2014年9月中口试题点评

One point three billion metric tons -- that's how much food that we waste each year. Not an easy number to wrap one's head around. Try to imagine 143,000 Eiffel Towers stacked one on top of the other-together they'd weigh around 1.3 billion tons. The sheer scale of the number makes it practically impossible to grasp, no matter how you come at it.

Rendering the figure all the more unfathomable is the fact that alongside this massive wastage of food, 840 million people experience chronic hunger on a daily basis. Many millions more suffer from "silent hunger" - malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.

For the more economically minded, here's another number: the economic cost of food wastage runs around $750 billion per annum. This is expressed in producer prices; if we were to consider retail prices and the wider impacts on the environment including climate change, the figure would be far higher.

When food is lost or wasted, the energy, land and water resources that went into producing it are also squandered -while at the same time large amounts of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere during production, processing, and cooking.

We simply cannot tolerate the wastage of 1.3 billion tons of food per year--one-third of the world's annual food production. There's a lot that can be done. To begin with, food losses and waste need to be seen as a cross-cutting policy issue, rather than a lifestyle choice to be left in the hands of individual consumers and their consciences. The world needs to wake up to the need for policies on food waste and losses that look at all stages of the food chain, from production to consumption.

Losses of food--on farms, during processing, transport and at markets--represent a thorn in the side of food security in most developing countries, where post-harvest losses can reach as high as 40 percent of production in some cases. Especially in these places, investment in infrastructure for transportation, storage, cooling and marketing of food is badly needed. Training farmers in best practices also has an important role to play.

In developed countries, food retailing practices require a rethink. For example, rejection of food products on the basis of aesthetic concerns is a major cause of food waste. Some supermarkets have already begun relaxing standards on fruit appearance, selling "misshaped" items at reduced prices and helping raise awareness that "ugly does not mean bad." More approaches like this, that find markets or uses for surplus food, are needed.

Both businesses and households should monitor to see where and how they waste food and take corrective steps, because prevention of waste is even more important than recycling or composting. Unlike the mindboggling figure of 1.3 billion tons, these simple steps are easy enough to grasp-and within reach of each of us. The world has enough on its plate-food wastage is something we can all do something about now.

这是一篇社会热点类的文章，主题明确、结构清晰，可分为两部分来看。第一部分为文章前四段，作者通过列举数据、打比方等方式讲述浪费食物的现象。在第二部分，也就是文章后四段，作者提出了建议，并分别指出developing countries，developed countries和both businesses and households该怎么做。

翻译点评

英译汉

英文多长难句，中文多短句，英译汉时要根据中文的表达习惯对长句进行断句。例如，段落首句非常长，我们可以以逗号为界，拆分为两个句子。我们把whereby后面的内容单独列出来，作为对前文的描述，翻译时就可以表达成“起初机器人是以虚幻的文学形象出现的，它是20世纪早期作家和电影人表达对科技憧憬和畏惧的一种方式。”而后半句中，也可以对“reckless jazz-age speed”做细化处理，把“jazz-age”直译为“爵士乐时代”，“reckless speed”译为“肆无忌惮、不计后果”，这样的译法就比冗长的定语修饰要地道自然得多。

汉译英

根据英文的表达习惯，汉译英时可以把汉语中有共同描述对象的多个句子，处理为一个长句。例如“56个民族”和“我国各族人民”就属于同一对象，在翻译时可以用who来指代，从而把两个句子串起来。另外，中文习惯把同义词叠加，来表示强调的意思，在翻译时可以减译。例如，“始终一脉相承，延续着……”就可以减译为“inheriting…”。