2011年考研英语一新题型 Part B 原文翻译及答案

A) No disciplines have seized on professionalism with as much enthusiasm as the humanities. You can, Mr. Menand points out, become a lawyer in three years and a medical doctor in four. But the regular time it takes to get a doctoral degree in the humanities is nine years. Not surprisingly, up to half of all doctoral students in English drop out before getting their degrees.

没有哪门学科像人文学科那样热情地拥抱专业化。正如梅南先生指出的，你可以在三年内成为一名律师，四年内成为一名医生。但在人文学科获得博士学位通常需要九年时间。毫不奇怪，高达一半的英语博士生在获得学位前就辍学了。

B) His concern is mainly with the humanities: literature, languages, philosophy and so on. These are disciplines that are going out of style: 22% of American college graduates now major in business compared with only 2% in history and 4% in English. However, many leading American universities want their undergraduates to have a grounding in the basic canon of ideas that every educated person should possess. But most find it difficult to agree on what a “general education” should look like. At Harvard, Mr. Menand notes, “the great books are read because they have been read” - they form a sort of social glue.

他主要关注人文学科：文学、语言、哲学等。这些学科正在过时：目前22%的美国大学毕业生主修商业，相比之下只有2%主修历史，4%主修英语。然而，许多顶尖的美国大学希望他们的本科生掌握每个受教育者都应具备的基本思想经典。但大多数大学难以就“通识教育”应该是什么样子达成一致。梅南先生指出，在哈佛，“伟大书籍之所以被阅读是因为它们已经被阅读”——它们形成了一种社会黏合剂。

C) Equally unsurprisingly, only about half end up with professorships for which they entered graduate school. There are simply too few posts. This is partly because universities continue to produce ever more PhDs. But fewer students want to study humanities subjects: English departments awarded more bachelor’s degrees in 1970-71 than they did 20 years later. Fewer students require fewer teachers. So, at the end of a decade of thesis-writing, many humanities students leave the profession to do something for which they have not been trained.

同样不足为奇的是，只有大约一半的人最终获得了他们进入研究生院所追求的教授职位。职位实在太少了。部分原因是大学继续生产越来越多的博士。但更少的学生想学习人文学科：英语系在1970-71年授予的学士学位比20年后还多。学生减少意味着需要更少的老师。因此，在十年的论文写作结束后，许多人文学生离开这个行业，去做他们未经培训的工作。

D) One reason why it is hard to design and teach such courses is that they cut across the insistence by top American universities that liberal-arts education and professional education should be kept separate, taught in different schools. Many students experience both varieties. Although more than half of Harvard undergraduates end up in law, medicine or business, future doctors and lawyers must study a non-specialist liberal-arts degree before embarking on a professional qualification.

设计和教授这类课程困难的一个原因是，它们与顶尖美国大学坚持文科教育和专业教育应分开、在不同学院教授的做法相悖。许多学生经历了这两种类型。尽管超过一半的哈佛本科生最终进入法律、医学或商业领域，但未来的医生和律师在获得专业资格之前必须学习一个非专业的文科学位。

E) Besides professionalising the professions by this separation, top American universities have professionalised the professor. The growth in public money for academic research has speeded the process: federal research grants rose fourfold between 1960 and 1990, but faculty teaching hours fell by half as research took its toll. Professionalism has turned the acquisition of a doctoral degree into a prerequisite for a successful academic career: as late as 1969 a third of American professors did not possess one. But the key idea behind professionalisation, argues Mr. Menand, is that “the knowledge and skills needed for a particular specialisation are transmissible but not transferable.” So disciplines acquire a monopoly not just over the production of knowledge, but also over the production of the producers of knowledge.

除了通过这种分离使职业专业化外，顶尖美国大学还使教授专业化了。用于学术研究的公共资金增长加速了这一过程：联邦研究拨款在1960年至1990年间增长了四倍，但由于研究的影响，教师教学时间减少了一半。专业化已将获得博士学位转变为成功学术生涯的先决条件：直到1969年，三分之一的美国教授还没有博士学位。但梅南先生认为，专业化背后的关键理念是“特定专业化所需的知识和技能是可传递的，但不可转移的。”因此，学科不仅垄断了知识的生产，还垄断了知识生产者的生产。

F) The key to reforming higher education, concludes Mr. Menand, is to alter the way in which “the producers of knowledge are produced”. Otherwise, academics will continue to think dangerously alike, increasingly detached from the societies which they study, investigate and criticise. “Academic inquiry, at least in some fields, may need to become less exclusionary and more holistic.” Yet quite how that happens, Mr. Menand does not say.

梅南先生总结道，改革高等教育的关键在于改变“知识生产者被生产”的方式。否则，学者们将继续以危险的方式思考相似，越来越脱离他们研究、调查和批评的社会。“学术探究，至少在某些领域，可能需要变得不那么排他，更加整体化。”然而，梅南先生并没有说明这究竟如何实现。

G) The subtle and intelligent little book The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University should be read by every student thinking of applying to take a doctoral degree. They may then decide to go elsewhere. For something curious has been happening in American universities, and Louis Menand, a professor of English at Harvard University, captured it skilfully.

这本微妙而睿智的小书《思想的市场：美国大学的改革与抵抗》应该被每个考虑申请博士学位的学生阅读。他们可能因此决定去别处。因为美国大学正在发生一些奇特的事情，而哈佛大学英语教授路易斯·梅南巧妙地捕捉到了这一点。