2021年
We tend to think that friends and family members are our biggest source of connection, laughter and warmth. While that may well be true, researchers have also recently found that interacting with strangers actually brings a boost in mood and feelings of belonging that we didn’t expect.
In one series of studies, researchers instructed that Chicago-area commuters using public transportation to strike up a conversation with one near them. On average, participants who followed this instruction felt better than those who had been told to stand or sit in silence. The researches also argued that when we shy away from casual interactions with strangers, it is often due to a misplaced anxiety that they might not want to talk to us. Much of the time, however, this belief is false. As it turns out, many people are actually perfectly willing to talk —and may even be flattered to receive your attention.
我们通常会认为朋友和家人是我们构建亲密关系,获得欢乐和温暖最主要的来源。虽然这很有可能是一个事实,但最近,研究人员发现与陌生人互动实际上也能够给我们带来归属感,而这一点我们之前是没有料想到的。
在一系列实验中,研究人员要求芝加哥地区乘坐公共交通工具的上班族们,主动和身边的陌生人聊天。总体上来说,这样做的人和那些被测试人员要求独自一人安静地站着或坐着的人们相比,前者体验感会更好。研究人员还表示,很多时候我们羞于和陌生人进行随意的交谈,是因为我们误以为对方可能并不愿意和我们说话,并为此而感到焦虑。然而,大多数时候,这种想法是错误的。这就证明:事实上,很多人都是非常愿意聊天的,甚至还会因为自己受到了你的关注而感到欣喜。
2020年
It’s almost impossible to go through life without experiencing some kind of failure. But, the wonderful thing about failure is that it’s entirely up to us to decide how to look at it.
We can choose to see failure as “the end of the world”. Or, we can look at failure as the incredible learning experience that it often is. Every time we fail at something, we can choose to look for the lesson we’re meant to learn. These lessons are very important; they’re how we grow, and how we keep from making that same mistake again. Failures stop us only if we let them.
Failure can also teach us things about ourselves that we would never have learned otherwise. For instance, failure can help you discover how strong a person you are. Failing at something can help you discover your truest friends, or help you find unexpected motivation to succeed.
人的一生几乎不可能不经历某种失败。但是,失败的妙处就在于,完全由我们来决定如何看待它。
我们可以选择将失败看作是“世界末日”。或者像以往一样,把它看作令人难以置信的学习经历。每当我们在某件事上失败时,我们会选择寻找应学习的教训。这些教训非常重要;他们教会我们如何成长,如何避免再次犯相同的错误。如果失败阻止我们前进,那么唯一的条件就是我们允许它的发生。
失败还可以教会我们认识自己,那是我们在别处永远无法学习到的。例如,失败可以帮助你发现自己的能力。失败可以帮助你发现最真实的朋友,或者帮助你找到预料之外的成功动力。
2019年
It is easy to underestimate English writer James Heriot. He had such a pleasant, readable style that one might think that anyone could imitate it. How many times have I heard people say “I could write a book. I just haven’t the time.” Easily said. Not so easily done. James Herriot, contrary to pupular opinion, did not find it easy in his early days of, as he put it, “having a go at the writing game”。 While he obviously had an abundance of natural talent, the final, polished work that he gave to the world was the result of years of practising, re-writing and reading. Like the majority of authors, he had to suffer many disappointments and rejections along the way, but these made him all the more determined to succeed. Everything he achieved in life was earned the hard way and his success in the literary field was no exception.
我们很容易低估英国作家吉米?哈利。他有着一种令人愉快的、可读的风格,有人认为这种风格任何人都可以模仿得来。很多次我听到人们说:“我能写一本书,我只是没时间。”说起来容易,做起来难。然而与大家通常所想的不同, 正如吉米?哈利所言,他在早年觉得“尝试写作游戏”并非易事。显然,即便他极具写作天赋,哈利呈现给这个世界的作品也是经过多年的练习、重写、阅读并且经过润色之后才得以形成的。与大多数作家一样,一路走来,吉米?哈利不得不经受多次的失望与拒绝,但是这一切更坚定了他获取成功的决心。他生命中所取得的一切,都是依靠自己艰苦的努力所获得的。他在文学领域的成功也不例外。
2018年
A fifth grader gets a homework assignment to select his future career path from a list of occupations. He ticks “astronaut” but quickly adds “scientist” to the list and selects it as well. The boy is convinced that if he reads enough. He can explore as many career paths as he likes. And so he reads—everything from encyclopedias to science fiction novels. He reads so passionately that his parents have to institute a “no reading policy” at the dinner table.
That boy was Bill Gates, and he hasn’t stopped reading yet—not even after becoming one of the most successful people on the planet. Nowadays, his reading material has changed from science fiction and reference books recently, he revealed that he reads at least 50 nonfiction books a year. Gates chooses nonfiction title because they explain how the world works.“Each book opens up new avenues of knowledge,” Gates says.
一个五年级的学生收到一份家庭作业:即从一系列职业中选择自己未来的职业道路。他勾划了“宇航员”,但很快由将“科学家”添加到列表中,并也将其选中。这个男孩相信,如果他读得足够多,他就可以探索尽可能多的他喜欢的职业道路。所以他读书广泛——从百科全书到科幻小说。他读得如此投入,以至于他的父母不得不制定一个:在餐桌上的“不读书政策”。
那个男孩就是比尔盖茨,他没有停止阅读,甚至在他成为这个星球上最成功的人士之一后,仍旧没有停下来。现在,他的阅读材料已经不再是科幻小说和工具书了:最近据他所说,他一年内至少读了50本非科幻小说。比尔盖茨选择非科幻小说类书籍,是因为这类书籍解释了世界是如何运作的。“每本书都开辟了新的知识探索渠道。”盖茨说。
2017年
My dream has always been to work somewhere in an area between fashion and publishing. Two years before graduating from secondary school, I took a sewing and design course thinking that I would move on to a fashion design course. However, during that course I realised that I was not good enough in this area to compete with other creative personalities in the future, so I decided that it was not the right path for me. Before applying for university I told everyone that I would study journalism, because writing was, and still is, one of my favourite activities. But, to be absolutely honest, I said it, because I thought that fashion and me together was just a dream – I knew that no one, apart from myself, could imagine me in the fashion industry at all! So I decided to look for some fashion-related courses that included writing. This is when I noticed the course “Fashion Media & Promotion”.
我的梦想
我一直梦想着能找到一个结合时尚与出版的工作。中学毕业前两年,我学习了缝纫设计课程,认为自己继而能够学习时尚设计。然而,期间,发现自己在该领域不够优秀,不足以在未来与其他富有创造力的人竞争。因此,得出结论:这条道路不适合我。在申请大学之前,我告诉大家自己会选择新闻专业,因为写作一直都是我最喜欢的事情之一。但是,说实话,当时这样说,是因为我认为时尚于我而言就是个梦想。我知道完全没有人相信我会进入时尚这一行。因此,我决定去寻找一些课程,既与时尚相关、又涉及写作。就在这时,我注意到了《时尚媒体与营销》这门课程。
【试题点评】翻译考查考生在准确理解的基础上,按照英语语法结构拆分句子,准确、通顺翻译汉语的能力。本次考试的翻译考点主要包含对并列句、定语从句、状语从句及固定词组等翻译的考查。具体相关知识点和解题思路在考研教育网基础阶段英语基础班班的翻译部分有重点讲解。
2016年
The supermarket is designed to lure customers into spending as much time as possible within its doors. The reason for this is simple:The longer you stay in the store, the more stuff you’ll see, and the more stuff you see, the more you’ll buy. And supermarkets contain a lot of stuff. The average supermarket, according to the Food Marketing Institute, carries some 44,00 different items, and many carry tens of thousands more. The sheer volume of available choice is enough to send shoppers into a state of information overload. According to brain-scan experiments, the demands of so much decision-making quickly become too much for us. After about 40 minutes of shopping, most people stop struggling to be rationally selective, and instead begin shopping emotionally – which is the point at which we accumulate the 50 percent of stuff in our cart that we never intended buying.
超市旨在吸引顾客尽可能长时间的停留在店中。其原因很简单:顾客在店里停留的时间越长,看到的商品越多;而看到的商品越多,买的就会越多。超市中出售大量的商品。根据食品推广协会的调查,普通的超市大概有44000种不同的商品;还有很多超市出售的商品高达上万种。如此多的选择足以使顾客面对超负荷的信息。根据脑部扫描实验,需要快速的做这么多决定就会让我们难以承受。大约在购物40分钟之后,大多人就不会再努力做出理性的选择了,取而代之的就是冲动购物——而这时,我们的购物车中已经装了一半根本就没想买的东西了。
2015年
Think about driving a route that’s very familiar. It could be your commute to work, a trip into town or the way home. Whichever it is, you know every twist and turn like the back of your hand. On these sorts of trips it’s easy to lose concentration on the driving and pay little attention to the passing scenery. The consequence is that you perceive that the trip has taken less time than it actually has.
This is the well-travelled road effect: people tend to underestimate the time it takes to travel a familiar route.
The effect is caused by the way we allocate our attention. When we travel down a well-known route, because we don’t have to concentrate much, time seems to flow more quickly. And afterwards, when we come to think back on it, we can’t remember the journey well because we didn’t pay much attention to it. So we assume it was shorter.
想想看在一条非常熟悉的路上驾驶的感觉,这可能发生在上班,进城或回家的路上。无论如何,你会熟悉路上的每一个迂回曲折。在这类旅行中,我们很容易会分散注意力并且不太关注路边的风景。结果就是你误以为旅途比实际所用的时间要少。
这是美妙的旅程所产生的效果:人们往往会低估在熟悉的旅程中所用掉的时间。
我们分散注意力的方式会导致这种结果。当我们在知名的路途中行驶时,我们不必过于集中精力,时间似乎过得飞快。随后,当我们回想整个过程时,由于没有特别留神,会变得印象模糊。此时,我们似乎会觉得这段旅程会更短些。
2014年
Most people would define optimism as endlessly happy, with a glass that’s perpetually half full. But that’s exactly the kind of false cheerfulness that positive psychologists wouldn’t recommend. “Healthy optimism means being in touch with reality,” says Tal Ben-Shahar, a Harvard professor. According to Ben-Shahar, realistic optimists are those who make the best of things that happen, but not those who believe everything happens for the best.
Ben-Shahar uses three optimistic exercisers. When he feels down —say, after giving a bad lecture —he grants himself permission to be human. He reminds himself that not every lecture can be a Nobel winner; some will be less effective than others. Next is reconstruction. He analyzes the weak lecture, leaning lessons for the future about what works and what doesn’t. Finally, there is perspective, which involves acknowledging that in the grand scheme of life, one lecture really doesn’t matter.
大多数人认为乐观是无尽的欢乐,如同总是有半杯水的杯子。但那是一种绝不会为积极心理学家所称道的虚假的快乐。哈佛大学的泰·本沙哈尔教授说,“健康的乐观主义意味着要活在现实之中。”在本沙哈尔看来,现实的乐观主义者会因势利导,而非求全责备。
本沙哈尔会使用三种乐观的方法。比如说,当他因搞砸了一场演讲而倍感郁闷的时候,他会告诉自己这是很正常的事,提醒自己:并不是每一次演讲都可以获得诺贝尔奖,总会有一些人的演讲效果不及其他人。接着为改进。他分析了一些效果不好的演讲并且从那些起效和无效的演讲中吸取教训为将来做准备。最后是看待问题的角度,即在生活的宏伟计划中,一次演讲真的无足轻重。
2013年
I can pick a date from the past 53 years and know instantly where I was , what happened in the news and even the day of the week. I’ve been able to do this since I was four.
I never feel overwhelmed with the amount of information my brain absorbs my mind seems to be able to cope and the information is stored away reatly. When I think of a sad memory, I do what everyone does- try to put it to one side. I don’t think it’s harder for me just because my memory is clearer. Powerful memory doesn’t make my emotions any more acture or vivid. I can recall the day my grandfather died and the sadness I felt when we went to the hosptibal the day before. I also remember that the musical paly Hamopened on the Broadway on the same day- they both just pop into my mind in the same way.
从过去的53年间任选一天,我能立刻回想起当时我身在何方,当天新闻中发生何事,甚至那天是周几。自从四岁,我就具备这种能力。
我从不会因大脑吸信息量过大而感到难以承受。我的大脑似乎可以处理它们,并将其有序地存储于脑中。每当忆及忧伤往事,和其他人一样,我会尽量将其搁置一旁。我不认为因为我的记忆更为清晰,自己就比其他人更难做到此事。好记性并没有让我的情感体验更鲜活生动。祖父去世那天的情景和之前那天我去医院看望他时的伤心欲绝都历历在目。我也还记得当天在音乐剧《毛发》百老汇开场演出。这两件事都以同样的方式跃入我的脑海。
2012年
When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest departure to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada and Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.
Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. A big survey of Indian households in 2004 found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age 25. This “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.
当发展中国家的人民考虑移民的时候,他们通常最向往离开家乡前往硅谷或是发达国家的医院和大学。这些人才是诸如美国、加拿大和澳大利亚等国家期望吸引到的类型,这些国家通过制定有利于大学毕业生的移民政策吸引人才。
多项研究表明,来自于发展中国家受过良好教育的人尤其可能选择移民国外。2004 年对印度家庭的一次大型调查显示,接近 40%的移民国外者都接受过高中以上的教育,相比之下,在整个印度超过 25 岁的印度人口中,只有大约 3.3%的人接受过高中以上的教育。这样的“人才流失”现象长期困扰着贫困国家的政策制定者。这些政策制定者们担心,移民造成的人才流失会使本国经济蒙受损失,夺走本国急需的人才,而这些人本可以在自己国家的大学教书,自己国家的医院工作,并且为本国的工厂开发新的产品。
2011年
Who would have thought that, globally, the IT industry produces about the same volume of greenhouse gases as the world’s airlines do—roughly 2 percent of all CO2 emissions?
Many everyday tasks take a surprising toll on the environment. A Google search can leak between 0.2 and 7.0 grams of CO2, depending on how many attempts are needed to get the “right” answer. To deliver results to its users quickly, then, Google has to maintain vast data centres around the world, packed with powerful computers. While producing large quantities of CO2, these computers emit a great deal of heat, so the centres need to be well air-conditioned, which uses even more energy.
However, Google and other big tech providers monitor their efficiency closely and make improvements. Monitoring is the first step on the road to reduction, but there is much more to be done, and not just by big companies.
从全球范围来看,有谁会想到IT 行业释放的温室气体与全球航空公司产生的一样多呢?它大约占总二氧化碳总排量的2%。
许多日常工作对环境造成了令人震惊的破坏。根据每次你搜索并得到正确答案的尝试次数,谷歌会排放0.2至7克的二氧化碳。为了迅速将结果传递给用户,谷歌在全球设置了大量充斥着能量巨大的电脑的数据中心。这些电脑在排放大量二氧化碳的同时,也产生大量的能量。因此,这些数据中心需要良好的空调降温,这又会同时产生大量的能量。
然而,谷歌和其他技术提供商严密检测他们的效果并不断进行改进。监控是减排的第一步,但这仍任重道远,且不仅只由大公司来承担。
2010年
“Suatainability” has become apopular word these days, but to Ted Ning, the concept will always have personal meaning. Having endured apainful period of unsustainability in his own life made itclear to him that sustainability-oriented values must be expressed though everyday action and choice.
Ning recalls spending aconfusing year in the late 1990s selling insurance. He’d been though the dot-com boom and burst and,desperate for ajob,signed on with a Boulder agency.
It didin’t go well. “It was a really had move because that’s not my passion,” says Ning, whose dilemma about the job translated, predictably, into a lack of sales. “I was miserable, I had so much anxiety that I would wake up in the middle of the night and stare at the ceiling. I had no money and needed the job. Everyone said, ‘Just wait, you’ll trun the corner, give it some time.’”
“坚持不懈”如今已成一个流行词汇,但对TedNing而言,这个概念一直有个人含义,经历了一段痛苦松懈的个人生活,使他清楚面向以坚持不懈为导向的价值观,必须贯彻到每天的行动和选择中。
Ning回忆起20世纪90年代末期卖保险的那段迷茫时光,他通过蓬勃兴起的网络疯狂地找工作,并且与Boulder代理机构签了约。
事情进展并不顺利,TedNing说到:“那真是个糟糕的选择,因为我对此没有激情,”可以预料,他把工作中的矛盾能解释为没有业务。Ning说:“我很痛苦渴望午夜起来盯着天花板,我没钱,我需要工作,每个人都说‘等吧,只要有耐心会好转的。’”
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