(1)不吸烟者的权利问题，正在一个又一个国家里开始议论。至今多数国家很少或还没有采取措施，有三十个左右的国家已经采取法律程序控制吸烟。另一些国家则已制订旨在为不吸烟者净化空气或消减纸烟消费量的多种法律。
在某些发达国家中。纸烟的消费量已渐趋稳定。然而在许多发展中国家里，吸烟却被视为经济发展的一种标志——甚至受到鼓励。随着更多的烟草公司走上国际化的道路，它们在这些国家中寻找新的市场，争取更多的吸烟者。例如美国烟草工业就力图在中东和北非推销香烟——在这些地区，美国烟草出口量在1974年增加了百分之二十七以上。
吸烟对人民健康有害。世界各国政府应该开展认真的反对吸烟运动。限制香烟广告，每包香烟上加印有害健康的警告，以及禁止在诸如影剧院和餐馆等某些公共场所吸烟，这些都是许多国家用以支持不吸烟者和控制吸烟最常用的办法。同时，人们也正把注意力集中在另一项措施上。这项措施将使吸烟者越来越意识到自己的不良习惯并为此感到不安。应该作出巨大努力告诉青年人抽烟的危害性，特别是养成抽烟习惯的可怕后果。而且香烟价格应予提高。
从长远观点看，毫无疑问，如果能完全禁止吸烟，那么每个人的境况将得到很大的改善。但对于采取这种极端措施，人们尚无准备。
(2)Nuclear power’s danger to health, safety, and even life itself can be summed up in one word: radiation.
Nuclear radiation has a certain mystery about it, partly because it cannot be detected by human senses. It can’t be seen or heard, or touched or tasted, even though it may be all around us. There are other things like that. For example, radio waves are all around us but we can’t detect them, sense them, without a radio receiver. Similarly, we can’t sense radioactivity without a radiation detector. But unlike common radio waves, nuclear radiation is not harmless to human beings and other living things.
At very high levels, radiation can kill an animal or human being outright by killing masses of cells in vital organs. But even the lowest levels can do serious damage. There is no level of radiation that is completely safe. If the radiation does not hit anything important, the damage many not be significant. This is the case when only a few cells are hit, and if they are killed outright. Your body will replace the dead cells with healthy ones. But if the few cells are only damaged, and if they reproduce themselves, you may be in a deformed way. They can grow into cancer. Sometimes this does not show up for many years.
This is another reason for some of the mystery about nuclear radiation. Serious damage can be done without the victim being aware at the time that damage has occurred. A person can be irradiated and feel fine, then die of cancer five, ten, or twenty years later as a result. Or a child can be born weak or liable to serious illness as a result of radiation absorbed by its grandparents.
Radiation can hurt us. We must know the truth.
(2)核能对健康、安全甚至对生命本身构成的危险可以用一个词来概括：辐射。
核辐射这种现象多少有点神秘，其部分原因是人类的官能无法觉察到它的存在。尽管我们周围可能都是辐射线，可是我们看不风它，听不到它， 摸不着它，也辨别不出它的味道。还有一些和它相类似的东西。例如，我们四周到处都是无线电波，但如果没有无线电接收器，我们就不能探测到或感觉到它的存在。同样，如果不用辐射探测器，我们也不能感觉到放射现象。但核辐射不同于普通的无线电波，它对人类以及其他生物不是无害的。
能级非常高的辐射线能摧毁重要器官里的大量细胞从而把动物或人立即杀死。即使是最低能级的辐射线也能造成严重的损害。不存在任何绝对安全的辐射能级。如果辐射线没有击中任何重要的东西，造成的损害可能不太大。当辐射线只击中少数细胞并且立即摧毁它们的时候，情况就是这样。你的身体能以健康的细胞代替死亡的细胞。但如果这些少数的细胞只受到损坏，而这些细胞又自行繁殖，那你就会遇到麻烦。它们进行畸形繁殖。它们有可能演变成癌，这种情况有时在许多年之后才能显示出来。
这是核辐射现象带有某些神秘色彩的另一个原因。它可能在损害已经发生而受害者意识不到的情况下造成严重损害。一个人在受到照射时可能感觉良好，结果在五年、十年或二十年后死于癌症。或者小孩一生下来就体弱或易于感染严重的疾病，原因是他的祖父母曾吸收过辐射线。
辐射线能伤害我们。我们应该知道真相。




四.1984年考研英语翻译真题及答案解析
Translate the following sentences into English. (15 points)
1.    充分利用自然资源来为人类造福的愿望总有一天会实现。
1. The wish of fully utilizing the natural resources for the benefit of mankind will eventually come true.
2. 据我所知，到目前为止，这是他们所能想到的最好方案。
2. To my knowledge, this is the best program they can conceive of so far.
3. 随着科学与技术的普及，电子计算机已越来越广泛地在各个领域中得到应用。
3. With the popularization of science and technology, computer has found an increasingly wide application in all fields.
4. 通过深入的调查研究，他们终于取得了大量的第一手资料。
4. Through and intensive investigation they have finally obtained abundant first-hand information.
5. 在我们的工作中失败是常事，但我们绝不能因此而灰心丧气。
5. In our work it's nothing unusual to be confronted with failures but we should in no way be discouraged on that account.
Section VIII English-Chinese Translation
 (1) Electricity is such a part of our everyday lives and so much taken for granted nowadays that we rarely think twice when we switch on the light or turn on the radio. At night, roads are brightly lit, enabling people and traffic to move freely. Neon lighting used in advertising has become part of the character of every modern city. In the home, many labour-saving devices are powered by electricity. (2) Even when we turn off the bedside lamp and are fat asleep, electricity is working for us, driving our refrigerators, heating our water, or keeping our rooms air-conditioned. Every day, trains, trolley-buses, and trams take us to and from work. (3) We rarely bother to consider why or how they run until something goes wrong.
One summer something did go wrong with the power plant that provides New York with electricity. For a great many hours, life came almost to a standstill. Trains refused to move and the people in them sat in the dark, powerless to do anything; (4) lifts stopped working, so that even if you were lucky enough not to be trapped between two floors, you had the unpleasant task of finding your way down hundreds of flights of stairs. Famous streets like Broadway and Fifth Avenue in an instant became as gloomy and uninviting as the most remote back streets. (5) People were afraid to leave their houses, for although the police had been ordered to stand by in case of emergency, they were just as confused and helpless as anybody else.
Meanwhile, similar disorder prevailed in the home. New York can be stifling in the summer and this year was no exception. Cool, air-conditioned apartments became furnaces. Food went bad in refrigerators. Cakes and joints of meat remained uncooked in cooling ovens. (6) People sat impatient and frightened in the dark as if an unseen enemy had landed from Mars. (7) One of the strange things that occurred during the power-cut was that some fifty blind people lead many sighted workers home. (8) When the lights came on again, hardly a person in the city can have turned on a switch without reflecting how great a servant he had at his fingertips.
(1)
1. 电在我们的日常生活中所占的地位是这样的重要，而且现在人们还认为有电是完全理所当然的事，所以我们在开电灯或开收音机时就很少会再去想一想电是怎么来的。
2. 即使在我们关掉了床头灯深深地进入睡乡时，电也在为我们工作，它帮我们开动冰箱，帮我们烧水或使我们房间里的空调机保持运转。
3. 在车辆出毛病之前，我们就不会去费脑筋想一下它们为什么会开动或怎样开动。
4. 电梯停了，因此即使你幸而没有被困在两个楼层的中间，你也得去完成一项不愉快的任务：即摸黑往下走几百级楼梯。
5. 尽管警察都已接到命令，要作好准备以应付紧急情况，但人们还是不敢出门，因为警察也同其它任何人一样感到不知所措和无能为力。
6. 人们焦急不安、惊惶失措地坐在黑暗中，好象有一名来自火星的看不见的敌人已登上了地球。
7. 停电期间所发生的事件中有过这样一件怪事：大约有五十名盲人给许多有视力的职工带路，把他们送回家。
8. 当电灯再亮时，城里的人在揿电灯开关之前，几乎没有一个人不仔细想一想，他随时都能有一个多么能干的个人来为他服务啊。


(2)
A mineral is a material that is mined, not grown. (9) In other words mineral substances which are found on the earth must be extracted by digging, boring holes, artificial explosions, or similar operations which make them available to us. Some minerals, for example coal and oil, were originally living substances; others, like iron, never had life. (10) Coal and oil are the remains of plants and animals. Crude mineral ores and crude oil must be purified before they can be used.
(11) A stage in human civilization is often called by the name of the substance mainly used at that stage: the Stone Age, the Iron Age, and so on. The level of civilization reached by a society depends on the materials it can use, not only on those which are available. (12) The capacity to use a raw material depends on various factors, such as means of access, methods of extraction, and techniques of processing. In order to be purified, or combined into alloys, metals must be melted. For this purpose they must be placed in containers which can be heated to enormous temperatures. These containers or enclosed spaces are called furnaces. (13) Plants which refine crude ores are often located in countries other than those in which the crude ores are mined.
Although much was known previously about the chemical properties of aluminum and their application to practical uses, (14) it was not until sixty years ago that a method of extracting aluminum ore was found which could lead to a cheap large-scale process.
(15) In the past few decades men behaved as if their supplies of minerals were inexhaustible. (16) But now it is realized that supplies of some of them are limited, and it is even possible to give a reasonable estimate of their "expectation of life," the time it will take to exhaust all known sources and reserves of these materials.