年9月中口試題點評
One point three billion metric tons -- that's how much food that we waste each year. Not an easy number to wrap one's head around. Try to imagine 143,000 Eiffel Towers stacked one on top of the other-together they'd weigh around 1.3 billion tons. The sheer scale of the number makes it practically impossible to grasp, no matter how you come at it.
Rendering the figure all the more unfathomable is the fact that alongside this massive wastage of food, 840 million people experience chronic hunger on a daily basis. Many millions more suffer from "silent hunger" - malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies.
For the more economically minded, here's another number: the economic cost of food wastage runs around $750 billion per annum. This is expressed in producer prices; if we were to consider retail prices and the wider impacts on the environment including climate change, the figure would be far higher.
When food is lost or wasted, the energy, land and water resources that went into producing it are also squandered -while at the same time large amounts of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere during production, processing, and cooking.
We simply cannot tolerate the wastage of 1.3 billion tons of food per year--one-third of the world's annual food production. There's a lot that can be done. To begin with, food losses and waste need to be seen as a cross-cutting policy issue, rather than a lifestyle choice to be left in the hands of individual consumers and their consciences. The world needs to wake up to the need for policies on food waste and losses that look at all stages of the food chain, from production to consumption.
Losses of food--on farms, during processing, transport and at markets--represent a thorn in the side of food security in most developing countries, where post-harvest losses can reach as high as 40 percent of production in some cases. Especially in these places, investment in infrastructure for transportation, storage, cooling and marketing of food is badly needed. Training farmers in best practices also has an important role to play.
In developed countries, food retailing practices require a rethink. For example, rejection of food products on the basis of aesthetic concerns is a major cause of food waste. Some supermarkets have already begun relaxing standards on fruit appearance, selling "misshaped" items at reduced prices and helping raise awareness that "ugly does not mean bad." More approaches like this, that find markets or uses for surplus food, are needed.
Both businesses and households should monitor to see where and how they waste food and take corrective steps, because prevention of waste is even more important than recycling or composting. Unlike the mindboggling figure of 1.3 billion tons, these simple steps are easy enough to grasp-and within reach of each of us. The world has enough on its plate-food wastage is something we can all do something about now.
這是一篇社會熱點類的文章，主題明確、結構清晰，可分爲兩部分來看。第一部分爲文章前四段，作者通過列舉數據、打比方等方式講述浪費食物的現象。在第二部分，也就是文章後四段，作者提出了建議，並分別指出developing countries，developed countries和both businesses and households該怎麼做。
翻譯點評
英譯漢
英文多長難句，中文多短句，英譯漢時要根據中文的表達習慣對長句進行斷句。例如，段落首句非常長，我們可以以逗號爲界，拆分爲兩個句子。我們把whereby後面的內容單獨列出來，作爲對前文的描述，翻譯時就可以表達成“起初機器人是以虛幻的文學形象出現的，它是20世紀早期作家和電影人表達對科技憧憬和畏懼的一種方式。”而後半句中，也可以對“reckless jazz-age speed”做細化處理，把“jazz-age”直譯爲“爵士樂時代”，“reckless speed”譯爲“肆無忌憚、不計後果”，這樣的譯法就比冗長的定語修飾要地道自然得多。
漢譯英
根據英文的表達習慣，漢譯英時可以把漢語中有共同描述對象的多個句子，處理爲一個長句。例如“56個民族”和“我國各族人民”就屬於同一對象，在翻譯時可以用who來指代，從而把兩個句子串起來。另外，中文習慣把同義詞疊加，來表示強調的意思，在翻譯時可以減譯。例如，“始終一脈相承，延續着……”就可以減譯爲“inheriting…”。
