2018上半年翻译考试catti三级笔译试题：野火

　　英译汉

　　As I mentioned last week, I‟ve recently returned from Australia. While I was there, I visited a eucalyptus forest that, in February, was the scene of an appalling wildfire. Perhaps naively, I had expected to find that many trees had been killed. They hadn‟t. They had blackened bark, but were otherwise looking rather well, many of them wreathed in new young leaves. This prompted me to consider fire and the role it plays as a force of nature.

　　Fossil charcoals tell us that wildfires have been part of life on Earth for as long as there have been plants on land. That‟s more than 400 million years of fire. Fire was here long before arriviste plants like grasses; it pre-dated the first flowers. And without wanting to get mystical about it, fire is, in many respects, a kind of animal, albeit an ethereal one. Like any animal, it consumes oxygen. Like a sheep or a slug, it eats plants. But unlike a normal animal, it‟s a shape-shifter. Sometimes, it merely nibbles a few leaves; sometimes it kills grown trees. Sometimes it is more deadly and destructive than a swarm of locusts.

　　The shape-shifting nature of fire makes it hard to study, for it is not a single entity. Some fires are infernally hot; others, relatively cool. Some stay at ground level; others climb trees. Moreover, fire is much more likely to appear in some parts of the world than in others. Satellite images of the Earth show that wildfires are rare in, say, northern

　　Europe, and common in parts of central Africa and Australia. (These days many wildfires are started by humans, either on purpose or by accident. But long before our ancestors began to throw torches or cigarette butts, fires were started by lightning strikes, or by sparks given off when rocks rub together in an avalanche.)

　　Once a fire gets started, many factors contribute to how it will behave. The weather obviously has a huge effect: winds can fan flames, rains can quench them. The lie of the land matters, too: fire runs uphill more readily than it goes down. But another crucial factor is what type of plants the fire has to eat.

　　It‟s common knowledge that plants regularly exposed to fire tend to have features that help them cope with it — such as thick bark, or seeds that only grow after being exposed to intense heat or smoke. But what is less often remarked on is that the plants themselves affect the nature and severity of fire.

　　The shape-shifting nature of fire makes it hard to study, for it is not a single entity. Some fires are infernally hot; others, relatively cool. Some stay at ground level; others climb trees. Moreover, fire is much more likely to appear in some parts of the world than in others. Satellite images of the Earth show that wildfires are rare in, say, northern

　　Europe, and common in parts of central Africa and Australia. (These days many wildfires are started by humans, either on purpose or by accident. But long before our ancestors began to throw torches or cigarette butts,fires were started by lightning strikes, or by sparks given off when rocks rub together in an avalanche.)

　　Once a fire gets started, many factors contribute to how it will behave. The weather obviously has a huge effect: winds can fan flames, rains can quench them. The lie of the land matters, too: fire runs uphill more readily than it goes down. But another crucial factor is what type of plants the fire has to eat.

　　It‟s common knowledge that plants regularly exposed to fire tend to have features that help them cope with it — such as thick bark, or seeds that only grow after being exposed to intense heat or smoke.

　　参考译文：

　　上周我曾谈到，我前不久去过澳大利亚，访澳期间我参观了一个桉树林。就在二月份，这片桉树林曾发生过森林大火，场面可怖。此次访问期间，我还天真地以为会看到许多被大火烧毁的桉树，事实超乎我的预料，这些桉树除了树皮被烤黑之外，其他一切安好，有些桉树还长出了嫩叶。我不由开始对野火以及野火作为自然力的作用进行研究探索。木炭形成的历史表明，自从地球上有植物以来，野火就一直是地球生命的组成部分，也就是说野火存在的历史超过 4 亿年。早在杂草等恣意生长的植物出现之前野火就已经存在了;野火的历史早于开花植物的历史。野火虽然虚无缥缈，但从很多方面来讲，野火就是一种动物，这并非故弄玄虚。野火像任何动物一样需要氧气，会像羊或鼻涕虫一样以植物为食，不过，野火与一般的动物不同之处在于，野火形体变化莫测，有时野火只蚕食几片叶子，有时则会吞噬成年树木，甚至变得比蝗灾更具致命性和破坏性。

　　野火形体不定，也并非单一实体存在，研究起来颇有难度。野火可以炙热无比也可以相对清凉，可以贴地匍匐也可以沿树攀爬，而且，野火在不同地区的发生频率也各不相同。地球观测卫星获取的图像显示，北欧地区野火较为罕见，中非和澳大利亚野火则司空见惯。如今，许多野火皆因人为因素而起，有些是有意为之，有些则是意外之举。人类曾扔掷火把“刀耕火种”或乱丢烟头引发野火，不过早在人为制造野火之前，野火要么由闪电引发，要么由雪崩时岩石摩擦产生的火花引发。

　　一旦引发野火，火势如何会受到许多因素的影响。天气状况显然是一大因素：风助火势，雨则相反。地势也是一大因素：火势沿山坡的蔓延速度由低到高比由高到低要快。当然，火势还取决于另一个关键因素，即，过火植物的种类。有关野火的一个常识就是，野火频发地区的植物往往都自有应对之策，如：树皮较厚，或者种子只有在遇到高热或烟熏时才会发芽。不过人们较少提及的一点是，这些植物本身也会对野火的性质和火势大小产生影响。