1. And there are the townsfolk who largely live off the tourists who come, not to see the plays, but to look at Anne Hathaway's Cottage, Shakespeare's birthplace and the other sights.

譯文：另一方則是很大程度上依賴游客而謀生的當地居民，這些游客來到鎮上，不是為了看戲，而是來參觀安·哈瑟維小屋、莎士比亞出生地及其他景點。

2. It's all deliciously ironic when you consider that Shakespeare, who earns their living, was himself an actor (with a beard) and did his share of noise-making.

譯文：當你想到為他們提供生計的莎士比亞本人就是個留著胡須、吵吵嚷嚷的演員時，這真是一個極好的諷刺。

3. Hilton is building its own hotel there, which you may be sure will be decorated with Hamlet Hamburger Bars, the Lear Lounge, the Banquo Banqueting Room, and so forth, and will be very expensive.

譯文：希爾頓酒店正在這里構建自己的旅館，你幾乎可以肯定它會配有哈姆雷特漢堡包店、李爾休息室、班柯宴會包間等等，而且價格昂貴。

4. They all seem to look alike (though they come from all over) -- lean, pointed, dedicated faces, wearing jeans and sandals, eating their buns and bedding down for the night on the flagstones outside the theatre to buy the 20 seats and 80 standing-room tickets held for the sleepers and sold to them when the box office opens at 10:30 a.m.

譯文：他們雖然來自世界各地，看起來卻都很相像——身材消瘦，棱角分明，神情執著，穿著牛仔褲和涼鞋，啃著圓面包，躺在劇院外的石板上過夜，等著買20張預留給露宿者的座位票和80張站票。在上午10點半售票處開門時他們就可以買到這些票。

Text3

1. That means a higher proportion of what is in the sea is being caught, so the real difference between present and past is likely to be worse than the one recorded by changes in catch sizes.

譯文：這就意味著更高比例的海洋物種正在被捕撈，因此現在和過去之間的真正差異可能比用捕撈規模變化所記錄的要更糟糕。

2. Some individuals would therefore not have been caught, since no baited hooks would have been available to trap them, leading to an underestimate of fish stocks in the past.

譯文：個別的魚沒有被捕捉，是因為沒有可用來誘惑它們的帶餌的鉤，這導致了過去對魚類資源量的低估。

3. That matters because theory suggests that the maximum sustainable yield that can be cropped from a fishery comes when the biomass of a target species is about 50% of its original levels.

譯文：而這很重要，因為理論認為當目標物種的生物量達到原始基數的50%左右時，從漁場中可以獲得最大的可持續產量。

2007年閱讀真題

Text2

1. So it is a bit confusing when vos Savant fields such queries from the average Joe (whose IQ is 100) as, What's the difference between love and fondness? Or what is the nature of luck and coincidence?

譯文：因此，莎凡(居然能)巧妙回答(智商為100的)普通人提出的諸如"愛與喜歡有何區別"或"運氣和巧合的本質是什么"這類問題，這令人感到有些費解。

2. It's not obvious how the capacity to visualize objects and to figure out numerical patterns suits one to answer questions that have eluded some of the best poets and philosophers.

譯文：那些想象物體和計算數字模式的能力如何滿足了(莎凡)回答那些曾難倒部分最優秀詩人和哲學家的問題的需要，這一點難以明確。

3. Anyone who has toiled through SAT will testify that test-taking skill also matters, whether it's knowing when to guess or what questions to skip.

譯文：任何熬過"學術能力評估測試"的人都可以證明，應試技能也很重要，比如知道何時應該猜測或者什么題目可以略過不答。

2008年閱讀真題

Text4

1. Just as bosses and boards have finally sorted out their worst accounting and compliance troubles, and improved their feeble corporation governance, a new problem threatens to earn them - especially in America - the sort of nasty headlines that inevitably lead to heads rolling in the executive suite: data insecurity.

譯文：正當老板、董事會總算解決了最為棘手的財務和規章問題，并且改善了薄弱的公司管理之際，一個新的問題又威脅著他們——尤其是在美國——置他們于負面頭版頭條新聞中，管理層進而不可避免地受到懲罰。這個問題就是：數據不安全。

2. Surely it should be obvious to the dimmest executive that trust, that most valuable of economic assets, is easily destroyed and hugely expensive to restore - and that few things are more likely to destroy trust than a company letting sensitive personal data get into the wrong hands.

譯文：甚至最愚笨的管理人員也必定清楚地知道：信任，這個經濟資產中最有價值的東西，很容易遭到破壞而修復起來代價昂貴;沒有什么比企業任由個人敏感信息落入別有用心的人手中更能有破壞信任的了。

3. Meanwhile, the theft of information about some 40 million credit-card accounts in America, disclosed on June 17th, overshadowed a hugely important decision a day earlier by America's Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that puts corporate America on notice that regulators will act if firms fail to provide adequate data security.

譯文：與此同時，6月16日美國聯邦貿易委員會做出重大決定，通知美國商界如果公司不能充分保障數據的安全，那么監管機構就會采取措施。但是17日披露的美國大約4000萬信用卡賬戶信息失竊案件卻使得上述決定黯然失色。

2009年閱讀真題

Text3

1. Progress in both areas is undoubtedly necessary for the social, political and intellectual development of these and all other societies; however, the conventional view that education should be one of the very highest priorities for promoting rapid economic development in poor countries is wrong.

譯文：毫無疑問，在這兩個領域取得的進步對于這些貧窮國家以及其他國家的社會、政治、智力發展都是必不可少的。傳統觀點認為教育應成為促進貧困國家經濟快速發展首要考慮的因素之一，然而這種觀點是錯誤的。

2. We are fortunate that is it, because building new educational systems there and putting enough people through them to improve economic performance would require two or three generations.

譯文：我們很慶幸這種觀點錯了，因為在這些國家建立新的教育體制并通過這種體制培養足夠的人才來提高經濟水平需要兩三代人的時間。

3. More recently, while examining housing construction, the researchers discovered that illiterate, non-English- speaking Mexican workers in Houston, Texas, consistently met best-practice labor productivity standards despite the complexity of the building industry's work.

譯文：更近些時候，研究者在調查房屋建筑業時發現，盡管建筑業的工作很復雜，但是在德克薩斯州休斯敦市的那些不識字、不會說英語的墨西哥工人卻能一直達到勞動生產率最佳實踐標準。

2010年閱讀真題

Text2

1. In a move that has intellectual-property lawyers abuzz the U.S. court of Appeals for the federal circuit said it would use a particular case to conduct a broad review of business-method patents.

譯文：美國聯邦巡回上訴法院宣稱，它將利用一項特殊案例對商業方法專利開展廣泛復審，這一舉措令知識產權律師們議論紛紛。

2. Curbs on business-method claims would be a dramatic about-face, because it was the federal circuit itself that introduced such patents with is 1998 decision in the so-called state Street Bank case, approving a patent on a way of pooling mutual-fund assets.

譯文：對商業方法專利申請的控制是一個突然的180度大轉變，因為正是聯邦巡回法院在1998年被稱為"道富銀行案"的決議中引入了這類專利，當時法庭對一種"匯集各種公有基金資產"的方法授予了專利。

3. That ruling produced an explosion in business-method patent filings, initially by emerging internet companies trying to stake out exclusive rights to specific types of online transactions.

譯文：這項裁決帶來了商業方法專利申請案卷的激增，起初是新興的網絡公司試圖對特定類型的在線交易方法占得獨家權利。

4. The Federal Circuit issued an unusual order stating that the case would be heard by all 12 of the court's judges, rather than a typical panel of three, and that one issue it wants to evaluate is weather it should" reconsider" its state street Bank ruling.

譯文：聯邦巡回法院發布了一項不同尋常的法令，聲明這個案子將由法院的全部12名法官共同聽審，而不是典型的三人聽審團;法令還宣布法院希望評估是否需要"重新考慮"對道富銀行案的判決。

2011年閱讀真題

Text3

1. Marketers have embraced the two-step flow because it suggests that if they can just find and influence the influentials, those selected people will do most of the work for them.

譯文：營銷人員已經采納了這個兩級流動理論，因為該理論表明，他們只需找到有影響力人士就可以為他們完成大部分的工作。

2. Yet it is precisely these non-celebrity influentials who, according to the two-step-flow theory, are supposed to drive social epidemics by influencing their friends and colleagues directly.

譯文：而根據兩級流動理論，恰恰是這些不是名人但具有影響力的人，通過直接影響他們的朋友和同事，推動了社會流行潮。

3. For a social epidemic to occur, however, each person so affected, must then influence his or her own acquaintances, who must in turn influence theirs, and so on; and just how many others pay attention to each of these people has little to do with the initial influential.

譯文：但是，一種社會流行潮要最終形成，每個受到有影響力影響的人都必須接著影響自己的熟人，繼而這些熟人必須再影響自己的熟人，如此循環不已;這些人中的每個人能得到多少關注與最初的有影響力人士并無多大關系。

2012年閱讀真題

Text3

1. In the idealized version of how science is done, facts about the world are waiting to be observed and collected by objective researchers who use the scientific method to carry out their work.

譯文：在"科學研究如何開展"的理想化模式中，世界真相正等待著以科學的方法開展工作的研究者們去觀察和收集。

2. Within the complex social structure of the scientific community, researchers make discoveries; editors and reviewers act as gatekeepers by controlling the publication process; other scientists use the new finding to suit their own purposes; and finally, the public (including other scientists) receives the new discovery and possibly accompanying technology.

譯文：在科學界這個復雜的社會結構中，研究者做出發現;編輯和評審者控制發現的發表過程以扮演看門人的角色;其他科學家則使用這一新發現來滿足自己需要;最后，公眾(包括其他科學家)接受這個新發現及其可能隨之而來的技術。

3. As a discovery claim works it through the community, the interaction and confrontation between shared and competing beliefs about the science and the technology involved transforms an individual's discovery claim into the community's credible discovery.

譯文：在發現聲明通過科學界的逐級審查之時，與該科技相容或相抗的理念會相互作用、相互對抗，將個體的研究發現轉變為科學界的可信發現。

4. Not surprisingly, newly published discovery claims and credible discoveries that appear to be important and convincing will always be open to challenge and potential modification or refutation by future researchers.

譯文：不足為奇的是，貌似重要且令人信服的新發表的發現聲明和可信發現總是面對后來研究者的質疑、修改、甚至推翻。

2013年閱讀真題

Text 2

1. In the past couple of weeks a quarrel has illustrated the value to advertisers of such fine-grained information: Should advertisers assume that people are happy to be tracked and sent behavioral ads? Or should they have explicit permission?

譯文：在過去幾周里，一場爭論說明了這種精細的信息對于廣告商的價值：廣告商是否可以認為用戶愿意被跟蹤并接收行為廣告?還是說廣告商應該獲得用戶的明確許可?

2. DNT does not seem an obviously huge selling point for windows 8-though the firm has compared some of its other products favorably with Google's on that count before.

譯文：DNT似乎并不是微軟Windows 8系統的最大賣點，盡管微軟的其他產品在這一方面優于谷歌。

2014年閱讀真題

Text4

1. The Heart of the Matter," the just-released report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), deserves praise for affirming the importance of the humanities and social sciences to the prosperity and security of liberal democracy in America.

譯文：美國人文與科學院(AAAS)剛剛發布的研究報告《問題的核心》值得稱贊，因為其肯定了人文學科和社會科學對鞏固和繁榮美國自由民主的重要性。

2. In 2010, leading congressional Democrats and Republicans sent letters to the AAAS asking that it identify actions that could be taken by "federal, state and local governments, universities, foundations, educators, individual benefactors and others" to "maintain national excellence in humanities and social scientific scholarship and education."

譯文：2010年，美國國會的重要民主黨人和共和黨人向美國人文與科學院致信，要求其制定可以被"聯邦、州和地方政府，大學，機構，教育工作者，個人捐助者及其他人"采納的措施，以"使國家在人文學科和社會學科的學術研究及教育方面繼續保持卓越的地位"。

3. To encourage innovation and competition, the report calls for increased investment in research, the crafting of coherent curricula that improve students' ability to solve problems and communicate effectively in the 21st century, increased funding for teachers and the encouragement of scholars to bring their learning to bear on the great challenges of the day.

譯文：為了激勵創新和競爭，該報告呼吁增加科研收入，精心設計調理清晰的課程，以提高學生在21世紀解決問題的能力和有效溝通的能力，呼吁增加對教師的投入，鼓勵學者應用他們的研究來應對如今的巨大挑戰。

2015年閱讀真題

Text2

1. California has asked the justices to refrain from a sweeping ruling particularly one that upsets the old assumption that authorities may search through the possessions of suspects at the time of their arrest.

譯文：之前的設想是當局在逮捕嫌犯時可以搜查其財物，而加州請求大法官要避免做出全面性的裁決，尤其不能推翻之前的設想。

2. They could still invalidate Fourth Amendment protections when facing severe, urgent circumstances, and they could take reasonable measures to ensure that phone data are not erased or altered while a warrant is pending.

譯文：當面對嚴重的、緊急的情況時，他們甚至還可以不受第四條修正案保護條款的約束，并且他們在搜查令還未獲準的情況下，也能采取合理的措施以確保手機里的數據不被刪改。

Text4

1. This same absence of moral purpose was wounding companies such as News International ,she thought ,making it more likely that it would lose its way as it had with widespread illegal telephone hacking .

譯文：她認為，同樣道德目的的缺失傷害到了像新聞國際這樣的公司，使其更有可能像過去一樣因大范圍非法竊聽電話而迷失方向。

2. One of the astonishing revelations was how little Rebekah Brooks knew of what went on in her newsroom, wow little she thought to ask and the fact that she never inquired wow the stories arrived.

譯文：其中讓人吃驚的真相之一是麗貝卡·布魯克斯竟然對于發生在她新聞工作室的事情知之甚少，她竟然幾乎未加以過問，實際上她從不詢問這些新聞報道的來源.