第一部分 英译汉

 

Passage 1

 

There was, last week, a glimmer of hope in the world food crisis. Expecting a bumper harvest, Ukraine relaxed restrictions on exports. Overnight, global wheat prices fell by 10 percent.

 

By contrast, traders in Bangkok quote rice prices around $1,000 a ton, up from $460 two months ago.

 

Such is the volatility of today’s markets. We do not know how high food prices might go, nor how far they could fall. But one thing is certain: We have gone from an era of plenty to one of scarcity. Experts agree that food prices are not likely to return to the levels the world had grown accustomed to any time soon.

 

Imagine the situation of those living on less than $1 a day – the “bottom billion”, the poorest of the world’s poor. Most live in Africa, and many might typically spend two-thirds of their income on food.

 

In Liberia last week, I heard how people have stopped purchasing imported rice by the bag. Instead, they increasingly buy it by the cup, because that’s all they can afford.

 

Traveling though West Africa, I found good reason for optimism. In Burkina Faso, I saw a government working to import drought resistant seeds and better manage scarce water supplies, helped by nations like Brazil. In Ivory Coast, we saw a women’s cooperative running a chicken farm set up with UN funds. The project generated income – and food – for villagers in ways that can easily be replicated.

 

Elsewhere, I saw yet another women’s group slowly expanding their local agricultural production, with UN help. Soon they will replace World Food Program rice with their own home-grown produce, sufficient to cover the needs of their school feeding program.

 

These are home-grown, grass-roots solutions for grass-roots problems – precisely the kind of solutions that Africa needs.

 

参考译文：

 

上周，世界粮食危机迎来了一丝曙光。因为丰收在望，乌克兰政府放宽了对出口的限制。一整夜，全球小麦价格下降了10%。

 

相比之下，曼谷商人报出的大米价格从两个月前的每吨460美元上升到每吨1000美元。

 

这就是当今市场的波动性。我们不知道粮食价格起伏程度。然而有一点是毋庸置疑的：我们已经从粮食充足的时代走向了匮乏的时代。专家认为，粮食价格已不可能很快回到我们能够接受的价格。

 

想象一下那些日消费额不到1美元的人们的生活境况。他们是最底层的10亿人，是世界上穷人中的穷人。他们大多数居住在非洲，他们很多人在食物上的花费可能就占据了他们收入的三分之二。

 

上周在利比里亚，我听说当地人们已经不用带子购买进口大米了。越来越多的人开始用杯子代替，因为一杯子大米的价格已经是他们能够承受的极限。

 

我从西非之行中发现的一些情况也值得乐观。在布基纳法索，在巴西等国家的帮助下，当地政府开始引进抗旱种子，更科学地利用稀有的水资源。在象牙海岸，我看到一名妇女联合经营由联合国出资建立的养鸡场，这个项目增加了收入和口粮。这对村民们来说，也极易推广效仿。

 

在别的地方，我还看到另一个妇女群体在联合国的帮助下，慢慢地增加了当地农产品产量。不久，她们就会用自产的水稻来替代世界粮食计划署的水稻，她们本土的水稻就足以满足学校供餐计划的需要了。

 

对于基层问题，总是可以找到因地制宜的解决办法，对非洲而言，尤其如此。

 

Passage 2

 

For a decade, metallurgists studying the hulk of the Titanic have argued that the storied ocean liner went down quickly after hitting an iceberg because the ship’s builder used substandard rivets that popped their heads and let tons of icy seawater rush in. More than 1,500 people died.

 

Now a team of scientists has moved into deeper waters, uncovering evidence in the builder’s own archives of a deadly mix of great ambition and use of low-quality iron that doomed the ship, which sank 96 years ago Tuesday.

 

The scientists found that the ship’s builder, Harland and Wolff, in Belfast, struggled for years to obtain adequate supplies of rivets and riveters to build the world’s three biggest ships at once: the Titanic and two sisters, Olympic and Britannic.

 

Each required three million rivets, and shortages peaked during Titanic’s construction.

 

“The board was in crisis mode,” said Jennifer Hooper McCarty, a member of the team that studied the company’s archive and other evidence. “It was constant stress. Every meeting it was, ‘There’s problems with the rivets, and we need to hire more people’”.

 

The team collected other clues from 48 Titanic rivets, using modern tests, computer simulations, comparisons to century-old metals and careful documentation of what engineers and shipbuilders of the era considered state of the art.

 

The scientists say the troubles began when the colossal plans forced Harland and Wolff to reach beyond its usual suppliers of rivet iron and include smaller forges, as disclosed in company and British government papers. Small forges tended to have less skill and experience.

 

Adding to the threat, the company, in buying iron for Titanic’s rivets, ordered No.3 bar, known as “best”, not No.4, known as “best-best”, the scientists found. They also discovered that shipbuilders of the day typically used No.4 iron for anchors, chains and rivets.

 

So the liner, whose name was meant to be synonymous with opulence, in at least one instance relied on cheap materials.

 

The scientists argue that better rivets would have probably kept the Titanic afloat long enough for rescuers to have arrived before the icy plunge, saving hundreds of lives.

 

（无参考译文）