翻译硕士英语样题及参考答案

《翻译硕士英语》样题

I. Vocabulary and grammar (30’)

Multiple choice

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

1. Thousands of people turned out into the streets to _________ against the local authorities’ decision to build a highway across the field.

A. contradict B. reform C. counter D. protest

2. The majority of nurses are women, but in the higher ranks of the medical profession women are in a _________.

A. minority B. scarcity C. rarity D. minimum

3. Professor Johnson’s retirement ________ from next January. A. carries into effect B. takes effect C. has effect

D. puts into effect

4. The president explained that the purpose of taxation was to ________ government spending. A. finance B. expand C. enlarge D. budget

5. The heat in summer is no less _________ here in this mountain region. A. concentrated B. extensive C. intense D. intensive

6. Taking photographs is strictly ________ here, as it may damage the precious cave paintings. A. forbidden B. rejected C. excluded D. denied

7. Mr. Brown’s condition looks very serious and it is doubtful if he will _________. A. pull back B. pull up C. pull through D. pull out

8. Since the early nineties, the trend in most businesses has been toward on-demand, always-available products and services that suit the customer’s _________ rather than the company’s.

A. benefit B. availability C. suitability D. convenience

9. The priest made the ________ of the cross when he entered the church. A. mark B. signal C. sign D. gesture

10. This spacious room is ________ furnished with just a few articles in it. A. lightly B. sparsely C. hardly D. rarely

11. If you explained the situation to your solicitor, he ________ able to advise you much better than I can.

A. would be B. will have been C. was D. were

12. With some men dressing down and some other men flaunting their looks, it is really hard to tell they are gay or _________.

A. straight B. homosexual C. beautiful D. sad

13. His remarks were ________ annoy everybody at the meeting.

A. so as to B. such as to C. such to D. as much as to

14. James has just arrived, but I didn’t know he _________ until yesterday. A. will come B. was coming C. had been coming D. came

15. _________ conscious of my moral obligations as a citizen.

A. I was and always will be B. I have to be and always will be

C. I had been and always will be D. I have been and always will be

16. Because fuel supplies are finite and many people are wasteful, we will have to install _________ solar heating device in our home.

A. some type of B. some types of a

C. some type of a D. some types of

17. I went there in 1984, and that was the only occasion when I ________ the journey in exactly two days.

A. must take B. must have made C. was able to make D. could make

18. I know he failed his last test, but really he’s _________ stupid. A. something but B. anything but C. nothing but

D. not but

19. Do you know Tim’s brother? He is _________ than Tim.

A. much more sportsman B. more of a sportsman C. more of sportsman D. more a sportsman

20. That was not the first time he ________ us. I think it’s high time we ________ strong actions against him.

A. betrayed… take B. had betrayed… took C. has betrayed… took D. has betrayed… take

II. Reading comprehension (40’)

Section 1 Multiple choice (20’)

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

Passage A

The Welsh language has always been the ultimate marker of Welsh identity, but a generation ago it looked as if Welsh would go the way of Manx, once widely spoken on the Isle of Man but now extinct. Government financing and central planning, however, have helped reverse the decline of Welsh. Road signs and official public documents are written in both Welsh and English, and schoolchildren are required to learn both languages. Welsh is now one of the most successful of Europe’s regional languages, spoken by more than a half-million of the country’s three million people.

The revival of the language, particularly among young people, is part of a resurgence of national identity sweeping through this small, proud nation. Last month Wales marked the second anniversary of the opening of the National Assembly, the first parliament to be convened here since 1404. The idea behind devolution was to restore the balance within the union of nations making up the United Kingdom. With most of the people and wealth, England has always had bragging rights. The partial transfer of legislative powers from Westminster, implemented by Tony Blair, was designed to give the other members of the club—Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales—a bigger say and to counter centrifugal forces that seemed to threaten the very idea of the union.

The Welsh showed little enthusiasm for devolution. Whereas the Scots voted overwhelmingly for a parliament, the vote for a Welsh assembly scraped through by less than one percent on a turnout of less than 25 percent. Its powers were proportionately limited. The Assembly can decide how money from Westminster or the European Union is spent. It cannot, unlike its counterpart in Edinburgh, enact laws. But now that it is here, the Welsh are growing to like their Assembly. Many people would like it to have more powers. Its importance as figurehead will grow with the opening in 2003, of a new debating chamber, one of many new buildings that are transforming Cardiff from a decaying seaport into a Baltimore-style waterfront city. Meanwhile a grant of nearly two million dollars from the European Union will tackle poverty. Wales is one of the poorest regions in Western Europe—only Spain, Portugal, and Greece have a lower standard of living.

Newspapers and magazines are filled with stories about great Welsh men and women, boosting self-esteem. To familiar faces such as Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton have been added new icons such as Catherine Zeta-Jones, the movie star, and Bryn Terfel, the opera singer. Indigenous foods like salt marsh lamb are in vogue. And Wales now boasts a national airline, Awyr Cymru. Cymru, which means “land of compatriots”, is the Welsh name for Wales. The red dragon, the nation’s symbol since the time of King Arthur, is everywhere—on T-shirts, rugby jerseys and even cell phone covers.

“Until very recent times most Welsh people had this feeling of being second-class citizens,” said Dyfan Jones, an 18-year-old student. It was a warm summer night, and I was sitting on the grass with a group of young people in Llanelli, an industrial town in the south, outside the rock music venue of the National Eisteddfod, Wales’s annual cultural festival. The disused factory in front of

us echoed to the sounds of new Welsh bands.

“There was almost a genetic tendency for lack of confidence,” Dyfan continued. Equally comfortable in his Welshness as in his membership in the English-speaking, global youth culture and the new federal Europe, Dyfan, like the rest of his generation, is growing up with a sense of possibility unimaginable ten years ago. “We used to think. We can’t do anything, we’re only Welsh. Now I think that’s changing.”

1. According to the passage, devolution was mainly meant to A. maintain the present status among the nations. B. reduce legislative powers of England.

C. create a better state of equality among the nations. D. grant more say to all the nations in the union.

2. The word “centrifugal” in the second paragraph means A. separatist. B. conventional. C. feudal. D. political

3. Wales is different from Scotland in all the following aspects EXCEPT A. people’s desire for devolution. B. locals’ turnout for the voting. C. powers of the legislative body. D. status of the national language.

4. Which of the following is NOT cited as an example of the resurgence of Welsh national identity?

A. Welsh has witnessed a revival as a national language. B. Poverty-relief funds have come from the European Union. C. A Welsh national airline is currently in operation. D. The national symbol has become a familiar sight.

5. According to Dyfan Jones what has changed is A. people’s mentality. B. pop culture.

C. town’s appearance. D. possibilities for the people.

Passage B

The miserable fate of Enron’s employees will be a landmark in business history, one of those awful events that everyone agrees must never be allowed to happen again. This urge is understandable and noble: thousands have lost virtually all their retirement savings with the demise of Enron stock. But making sure it never happens again may not be possible, because the

sudden impoverishment of those Enron workers represents something even larger than it seems. It’s the latest turn in the unwinding of one of the most audacious promises of the 20th century. The promise was assured economic security—even comfort—for essentially everyone in the developed world. With the explosion of wealth, that began in the 19th century it became possible to think about a possibility no one had dared to dream before. The fear at the center of daily living since caveman days—lack of food, warmth, shelter—would at last lose its power to terrify. That remarkable promise became reality in many ways. Governments created welfare systems for anyone in need and separate programs for the elderly (Social Security in the U.S.). Labour unions promised not only better pay for workers but also pensions for retirees. Giant corporations came into being and offered the possibility—in some cases the promise—of lifetime employment plus guaranteed pensions? The cumulative effect was a fundamental change in how millions of people approached life itself, a reversal of attitude that most rank as one of the largest in human history. For millennia the average person’s stance toward providing for himself had been. Ultimately I’m on my own. Now it became, ultimately I’ll be taken care of.

The early hints that this promise might be broken on a large scale came in the 1980s. U.S. business had become uncompetitive globally and began restructuring massively, with huge Layoffs. The trend accelerated in the 1990s as the bastions of corporate welfare faced reality. IBM ended its no-layoff policy. AT&T fired thousands, many of whom found such a thing simply incomprehensible, and a few of whom killed themselves. The other supposed guarantors of our economic security were also in decline. Labour-union membership and power fell to their lowest levels in decades. President Clinton signed a historic bill scaling back welfare. Americans realized that Social Security won’t provide social security for any of us.

A less visible but equally significant trend affected pensions. To make costs easier to control, companies moved away from defined benefit pension plans, which obligate them to pay out specified amounts years in the future, to defined contribution plans, which specify only how much goes into the play today. The most common type of defined-contribution plan is the 401(k). the significance of the 401(k) is that it puts most of the responsibility for a person’s economic fate back on the employee. Within limits the employee must decide how much goes into the plan each year and how it gets invested—the two factors that will determine how much it’s worth when the employee retires.

Which brings us back to Enron? Those billions of dollars in vaporized retirement savings went in employees’ 401(k) accounts. That is, the employees chose how much money to put into those accounts and then chose how to invest it. Enron matched a certain proportion of each employee’s 401(k) contribution with company stock, so everyone was going to end up with some Enron in his or her portfolio; but that could be regarded as a freebie, since nothing compels a company to match employee contributions at all. At least two special features complicate the Enron case. First, some shareholders charge top management with illegally covering up the company’s problems, prompting investors to hang on when they should have sold. Second, Enron’s 401(k) accounts were locked while the company changed plan administrators in October, when the stock was falling, so employees could not have closed their accounts if they wanted to. But by far the largest cause of this human tragedy is that thousands of employees were heavily overweighed in Enron stock. Many had placed 100% of their 401(k) assets in the stock rather than in the 18 other investment options they were offered. Of course that wasn’t prudent, but it’s what some of them did.

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