12月10日雅思考试已经考完了，那么考生对这个考试了解多少呢?下面是小编为大家整理收集的关于2016年12月10日雅思阅读考试真题的详细解析，希望对大家有所帮助。
Passage1
Consecutive and Simultaneous Translation
A
When people are faced with a foreign-language barrier, the usual way round it is to find someone to interpret or translate for them. The term‘translation’, is the neutral term used for all tasks where the meaning or expressions in one language (the source language) is turned into the
meaning of another (the ‘target’ language), whether the medium is spoken, written, or signed. In specific professional contexts, however, a distinction is drawn between people who work with the spoken or signed language (interpreters), and those who work with the written language (translators). There are certain tasks that blur this distinction, as when source speeches turned into target writing. But usually the two roles are seen as quite distinct, and it is unusual to find one person who is equally happy with both occupations. Some writers on translation, indeed,consider the interpreting task to be more suitable for extravert ( 外向的) personalities, and the translating task for introverts ( 内向的人).
B
Interpreting is today widely known from its use in international political life.Then senior ministers from different language backgrounds meet, the television record invariably shows a pair of interpreters hovering in the background.At major conferences, such as the United Nations General Assembly, the presence of headphones is a clear indication that a major linguistic exercise is taking place. In everyday circumstances, too interpreters are frequently needed, especially in cosmopolitan societies formed by new reiterations ( 反复) of mmigrants and Gastarbeiter ( 客籍工人) . Often, the business of law courts, hospitals, local health clinics, classrooms, or industrial tribunals cannot be carried on without the presence of an interpreter. Given the importance and frequency of this task, therefore, it is remarkable that so little study has been made of what actually happens when interpreting takes place, and of how successful an exercise it is.
C
There are two main kinds of oral translation-consecutive( 连贯的) and
simultaneous ( 同时的). In consecutive translation the translating starts after the original speech or some part of it has been completed. Here the interpreter’s strategy and the final results depend, to a great extent on the length of the segment to be translated. If the segment is just a sentence or two the interpreter closely follows the original speech. As often as not, however, the interpreter is expected to translate a long speech which has lasted for scores of minutes or even longer. In this case he has to remember a great number of messages;and keep them in mind until he begins his translation. To make this possible the interpreter has to take notes of the original messages, various systems of notation having been suggested for the purpose. The study of, and practice in, such notation is the integral part of the interpreter’s training as are special
exercises to develop his memory.
D
Doubtless the recency ( 崭新) of developments in the field partly explains this neglect. One procedure, consecutive interpreting, is very old - and presumably dates from the Tower of Babel ! Here, the interpreter translates after the speaker has finished speaking, This approach is widely practiced in informal situations, as well as in committees and small conferences. In larger and more formal settings, however, it has been generally replaced by simultaneous interpreting - a recent development that arose from the availability of modern audiological equipment and the advent of increased international interaction following the Second World War.
E
Of the two procedures, it is the second that has attracted most interest,
because of the complexity of the task and the remarkable skills required. In no other context of human communication is anyone routinely required to listen and speak at the same time, preserving an exact semantic ( 语义的) correspondence between the two modes. Moreover, there is invariably a delay of a few words between the stimulus and the response, because of the time it takes to assimilate ( 吸收) what is being said in the source language and to translate it into an acceptable form in the target language. This‘ ear-voice span’ is usually about 2 or 3 seconds, but it may be as much as 10 seconds or so, if the text is complex. The brain has to remember what has just been said, attend to what is currently being said, and anticipate the construction of what is about to be said. As you start a sentence you are taking a leap in the dark, you are mortgaging your grammatical future; the original sentence may suddenly be turned in such a way that your translation of its end cannot easily be reconciled ( 和解) with your translation of its start. Great nimbleness ( 聪明 ) is called for.
F
How it is all done is not at all clear. That it is done at all is a source of some wonder, given the often lengthy periods of interpreting required, the confined environment of an interpreting booth , the presence of background noise, and the awareness that major decisions may depend upon the accuracy of the work. Other consideration such as cultural background also makes it aim to pay full attention to the backgrounds of the authors and the recipients, and to take into account differences between source’ and target language.
G
Research projects have now begun to look at these factors-to determine,
for example, how far successful interpreting is affected by poor listening
conditions, or the speed at which the source language is spoken. It seems that an input speed of between 100 and 120 words per minute is a comfortable
rate for interpreting, with an upper limit of around 200 w.p.m. But even
small increases in speed can dramatically affect the accuracy of output. In one controlled study, when speeds were gradually increased in a series of stages from 95 t0 164 w.p.m., the ear-voice span also increased with each stage, and the amount correctly interpreted showed a clear decline. Also, as the translating load increases, not only are there more errors of commission (mistranslations, cases of vagueness( 合糊其辞) replacing precision), there are also more errors of omission, as words and segments of meaning are filtered out. These are important findings, given the need for accuracy in international communication. What is needed is a more detailed identification of the problem areas, and of the strategies speakers, listeners, and interpreters use to solve them. There is urgent need to expand what has so far been one of the most neglected fields of communication research.
题目暂缺
Passage2
Health in the Wild
For the past decade Dr. Engel, a lecturer in environmental sciences at Britain's Open University, has been collating examples of self-medicating behavior in wild animals. She recently published a book on the subject. In a talk at the Edinburgh Science Festival earlier this month, she explained that the idea that animals can treat themselves has been regarded with some skepticism by her colleagues in the past. But a growing number of animal behaviourists now think that wild animals can and do deal with their own medical needs.
One example of self-medication was discovered in 1987. Michael Huffman and Mohamedi Seifu, working in the Mahale, National Park in Tanzania, noticed that local chimpanzees suffering from intestinal worms would dose themselves with the pith of a plant called Veronia. This plant produces poisonous chemicals called terpenes. Its pith contains a strong enough concentration to kill gut parasites, but not so strong as to kill chimps (nor people, for that matter; locals use the pith for the same purpose). Given that the plant is known locally as "goat-killer", however, it seems that not all animals are as smart as chimps and humans. Some consume it indiscriminately and succumb.
Since the Veronia-eating chimps were discovered, more evidence has emerged suggesting that animals often eat things for medical rather than nutritional reasons. Many species, for example, consume dirt-a behaviour known as geophagy. Historically, the preferred explanation was that soil supplies minerals such as salt. But geophagy occurs in areas where the earth is not a useful source of minerals, and also in places where minerals can be more easily obtained from certain plants that are known to be rich in them. Clearly, the animals must be getting something else out of eating earth.
The current belief is that soil-and particularly the clay in it helps to detoxify the defensive poisons that some plants produce in an attempt to prevent themselves from being eaten. Evidence for the detoxifying nature of clay came in 1999, from an experiment carried out on macaws by James Gilardi and his colleagues at the University of California, Davis. Macaws eat seeds containing allcaloids, a group of chemicals that has some notoriously toxic members, such as strychnine. In the wild, the birds are frequently seen perched on eroding riverbanks eating clay. Dr Gilardi fed one group of macaws a mixture of a harmless alkaloid and clay, and a second group just the alkaloid. Several hours later, the macaws that had eaten the clay had 60% less alkaloid in their bloodstreams than those that had not, suggesting that the hypothesis is correct.
Other observations also support the idea that clay is detoxifying. Towards the tropics the amount of toxic compounds in plants increases-and so does the amount of earth eaten by herbivores. Elephants lick clay from mud holes all year round, except in September when they are bingeing on fruit which, because it has evolved to be eaten, is not toxic. And the addition of clay to the diets of domestic cattle increases the amount of nutrients that they can absorb from their food by 10-20%.
A third instance of animal self-medication is the use of mechanical scours to get rid of gut parasites. In 1972 Richard Wrangham, a researcher at the Gombe Stream Reserve in Tanzania, noticed that chimpanzees were eating the leaves of a tree called Aspilia. The chimps chose the leaves carefully by testing them in their mouths. Having chosen a leaf, a chimp would fold it into a fan and swallow it. Some of the chimps were noticed wrinkling their noses as they swallowed these leaves, suggesting the experience was unpleasant. Later, undigested leaves were found on the forest floor.
Dr. Wrangham rightly guessed that the leaves indeed, one of the earliest interpretations of a had a medicinal purpose-this was. However, he guessed wrong about what the behavior mechanism pattern as self-medication was. His (and everybody else's) assumption was that Aspilia contained a drug, and this sparked more than two decades of phytochemical research to try to find out what chemical the chimps were after. But by the 1990s, chimps across Africa had been seen swallowing the leaves of 19 different species that seemed to have few suitable chemicals in common. The drug hypothesis was looking more and more dubious.
It was Dr. Huffman who got to the bottom of the problem He did so by watching what came out of the chimps, rather than concentrating on what went in. He found that the egested leaves were full of intestinal worms. The factor common to all 19 species of leaves swallowed by the chimps was that they were covered with microscopic hooks. These caught the worms and dragged them from their lodgings.
Following that observation, Dr. Engel is now particularly excited about how knowledge of the way that animals look after themselves could be used to improve the health of livestock. People might also be able to learn a thing or two-and may, indeed, already have done so. Geophagy, for example, is a common behaviour in many parts of the world. The medical stalls in African markets frequently sell tablets made of different sorts of clays, appropriate to different medical conditions.
Africans brought to the Americas as slaves continued this tradition, which gave their owners one more excuse to affect to despise them. Yet, as Dr. Engel points out, Rwandan mountain gorillas eat a type of clay rather similar to kaolinite-the main ingredient of many patent medicines sold over the counter in the West for digestive complaints. Dirt can sometimes be good for you, and to be "as sick as a parrot" may, after all, be a state to be desired.
题目暂缺
Passage3回忆暂缺
Passage3
1、T
2、T
3、F
4、T
5、T
6、NG
7、expensive
8、LaTeX
9、lead ripe
10、unusual seaeed
11、president Buchanan
12、camels
13、tropical rain
14、seven hours