2013翻译资格考试：口译笔译模拟试题(2)

　　 We already live in an over communicated world that will only become more so in the next tech- era. We've developed technology that gets us so much information that we've got cell phones that we need every second, we've got computers and laptops, we've got personal organizers and we are just being bombarded with communication and every advancing technology seems to create more and more communications at us. We are thought of overwhelmed by the information flow. Research suggests that all the multitasking may actually make our brains work better and faster, producing a worldwide increase in IQ up to 20 points and more in recent decades. Is there any real benefit in all these mental gymnastics we now have to go through? We are not becoming a race of global idiots but many do think certain skills are enhanced and certain are not.

　　You know the ability to make fast decisions to answer a dozen emails in five minutes or to fill out maybe big aptitude tests that's enhanced. Between someone is out there with his kids playing in his little league and or something like that, he's got his cell phone in his pocket. He's always wondering "Jeez! Did I got a voice mail?" This might have negative effects on own brain patterns. Creativity is something that happens slowly. It happens when your brain is just whirling around, just playing. When it puts together ideas which you haven't thought of . Or may be you have time to read a book. You are a business person that you have time to read a book about history or about philosophy and something that happened long ago.

　　Or something or some idea or some default of long ago. Actually it might occurred to you that you might think of your own business in that way so this mixture of unrelated ideas that feeds your productivity, feeds your creativity and if your mind is disciplined to answer every email then you don't have time for that playful whirling, you don't have time for those unexpected conjunctions. So I thinking maybe we are getting smarter in some senses but over communication is a threat to our creativity and to our reflection.

　　M: You know, in deciding this new town, we’ve tried to look backward at small town America, and take the best of those planning elements, houses close together, sidewalks, front porches, tree-line streets, easy none automobile-dependent access to the town center and to your neighbors and to the school and the other institutions that are vital. And we’ve tried to take some of those ideas and update them in come up with a livable and workable place where people can go and rekindle the sense of community that seems to be missing from suburbs all across the country.

　　F: So give us a sense of how this new town is designed.

　　M: Houses are all very close together. We will just 10-feet apart from our neighbors on each side of us. And that’s pretty nice a standard for the town. So you have houses that are close together, houses that surround open areas. They have a lot of big parks, a lot of common areas. The theory is you are willing to sacrifice your private yard space. You don’t need a quarter of an acre or half an acre , if you have a public area where you can go and enjoy the facilities there. And most importantly, you can interact with your neighbors. They’ll help to create the sense of community, that so important to many of these new town developments.

　　F: Now I see all these whole sense of community. It’s going to be a new town. But we are going to do it with the sense of nostalgia for the past, like a lot of the houses had porches.

　　M: Yes. It would create a front porch culture. That people would be out on their porches talking to their neighbors next door and to people walking down the street or people riding their bikes and there would be this culture that existed 40, 50 or 60 years ago. But that really has been one of the failures that we observe joining up to two years in this new town. And the people don’t spend very much time at all on their front porches. There are a couple of things going on. One is in central Florida and it’s hotter than hell a good part of the year. And sitting in the front porch if you have a fan going can be a very uncomfortable thing. People prefer to be inside in the air conditioning.

　　F: What were some of the rules you have to live by in the new project and do any of those rules bother you?

　　M: Well, the develop of an area have different feelings about rules. His feeling is, now if I can summarize his feelings for him, that if you move, you are knowing the rules. And if you don’t like them, you shouldn’t move in. I have some problems with rules. I just sometimes like to break them. And they just bother me because they are an existence. But the rules sometimes were silly and sometimes weren’t. They dictated what color your curtains could be facing the street and actually answer woman with red curtains to remove them.

　　F: Really? Is that true?

　　M: And they dictated where you could park your car and for how long. They dictated any sort of thing you could attach to your house. You couldn’t attach a satellite dish to your house. They dictated forever the color of your house. And they dictated how often you have to repaid your house. They’ve tried to go a step further and remove plastic flowers and plastic furniture from that all important front porches. Some rules seem to go a little too far.

　　Q1、 What are the two speakers talking about?

　　Q2、There are several planning elements for recreating a sense of community, which of the following is not one of these elements?

　　Q 3、 According to the conversation, what can we learn about the so-called front porch culture?

　　Q 4、Which of the following is not one of the rules the residents have to live by?

　　Q 5、 What does the men think of these rules, according to the conversation?

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