AUGUST was once a time for dreaming, wandering the empty streets of this city, reading silly-season newspaper stories after a leisurely lunch washed down with Sancerre, gazing at squares where fountains plashed and the pregnant or the old chatted on benches at dusk. Then something happened. The world speeded up. Stress levels soared. Idle moments evaporated. Egos expanded. Devices became hand-held. Money outpaced politics. August aborted this year. It morphed into the serious season. The beach lost out to the barricades. A time of outrage is upon us.

八月曾经是一个适合做梦的季节，漫步在空阔的街道上，悠闲地 享受午饭，然后喝点桑塞尔白葡萄酒 ，读读在七八月这样的淡季新闻报纸上的小道故事，或是盯着广场上的喷泉发发呆，旁边长椅上有孕妇和老人在闲谈。然后，突然发生了一些事情。世界开始加快了它的步伐，压力日益剧增。悠闲的时光一去不复返了。人们的自我意识不断膨胀，每个人手中都拿着各种设备，金钱胜过了政治。悠闲的八月已成为了一个严酷的季节，路障取代了长椅。我们正面临着一个愤怒的时期。

A feeling has grown in Western societies that uncontrollable forces are at work shrinking possibility. History has never seen a global power shift as radical as the current one that managed to be peaceful.

一股不可控的力量正在发挥作用，不断的减少各种可能性，这种感觉正在西方社会蔓延滋长。历史从未见证过这样一种全球力量变化是如此激进却又试图趋于平静。

Growth, jobs, expansion, excitement — and, yes, possibility — lie in the great non-Western arc from China through India to South Africa and Brazil. The world has been turned upside-down. What we are witnessing is how shaken Western societies are by such inversion.

经济增长，充分的就业机会，迅速的发展，成功的喜悦，哦，是的，还有无限的可能性，都存在于那些非西方的国度，从中国到印度、南非和巴西。整个世界都被颠倒了，我们正在见证西方社会是如何因这些变化而受到动摇。

As new powers emerge, globalization has altered the relationship between capital and labor in the former’s favor. The only people who walked away unscathed from the great financial binge that preceded this mess were its main architects and greatest beneficiaries: bankers, financiers. This, too, is fueling a time of outrage that has left Western politicians chasing shadows.

当一种新力量产生的时候，全球化必将导致资本与劳动之间的关系发生改变，而往往会对前者有利。唯一能从这场金融风暴中全身而退且毫发无伤的人，就是它的主导者和受益者：银行家和金融家。这也刺激了一个愤怒时代的出现，让那些西方政客在那里捕风捉影。

点评：这篇散文评论摘自2011年8月的New York Times ， 题目为The Age of Outrage 《愤怒的时代》。Roger Cohen散文般的时评，是否让你在考试时感到一阵轻松呢？

首先这篇这段220字的文章的话题我们并不陌生，讨论的是全球化的影响。这段话的难点在第一段，话题切入以及短句的罗列，如果没有看到后面的内容，考生很容易不知所云。所以，阅读前首先扫读，预判文章大意，不确定的地方再根据大意来展开。翻译的时候注意把握三点：短句的翻译；词语的翻译；生词的翻译。

第一段从“Then something happened.”一直到结束都是主谓或主谓宾组成的短句，间或有比喻出现，如August aborted this year.考生注意本题材话题切入，准确翻译各短句所指，即理解经济类话题的内涵和外延。这也是下面一点要提到的，词语的翻译。第三段段首的Growth, jobs, expansion, excitement — and, yes, possibility也是可以翻译出彩的地方，翻译成名词还是偏正短语，视个人水平而定，但是意思一定不要出错。

第三点就是生词的翻译，第一段出现了Sancerre，法国白葡萄酒，这种词语虽然在考试中出现的几率不大，翻译时稍微注意一下即可。其他难词，比如第一段的abort, morph into，最后一段unscathed ，architects，chasing shadows；这些词语在经济类话题中出现，注意平时的积累，或者考生根据上下文判断出大意进行翻译。