发布时间 : 星期六 文章2008年3月上海中级口译真题（文本+音频+答案）更新完毕开始阅读b4ccfb2cb4daa58da0114af7
(A) killed animals by exhausting them (B) may have evolved big brains for running (C) competed with other animals for food (D) could probably run before they could walk Questions 11-15
People value money desperately because they value one another desperately; thus the cause of panic in the stock-market plunge is not that people will lose their dollars but that they will lose their sense of community. For the past couple of weeks, the nation has watched itself roll toward ruin because people were losing their money in bales. If one were tasteless enough to ask a big loser what exactly he was losing, he would sputter, \My clothes! My dinner! My dollars!\mourning the passing of their money for all the things that money can do, and what money can do is impressive. Money can build cities, cure diseases, and win wars. The sudden acquisition of the stuff can toss our spirits into the air like a hat.
Money can do considerably more. It offers power, an almost unique form of power, not simply because it allows us to acquire and possess things but because it is we who determine its worth; we who say a ruby costs more than an apple; we who decide that a tennis court is more valuable than a book. Paradoxically, money creates a deep sense of powerlessness as well, since technically we cannot provide money for ourselves; someone or something else must do that for us-our employers or, until recently, our stocks. All that, money can do: and when such essential, familiar
functions are snatched from one's life, small wonder that people may grow wild, frantic, and even murderous.
What money can do, however, is not the same as what money is. Let's return for a moment to the theory: people value money because they value one another. In other words, the usefulness of money is directly related to and established by continuous mutual need. People work for money to buy things that other people make or do, things that they cannot or will not make or do for themselves but that they deem necessary for some definition of self-improvement.
Abstractly, money is one of the ways, indeed a universally accepted way, by which we make connections. Cash is cold. So the connections may feel cold, but real blood flows through them. These connections constitute one
of the central means by which societies cohere; by which they sustain and characterize themselves.
When the coin begins to wobble, as it has in the past weeks, a fear seizes the mind that is disorienting. The fear is not merely that of the loss of possessions but of self-possession, which in some sense is bought and sold from person to person in infinite daily bargains. To lose money is frightening. To lose touch with others is more frightening still. Losing touch may cause the panic of the times. 11.This passage mainly discusses _______. (A) the functions of money (B) the stock-market plunge (C) a new theory of investment (D) a cold characteristic of cash
12.According to the author, what can be a regular source of money provided for us?
(A) Possessions. (B) Bargains. (C) Stocks. (D) Employers.
13.According to the passage, money can do all the following EXCEPT _______.
(A) build cities and cure diseases (B) enhance relationships among people (C) create a sense of powerlessness (D) prove the morality of people
14.Under what circumstances are connections related to cash said to be cold in the passage?
(A) When they are not established for societies to cohere.
(B) When they are not compared to \
(C) When their functions are snatched from people's life. (D) When their worth is hard to determine and not valued. 15.It can be learned from the passage that ______.
(A) people worry about the dollars they have more than the sense of community
(B) money can lubricate the social machine but it cannot prove the value of people
(C) in daily transactions one's self-possession is gained or lost (D) losing money is more frightening than losing touch with others Questions 16-20
At first glance, why anyone would want to save California condors is not entirely clear. Unlike the closely related Andean condors with their white neck fluff or king vultures with their brilliant black-and-white colour, California condors are not much to see. Their dull black colour-even when contrasted with white underwings-featherless head and neck, oversized feet and blunt talons are hardly signs of beauty or strength. Their appeal begins to become evident when they take flights. California condors can soar almost effortlessly for hours, often covering hundreds of miles a day-far more than other creatures of the air. Only occasionally do they need to flap their wings-to take off, change direction or find a band of warm air known as thermal to carry them higher.
When it was discovered that the condor population was becoming dangerously small, scientists and zookeepers sought to increase condor numbers quickly to preserve as much of the species' genetic diversity as possible. From studying wild condors, they already knew that if a pair lost an egg, the birds would often produce another. So the first and sometimes second eggs laid by each female in captivity were removed, artificially incubated, and the chicks raised using hand-held puppets made to look like adult condors. Such techniques quickly proved effective.
Despite these successes, the effort to save California condors continues to have problems, evoke criticisms and generate controversy.
Captive-hatched condors released to the wild have died at what to some people are alarmingly high rates. Others have had to be recaptured after
they acted foolishly or became ill. As a result, the scientists,
zookeepers and conservationists who are concerned about condors have bickered among themselves over the best ways to rear and release the birds. Some of the odd behavior on the part of these re-released birds is hard to explain. At times they landed on people's houses and garages, walked across roads and airport runways, sauntered into park visitor centers and fast food restaurants, and took food offered by picnickers and fishermen. None are known to have died by doing so, though. Most recently, some of the first chicks hatched in the wild died after their parents fed them bottle caps, glass shards, pieces of plastic and other man-made objects that fatally perforated or blocked their intestines. These deaths may be due to the chicks' parents mistaking man-made objects for bone chips eaten for their calcium content.
Mike Wallace, a wildlife specialist at the San Diego Zoo, has suggested that some of the condors' problems represent natural behavior that helps them survive as carrion eaters. The real key to successful condor
reintroduction, he believes, lies in properly socializing young condors as members of a group that follow and learn from older, preferably adult birds. That, he argues, was missing from earlier condor releases to the wild. Typically, condors hatched in the spring were released to the wild that autumn or winter, when they were still less than a year old. Now, condor chicks at several zoos are raised in cave-like nest boxes. The chicks can see older condors in a large flight pen outside their box but cannot interact with them until they are about five months old. Then the chicks are gradually released into the pen and the company of the social group. The group includes adult and older juvenile condors that act as mentors for younger ones.
16.According to the passage, the most impressive feature of the California condor is _______.
(A) its resemblance to Andean condor (B) its ability to glide (C) its colorful plumage (D) its blunt talons
17.In the first stage of the conservation program _______. (A) eggs were removed from the nests of wild condors