年3月高級口譯上半場閱讀（四篇）解析

上半場閱讀理解第一篇：

本文選擇《經濟學人》雜誌2013年9月23日。譯文來自網絡。
原文鏈接：

WHAT makes an artist great? Brilliant composition, no doubt. Superb draughtsmanship, certainly. Originality of subject or of concept, sometimes. But surely true greatness means that the creator of a painting has brought a certain je ne sais quoi to the work as well.
是什麼成就了一名偉大的畫家？出色的構圖？高超的畫技？這兩點毋庸置疑。有時也靠創作主題或理念的新穎性。但真正的偉大指的是畫家爲作品賦予一種難以描述的特質。

There is, however, a type of person who seems to sait perfectly well what that quoi is, and can turn it out on demand. In 1945, for example, a Dutchman named Han van Meegeren faced execution for selling a national art treasure, in the form of a painting by Vermeer, to Hermann Göring, Hitler’s deputy. His defence was that it was a forgery he had painted himself. When asked to prove it by copying a Vermeer he scorned the offer. Instead he turned out a completely new painting, “Jesus Among the Doctors”, in the style of the master, before the eyes of his incredulous inquisitors.
然而，有這樣一種人，他們似乎能準確把握這個難以名狀的東西，並且能夠按要求把它複製出來。例如，1945年，一位名叫漢·凡·米格倫（HanvanMeegeren）的荷蘭人因將一幅國家藝術珍品，也就是維米爾（Vermeer）的一幅畫作，賣給希特勒的副手赫爾曼·戈林（HermannGöring）而面臨死刑。他辯稱這只是幅贗品，由他本人仿造。當被要求現場模仿一幅維米爾的畫作來證明自己時，他表示十分不屑。在審判者懷疑的眼神下，他以維米爾的風格創作了一幅全新的作品《基督在博學者中間》。

此處例子功能題：作者爲何提及荷蘭畫家？

Göring, who was facing a little local difficulty at the time, did not sue van Meegeren. But that has not been the experience of Glafira Rosales, an art dealer in New York who admitted this week that she has, over the past 15 years, fooled two local commercial art galleries into buying 63 forged works of art for more than $30m. She is being forced to give the money back, and is still awaiting sentence.
戈林當時在本國遇到了點麻煩，所以就沒有起訴凡·米格倫。但格拉菲拉·羅薩萊斯（GlafiraRosales）可沒那麼好運了。作爲紐約的一位藝術品商人，羅薩萊斯於本週承認了在過去的十五年裏曾向兩個當地的商業藝術畫廊賣出了63幅假畫，總收益達三千多萬美元。她被強制要求退還所有收入，目前仍在等待法院的判決。

此處細節題，考有關Rosales 的例子內容。

Ms Rosales is guilty of passing goods off as something they are not, and should take the rap for the fraud. But although art forgers do a certain amount of economic damage, they also provide public entertainment by exposing the real values that lie at the heart of the art market.
羅薩萊斯女士因出售贗品獲罪，應承擔相應的刑事責任。但雖然這些藝術品僞造者給他人造成了一定的經濟損失，但他們也通過揭露藝術品市場上核心藝術品的真實價值而娛樂了大衆。

此處詞彙理解題：解釋take the rap。

That art market pretends that great artists are inimitable, and that this inimitability justifies the often absurd prices their work commands. Most famous artists are good: that is not in question. But as forgers like van Meegeren and Pei-Shen Qian, the painter who turned out Ms Rosales’s Rothkos and Pollocks, show, they are very imitable indeed. If they were not, the distinction between original and knock-off would always be obvious. As Ms Rosales’s customers have found, no doubt to their chagrin, it isn’t.
藝術品市場稱偉大的藝術家都是獨一無二的，而這種不可模仿性使得他們的作品都貴得離譜。大多數著名的藝術家都很優秀，這一點毋庸置疑。但像僞造者凡·米格倫和爲羅薩萊斯女士僞造羅斯科和波洛克畫作的錢培琛，他們的存在證明了這些藝術家是可以被模仿的。如果不是的話，那真品和贗品之間的差別就會十分明顯。羅薩萊斯女士的顧客就沒有發現其中的區別，難怪事後他們懊惱不已。

此處句子理解題，解釋黑體字部分。chagrin: 懊悔，懊惱。

If the purchasers of great art were buying paintings only for their beauty, they would be content to display fine fakes on their walls. The fury and embarrassment caused by the exposure of a forger suggests this is not so.
如果購買者純粹是因爲欣賞畫作的美而去購買它，那麼即使是把假畫掛在自家牆上也會心滿意足。但僞造者的曝光所引起的憤怒和尷尬說明了情況並非如此。

Expensive pictures are primarily what economists call positional goods—things that are valuable largely because other people can’t have them. The painting on the wall, or the sculpture in the garden, is intended to say as much about its owner’s bank balance as about his taste. With most kit a higher price reduces demand. But art, sports cars and fine wine invert the laws of economics. When the good that is really being purchased is evidence that the buyer has forked out a bundle, price spikes cause demand to boom.
名貴的畫作被經濟學家稱爲地位性商品——這類商品昂貴的價值很大程度是因爲其他人無法擁有。不管是牆上的名畫，還是花園裏的雕塑，都彰顯着其主人的品位和財富。大多數情況下，價格越高，需求就會越少。但是藝術品，跑車和名酒卻打破了這一經濟學定律。當真正被買下的商品能證明買家的確是花了大手筆時，那麼價格的上漲反而會使需求猛增。

All this makes the scarcity and authenticity that underpin lofty valuations vital. Artists forget this at their peril: Damien Hirst’s spot pictures, for instance, plummeted in value when it became clear that they had been produced in quantities so vast nobody knew quite how many were out there, and when the market lost faith in a mass-production process whose connection with the original artist was, to say the least, tenuous.
這個現象說明了商品稀缺性和真實性的重要性。正因爲此，藝術品的價格纔會持續居高不下。藝術家若忽視這一點，便會自嘗苦果。例如，當達明安·赫斯特（DamienHirst）的現場畫作被大批量生產時，其價格直跌。市場對批量生產過程失去了信心，至少可以說，這樣生產出來的作品和原創者的聯繫不再緊密。

Ms Rosales’s career is thus a searing social commentary on a business which purports to celebrate humanity’s highest culture but in which names are more important than aesthetics and experts cannot tell the difference between an original and a fake. Unusual, authentic, full of meaning—her life itself is surely art, even if the paintings were not.
羅薩萊斯女士的一生無非是對藝術行業的嘲諷。這個行業聲稱頌揚人類最崇高的文化，但藝術家的名字卻比美感更重要，而專家卻連真品和贗品都無法區別開來。即使羅薩萊斯女士出售的畫作不是真正的藝術品，但她的一生，不同尋常、萬般真實且意義深刻，充滿了藝術性。上半場閱讀理解第二篇：

In 1965, America’s big companies had a hell of a year. The stock market was booming. Sales were rising briskly, profit margins were fat, and corporate profits as a percentage of G.D.P. were at an all-time high. Almost half a century later, some things look much the same: big American companies have had a hell of a year, with the stock market soaring, margins strong, and profits hitting a new all-time high. But there’s one very noticeable difference. In 1965, C.E.O.s at big companies earned, on average, about twenty times as much as their typical employee. These days, C.E.O.s earn about two hundred and seventy times as much.

從第二段開頭的the huge gap可以看出第一段講的是兩種經濟狀況之間的差距。這裏也正好是第一題的定位：The author makes a comparison between today’s America with that of 1965______.既然第二段追究的是這種gap的原因，那麼答案就在第一段結尾處：今天的CEO-僱員的收入差距比大大增加了。

That huge gap between the top and the middle is the result of a boom in executive compensation, which rose eight hundred and seventy-six per cent between 1978 and 2011, according to a study by the liberal Economic Policy Institute. In response, we’ve had a host of regulatory reforms designed to curb executive pay. The latest of these is a rule, unveiled by the S.E.C. last month, requiring companies to disclose the ratio of the C.E.O.’s pay to that of the median worker. The idea is that, once the disparity is made public, companies will be less likely to award outsized pay packages.
Faith in disclosure has been crucial to the regulation of executive pay since the nineteen-thirties, when companies were first required to reveal those figures. More recently, rules have made companies detail the size and the structure of compensation packages and have enforced transparency about the kinds of comparisons they rely on to determine salaries. The business press, meanwhile, now rigorously tracks executive pay. The result is that shareholders today know far more about C.E.O. compensation than ever before. There’s only one problem: even as companies are disclosing more and more, executive pay keeps going up and up.

這一段開頭黑體部分爲我們提示了一個關鍵字：disclosure. 由此可以看出本文的話題是從收入差距說開去，轉向CEO的收入披露機制。

This isn’t a coincidence: the drive for transparency has actually helped fuel the spiralling salaries. For one thing, it gives executives a good idea of how much they can get away with asking for. A more crucial reason, though, has to do with the way boards of directors set salaries. As the corporate-governance experts Charles Elson and Craig Ferrere write in a recent paper, boards at most companies use what’s called “peer benchmarking.” They look at the C.E.O. salaries at peer-group firms, and then peg their C.E.O.’s pay to the fiftieth, seventy-fifth, or ninetieth percentile of the peer group—never lower. This leads to the so-called Lake Wobegon effect: every C.E.O. gets treated as above average. With all the other companies following the same process, salaries ratchet inexorably higher. “Relying on peer-group comparisons, the way boards do, mathematically guarantees that pay is going to go up,” Elson told me.

本段講到越是披露高管們的收入，他們就越能要求更高的收入。

On top of this, peer-group comparisons aren’t always honest: boards can be too cozy with C.E.O.s and may tweak the comparisons to justify overpaying. A recent study by the labor economist Ron Laschever shows that boards tend to include as peers companies that are bigger than they are and that pay their C.E.O.s more. The system is also skewed by so-called “leapfroggers,” the few C.E.O.s in a given year who, whether by innate brilliance or by dumb luck, end up earning astronomical salaries. Those big paydays reset the baseline expectations for everyone else.

段首句是主題句：高管們可能還會想方設法隱瞞自己高增長的收入。

This isn’t just an American problem. Elson notes that, when Canada toughened its disclosure requirements, executive salaries there rose sharply, and German studies have found something similar. Nor is it primarily a case of boards being helplessly in thrall to a company’s executives. Boards are far more independent of management than they used to be, and it’s notable that a C.E.O. hired from outside a company—who therefore has no influence over the board—typically gets twenty to twenty-five per cent more than an inside candidate. The real issues are subtler, though no less insidious. Some boards, in the face of much evidence to the contrary, remain convinced of what Elson calls “superstar theory”: they think that C.E.O.s can work their magic anywhere, and must be overpaid to stay. In addition, Elson said, “if you pay below average, it makes it look as if you’d hired a below-average C.E.O., and what board wants that?”

這個問題並不侷限於美國，而是國際化的。

Transparent pricing has perverse effects in other fields. In a host of recent cases, public disclosure of the prices that hospitals charge for various procedures has ended up driving prices up rather than down. And the psychological causes in both situations seem similar. We tend to be uneasy about bargaining in situations where the stakes are very high: do you want the guy doing your neurosurgery, or running your company, to be offering discounts? Better, in the event that something goes wrong, to be able to tell yourself that you spent all you could. And overspending is always easier when you’re spending someone else’s money. Corporate board members are disbursing shareholder funds; most patients have insurance to foot the bill.

收入披露在其他領域中也會引起一系列不良反應。

Sunlight is supposed to be the best disinfectant. But there’s something naïve about the new S.E.C. rule, which presumes that full disclosure will embarrass companies enough to restrain executive pay. As Elson told me, “People who can ask to be paid a hundred million dollars are beyond embarrassment.” More important, as long as the system for setting pay is broken, more disclosure makes things worse instead of better. We don’t need more information. We need boards of directors to step up and set pay themselves, instead of outsourcing the job to their peers. The rest of us don’t get to live in Lake Wobegon. C.E.O.s shouldn’t, either.

本文得出的結論是，SEC的規則的潛臺詞是，完全披露收入將會是各大公司不願提高高管的薪水。上半場閱讀理解第三篇：

本文講述全球人口增長問題。文章第一段提出了Sir David Attenborough 的悲觀看法：100年後的世界會出現各種問題，所以我們今天的人類一定要做好準備，盡力逆轉。第二段用數字列舉了人口增長的趨勢。第三、四兩段討論瞭解決人口增長問題的conventioanal wisdom. 第五段提出非洲的新生兒死亡率大幅增加。第六段中，作者根據以上內容提出，世界人口停止增長的日期應該早於2070年。而且無論如何，讀者無需爲人口增長過快擔憂。第七段分析了耕地和動物分佈狀況，同樣得出了無需杞人憂天的結論。最後一段讚揚了非洲的進步會爲人類生存環境的改善加分。
題目解析：

第一題問作者爲什麼要提出Sir David Attenborough 的悲觀看法。

第二題圍繞birth control 的種種細節。

第三題要求考生解釋詞彙：as night follows day的意思。

第四題是新問法：四個說法中哪一個與另外三個不同?相當於NOT TRUE 體型。

第五題主旨題上半場閱讀理解第四篇：

本文開頭便指出Help to buy 政策等同於help to vote，由此可知，該篇文章屬於政治類。本文主人公George Osborne 提出一項help to buy 政策，而本段接下來便說IMF和其他經濟觀察組織指出這項政策十分瘋狂。第二、三段中，作者爲Osborne進行辯護，這項政策開始時的確發揮了積極的作用。而且他們的團隊的確積極推行。第四段說英國財政部也積極配合，使得這個項目與房地美和房利美有本質不同。第五段話鋒一轉，說這個項目很好的證明了英國金融房地產政策的魯莽政策。並從幾個角度進行了具體分析。第六段說英國二三十歲的年輕人就開始希望擁有房產，而其他幾個國家則普遍到四十歲以後考慮買房子，並用數據支持。第七段引用經濟學家的觀點說，國家補貼購房的政策不僅爲通貨膨脹的虛高的房價推波助瀾，而且還會影響到真正需要住房的人。第八段說，新增住房的增加只會對目前awesome 的房地產存量雪上加霜。

題目解析：

第一題請考生解釋help to vote 的意思。

第二題是詞彙理解，問第二段的talisman 的意思。

第三題通過第五段的一句話考察對整段的理解。

第四題問爲什麼作者比較了英國和其他幾個國家，用意何在。

第五題問最後一段的段意。