2021年06月四级第2套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) Numbers do not exist in all cultures. There are numberless hunter-gatherers in Amazonia, living along branches of the world's largest river tree. Instead of using words for precise quantities, these people rely exclusively on terms similar to "a few" or "some." In contrast, our own lives are governed by numbers. As you read this, you are likely aware of what time it is, how old you are, your checking account balance, your weight and so on. The exact numbers we think with impact everything in our lives.

数字并非存在于所有文化中。在亚马逊地区，有一些没有数字概念的狩猎采集者，他们生活在世界最大河流树的分支上。这些人不使用精确数量的词语，而是完全依赖类似“几个”或“一些”的术语。相比之下，我们自己的生活被数字所支配。当你读到这篇文章时，你可能知道现在几点、你多大、你的支票账户余额、你的体重等等。我们思考时使用的精确数字影响着我们生活中的方方面面。

B) But, in a historical sense, number-conscious people like us are the unusual ones. For the bulk of our species' approximately 200,000-year lifespan, we had no means of precisely representing quantities. What's more, the 7,000 or so languages that exist today vary dramatically in how they utilize numbers.

但从历史的角度来看，像我们这样对数字敏感的人才是异类。在人类物种大约20万年的存在期间，大部分时间我们没有精确表示数量的方法。更重要的是，现存的约7000种语言在如何使用数字方面存在巨大差异。

C) Speakers of anumeric, or numberless, languages offer a window into how the invention of numbers reshaped the human experience. Cultures without numbers, or with only one or two precise numbers, include the Munduruku and Piraha in Amazonia. Researchers have also studied some adults in Nicaragua who were never taught number words. Without numbers, healthy human adults struggle to precisely distinguish and recall quantities as low as four. In an experiment, a researcher will place nuts into a can one at a time and then remove them one by one. The person watching is asked to signal when all the nuts have been removed. Responses suggest that anumeric people have some trouble keeping track of how many nuts remain in the can, even if there are only four or five in total.

使用无数字语言的人提供了一个窗口，让我们了解数字的发明如何重塑了人类经验。没有数字的文化，或只有一两个精确数字的文化，包括亚马逊地区的蒙杜鲁库人和皮拉罕人。研究人员还研究了一些从未学过数字词的尼加拉瓜成年人。没有数字，健康的成年人也难以精确区分和回忆低至四个的数量。在一个实验中，研究人员会将坚果一次一个地放入罐子，然后一次一个地取出。要求观看者在所有坚果被移除时发出信号。反应表明，无数字概念的人在追踪罐子里剩余坚果数量方面有些困难，即使总数只有四五个。

D) This and many other experiments have led to a simple conclusion: When people do not have number words, they struggle to make quantitative distinctions that probably seem natural to someone like you or me. While only a small portion of the world's languages are anumeric or nearly anumeric, they demonstrate that number words are not a human universal.

这个和许多其他实验得出了一个简单的结论：当人们没有数字词时，他们难以进行数量区分，而这些区分对你或我这样的人来说可能是自然的。虽然世界上只有一小部分语言是无数字或几乎无数字的，但它们表明数字词并非人类普遍现象。

E) It is worth stressing that these anumeric people are cognitively (在认知方面) normal, well-adapted to the surroundings they have dominated for centuries. As a child, I spent some time living with anumeric people, the Piraha who live along the banks of the black Maici River. Like other outsiders, I was continually impressed by their superior understanding of the ecology we shared. Yet numberless people struggle with tasks that require precise discrimination between quantities. Perhaps this should be unsurprising. After all, without counting, how can someone tell whether there are, say, seven or eight coconuts (椰子) in a tree? Such seemingly straightforward distinctions become blurry through numberless eyes.

值得强调的是，这些无数字概念的人在认知方面是正常的，很好地适应了他们几个世纪以来主宰的环境。小时候，我曾与无数字概念的人——住在黑马伊西河岸边的皮拉罕人——一起生活过一段时间。和其他外人一样，我不断被他们对我们共享生态的优越理解所印象深刻。然而，无数字概念的人难以完成需要精确区分数量的任务。也许这并不令人惊讶。毕竟，没有计数，一个人怎么能判断树上有，比如说，七个还是八个椰子？在无数字概念的眼中，这种看似直截了当的区分变得模糊。

F) This conclusion is echoed by work with anumeric children in industrialized societies. Prior to being spoon-fed number words, children can only approximately discriminate quantities beyond three. We must be handed the cognitive tools of numbers before we can consistently and easily recognize higher quantities. In fact, acquiring the exact meaning of number words is a painstaking process that takes children years. Initially, kids learn numbers much like they learn letters. They recognize that numbers are organized sequentially, but have little awareness of what each individual number means. With time, they start to understand that a given number represents a quantity greater by one than the number coming before it. This "successor principle" is part of the foundation of our numerical (数字的) cognition, but requires extensive practice to understand.

这一结论得到了工业化社会中无数字概念儿童研究的呼应。在灌输数字词之前，儿童只能大致区分超过三的数量。我们必须先获得数字的认知工具，才能持续且轻松地识别更高的数量。事实上，获得数字词的精确含义是一个艰巨的过程，需要儿童数年时间。最初，孩子们学习数字的方式与学习字母类似。他们认识到数字是按顺序组织的，但对每个数字的具体含义了解甚少。随着时间的推移，他们开始理解一个给定的数字代表比前一个数字多一的数量。这个“后继原则”是我们数字认知的基础之一，但需要大量的练习才能理解。

G) None of us, then, is really a "numbers person." We are not born to handle quantitative distinctions skillfully. In the absence of the cultural traditions that fill our lives with numbers from infancy, we would all struggle with even basic quantitative distinctions. Number words and their written forms transform our quantitative reasoning as they are introduced into our cognitive experience by our parents, peers and school teachers. The process seems so normal that we sometimes think of it as a natural part of growing up, but it is not. Human brains come equipped with certain quantitative instincts that are refined with age, but these instincts are very limited.

因此，我们中没有人是真正的“数字人”。我们并非天生就能熟练处理数量区分。如果没有从婴儿期就用数字充实我们生活的文化传统，我们都会在基本的数量区分上挣扎。数字词及其书面形式通过我们的父母、同伴和学校老师引入我们的认知经验，从而改变了我们的数量推理。这个过程看起来如此正常，以至于我们有时认为它是成长的自然部分，但事实并非如此。人类大脑天生具有某些数量本能，这些本能随着年龄增长而精炼，但这些本能非常有限。

H) Compared with other mammals, our numerical instincts are not as remarkable as many assume. We even share some basic instinctual quantitative reasoning with distant non-mammalian relatives like birds. Indeed, work with some other species suggests they too can refine their quantitative thought if they are introduced to the cognitive power tools we call numbers.

与其他哺乳动物相比，我们的数字本能并不像许多人认为的那样非凡。我们甚至与鸟类等遥远的非哺乳动物亲属共享一些基本的本能数量推理。确实，对其他物种的研究表明，如果引入我们称之为数字的认知强大工具，它们也能精炼其数量思维。

I) So, how did we ever invent "unnatural" numbers in the first place? The answer is, literally, at your fingertips. The bulk of the world's languages use base-10, base-20 or base-5 number systems. That is, these smaller numbers are the basis of larger numbers. English is a base-10 or decimal (十进制的) language, as evidenced by words like 14 ("four" + "10") and 31 ("three" X "10" + "one"). We speak a decimal language because an ancestral tongue, proto-Indo-European, was decimally based. Proto-Indo-European was decimally oriented because, as in so many cultures, our ancestors' hands served as the gateway to the realization that "five fingers on one hand is the same as five fingers on the other." Such momentary thoughts were represented in words and passed down across generations. This is why the word "five" in many languages is derived from the word for "hand." Most number systems, then, are the by-product of two key factors: the human capacity for language and our inclination for focusing on our hands and fingers. This manual fixation-an indirect by-product of walking upright on two legs-has helped yield numbers in most cultures, but not all.

那么，我们最初是如何发明“不自然”的数字的？答案就是，字面意思，在你指尖。世界上大多数语言使用十进制、二十进制或五进制数字系统。也就是说，这些较小的数字是较大数字的基础。英语是一种十进制语言，如单词14（“四”+“10”）和31（“三”ד10”+“一”）所示。我们说十进制语言是因为一种祖先语言——原始印欧语——是基于十进制的。原始印欧语以十进制为导向，因为在许多文化中，我们祖先的手是意识到“一只手上的五个手指与另一只手上的五个手指相同”的门户。这种瞬间的思考被用语言表达并代代相传。这就是为什么许多语言中“五”一词源自“手”一词。因此，大多数数字系统是两个关键因素的副产品：人类的语言能力和我们专注于手和手指的倾向。这种对手的迷恋——直立行走的间接副产品——帮助在大多数文化中产生了数字，但并非所有文化。

J) Cultures without numbers also offer insight into the cognitive influence of particular numeric traditions. Consider what time it is. Your day is ruled by minutes and seconds, but these concepts are not real in any physical sense and are nonexistent to numberless people. Minutes and seconds are the verbal and written representations of an uncommon base-60 number system used in ancient Mesopotamia. They reside in our minds, numerical artifacts (人工制品) that not all humans inherit conceptually.

没有数字的文化也提供了对特定数字传统认知影响的见解。考虑一下现在的时间。你的一天由分钟和秒支配，但这些概念在物理意义上并不真实，对无数字概念的人来说并不存在。分钟和秒是古代美索不达米亚使用的不常见的六十进制数字系统的口头和书面表示。它们存在于我们的思维中，是并非所有人类在概念上继承的数字人工制品。

K) Research on the language of numbers shows, more and more, that one of our species' key characteristics is tremendous linguistic (语言的) and cognitive diversity. If we are to truly understand how much our cognitive lives differ cross-culturally, we must continually explore the depths of our species' linguistic diversity.

对数字语言的研究越来越多地表明，我们物种的一个关键特征是巨大的语言和认知多样性。如果我们要真正理解我们的认知生活在不同文化中有多大差异，我们必须不断探索我们物种语言多样性的深度。