高等院校英语专业八级考试样题XI
文章出处： 发布时间：2006-07-09
（原 文）
中国科技馆的诞生来之不易。与国际著名科技馆和其他博物馆相比，它先天有些不足，后天也常缺乏营养，但是它成长的步伐却是坚实而有力的。它在国际上已被公认为后起之秀。
世界上第一代博物馆属于自然博物馆，它是通过化石、标本等向人们介绍地球和各种生物的演化历史。第二代属于工业技术博物馆，它所展示的是工业文明带来的各种阶段性结果。这两代博物馆虽然起到了传播科学知识的作用，但是，它们把参观者当成了被动的旁观者。
世界上第三代博物馆是充满全新理念的博物馆。在这里，观众可以自己去动手操作，自己细心体察。这样，他们可以更贴近先进的科学技术，去探索科学技术的奥妙。
中国科技馆正是这样的博物馆！它汲取了国际上一些著名博物馆的长处，设计制作了力学、光学、电学、热学、声学、生物学等展品，展示了科学的 原理 和先进的科技成果。
（参考译文）
The first generation of museums are what might be called natural museums which, by means of fossils, specimens and other objects, introduced to people the evolutionary history of the Earth and various kinds of organisms. The second generation are those of industrial technologies which presented the fruits achieved by industrial civilization at different stages of industrialization. Despite the fact that those two generations of museums helped to disseminate / propagate / spread scientific knowledge, they nevertheless treated visitors merely as passive viewers.
The third generation of museums in the world are those replete with / full of wholly novel concepts / notions / ideas. In those museums, visitors are allowed to operate the exhibits with their own hands, to observe and to experience carefully. By getting closer to the advanced science and technologies in this way, people can probe into their secret mysteries.
The China Museum of Science and Technology is precisely one of such museums. It has incorporated some of the most fascinating features of those museums with international reputation. Having designed and created exhibits in mechanics, optics, electrical science, thermology, acoustics, and biology. Those exhibits demonstrate scientific principles and present the most advanced scientific and technological achievements.
SECTION B：Translate the following underlined part of the English text into Chinese
（原 文）
If people mean anything at all by the expression "untimely death", they must believe that some deaths run on a better schedule than others. Death in old age is rarely called untimely---a long life is thought to be a full one. But with the passing of a young person, one assumes that the best years lay ahead and the measure of that life was still to be taken.
History denies this, of course. Among prominent summer deaths, one recalls those of Marilyn Monroe and James Deans, whose lives seemed equally brief and complete. Writers cannot bear the fact that poet John Keats died at 26, and only half playfully judge their own lives as failures when they pass that year. The idea that the life cut short is unfilled is illogical because lives are measured by the impressions they leave on the world and by their intensity and virtue.
（参考译文）
如果人们藉"英年早逝"这一字眼真的意欲表达什么含义的话，他们必然相信某些人的辞世可以算是寿终正寝，而另一些人则"死不逢时" 。死于年迈很少被冠以"死不逢时"之名，因为能度过漫长的一生被认为是甚为圆满的。反之，如果所碰到的是一位年轻人之死，人们会以为这位年轻人风华正茂，前途无可限量，生命的倒计时尚未真正开始。
当然，历史否定这一切。在诸多较为著名的"英年早逝"的情形中，我们会忆起玛丽莲.梦露与詹姆斯.迪恩斯之死，其生命并不因其短暂而有损其圆满。对于约翰.济慈年方26便溘然长逝这一事实，文人墨客们皆痛不欲生，但他们中仅有半数人诙谐地认为，设若他们也死于这一年龄，其一生可视为失败。视英年早逝为不圆满，这一观念有悖于逻辑，因为衡量生命的尺度乃是留给世界的印记，是生命的力度及其美德。