翻译硕士考研者，在暑期阶段需要看双语阅读文章，来提升阅读水平和翻译能力。下面，北京文都考研网为助力翻译硕士学子们在备考上一臂之力，整理了MTI双语阅读精选:昆虫数量减少,生态危机如何?供考生参考。
2020考研MTI双语阅读精选:昆虫数量减少,生态危机如何?
“BE AFRAID. BE very afraid,” says a character in “The Fly”, a horror film about a man who turns into an enormous insect. It captures the unease and disgust people often feel for the kingdom of cockroaches, Zika-carrying mosquitoes and creepy-crawlies of all kinds. However, ecologists increasingly see the insect world as something to be frightened for, not frightened of. In the past two years scores of scientific studies have suggested that trillions of murmuring, droning, susurrating honeybees, butterflies, caddisflies, damselflies and beetles are dying off. “If all mankind were to disappear”, wrote E.O. Wilson, the doyen of entomologists, “the world would regenerate…If insects were to vanish the environment would collapse into chaos.”
“害怕。非常害怕，”电影 《飞蝇》中的一个人物说道。这是一部关于一个男子变成大昆虫的恐怖电影。它描给的是人们不安和厌恶于蟑螂、携带寨卡病毒的蚊子和各种令人毛骨悚然的爬行动物世界。然而，生态学家越来越多地将昆虫世界看作是受到惊吓的物体，而不是吓人了物体。在过去的两年里，数十项科学研究表明，数以万亿的嗡嗡作响的蜜蜂、蝴蝶、石蛾、蜻蛉和甲壳虫正在灭绝。“如果人类彻底消失了,”昆虫学家E·O·威尔逊写道，“世界将再生......如果昆虫消亡，环境将陷入混乱。”
We report on these studies in this week’s Science section. Most describe declines of 50% and more over decades in different measures of insect health. The immediate reaction is consternation. Because insects enable plants to reproduce, through pollination, and are food for other animals, a collapse in their numbers would be catastrophic. “The insect apocalypse is here,” trumpeted the New York Times last year.
本周的科学栏目会报道了这些研究。大多数报告称，从各种衡量昆虫健康性的指标来看，几十年来，至少有50%的昆虫在减少。对此的第一反应是惊愕。由于昆虫让植物通过授粉繁殖，同时也是其它动物的食物，因此，它们数量的减少将是灾难性的。“昆虫大灾难就在这里，”去年《纽约时报》大声宣扬道。
But a second look leads to a different assessment. Rather than causing a panic, the studies should act as a timely warning and a reason to take precautions.
不过，细想之后，就会有不同的评估结果。上述研究应该视作及时警告和采取预防措施的理由，而不是引起恐慌。
That is because the worst fears are unproven. Only a handful of databases record the abundance of insects over a long time—and not enough to judge long-term population trends accurately. There are no studies at all of wild insect numbers in most of the world, including China, India, the Middle East, Australia and most of South America, South-East Asia and Africa. Reliable data are too scarce to declare a global emergency.
原因是最令人的恐惧的事还未经证实。只有少数数据库能够长期记录昆虫数量多少 —— 但还不足以准确地判断长期的种群数量趋势。世界上大多数地区没有研究所有野生昆虫的数量，包括中国、印度、中东、澳大利亚和大部分南美洲、东南亚和非洲。几乎没有可靠的数据能促成宣布全球处于紧急状况。
Moreover, where the evidence does show a collapse—in Europe and America—agricultural and rural ecosystems are holding up. Although insect-eating birds are disappearing from European farmlands, plants still grow, attract pollinators and reproduce. Farm yields remain high. As some insect species die out, others seem to be moving into the niches they have left, keeping ecosystems going, albeit with less biodiversity than before. It is hard to argue that insect decline is yet wreaking significant economic damage.
此外，有证据显示欧洲和美国的情况的崩溃 - 农业和农村生态系统正在持续。虽然吃昆虫的鸟类正从欧洲农田消失，但植物仍在生长，吸引传粉媒介并繁殖。农田产量仍然很高。随着一些昆虫物种消亡，其它的昆虫物种似乎正在进入留出的空间，保持生态系统的发展，尽管生物多样性会比以前少。很难说昆虫数量的减少正在造成重大的经济损失。
But there are complications. Agricultural productivity is not the only measure of environmental health. Animals have value, independent of any direct economic contribution they may make. People rely on healthy ecosystems for everything from nutrient cycling to the local weather, and the more species make up an ecosystem the more stable it is likely to be. The extinction of a few insect species among so many might not make a big difference. The loss of hundreds of thousands would.
但是，问题随之而来。农业生产力不是衡量环境好坏的唯一标准。动物具有价值，不受任何直接对经济贡献的影响。人们依赖健康的生态系统——从养分循环到当地天气，物种越多，生态系统就越稳定。其中有一些昆虫物种的灭绝可能不会产生很大的影响，但数以千万计的损失还是有的。
And the scale of the observed decline raises doubts about how long ecosystems can remain resilient. An experiment in which researchers gradually plucked out insect pollinators from fields found that plant diversity held up well until about 90% of insects had been removed. Then it collapsed. In Krefeld, in western Germany, the mass of aerial insects declined by more than 75% between 1989 and 2016. As one character in a novel by Ernest Hemingway says, bankruptcy came in two ways: “gradually, then suddenly”. Given the paucity of data, it is impossible to know how close Europe and America are to an ecosystem collapse. But it would be reckless to find out by actually triggering one.
监测到的减少规模使人们怀疑生态系统的弹性能够保持多久。在一项实验中，研究人员渐进地将农田里的昆虫传粉者捉走，植物多样性直到大约90%的昆虫移除后就崩溃了。在德国西部的克雷菲尔德，人1989年到2016年，空中昆虫的数量减少了75%以上。正如欧内斯特·海明威在小说中的一个角色所说，破产有两种方式：“逐渐地，然后突然地”。在数据不足的情况下，不可能知道欧洲和美有多接近生态系统崩溃。不过，用真正地引发一次生态危机的方式来发现它，这就很鲁莽了。
Insects can be protected in two broad ways, dubbed sharing and sparing. Sharing means nudging farmers and consumers to adopt more organic habits, which do less damage to wildlife. That might have local benefits, but organic yields are often lower than intensive ones. With the world’s population rising, more land would go under the plough, reducing insect diversity further. So sparing is needed, too. This means going hell for leather with every high-yield technique you can think of, including insecticide-reducing genetically modified organisms, and then setting some land aside for wildlife.
大致有两种方式能用来保护昆虫，即所谓的“共享”和“保留”方式。分享方式是指推动农民和消费者形成使用有机物的习惯，这对野生动物造成更小的伤害。这可能对当地人有益，但有机物的产量往往低于集中性产量。随着世界人口的增加，会有更多的土地变成耕地，进一步减少昆虫的多样性。因此，保留方式也是需要的，即你可以想到的每一种高产技术，包括降低杀虫剂的转基因生物，然后为野生动物留下一些土地。
Insects are indicators of ecosystem health. Their decline is a warning to pay attention to it—before it really is too late.
昆虫是生态系统好坏的指标。他们的减少是一个警告，需要注意它 ——是在它真的为时已晚之前。
以上是北京文都考研网给出的“2020考研MTI双语阅读精选:昆虫数量减少,生态危机如何?”，希望对翻译硕士考生有所帮助!祝2020考研金榜题名!
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