上海外语口译证书考试
问答题Practice 1 Some people call him “Guidone”—big Guido. Large in both physical stature and reputation, Guido Rossi, who took over as Telecom Italia's chairman on September 15th following the surprise resignation of Marco Tronchetti Provera, has stood out from the Italian business crowd for more than three decades. Mr. Rossi, who attended Harvard law school in the 1950s and wrote a book on American bankruptcy law, made his name as a corporate lawyer keen on market rules and their enforcement. He has since worked in both private and public sectors, including stints in the Italian Senate and as one of the European Commission's group of company-law experts. As well as running a busy legal practice, he also has a reputation as a corporate troubleshooter and all-round Mr Fix-It, and is often called upon to clean up organisations in crisis. His role at Telecom Italia marks a return to the company he headed for ten months in 1997, during its politically tricky and legally complex privatisation. Before that, Mr Rossi had been sent in to sort out Ferruzzi-Montedison, an agri-business and chemicals group, which had collapsed after magistrates uncovered tangentopoli (“bribesville”).
问答题Practice 8 Over the years, organizations have implemented incentive plans for a variety of reasons: high labor costs, competitive product markets, slow technological advances, and high potential for production bottlenecks. While these reasons are still cited, contemporary arguments for incentive plans focus on pay-for-performance and link compensation rewards to organizational goals. By meshing compensation and organizational objectives, managers believe that employees will assume “ownership” of their jobs, thereby improving their effort and overall job performance. Incentives are designed to encourage employees to put out more effort to complete their job tasks-effort they might not be motivated to expend under hourly and/or seniority-based compensation systems. Financial incentives are therefore offered to improve or maintain high levels of productivity and quality. Do incentive plans work? Various studies have demonstrated a measurable relationship between incentive plans and improved organizational performance. In a survey of organizations with more than 500 employees, conducted by the New York Stock Exchange,70 percent of organizations with gain sharing programs stated that those programs improved productivity. In the area of manufacturing productivity will often improve by as much as 20 percent after the adoption of incentive plans.
问答题Practice 7 Some people would say that the Englishman's home is no longer his castle; that it has become his workshop. This is partly because the average English is keen on working with his own hands and partly because he feels, for one reason or another, that he must do for himself many household jobs for which, some years ago, he would have hired professional help. The main reason for this is a financial one.. the high cost of labor has meant that the builders and decorators' costs have reached a level which makes them prohibitive for house-proud English people of modest means. So, if they wish to keep their houses looking bright and smart, they have to tackle some of the repairs and decorating themselves. As a result, there has grown up in the post-war years what is sometimes referred to as the “Do-it-yourself Movement”. The “Do-it-yourself Movement” began with home decorating but has since spread into a much wider field. Nowadays there seem to be very few things that cannot be made by the “do-it- yourself” method.
问答题Practice 6 If there's a threat of dangerous deflation—a general fall in prices—the causes lie as much in Europe and Japan as in the United States. The inevitable collapse of America's speculative boom need not have been especially damaging if the world's other advanced economies were healthy. Their expanding appetite for imports would have bolstered the United States and so-called emerging market countries, from Brazil to South Korea. The trouble is that other advanced economies aren't healthy. Deflation could emerge from simultaneous slumps in the world's three major economies. Prices drop because there's too little global demand chasing too much global supply—everything from steel to shoes. Japan's ills are well known. Its banks are awash in bad loans. Less understood (at least in the United States) is the fact that Europe's troubles stem significantly from Germany. Germany is Europe's “sick man”, just as Japan is Asia's. Only 15 years ago, these countries seemed poised to assume leadership of the world economy. Now they are dragging it down.
问答题Practice 3 Energy-saving vehicles were part of the Green Transportation Festival in the US in 2003. The vehicles shown were designed to reduce America’s dependence on oil and help the environment. There are exhibits of cars and buses at the festivals. Most of them use little gas or use another kind of fuel such as natural gas. People are also urged to consider simpler ways of getting around, such as walking, biking and using public transportation systems. The United States has less than five per cent of the world’s population, but uses about twenty-five per cent of the world’s oil. More than half of the nation’s oil is imported. Most of it goes to transportation. Festival organizers said progress in technology was making it possible for Americans to reduce their dependence on oil. That is because the kinds of energy-saving vehicles are increasing. Efforts to reduce oil imports in the United States would also have important environmental benefits. The burning of oil as fuel is responsible for gases blamed for climate change. When gasoline is burned in cars, it also pollutes the air. This leads to many health problems.
问答题Practice 2 The regular use of text messages and e-mails can lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana. That is the claim of psychologists who have found that tapping away on a mobile phone or computer keypad or checking them for electronic messages temporarily knocks up to 10 points off the user’s IQ. This rate of decline in intelligence compares unfavourably with the four-point drop in IQ associated with smoking marijuana, according to British researchers, who have labelled the fleeting phenomenon of enhanced stupidity as “infomania”. The noticeable drop in IQ is attributed to the constant distraction of “always on” technology when employees should be concentrating on what they are paid to do. Furthermore, infomania is having a negative effect on work colleagues, increasing stress and dissenting feelings. Nine out of ten polled thought that colleagues who answered e-mails or messages during a face-to-face meeting were extremely rude. Yet one in three Britons believes that it is not only acceptable, but actually diligent and efficient to do so.
问答题Practice 5 Water is essential for life. Yet many millions of people around the world face water shortages. Many millions of children die every year from water-borne diseases. And drought regularly afflicts some of the world’s poorest countries. The world needs to respond much better. We need to increase water efficiency, especially in agriculture. We need to free women and girls from the daily chore of hauling water. We must involve leaders of countries in decision-making on water management. We need to make sanitation a priority. This is where progress is lagging most. And we must show that water resources need not be a source of conflict. Instead, they can be a catalyst for cooperation. Significant gains have been made. But a major effort is still required. Our goal is to meet the internationally agreed targets for water and sanitation by 2015, and to build the foundation for further progress in the years beyond. This is an urgent matter of human development, and human dignity. Together, we can provide safe, clean water to the entire world’s people. The world’s water resources are our lifeline for survival, and [or sustainable development in the 21st century. Together, we must manage them better.
问答题Practice 10 What we today call American folk art was, art of, by, and for ordinary, everyday I “folks” who, with increasing prosperity and leisure, created a market for art of all kinds, and especially for portraits. Citizens of prosperous, essentially middle-class republics—whether ancient Romans,seventeenth-century Dutch burghers, or nineteenth-century Americans—have always shown a marked taste for portraiture. Starting in the late eighteenth century, the United States contained an increasing number of such people, and of the artists who could meet their demands. The earliest American folk art portraits come, not surprisingly, from New England—especially Connecticut and Massachusetts—for this was a wealthy and populous region and the center of a strong craft tradition. Within a few decades after the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the population was pushing westward, and the portrait painters could be found at work in western New York, Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri. Midway through its first century as a nation, the United States' population had increased roughly five times, and eleven new states had been added to original thirteen. During these years, the demand for portraits grew and grew, eventually to be satisfied by camera.
问答题Practice 5 Many companies get into exporting almost by happenstance: most export sales are simply a spin-off from domestic contracts. Similarly, most agent and distributor relationships are born from random inquiries or chance meetings at trade shows. When asked-how they obtained their international representation, many companies have no recollection whatsoever of how or why the relationship began. Strange as it may seem, the same is true of joint venture relationships. With the growing use of the Internet, one could be fooled into thinking the odds of success in finding that elusive, top-performing trade partner will be increased. The key is to remember at all times that promotional materials are not stand-alone, clean “information”. The Internet can be used to provide indicators of activity and reach; however, these benefits in no way eliminate the more conventional, strategic wisdom that highly successful international sales organizations, in one way or another, employ. Surprisingly, this hit-and-miss approach to international expansion is not exclusive to small-and medium-sized companies. Many well-recognized large companies spin the same wheel of chance. Experienced international executives and substantial budgets for foreign expansion will contribute to success, given the right opportunities. The problem is that the “right opportunities” are rarely “given.”
问答题Practice 4 The answer is, in a sense, all in our minds. For the last century, our society’s basic drive has been toward more—toward a bigger national economy, toward more stuff for each of us. And it’ s worked. Our economy is enormous; our houses are enormous. We are living large. All that more is created by using cheap energy and hence built on carbon dioxide (CO2)—which makes up 72% of all greenhouse gases. Some pollutants decrease as we get richer. But carbon dioxide consistency tracks economic growth. As Harvard economist Friedman concluded last year, CO2 is “the one major environmental contaminant for which no study has ever found any indication of improvement as living standards rise.” This means that if we’re going to cope with global warming, we may also have to cope with the end of infinite economic expansion. That sounds gloomy, but maybe not. New data suggest that we’ve been overstating the issue for many decades. We made an assumption that more was better. It seemed a reasonable thinking. But in recent years, economists, sociologists and other researchers have begun to question that link. Indeed, they’re finding that at least since the 1950’s, more material prosperity has yielded little increase in humans’ satisfaction.
问答题Practice 4 This was the first significant victory for Mary Rose Taylor, the chairman of the Margaret Mitchell House, Inc., Foundation, who has championed the efforts to save the house. Taylor looks like a typical Buckhead Society matron: a former University of North Carolina homecoming queen, she is tall, blond, carefully coifed and married to a successful real-estate developer. But she considers herself a product of the sixties and the civil-rights movement. A former television journalist, she worked for “60 Minutes'' in the late sixties, was once married to the talk-show host Charlie Rose, and has been an anchorwoman for one of Atlanta's main television stations. She played an important role in Mayor Campbell's 1994 election campaign. “I see the Mitchell House and the debate surrounding it as a symbol of Atlanta's inability to deal with its past,” she says. “I want to use the past to stimulate greater candor about racial relations, not to glorify the antebellum South.” Taylor has never read Gone with the Wind before moving to Atlanta in 1980, and hadn't seen the movie since her first date, at the age of sixteen in 1961. She didn't learn about the existence of the house until 1987 and was surprised to discover that there was no monument commemorating Mitchell. After all, the book has sold some thirty, million copies, and the movie has been seen by hundreds of millions.
问答题Practice 10 The U. S. Dollar is the currency most often used in international trade. If the currency of export sales is different from the currency of the exporting country, for example a Japanese exporter sells in U.S. Dollars, the exporter may encounter exchange risks-risks from fluctuations in exchange rates, for example between the U. S. Dollar and the Japanese Yen. In case of the Yen appreciation at the time of converting the U.S. Dollar to the Yen, the exporter will get less Yen per U.S. Dollar. Conversely, in case of the Yen devaluation the exporter will get more Yen per U.S. Dollar. Hence, in time of currency appreciation in the exporting country, it is important that the exporter ships the goods earlier, unless an earliest date for shipment is stipulated in the L/C or has been agreed upon between exporter and importer, and present the negotiating documents to the bank immediately. The exporter may contract with the bank to sell the U.S. Dollar forward in a so-called forward exchange, at a predetermined rate on an agreed future date, thus he/she will not be affected by the currency appreciation and will receive a fixed amount in his/her own currency at a future date.
问答题Practice 2 What exactly does globalization mean? Concepts related to globalization include “internationalization”, “multidomestic marketing”, and “multinational or transnational marketing”, suggesting that the basic criterion is transactions across national boundaries. In the marketing and strategic management literature, globalization is conceptualized as a means to gain competitive advantage by locating different stages of production in different geographic regions according to the particular region's comparative advantage. This conceptualization focuses only on the economic aspects of globalization; social, cultural and political factors are only considered in the context of achieving economic advantage. Thus, being “culturally sensitive” in global markets is being able to sell one's product with enough ingenuity to avoid possible pitfalls arising from the seller's ignorance of local customs. International marketing textbooks discuss such cultural pitfalls in great detail; however, the cultural contest of globalization is always framed by the economy. Broader conceptualization of globalization can be found in other disciplines such as sociology and anthropology. Waters defined globalization as “a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding.” This conceptualization with its much broader scope, allows for the examination of a number of consequences of globalization, not jut economic but social, cultural and political ones.
问答题Practice 9 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 pension 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 that her state pension would be cut by $12.30 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 March 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 rise 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.
问答题Practice 3 We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.. that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under god, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.(The Gettysburg Address—Abraham Lincoln)
问答题Practice 2 Henry Ford did not invent the automobile, but he was the first man to mass-produce it, and this made it available to the ordinary man. Many automobiles were being built by the hand at the turn of the century and were much too expensive for all but the wealthy. In 1903 Henry Ford's first mass-produced Model T cars cost $850. By the early 1920s he was able to reduce the price, to $350. Between 1903 and 1927 Ford manufactured 15 million Model T Fords and earned a profit of $700 million. In 1927 he produced his sedan Model A, which was much more comfortable than the open, windswept Model T. Henry Ford was himself a born mechanic and could build a car with his own hands. So he respected his workers and treated them well. In 1914, when the basic wage for an industrial worker in Detroit was $11 a week, Ford announced that he would pay his Workers $5 a day. Ford believed in the dignity of work, and did not wish his men to become underpaid robots. He also built them a special town on the outskirts of the city.
问答题Practice 3 The new assault on NAFTA rests on a single premise: ex- ports arc good, imports are bad. In economic terms, that’s non- sense: exporting doesn’t benefit Americans at all unless it allows them to consume more, which is what most imports arc for. As a political proposition, though the claim that exports create jobs while imports kill them is an easy sell. That’s why the critics fell silent during NAFTA’s first year, 1994, as US plants ran over- time to meet Mexico’s clamor for Coors beer. The collapse of Mexico’s peso last December, though, has devastated Mexico’s economy. Interests rates arc twice last year’s level, leaving mil- lions of middle-class families swamped by car loans and credit- card bills. Consumer spending has dropped by nearly a fifth, and the weak pesos means US-produced goods cost twice what they used to. Last year’s $ 8.9 billion US trade surplus with Mexico turned into a $ 3 billion deficit in the first half of 1995, and NAFTA foes adroitly seized the opening.
问答题Practice 2 “To be a Negro in America is to hope against hope,” wrote Martin Luther King in the last year Of his life. The advance the black man in the United States, from the position of slave to that of proud and equal citizen, is slow. The black man’s hopes have often ended in despair. “Of the good things in life he has about one-half those Of whites;Of the bad he has twice those Of whites, ”wrote Dr. King. Half of all black people lived in poor houses. They’re received about half as much pay as whites. They had twice as many of their people out Of work and twice as many babies dead for lack Of proper care. Allowing for their numbers, twice as many black men as white fought in the war in Vietnam, and twice as many died in that war. Most black people sti11 did work that was unpleasant and poorly paid. That was the only work they could get. (from Great People of Our Time, ed., by Carol Christian Macmillan Education,1977)
问答题Practice 1 All night, long after the televised cheers and hugs celebrating the arrival of a fresh new year, national-security officials manning the White House Situation Room waited for the worst. Among other worries, they feared terrorists would hijack airliners and try a repeat of the 9/11 attacks. Despite the warnings—or perhaps because of them—the holidays passed without incident. But administration officials can’t savor whatever relief they may feel. Instead, they once again find themselves fending off complaints that they overreacted and caused a national frenzy for nothing. Some conversations between suspected Qaeda terrorists, intercepted by the National Security Agency, seemingly referred to an upcoming airplane attack in Los Angeles. Intelligence reports even mentioned specific routes and flight numbers on British, French and Mexican airlines, a level of detail agents had rarely heard before. Though drained and somewhat frustrated, federal officials aren’t prepared to let down their guard. Privately, British and French intelligence officers say they think the United States went too far; some speculate the increased chatter may have been a Qaeda disinformation campaign designed to whip up fears.
问答题Practice 5 Expressionism was more than a style in painting. It could be found in theatre and cinema, literature and architecture. It was a sharing of ideas and experiences across all these media. The life stories of the Expressionist artists show just how much they had in common. Many began by studying applied art, such as furniture design, often to please their parents. Although they later made more personal art, they continued to make use of those technical skills. Both art critics and the public received this new movement with derision and outrage. Expressionist artists were trying to shock by challenging the traditional, conservative views held by many people. Gradually, however, it became accepted and even admired. All the Expressionists were affected by World War I (1914-18). Some fled from Germany and spent the war years in exile. Some never returned to their homeland. Most served in the war and some were killed. At first some of them hoped a war would change society for the better but they were soon disillusioned when they saw the destruction and suffering that it caused. In the years after the war, many Expressionist artist revealed the horrors they experienced in their work.
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