2018上半年翻譯考試catti三級(jí)筆譯試題：農(nóng)場破產(chǎn)

　　漢譯英

　　Farms go out of business for many reasons, but few farms do merely because the soil has failed. That is the miracle of farming. If you care for the soil, it will last — and yield— nearly forever. America is such a young country that we have barely tested that. For most of our history, there has been new land to farm, and we still farm as though there always will be.

　　Still, there are some very old farms out there. The oldest is the Tuttle farm, near Dover,N.H., which is also one of the oldest business enterprises in America. It made the news last week because its owner — a lineal descendant of John Tuttle, the original settler — has decided to go out of business. It was founded in 1632. I hear its sweet corn is legendary.

　　The year 1632 is unimaginably distant. In 1632, Galileo was still publishing, and John Locke was born. There were perhaps 10,000 colonists in all of America, only a few hundred of them in New Hampshire. The Tuttle acres, then, would have seemed almost as surrounded as they do in 2010, but by forest instead of highways and houses.

　　It was a precarious operation at the start — as all farming was in the new colonies—and　it became precarious enough again in these past few years to peter out at last. The land is protected by a conservation easement so it can‟t be developed, but no one knows whether the next owner will farm it.

　　In a letter on their Web site, the Tuttles cite “exhaustion of resources” as the reason to sell the farm. The exhausted resources they list include bodies, minds, hearts, imagination, equipment, machinery and finances. They do not mention soil, which has been renewed and redeemed repeatedly. It‟s as though the parishioners of the First Parish Church in nearby Dover — erected nearly 200 years later, in 1829 — had rebuilt the structure on the same spot every few years.

　　It is too simple to say, as the Tuttles have, that the recession killed a farm that had survived for nearly 400 years. What killed it was the economic structure of food production.

　　Each year it has become harder for family farms to compete with industrial scale agriculture— heavily subsidized by the government — underselling them at every turn. In a system committed to the health of farms and their integration with local communities, the result would have been different. In 1632, and for many years after, the Tuttle farm was a necessity.In 2010, it is suddenly superfluous, or so we like to pretend.

　　參考譯文：

　　農(nóng)場破產(chǎn)原因很多，不過僅僅因?yàn)橥寥劳嘶�而破產(chǎn)的卻為數(shù)不多，這也正是經(jīng)營農(nóng)場的一大優(yōu)勢：如果對(duì)農(nóng)田悉心照料，那么土壤將可永葆肥力，農(nóng)場也可持續(xù)高產(chǎn)。美國是一個(gè)相對(duì)年輕的國家，歷史上尚未對(duì)上述理論進(jìn)行過試驗(yàn)論證�；仡櫭绹�的發(fā)展史，

　　在大多數(shù)歷史階段，可供開墾的土地不斷涌現(xiàn)，現(xiàn)如今，美國的耕種觀念依然沒變，似乎美國有開墾不完的土地。

　　不過，美國還是有一些頗有年頭的老農(nóng)場，年頭最長的當(dāng)屬塔特爾農(nóng)場。該農(nóng)場位于美國新罕布什爾州多佛市附近，也是美國歷史最為悠久的商業(yè)企業(yè)之一。就在上周，塔特爾農(nóng)場成了一大新聞�，F(xiàn)農(nóng)場場主、農(nóng)場創(chuàng)始人約翰﹒塔特爾的直系繼承人宣布農(nóng)場破產(chǎn)。塔特爾農(nóng)場成立于 1632 年，據(jù)說該農(nóng)場出產(chǎn)的甜玉米特別有名。

　　1632 年是多么久遠(yuǎn)的一個(gè)年份，那年，伽利略仍在出書，約翰·洛克(著名的英國哲學(xué)家)才剛剛出生。當(dāng)時(shí)，全美共有約 1 萬名殖民者，而新罕布什爾只有區(qū)區(qū)幾百名。那時(shí)的塔特爾農(nóng)場四周森林環(huán)繞，如今的農(nóng)場四周已是公路密布，庭院櫛比。在新殖民地開墾農(nóng)場一開始都會(huì)出現(xiàn)經(jīng)營問題，塔特爾農(nóng)場也不例外。近年來該農(nóng)場再次出現(xiàn)經(jīng)營問題，最終難逃破產(chǎn)的命運(yùn)。塔特爾農(nóng)場已經(jīng)簽署了保護(hù)地役權(quán)協(xié)定，不允許做其他開發(fā)之用，但是接收農(nóng)場的人會(huì)不會(huì)繼續(xù)農(nóng)場經(jīng)營還是個(gè)未知數(shù)。塔特爾農(nóng)場的網(wǎng)頁上載有一封塔特爾家族的公開信，信中稱出售農(nóng)場是因?yàn)椤百Y源耗盡”。信中羅列的耗盡的資源包括：身心交瘁、創(chuàng)新力枯竭、設(shè)備機(jī)械老化、財(cái)力不支等等。他們唯獨(dú)沒有提及土壤問題，而土壤歷經(jīng)了循環(huán)往復(fù)的開墾(，肥力如何可想而知)。

　　在臨近的多佛市有一座 “第一教區(qū)教堂”，興建于 1829 年，比農(nóng)場建立的時(shí)間晚了近 200年。如果打個(gè)比方的話，對(duì)農(nóng)場的循環(huán)開墾利用就好比是該教堂的教民每隔幾年就在同一地點(diǎn)重建教堂一樣。塔特爾農(nóng)場歷經(jīng)近 400 年的風(fēng)風(fēng)雨雨一直經(jīng)營到現(xiàn)在，塔特爾家族的人稱是眼下這場經(jīng)濟(jì)衰退使得農(nóng)場難以為繼。這話說起來著實(shí)輕巧�？墒�，真正導(dǎo)致農(nóng)場破產(chǎn)的是糧食生產(chǎn)的結(jié)構(gòu)性問題�，F(xiàn)在，農(nóng)業(yè)實(shí)行規(guī)�；�生產(chǎn)，政府給予大力補(bǔ)貼，大型農(nóng)場的糧食售價(jià)自然會(huì)處處低于家族經(jīng)營的農(nóng)場，致使這些家族農(nóng)場在競爭中日益處于劣勢。如果美國在糧食生產(chǎn)體系中切實(shí)關(guān)注農(nóng)場的健康發(fā)展，統(tǒng)籌兼顧農(nóng)場與當(dāng)?shù)匕l(fā)展，結(jié)局就

　　不是現(xiàn)在這樣了/塔特爾農(nóng)場就不會(huì)落到這般田地。自 1632 年建立之后的若干年里，塔特爾農(nóng)場一直都是(當(dāng)?shù)匕l(fā)展)不可或缺的一大支柱，而在 2010 年，塔特爾農(nóng)場轉(zhuǎn)瞬間已成冗余之物，或者說被我們看作是一個(gè)累贅。