(3) 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, genius-no advocate was an analysis of Galileo’s role at the start of the scientific revolution. The wisdom of the day was derived from Ptolemy, an astronomer of the second century, whose elaborate system of the sky put Earth at the center of all heavenly motions. (4) 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 long evolution in the improvement of machinery for making eye-glasses.
Federal policy is necessarily involved in the technology vs. genius dispute. (5) Whether the Government’s should increase the financing of pure science at the expense of technology or vice versa (反之) often depends on the issue of which is seen as the driving force.
翻译
Section IV: English-Chinese Translation (15 points)
1.他们（新学派科学家们）说，科学的发展与其说源于天才伟人的真知灼识，不如说源于改进了的技术和工具等等更为普通的东西。
2.新学派的一位领袖人物坚持说：“简而言之，我们所称谓的科学革命，主要是指一系列器具的改进、发明和使用，这些改进、发明和使用使科学发展的范围无所不及。”
3.工具和技术本身作为根本性创新的源泉多年来在很大程度上被科学史学家和科学思想家们忽视了。
4.伽里略的最光辉的业绩在于他在1609年第一个把新发明的望远镜对准天空，以证实行星是围绕太阳旋转，而不是围绕地球。
5.政府究竟是以减少对技术的经费投入来增加对纯理论科学的经费投入，还是相反，这往往取决于把哪一方看作是驱动的力量。

十六.1995年考研英语翻译真题及答案解析
Section IV English-Chinese Translation
Directions:
Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. Your translation must be written neatly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)
The standardized educational or psychological tests that are widely used to aid in selecting, classifying, assigning, or promoting students, employees, and military personnel have been the target of recent attacks in books, magazines, the daily press, and even in Congress. 1) The target is wrong, for in attacking the tests, critics divert attention from the fault that lies with ill-informed or incompetent users. The tests themselves are merely tools, with characteristics that can be measured with reasonable precision under specified conditions. Whether the results will be valuable, meaningless, or even misleading depends partly upon the tool itself but largely upon the user.
All informed predictions of future performance are based upon some knowledge of relevant past performance: school grades, research productivity, sales records, or whatever is appropriate. 2) How well the predictions will be validated by later performance depends upon the amount, reliability, and appropriateness of the information used and on the skill and wisdom with which it is interpreted. Anyone who keeps careful score knows that the information available is always incomplete and that the predictions are always subject to error.
Standardized tests should be considered in this context. They provide a quick, objective method of getting some kinds of information about what a person learned, the skills he has developed, or the kind of person he is. The information so obtained has, qualitatively, the same advantages and shortcomings as other kinds of information. 3) Whether to use tests, other kinds of information, or both in a particular situation depends, therefore, upon the evidence from experience concerning comparative validity and upon such factors as cost and availability.
4) In general, the tests work most effectively when the qualities to be measured can be most precisely defined and least effectively when what is to be measured or predicted cannot be well defined. Properly used, they provide a rapid means of getting comparable information about many people. Sometimes they identify students whose high potential has not been previously recognized, but there are many things they do not do. 5) For example, they do not compensate for gross social inequality, and thus do not tell how able an underprivileged youngster might have been had he grown up under more favorable circumstances.
答案解析
Section IV: English-Chinese Translation (15 points)
1. 把标准化测试作为抨击目标是错误的，因为在抨击这类测试时，批评者不考虑其弊病来自人们对测试不甚了解或使用不当。
2. 这些预测在多大程度上为后来的表现所证实，这取决于所采用信息的数量、可靠性和适宜性，以及解释这些信息的技能和才智。
3. 因此，在某一特定情况下，究竟是采用测试还是其他种类的信息，或是两者同时使用，须凭有关相对效度的经验依据而定，也取决于诸如费用和有无来源等因素。
4. 一般地说，当所要测定的特征能很精确地界定时，测试最为有效；而当所要测定或预测的东西不能明确地界定时，测试的效果则最差。
5. 例如，测试并不弥补明显的社会不公；因此，它们不能说明一个物质条件差的年轻人，如果在较好的环境下成长的话，会有多大才干。

十七.1996考研全国考研英语翻译真题及答案解析
Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. Your translation must be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)
The differences in relative growth of various areas of scientific research have several causes. 1) Some of these causes are completely reasonable results of social needs. Others are reasonable consequences of particular advances in science being to some extent self-accelerating. Some, however, are less reasonable processes of different growth in which preconception of the form scientific theory ought to take, by persons in authority, act to alter the growth pattern of different areas. This is a new problem probably not yet unavoidable; but it is a frightening trend. 2) This trend began during the Second World War, when several governments came to the conclusion that the specific demands that a government wants to make of its scientific establishment cannot generally be foreseen in detail. It can be predicted, however, that from time to time, questions will arise which will require specific scientific answers. It is therefore generally valuable to treat the scientific establishment as a resource or machine to be kept in functional order. 3) This seems mostly effectively done by supporting a certain amount of research not related to immediate goals but of possible consequence in the future.
This kind of support, like all government support, requires decisions about the appropriate recipients of funds. Decisions based on utility as opposed to lack of utility are straightforward. But a decision among projects none of which has immediate utility is more difficult. The goal of the supporting agencies is the praisable one of supporting “good” as opposed to “bad” science, but a valid determination is difficult to make. Generally, the idea of good science tends to become confused with the capacity of the field in question to generate an elegant theory. 4) However, the world is so made that elegant systems are in principle unable to deal with some of the world’s more fascinating and delightful aspects. 5) New forms of thought as well as new subjects for thought must arise in the future as they have in the past, giving rise to new standards of elegance.
答案解析
Section IV: English-Chinese Translation (15 points)
1. 在这些原因中，有些完全是自然而然地来自社会需求;另一些则是由于科学在一定程度上自我加速而产生某些特定发展的必然结果。
2. 这种趋势始于第二次世界大战期间，当时一些国家的政府得出结论：政府要向科研机构提出的具体要求通常是无法详尽预见的。
3. 给某些与当前目标无关但将来可能产生影响的科研以支持，看来通常能有效地解决这个问题。
4. 然而，世界就是如此，完美的体系一般而言是无法解决世上某些更加引人入胜的课题的。
5. 同过去一样，将来必然会出现新的思维方式和新的思维对象，给完美以新的标准。

十八.1997年全国考研英语翻译真题及答案解析
Read the following passage carefully and then translate the underlined sentences into Chinese. Your translation must be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)
Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground-clearing way to start. 1) Actually, it isn’t, because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have.
On one view of rights, to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have none. 2) Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements. Therefore, animals cannot have rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd, for exactly the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people -- for instance, to infants, the mentally incapable and future generations. In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it: how do you reply to somebody who says “I don’t like this contract”?
The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless. 3) It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all?