翻译考试历年中级口译真题(17)_第4页

Questions 11～15
      Another dropped stitch in life's rich tapestry: 15-year-old schoolboy who was caught in the Stock Market  crash after a ￡100,000 shares gamble. Peeved stockbrokers to whom he owes  ￡20,000 now say in injured tones:“He has been very naughty. We thought he was 19. ”

      I  must say that small fry finances have come on  a bit  since the era of  Billy  Bunter's nonarriving five bob postal order. While not in the same league as Britain's youngest yuppie, I see from a Health Education Authority survey that school teenagers are now spending  ￡10 a week or more on records, clothes and booze. The good news is that nearly one in two of the big spenders holds, the girls either babysitting or working in shops and cafes.

      I call this a very welcome trend. For a very long time, going right back to the golden age of the Welfate  State, there was a real  social  stigma  attached to the idea  of  school  kids working. Local  authorities  frowned on  it,  teachers  disapproved of  it,  parents  felt  guilty  about  it,  and children themselves  came to believe that  having to earn  their  own pocket  money was a  great imposition.

      To be sure, there is still opposition in some quarters. But by and large the pendulum seems to be  swinging  the  right  way  again. The other day I heard of a gang of  lads who station themselves outside a car wash every  Saturday offering, much to the rage of the manager, to do the  job half-price.  Now that's enterprise. Back in the  days  of the  Saturday penny.  I  was something  of an entrepreneur myself. I had   five paper  rounds, a  firewood  business, a golf-caddying concession and a contract to carry groceries back to the convent  for  a bunch  of local nuns. I was working a good twenty-four hours a week out of school, and as the saying goes, it never did me any harm. Indeed I'm sure it did me a good deal of good.

      Ten pounds a week does seem an awful lot to be squandering on fripperies, but at least it's as often as not their  own hard earned cash. More to the point, they learn at  a tender  age that while it may  or  may not be ture that  money  cannot buy happiness, at  least happiness—in the form of satisfaction at a job well done, that is—can buy money.

      But don't sink it all in futures, kids.

11.According to the passage, which of the following indicates the stockbrokers' attitude to the schoolboy?
    A. Guilty              B. Awful.                C. Satisfied.              D. Annoyed
12.According to the passage, which of the following is the most popular job for boys?
    A. Baby-sitting.                                   B. Working in cafes.
    C. Paper rounds.                                 D. Working in shops.
13. It can be concluded from the passage that local authorities and teachers frowned on children  working part-time because_________.
    A. it was socially unacceptable                 
    B. nearly one in two of the big spenders got a poor mark
    C. teenagers had spent too much money on records
    D. money cannot buy happiness and progress
14. How did the writer earn extra money when he was a teenager?
    A. Selling sandalwood.                       B. Working in shops.
    C. Working in cafes.                           D. Delivering groceries.
15.Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
    A. Children may get satisfaction from working part-time.
    B. School teenagers usually spend ￡10 a week on records.
    C. A good 24 hours a week out of school is the right amount of time for kids.
    D. School girls often work in shops and cafes.

Questions 16～20
      In the mid-1980's no thrusting executive was complete without his her personal organiser— a leather binder  containing everything from address-book and diary to a career-planning chart. Then   came    the  portable  telephone,   whispered    into  with   ostentatious  discretion.  Now    the electronic  organiser   has  arrived.  Psion,  a  British  firm  which   created  the  first such   digital diarycum-calculator, sells about 200,000 a year. Competitors are piling into the market.

      When Psion launched its hand-held computer in  1982, it foresaw two markets. One was in the  salerooms  and  warehouses  of  large  companies.  Here,  stocktakers  and  salesmen  needed  a portable way to talk to the big computers back at head office. About half  of  Psion's sales now come from companies—as well as many lucrative contracts to write software specially tailored to link its little machines into a firm's computer network.

      The other half  of  Psion's sales  come from individuals keen  to organise  themselves electronically. Most use the machine as a“personal data base”(i.e., address book and diary) or to crunch numbers too tough for their calculators to handle. It takes several times longer to tap a name or a date into the tiny keyboard of a hand-held computer than it does to write it down on an Asprey pad. But hundreds of thousands of people seem to think it worthwhile—maybe because the computer can search speedily through electronically stored names—or because it impresses their friends.

      Whatever the reasons, other companies are impressed with the market the Psion Organiser Ⅱhas  discovered.  Japan's  Sharp  recently  launched  a  similar  machine,  and  Casio  has  been nibbling at the edges of the market  for  some time. Other  companies are selling programs that enable   Psion to do tasks ranging  from complex  financial  calculations to  rudimentary French-English translation.

      A fledgling British firm has launched an electronic“Agenda”with a new, faster way of entering“lunch with Desdemona ”. It uses the Microwriter keyboard, which was invented some years ago by Mr. Cy Endfield, a film director whose other works include“Zulu”. His idea soon gained the support of Sir Mark Weinberg, chairman of an insurance group. Allied Dunbar. He is a 30% shareholder in Microwriter and has written its notably undaunting instruction book.   

     In addition to the standard letter keys, the Microwriter has a second keyboard consisting of five unmarked keys, one for each finger. By pressing the keys in various combinations, one can learn quickly to“type”almost as fast as on a full keyboard. The Microwriter was first peddled as a sort of hand-held word-processor, but only about 7,000 were sold. Now the firm is hoping that the boom in electronic organisers will revive its fortunes.

16. According to the passage, which of the following is true about a personal organiser popular in the mid-1980's?
   A. It had an expensive binding.
   B. It contained all the information needed.
   C. It was an impact made on status-conscious friends.
   D. It was indispensable to ambitious executives.
17. The advantage of the Psion product over earlier personal organisers is.
    A. that information can be retrieved more quickly
    B. the ability to provide a quicker input of information
    C. improved electronics
    D. its processing of numbers
18. Compared to traditional calculators, the Psion product                      .
    A. is cheaper                                    B. is more durable
    C. has greater capacity                     D. has a longer quality guarantee
19.According to the author, the response of other companies to Psion has been to                   .
    A. criticize its technology
    B. launch more competitively priced products
    C. capitalise on its success
    D. produce bilingual models
20. We can learn from the passage that one novel feature of the Microwriter is                        .
    A. its instruction book
    B. the fact that it was invented by a film director
    C. its dual keyboard
    D. the fact that it is a word-processor