英译汉指导：大学英语四级考试翻译练习5

　　Passage Three

　　Taste is such a subjective matter that we don t usually conduct preference tests for food. The most you can say about anyone s preference tests for food. The most you can say about anyones preference, is that its one persons opinion. But because the two big cola companies-Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola are marketed so aggressively, we have wondered how big a role taste preference actually plays in brand loyalty. We set up a taste test that challenged people who identified themselves as either Coca-Cola classic or Pepsi fans: find your brand in a blind tasting.

　　We invited staff volunteers who had a strong liking for either Coca-Cola classic or Pepsi, Diet Coke, or Diet Pepsi. These were people who thought they d have no trouble telling their brand from the other brand.

　　We eventually located 19 regular cola drinkers and 27 diet cola drinkers. Then we fed them four unidentified samples of co1a one at a time, regular colas for the one group, diet versions for the other. We asked them to tell us whether each sample was Coke or Pepsi, then we analyzed the records statistically to compare the participants choices with what mere guess-work could have accomplished.

　　Getting all four samples right was a tough test, but not too tough, we thought, for people who believed they could recognize their brand. In the end, only 7 out of 19 regular cola drinkers correctly identified their brand of choice in all four trials. The diet-cola drinkers did a little worse-only 7 of 27 identified all four sample correctly.

　　While both groups did better than chance would predict, nearly half the participants in each group made the wrong choice two or more times. Two people got all four samples wrong. Overall, half the participants did about as well on the last round of tasting as on the first, so fatigue, or taste burnout, was not a factor. Our preference test results suggest that only a few Pepsi participants and Coke fans may really be able to tell their favorite brand by taste and price.

　　Passage Four

　　Lincoln was a strong executive who saved the government, saved the United States. He was a President who understood people and when time came to make decisions he was willing to take the responsibility and make those decisions no matter how difficult they were. He knew how to treat people and how to make a decision stick and thats why he is regarded as such a great administrative.

　　Carl Sandburg and a lot of others have tried to make something out of Lincoln that he wasnt. He was a decent man, a good politician, and a great President, and theyve tried to build up things that he never even thought about. Ill bet a dollar and a half that if you read Sandburgs mouth and mind that never even occurred to him. He was a good man who was in the place where he ought to have been at the time important events were taking place, but when they write about him as though belongs in the pantheon(众神庙)of the gods, thats not the man he really was. He was the best kind of ordinary man and when I say that he was an ordinary man, I mean that as highpraise, not deprecation. Thats the highest praise you can give a man. Hes one of the people and becomes distinguished in the service that he gives other people. He was one of the people, and he wanted to stay that way. And he was that way until the day he died. One of the reasons he was assassinated was because he didnt feel important enough to have proper guards around him at Fords Theatre.

　　参考译文:

　　1. 人们利用准确的天气警报和专业预报，服务于航海、飞行、农业、工业，以及人类许多其他利益和活动领域。在挽救人类生命及财产和获得各种各样的经济利益方面，人类也获取了巨大的收益。

　　2. 媒体对所谓的信息高速公路予以极大的关注。信息高速公路运用电脑和电信技术彻底改变美国人的做事方法，将来人们在家里便可以通过它来获取信息，得到娱乐。

　　3. 但由于两大可乐饮料公司--可口可乐和百事可乐在市场销售方面竞争如此激烈，我们想知道口味偏爱对于品牌的专一究竟起多大作用。

　　4. 他是一位理解民众的总统，该做决定时，不管困难有多大，他愿意承担一切责任并作出决定。