翻译练习

1. 英译汉

According to the new school of scientists, technology is an overlooked force in expanding the horizons of scientific knowledge. Science moves forward, they say, not so much through the insights of great men of genius as because of more ordinary things like improved techniques and tools. “In short,” a leader of the new school contends, “the scientific revolution, as we call it, was largely the improvement and invention and use of a series of instruments that expanded the reach of science in innumerable directions.”

Over the years, tools and technology themselves as a source of fundamental innovation have largely been ignored by historians and philosophers of science. The modern school that hails technology argues that such masters as Galileo, Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, and inventors such as Edison attached great importance to, and derived great benefit from, craft information and technological devices of different kinds that were usable in scientific experiments.

The centerpiece of the argument of a technology --- yes, geniuses now advocate --- was an analysis of Galileo’s role at the start of the scientific revolution. The wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, and astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at the center of all heavenly motions. Galileo’s greatest glory was that in 1609 he was the first person to turn the newly invented telescope on the heavens to prove that the planets revolve around the sun rather than around the Earth. But the real hero of the story, according to the new school of scientists, was the evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eyeglasses.（267）

2. 汉译英

1） 有些人生来比较聪明，有些人生来就笨吗？或智力是靠我们的环境和经历发展起来的

吗？奇怪的是，对这两个问题的答案是肯定的。在某种程度上，我们的智力是生而有之，没有什么特殊教育能把生来就智力低下的儿童培养成为天才。然而，生活在差的环境中的儿童培养出来的智力低于生活在丰富多彩环境中的儿童。因此一个人的智力的限度取决于他的生活环境。

2） 有一个谚语：直到我们失去了某件东西，我们才会彻底认识到它的价值。当朋友已经死

去的时候我们常常才能珍惜朋友的爱，甚至比他生前更加珍惜。直至我们离开学校或大学，才开始了解教育给我们的无穷机会，而学习教育也已不再了。同样的， 只有当人身体虚弱或生病时才会了解到健康的可贵。

3） 青少年教育专家评论说，中国自80年代到现在仍然极不衰的所谓“才能培养”，包括音

乐、美术之类，实际上是欧洲19世纪对儿童的教育方法，已经被证明是徒劳无功的， 并非所有的孩子都具有艺术上的天赋，与其压抑他们的个性，不如顺其自然，多对孩子做独立性、创造性及吃苦精神的培养。（428）