自考英语阅读二课文及翻译.doc

自考英语阅读二课文及翻译

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Text 1.
Do we need extra vitamins?
Many people believe that taking vitamin supplements is the best safeguard against the dangers of an incomplete diet, but this should be ①a last resort (最后手段)rather than a way out of a problem. Even if there is a genuine need for extra vitamins, then sooner or later the question arises "which ones do I need, how much of them, and how often?" There is really no simple answer to this question. The Food Standards Committee (guardians②保护者 of our laws on food purity, labelling and advertising clams and descriptions) suggest in their recent report to the government that we do not need any extra vitamins. They say that they are "not necessary for a healthy individual eating a normal diet". Whilst few of us would challenge their authority on the subject of nutrition it is, perhaps, pertinent to ask the question "how many of us are healthy, and what is a normal diet? "There is an element of doubt in many minds about these two aspects and though few people are familiar with the wording of the Food Standards Report they do wonder instinctively if they are eating the right things. The blame for faulty eating habits is often placed at the door of the ubiquitous③（a. being everywhere, esp. at the same time 普遍存在的） junk and convenience foods. As we have seen, some of these are not the criminals they are made out to be White bread is only slightly less nutritious than brown bread and frozen vegetables can be almost as "fresh" as fresh food. There are very few foods which can really be described as pure rubbish. Many pre-packed goods contain too much sugar and we would all benefit by avoiding these, but most tinned, processed and dried foods contain useful amounts of fat, protein, carbohydrate④（n. 碳水化合物）, vitamins and minerals. The addition of a small amount of fruit or a side salad to convenience foods such as pizzas or hamburgers can turn a snack into a well-balanced meal.
许多人认为，服用维生互补剂是防止出现饮食营养不均衡情况的最好防范办法，但这是解决这一问题的方法中最不可行的作法。即使真的需要补充维生素，迟早会出现“我需要哪些维生素？需要多少？多久服一次？”这样的问题。对于这一问题，确实没有简单的答案。食品标准委员会（我们在食品纯度、标识和食品广告申请、宣传方面的法律卫士）在最近呈送给政府的报告中建议说，人们不需要补充维生素。她们说，“饮食正常的健康人不需要它们”。尽管我们没有几个人对她们在营养方面的权威有什么异议，但或许会问“我们中多少人是健康的？正常的饮食是什么样的饮食？”这样的问题。许多人心里对这两个问题还有点拿不不准尽管没有多少人熟悉食品标准委员会所呈报告中的措辞，但人们确实不由得要问，她们的饮食是否合理。不良的饮食习惯常常归咎到随处出售的没营养的食品和方面食品上。如我们所知，这些食品中的某些食品并不象人们认为的那要间（形成不良饮食习惯的）罪魁祸首。白面包比黑面包只是稍微少了点儿营养，而冷冻的蔬菜几乎和新鲜的食物一样的“新鲜”。真正能够说成是纯粹没有营养的食物是非常少的。许多包装好的食品含糖太多，避开它们对我们都有好处，多数罐装食品、加工食品和烘干食品含有大量的脂肪、蛋白质、碳水化合物、维生素和矿物质。往方便食品（如比萨饼或汉堡包）上加少许的水果或另外添加一道色拉会把快餐变成搭配均匀的营养餐。
'Junk' food is difficult to define. White sugar is probably the nearest contender⑤（n. rival, competitor）竞争者，对手 for the title. It contains plenty of calories for energy but not much else, and is often described as an "empty calorie" food. Alcohol is also high in calories, but beer and wine contain some of the B vitamins and wine is a good source of iron, so even a teetotaler ⑥（a person who never drinks alcohol）滴酒不沾的人could not describe all alcohol as useless, nutritionally speaking. Calories measure the energy we derive from the food we eat, and sugar and alcohol are sometimes described as having a high energy density. There is a limit to the amount of energy we need each day (2,000-2,200 calories is the average for women and 2,500-3,000 for men) and if we eat too much sugar and alcohol there is no appetite left for the vitamin-rich foods we need -- fish, meat, fruit and vegetables. Buying vitamins can be predicted by psychological as well as nutritional motives and it is prudent to investigate why we think we need them and what benefits we expect from them before we rush off to the health shop to make our purchases.
给真正“没营养”食品下定义并不容易。白糖可能是这一头衔的最有力竞争者。它含有很多提供能量的大卡，但含别的营养不多，因而常常被称为“只含大卡”的食物。酒含大片也很高，但啤酒和果酒含有一些B族维生素，而果酒富含铁质。因而从营养角度说，甚至滴酒不沾的人也不能把酒都说成是毫无益处的东西。大卡测量我们吃食物所得到的能量，而糖和酒有时被说成是单位能量高的物质。我们每天需要的热量有一个限度（妇女平均为２０００－２２００大卡，而男人为２５００－３０００大卡）。如果我们糖或酒用得太多，就留不下胃口去享用我们需要的含　维生阁下高的食物－－鱼、肉、水果和蔬菜。具有讽刺意味的是，真正吃“没营养”食物可能需要补充维生素的人几乎从没想到要补充维生素，而我们这些偶然吃些食物的人却觉得我们必须把所有能想到的维生素都用来去补充所缺的营养。购买维生素有的是出于营养方面的动机，有的是受心理因素的驱使。要认真地考虑一下，我们为什么觉得我们需要维生素，我们希望它们给我们带来什么益处，然后再跑到营养品商店去购买。
Most of us buy vitamins for one of three reasons. Either we believe that they are prophylactic⑦(a. 预防性的), that is they will ward off advancing ills, or they are therapeutic⑧(a. 治疗的) and will deal with the ills we have already, or finally we may believe they are wonder drugs and will lift us into a state of super health, with all its attendant⑨（a. connected with）伴随的，有联系的 delights. We are protected from some of these wild imaginings by the laws which control advertising but even without false promise we still believe that vitamins will “do us good”. Belief is a very potent state of mind and the power of the placebo（10n. 安慰剂） pill is never underestimated in clinical trials used to test new drugs. A placebo is a harmless substance given to one group of patients in the trial and it is similar in taste and appearance to a new drug which is given to a second group of patients. Theoretically the drug should cure or relieve any symptoms and the placebo should have no effect. Often these trials produce surprising results and the placebo group recover as well as the group taking the new drug. This has been explained in the light of modern psychology because many of us react favourably to any kind of interest taken in our problems and derive as much benefit from that as we would from a medical drug. It is a “mind over matter” philosophy and for some of us it works. Vitamin pills can sometimes fall into this category.
我们多数人是基于三个原因之一购买维生素的。我们要么认为维生互具有预防疾病功能，也就是它们会防止疾病的到来，要么以为它们具有治疗功能，会医治我们身上的病，或者最后一点，我们可能会认为它们是特效药，会使我们进入最佳身体状态，并随之带给我们各种快乐。广告法保护我们，使我们免受某些这类不切实际想象的危害。但即使没有虚假的广告承诺，我们依然认为对新药进行临床试验中安慰药的作用从未被低估过。安慰药是一种在试验中给一组病人服用的无害物质，它在味道和外观上与给第二组病人服用的新型药物相似。从理论上讲，新型药物有治疗或减轻各种病症作用，而安慰药应该没有效果。这类试验常常产生令人惊讶的结果：服用安慰药的一组与服用新型药物的一组恢复的一样好。当代心理学对这种情况的解释是，我们多数人一旦对我们患的疾病有了信心，就会产生良好的结果，从而会得到药物相同的好处。这是一种“精神高于物质”的哲学，而且它对我们中的一些人起作用。维生素丸有时能够归入这一类。维生互不是药，但它们有和安慰药相似的功效。适当采用这种自我疗法没有害处，甚至还有助于取得我们想达到的结果　。
Vitamins B and C cannot be retained (11. v. avoid losing 保留) in the body so if we take more than we need of these they are soon excreted （12. v. get rid of waste from the body 排泄）in the urine. The possible exception here is the theory about the increased body “pool” of vitamin C, but even this is limited and is still largely unproven. Taking too much of the fat soluble vitamins can be dangerous and vitamins A and D should never be taken indiscriminately. Vitamin E has not been found to have any toxic（13. a. poisonous 有毒的） effect in large doses but neither do there seem to be any noticeable benefits. This is an unexplored area in vitamin research and the only known advantages of vitamin E are confined to specialised medical cases.
维生素B和C不能在体内储存，因此如果服用量超过身体所需，它们很快在尿液中排出。在此可能出现的例外就是关于维生素C在体内“储量”增加的说法。不过即使这一储量也是有限的，而且在很大程度上还没有得到证实。服用过多的脂溶性维生素可能会有危险，因而维生素A和维生素D绝不能随便服用。大剂量服用维生素E没发现有什么副作用，但似乎也没有任何明显的好处。维生素E是维生素研究中的一个未探查的领域，它仅知的好处局限在特定的医学例上。
Text ２　
Women and tobacco
1. When smoking amongst women was not as widespread as it is now, women were considered to be almost free from cardiovascular( a. 心血管的) diseases and lung cancer. Unhappily, the situation has changed, and smoking kills over half a million women each year in the industrialized world. But it is also an increasingly important cause of ill health amongst women in developing countries.在女性吸烟人数还没有今天这样多时，人们认为女性几乎不会得心血管疾病和肺癌。不幸的是，现在已今非昔比，在世界工业化国家，每年因吸烟而致死的女性已超过５０万。在发展中国家，吸烟也日益成为女性健康不佳的重要原因。
2. A recent WHO consultation on the statistical aspects of tobacco-related mortality(2 n. the number of deaths from a certain cause 死亡数) concluded that the toll (3 n. the cost in health, life, etc., from illness, an accident 重大的代价，损失，（事故的）伤亡人数) that can be attributed to smoking throughout the world is 2.7 million deaths per year. It also predicted that, if current patterns of cigarette smoking continue unchanged, the global death toll from tobacco by the year 2025 may increase to eight million deaths per year. A large proportion of these will be amongst women.最近，世界卫生组织搞了一次与吸烟有关的死亡人数的评估会，统计结果表明，全世界每年因吸烟而致死的人数为２７０万。世界每年因吸烟而致死的人数将增加到８００万，其中很大一部分将为女性。
3. Despite these alarming statistics, the scale of the threat that smoking poses to women's health has received surprisingly little attention. Smoking is still seen by many as a mainly male problem, perhaps because men were the first to take up the habit and therefore the first to suffer the ill-effects. This is no longer the case. Women who smoke like men will die like men. WHO estimates that, in industrialized countries, smoking rates amongst men and women are very similar,, at around 30 per cent; in a large number of developed countries, smoking is now more common among teenage girls than boys.尽管这些数字令人吃惊，但吸烟对女性身体健康所造成的严重危险并未引起人们多大关注，这令人震惊。在许多人看来，吸烟依然主要是男人的问题。这或许是因为首先是男人养成了吸烟的习惯并最先吃到了苦头。但现在的情形决不是这样了。像男人那样吸烟的女人也会像男人那样死去。据世界卫生组织估计，在工业化国家中，男人和女人的吸烟率非常接近，大约为总人口的３０％；在许多发达国家中，未成熟的青少年中吸烟的女性超过了男性。
4. As women took up smoking later than men, the full impact (4 n. the force of an idea, invention, system, etc. 效果，影响，冲击)of smoking on their health has yet to be seen. But it is clear from countries where women have smoked longest, such as the United Kingdom and the United States, that smoking causes the same diseases in women as in men and the gap between their death rates is narrowing. On current trends, some 20 to 25 per cent of women who smoke will die from their habit. One in three of these deaths will be among women under 65 years of age. The US Surgeon General has estimated that, amongst these women, smoking is responsible for around 40 per cent heart disease deaths, 55 per cent of lethal strokes (5 由中风引起的死亡)and, among women of all ages, 80 per cent of lung cancer deaths and 30 percent of all cancer deaths. Over the last 20 years, death rates in women from lung cancer have more than doubled in Japan, Norway Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom; have increased by more than 200 per cent in Australia, Denmark and New Zealand; and have increased by more than 300 per cent in Canada and the United States.由于女性的吸烟史短于男性，对她们身体的影响还没有充分表现出来。但有一些是毋庸置疑的，即吸烟史上最长的那些国家里的女性，比如英国和美国，吸烟能在男女性身上引起同样的疾病，而且所造成的死亡率差别正在缩小。根据当前的趋势看，大约有２０％到２５％的女性吸烟者会因此而丧生，其中三分之一死时年龄不超　过６５岁。所美国卫生局医务主任估计，在这些６５岁以下的女性中，因吸烟导致心脏病而死亡的人约占４０％，因吸烟导致中风而死亡的占５５％；如果包括所有的年龄段，因肺癌而死的占８０％占因各种癌病而死的总人数的３０％。在过去的２０年中，在日本、挪威、波兰、瑞典及英国，女性的肺癌死亡率已翻了一番多；在澳大利亚、丹麦和新西兰翻了两番多；在加拿大和美国则翻了三番多。
5. There are dramatically increasing trends in respiratory (6 a. connected with breathing 呼吸用的，呼吸系统的) cancer among women in developed countries, and the casual relationship of smoking, rather than air pollution and other factors, to lung cancer is very clear. In the United States, for instance, the mortality rate for lung cancer among female non-smokers has not changed during the past 20 years. During the same period, the rate among female smokers has increased by a factor of half. In South-East Asia, more than 85 per cent of oral cancer cases in women are caused by tobacco habits.在发达国家中，女性患呼吸系统癌病的人有大幅度增加的势头。而且人们已经清楚，在吸烟与肺癌―而不是空气污染或其它别的因素－存在着某种关系。比如在美国，在过去的２０年中，不吸烟女性的肺癌死亡率并没有改变，而在吸烟女性中这种病的死亡率却增加了约５０％。在东南亚，有超过８５％的女性喉咽癌患者与吸烟有关。
6. Women's health is also affected by the smoking of others, that is, by passive or involuntary smoking; for example, it has been shown that non-smoking wives of heavy smokers run a higher risk of lung cancer.女性的健康还因其它人吸烟而受到影响，即所谓的被动吸烟。例如，不吸烟的妻子与其烟瘾很大的丈夫一样有较大的患肺癌可能性。
7. What can be done to halt (7 v. to (cause to) stop使停止) and reverse (8. v. change to the opposite 颠倒，反向) the tobacco epidemic amongst women? The challenge is twofold, to reduce the already high level of smoking among women in the industrialized world and to ensure that the low level of smoking in developing countries does not increase. In order to achieve these goals, all countries need to develop comprehensive anti-tobacco programs which take into account and address the needs of women. Whilst these programs should be culture-specific and tailored to meet the local situation, experts agree that to be successful they must contain three key elements; protection, education and support.应该采取什么措施才能阻止并扭转在女性中流行的吸烟风气呢？应该从两方面入手，一是减少世界上发达国家中业已很高升。为做到这两点，所有国家都需要制订一套全面的反吸烟计划，在这些计划中必须考虑到而且突出女性的需要，这些计划应该考虑为了保证这些计划获得成功，计划中必须包含下述三方面主要内容：保护，教育和支持。
8. Young girls and women need to be protected from inducements (9 n. an incentive, something that helps bring about an action or a desired result 引诱物，刺激，诱因) to smoke. Tobacco is multinational, multi-billion dollar industry. It is also an industry under threat; one quarter of its customers, in the long-term, had been killed by using its product and smoking is declining in many industrialized countries. To maintain profits, tobacco companies need to ensure that at least 2.7 million new smokers, usually young people, start smoking every year. Women haven been clearly identified as a key target group for tobacco advertising in both the industrialized and developing worlds. Billions of US dollars each year are spent on promoting this lethal product specifically to women.要保护年轻的女性免受吸烟的诱惑。烟草工业遍布世界各地，而且利润很高，但它又是一个随时都受到威胁的产业。烟民中的四分之一最终要因吸烟而死亡，吸烟习惯在许多工业化国家中正在逐渐被摒弃。为了确保利润不下降，烟草公司必须保证每年发展２７０万新烟民，一般都是年轻人。无论在工业化国家中还是在发展中国家里，烟草公司的广告明确地把女性作为其发展新烟民的主要对象。每年都有几十亿美元被用来促销这种致命的产品，这种促销特别针对着广大的女性。
9.This strategy has been highlighted( 10 v. to emphasize or make prominent使显著) by several tobacco journals which have carried articles on "Targeting the female smoker" and suggesting that retailer should "look to the ladies". Among the 20 US magazines that received the most cigarette advertising revenue(11 n. income, esp. that which the government receives as taxes 收入) in 1985, eight were women’s magazines. In the same year, a study on the cigarette advertising policies of 53 British women's magazines (read by more than half of all British women) showed that 64 per cent of the magazines accepted cigarette advertising, which represented an average of seven per cent of total advertising revenue.这种促销策略充分体现在几本烟草杂志上，登载了诸如“瞄准女烟民”的系列文章，并建议零售商要“关心女士们”。１９８５年在美国２０家接受香烟广告费最多的杂志中有８家是妇女杂志。同年，在５３家英国妇女杂志（阅读对象占全英国妇女一半以上）的香烟广告策略所做的一次研究表明，６４％的杂志都刊登香烟广告，平均占总广告费的７％。
10. Research in industrialized countries has shown the subtle(12 a. delicate, hardly noticeable, and esp. pleasant 精巧的，敏感的) methods used to encourage young girls to smoke. The impact of such methods is likely to be even greater in developing countries, where young people are generally less knowledgeable about smoking hazards(13 n. danger 危险，冒险)　and may be more attracted by glamorous, affluent（14 a. having plenty of money or other possessions 丰富的，富裕的）, desirable images of the female smoker. This is why WHO, together with other national and international health agencies, has repeatedly called or national legislation banning all forms of tobacco promotion, and for an appropriate "high price" policy which would slow down the "enthusiasm" of young women for tobacco consumption.在工业化国家所做的研究表明，为了鼓励年轻女性吸烟，在烟草广告中使用了一些细微巧妙的方法。这些方法在发展中国家所产生的影响可能会更为巨大，因为那里的年轻人一般对吸烟的害处了解较少，因而更容易被吸烟女性那副充满魅力，显得富有和令人羡慕的