2018年翻译资格考试初级笔译试题：教育
英译汉
We might marvel at the progress made in every field of study, but the methods of testing a person’s knowledge and ability remain as primitive as ever they were. It really is extraordinary that after all these years, educationists have still failed to device anything more efficient and reliable than examinations.
For all the pious claim that examinations test what you know, it is common knowledge that they more often do the exact opposite. They may be a good means of testing memory, or the knack of working rapidly under extreme pressure, but they can tell you nothing about a person’s true ability and aptitude.
As anxiety-makers, examinations are second to none. That is because so much depends on them. They are the mark of success of failure in our society. Your whole future may be decided in one fateful day. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t feeling very well, or that your mother died. Little things like that don’t count: the exam goes on. No one can give of his best when he is in mortal terror, or after a sleepless night, yet this is precisely what the examination system expects him to do.
The moment a child begins school, he enters a world of vicious competition where success and failure are clearly defined and measured. Can we wonder at the increasing number of “drop-outs”: young people who are written off as utter failures before they have even embarked on a career? Can we be surprised at the suicide rate among students?
A good education should, among other things, train you to think for yourself. The examination system does anything but that. What has to be learnt is rigidly laid down by a syllabus, so the student is encouraged to memorize. Examinations do not motivate a student to read widely, but to restrict his reading; they do not enable him to seek more and more knowledge, but induce cramming.
They lower the standards of teaching, for they deprive the teacher of all freedoms. Teachers themselves are often judged by examination results and instead of teaching their subjects, they are reduced to training their students in exam techniques which they despise. The most successful candidates are not always the best educated; they are the best trained in the technique of working under duress.
The results on which so much depends are often nothing more than a subjective assessment by some anonymous examiner. Examiners are only human. They get tired and hungry; they make mistakes. Yet they have to mark stacks of hastily scrawled scripts in a limited amount of time. They work under the same sort of pressure as the candidates. And their word carries weight. After a judge’s decision you have the right of appeal, but not after an examiner’s.
There must surely be many simpler and more effective ways of assessing a person”s true abilities. Is it cynical to suggest that examinations are merely a profitable business for the institutions that run them? This is what it boils down to in the last analysis. The best comment on the system is this illiterate message recently scrawled on a wall: “I were a teenage drop-out and now I are a teenage millionaire.”
参考译文
我们可能对学科的每个领域所取得的进步感到大为惊异，然而测试一个人的知识和能力的方法依然原始如初。确实是令人吃惊，这么多年以后，教育家们还没有找到比考试更为有效和可靠的手段。
考试就是测验你知道什么，对于所有这些虔诚的说法，普遍认为往往适得其反。考试可能是检验记忆力，或者在极度紧张的情况下发现快速工作窍门的好方法。但是它不能告诉你一个人的真正能力和智能究竟怎样。
作为制造焦虑者，考试是最好的手段。这是因为它决定着很多事。它是一个人在社会中成功或失败的标志。在事关命运的一天里你的整个前途就被决定下来了。它不管你当时的心情很糟糕，或者你的母亲已去世。像那样的小事不足挂齿：考试依然进行。当身陷致命的恐惧中或经过一个无眠之夜后，没人能发挥出他的最佳水平，不过这正是考试制度期望他这样做的。
（责任编辑:admin）
