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       考研英语一翻译题，是英语一试卷题型中容易得分的题。2020考研学子，在暑期备考英语一翻译题时，应以历年考研英语一真题来训练。下面，北京文都考研网为帮助英语一考生快速提升翻译能力，特意整理出2012年考研英语(一)翻译真题及解析，供考生参考。

2012年考研英语(一)翻译真题及解析

Since the days of Aristotle, a search for universal principles has characterized the scientific enterprise. In some ways, this quest for commonalities defines science. Newton’s laws of motion and Darwinian evolution each bind a host of different phenomena into a single explicatory frame work.

(46) In physics, one approach takes this impulse for unification to its extreme, and seeks a theory of everything-a single generative equation for all we see. It is becoming less clear, however, that such a theory would be a simplification, given the dimensions and universes that it might entail, nonetheless, unification of sorts remains a major goal.

This tendency in the natural sciences has long been evident in the social sciences too. (47) Here, Darwinism seems to offer justification, for it all humans share common origins it seems reasonable to suppose that cultural diversity could also be traced to more constrained beginnings. Just as the bewildering variety of human courtship rituals might all be considered forms of sexual selection, perhaps the world’s languages, music, social and religious customs and even history are governed by universal features. (48) To filter out what is unique from what is shared might enable us to understand how complex cultural behavior arose and what guides it in evolutionary or cognitive terms.

That, at least, is the hope. But a comparative study of linguistic traits published online today supplies a reality check. Russell Gray at the University of Auckland and his colleagues consider the evolution of grammars in the light of two previous attempts to find universality in language.

The most famous of these efforts was initiated by Noam Chomsky, who suggested that humans are born with an innate language-acquisition capacity that dictates a universal grammar. A few generative rules are then sufficient to unfold the entire fundamental structure of a language, which is why children can learn it so quickly.

(49) The second, by Joshua Greenberg, takes a more empirical approach to universality identifying traits (particularly in word order) shared by many languages which are considered to represent biases that result from cognitive constraints.

Gray and his colleagues have put them to the test by examining four family trees that between them represent more than 2,000 languages. (50) Chomsky’s grammar should show patterns of language change that are independent of the family tree or the pathway tracked through it. Whereas Greenbergian universality predicts strong co-dependencies between particular types of word-order relations. Neither of these patterns is borne out by the analysis, suggesting that the structures of the languages are lineage-specific and not governed by universals.

参考译文：

(46)在物理学领域,—种做法把这种寻求大同理论的冲动推向极端,试图寻找一个包含一切的理论———个涵盖我们所看到的一切的生成性公式。

(47) 对此，达尔文学说似乎提供了理由,因为如果所有的人类均有共同的起源,那么认为文化的多样性也可以追溯到更为有限的起源的假设，似乎就是合理的。

(48) 丛共性中筛除个性,这可能会让我们了解复杂的文化行为是如何产生的，以及从进化或认知的角度理解是什么引导它的走向。

(49) 第二次努力由乔舒亚·格林伯格作出——采用更为经验主义的方法来研究普遍性，确定了多种语言所共有的特性(特别是语序方面的特性),而这些特性则被认为代表了因人类的认知局限而产生的倾向。

(50) 乔姆斯基的语法应该显示出语言变化的模式,这些模式不受语言谱系或贯穿谱系路径的影响;而格林伯格式的普遍性理论却预言特定种类的语序关系之间具有很强的相关性。

       以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2012年考研英语(一)翻译真题及解析”，希望对复习考研英语一科目的考生，在解题方法上有所指导!祝2020考研者在没有硝烟的战场中，都能凯旋归来!

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