”。在乡下她往返于两个情人之间:一个是老成的高楚牧人——名字和他的病马一样,Jaime;另一个是梳着辫子,不明事理、吸毒成瘾的乡下女孩。

As sexual encounters unfold in the woman's alienated voice, the characters merge with the village “loonies”. Events, like interchangeable lovers, have equal weight, from a stable fire to the brewing of maté tea, in an ambiguous tale that verges on dark comedy. A suspected UFO turns out to be the spotlit film set for a commercial. In an asylum without walls, there is “nothing to limit the illusion of absolute liberty”; ultimate control is when people no longer feel they are being coerced. With skill and subtlety, the novel hints that a whole society might labour under an illusion of liberty, manipulated by forces outside the frame.

故事在女主角迷茫的声音中继续上演,浪漫情事随之展开,书中人物逐渐加入到小镇“疯子”的行列。对于女主角和各位情人之间发生的各种故事,作者给予了同等的笔墨,从描写马厩的热火到冲泡马黛茶的情节,整个故事寓意隐晦,充满黑色喜剧味道。一个疑似UFO的物体原来是为商业广告设置的聚光灯。在没有围墙的精神病院,“可以无限幻想绝对自由”;当人民不再感到压迫,即是统治的最高境界。小说巧妙地暗示了整个社会都在一种自由的假象下劳作,而操纵这一切的是外围的势力。

What those malign forces might be is more explicit in “7 Ways to Kill a Cat” by Matías Néspolo, another debut novelist of Mr Havilio's generation. His shantytown tale from southern Buenos Aires, which recalls the “City of God” slum in the Rio favelas, is set during Argentina's 2001 financial crash, with protesters defying tear gas, from teachers to lorry drivers. It opens in a barrio at the “wolf's mouth”, where the asphalt and streetlights give out, with two peso-less youths butchering a cat for meat. As they become embroiled in a lethal turf war between drug lords, the narrator, Gringo, probes the mystery of his mother's disappearance, and that of his cousin—a reformed gangster turned pavement hawker.

这些邪恶势力究竟是什么,《杀死一只猫的7种方式》(7 Ways to Kill a Cat)对此进行了详尽的记述。作者Matías Néspolo,与Havilio是同时代人,也是一位初次亮相的作家。小说以2001年阿根廷经济危机为时代背景,当时从教师到卡车司机,都参与到抗议者队伍中,公然反抗警察镇压。这部窝棚区故事取材于布宜诺斯艾利斯南部,让人想到位于里约贫民窟的“上帝之城”贫民区。故事在有着“狼口”之称的地区展开,这是柏油路和路灯的尽头,两个身无分文的青年为了填饱肚子正在宰杀一只猫。之后他们卷入与毒枭争夺地盘的致命斗争,故事的叙述者Gringo对两起神秘失踪事件展开调查,一位是他的母亲,另一位是他的表兄——曾是一个恶棍,改过自新后成了街边小贩。

Gringo, torn between moral scruples and the need to “look after number one”, learns that there are only two ways to kill a cat: civilised or savage. A police crackdown on the marchers prompts him to retaliate in what he sees as a “seriously civilised fashion”. One of the characters in “An Open Secret” claims bitterly that in Argentina, “the winners make history and the losers write it.” To judge from these novels that scour the past and mourn the future, it seems nobody won.

Gringo在道德和“一己私欲”之间倍受折磨,他意识到杀死一只猫只有两种方式:文明的方式或野蛮的方式。警察对游行者的镇压迫使他以一种自认为“极度文明的方式”展开报复。《公开的秘密》中有人曾悲愤地说,在阿根廷“胜利者创造历史,失败者记录历史。”纵观这些追寻过去、忧心未来的小说,这里似乎并没有赢家。

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