英译汉指导：大学英语四级考试翻译练习4

　　Passage Three

　　One hundred and thirteen million Americans have at least one bank-issued credit card. They give their owners automatic credit in stores, restaurants, and hotels, at home, across the country, and even abroad, and they make many banking services available as well. More and more of these credit cards can be read automatically, making it possible to withdraw or deposit money in scattered locations, whether or not the local branch bank is opened. For many of us the cashless society is not on the horizon-its already here.

　　While computers offer these conveniences to consumers, they have many advantages for sellers too. Electronic cash registers can do much more than simply ring up sales. They can keep a wide range of records, including who sold what, when, and to whom. This information allows businessman to keep track of their list of goods by showing which items are being sold and how fast they are moving. Decisions to record or return goods to suppliers can then be made. At the same time these computers record which hours are busiest and which employees are the most efficient, allowing personnel and staffing assignments to be made accordingly. And they also identify preferred customers for promotional campaigns. Computers are relied on by manufacturers for similar reasons. Computer-analyzed marking reports can help to decide which products to emphasize now, which to develop for the future, and which to drop. Computers keep track of goods in stock, of raw materials on hand, and even of the production process itself.

　　Numerous other commercial enterprises, from theaters to magazines publishers, from gas and electric utilities to milk processors, bring better and more efficient services to consumers through the use of computers.

　　Passage Four

　　Ours has becomes a society of employees. A hundred years or so age only one out of every five Americans at work was employed. Today only one out of five is not employed but working for himself. And when fifty years ago being employed meant working as a factory labourer or as a farmhand, the employee of today is increasingly a middle-class person with a substantial formal education, holding a professional or management job requiring intellectual and technical skills. Indeed, two things have characterized American society during these last fifty years: middle-class and upper-class employees have been the fastest-growing groups in our working population-growing so fast that the industrial worker, that oldest child of the Industrial Revolution, has been losing in numerical importance despite the expansion of industrial production.

　　Yet you will find little if anything written on what it is to be an employee. You can find a great deal of very dubious advice on how to get a job or how to get a promotion. You can also find a good deal of work in a chosen field, whether it be the mechanists trade or bookkeeping(会计). Every one of these trades requires different skills, sets different standards, and requires a different preparation. Yet they all have employeeship in common. And increasingly, especially in the large business or in government, employeeship is more important to success than the special professional knowledge or skill. Certainly more people fail because they do not know the requirements of being an employee than because they do not adequately possess the skills of their trade. The higher you climb the ladder, the more you get into administrative of executive work, the greater the emphasis on ability to work within the organization rather than on technical abilities or professional knowledge.

　　参考译文:

　　1. 在世界的一些地区，池塘鱼的养殖为我们提供了必不可少的食物来源。但在这些地方，因为没有考虑到杀虫剂的使用给鱼带来的影响，所以也给我们造成了直接的问题。

　　2. 从古至今诞生了许多伟大的发明，这些发明改变了我们的生活方式。第一个伟大的发明--车轮，在现在仍然是很重要的一个。车轮使得搬运重物和长距离的旅行更容易。这之后的几百年，很少有其他的发明能有如此重大的影响。

　　3. 越来越多的信用卡能被自动读取，无论当地的银行是否开放，我们都能在这些分散的地方存款或取款。

　　4. 你往上爬得越高，就更多地参与行政管理工作，就越需要强调在机构内部的工作能力，而不是技术能力和专业知识