2004年9月上海市高级口译笔试真题
Long before airbus, the French produced superlative aeronautical engineers. They were the first Europeans to acclaim the Wrights' breakthroughs in aircraft control, and they made key improvements. French inventors, especially Louis Bleriot and Robert Esnault-Pelterie, created the monoplane as we know it, which is why we still speak of fuselages and ailerons. Esnault-Pelterie, was also the father of the joystick.
Flag-waving Americans may reply that many of France's own technological triumphs rely on ideas born here. French high-speed trains lead the world today, but as the railroad historian Mark Reutter has shown, the Budd Co. of Philadelphia was already building lightweight, articulated streamliners in the 1930s. And France now gets 75 percent of its electricity from America's great hope of 50 years ago, nuclear power. Social legislation also helps make France a showplace of other U.S. innovations: vending machines (limited retailing hours) and mass-produced antibiotics (generous health benefits).
In fact, the French have so often jettisoned their heritage in favor of novel technology that it sometimes takes Americans to defend it. The Cornell University scholar Steven Kaplan has revived the art of French bread making, and Mother Noella Marcellino, an American Benedictine nun with a Ph.D. in microbiology, has been saving the classic cheese of France from pasteurization — a process invented by the Frenchman Louis Pasteur.
It's pointless to debate who owes more to whom, and far more interesting to rejoice in cross-appropriation. Airbus has many U.S. suppliers, and Boeing will jump ahead sooner or later in the endless technological leapfrog. The last word may belong to the sage — perhaps Oscar Wide — who said, "Talents imitate; geniuses steal."
4. Why does the author introduce the Wright brothers and the European Airbus at the beginning of the passage?
5. What does the author mean by saying that "technologically the two nations [America and France] have had a long love affair"? Give some examples.
6. Paraphrase the sentence "the French have so often jettisoned their heritage in favor of novel technology that it sometimes takes Americans to defend it." (para.9)
Questions 7-10
Millions of elderly Germans received a notice from the Health & Social Security Ministry earlier this month that struck a damaging blow to the welfare state. The statement informed them that their pensions were being cut. The reductions come as a stop-gap measure to control Germany's ballooning persion crisis. Not surprisingly, it was an unwelcome change for senior citizens such as Sabine Wetzel, a 67-year-old retired bank teller, who was told her state pension would be cut by $12.30, or 1% to $1,156.20 a month. "It was a real shock," she says. "My pension had always gone up in the past."
There's more bad news on the way. On Mar. 11, Germany's lower house of Parliament passed a bill gradually cutting state pensions — which have been rising steadily since World War II — from 53% of average wages now to 46% by 2020. And Germany is not alone. Governments across Western Europe are racing to curb pension benefits. In Italy, the government plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 57 to 60, while France will require that civil servants put in 40 years rather than 37.5 to qualify for a full pension. The reforms are coming despite tough opposition from unions, leftist politicians, and pensioners' groups.
The explanation is simple: Europeans are living longer and having fewer children. By 2030 there will only be two workers per pensioner, compared with four in 2000. With fewer young workers paying into the system, cuts are being made t
