2017年翻譯考試初級(jí)筆譯模擬題：尼羅河三角洲

　　【英譯漢】

　　Delta

　　The large river best known to the ancient Greeks was the Nile of Egypt, river with admiration and called Egypt "the gift of the Nile". The reason for the Nile brought water to a rainless desert and, second, that once a year, the banks, leaving, as the water went back, a new layer of fertile soil.

　　The flood waters carry in them soil (called silt) from the upper parts of the river valley to the lower parts, and so to the sea. But as the river meets the sea, the sea acts as a barrier and forces the river to drop the silt it is carrying.

　　There are no tides in the Mediterranean to carry the silt away, so year after year it collects at the mouth of the Nile, and the river must find its way around islands of silt to the always more distant Mediterranean. In this way, a vast area of fertile soil has been built up at the mouth of the Nile and out into the sea. The river water splits up to form small branches winding across the area. To the ancient Greeks, the mouth of the Nile looked like the drawing.

　　Now we sometimes name things after the letters of the alphabet they resemble: a U-tum, an I-beam a T-square, an S-bend, and so on. The Greeks did the same. The triangular area of land built up at the mouth of the Nile looked like the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet delta (Δ) and so this was the name they gave it. The word is now used for all areas of land formed at the mouth of rivers which flow into tideless seas, even when they are nor triangular in shape. The Mississippi delta, for example, is not shaped at all like the Greek delta, as you will see if you look at a map.

　　【參考譯文】

　　尼羅河三角洲

　　埃及尼羅河在古希臘人中享有盛譽(yù)。古希臘人每每提起尼羅河，總是滿懷崇敬，把埃及稱為“尼羅河的恩賜”。個(gè)中緣由有二：其一，尼羅河為一片久無(wú)甘露的沙漠帶來(lái)了河水，其二，每年尼羅河水位上漲，會(huì)溢出河岸一次，退潮過(guò)后，留下的就是一層肥沃的泥土。

　　河水把泥土(或叫淤沙)從上游河谷帶到下游地區(qū)乃至人�？�。當(dāng)與大海交匯時(shí)，由于受到海洋阻力，順?biāo)�而下的淤沙便停滯下�?lái)。

　　然而地中海潮水不會(huì)把淤沙帶走，年復(fù)一年，淤沙便在尼羅河的入海口處堆積，尼羅河為此不得不繞道而行，距海洋越來(lái)越遠(yuǎn)。于是在尼羅河和地中海之間形成了一大片肥沃的土壤，尼羅河水也分成一股股細(xì)流，蜿蜒穿過(guò)這片土地。古希臘人覺(jué)得，尼羅河口的形狀與三角圖形很是相似。

　　如今我們會(huì)因?yàn)槭挛锏男螤羁崴颇硞�(gè)字母，便以此為之命名。比方說(shuō)：U形轉(zhuǎn)彎，I形標(biāo)，T形廣場(chǎng)，S形彎等等。希臘人也這樣取名。尼羅河口的這片土地看起來(lái)很像希臘字母的第四個(gè)△( Delta)，尼羅河三角洲便由此得名�，F(xiàn)在任何在河流入海(無(wú)潮海)口形成的流域，不管其形似與否，都可以用Delta三角洲命名。如果你對(duì)照地圖就會(huì)發(fā)現(xiàn)，其實(shí)密西西比河三角洲根本就不像三角形。

　　(選自《科學(xué)淺談》艾薩克·阿西莫夫Words of Science Isaac Asimov)