1997年考研翻譯題及參考答案

Part Ⅲ English-Chinese Translation

Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate the underlined segments into Chinese. Your translation should be written clearly on ANSWER SHEET 2. (15 points)

Do animals have rights? This is how the question is usually put. It sounds like a useful, ground-clearing way to start. 31)Actually, it isn’t, because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights, which is something the world does not have.

On one view of rights, to be sure, it necessarily follows that animals have none. 32)Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract, as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements. Therefore animals cannot have rights. The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd, for exactly the same reason, so is the idea that tigers have rights. However, this is only one account, and by no means an uncontested one. It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people—for instance, to infants, the mentally incapable and future generations. In addition, it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it: how do you reply to somebody who says “ I don’t like this contract”?

The point is this: without agreement on the rights of people, arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless. 33)It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset: it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans, or with no consideration at all. This is a false choice. Better to start with another, more fundamental, question: is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all?

Many deny it. 34)Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect, extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice. Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake—a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans.(www.nmet168.com)

This view, which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood, may seem bravely “l(fā)ogical”. In fact it is simply shallow: the confused centre is right to reject it. The most elementary form of moral reasoning—the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh other’s interests against one’s own. This in turn requires sympathy and imagination: without which there is no capacity for moral thought. To see an animal in pain is enough, for most, to engage sympathy. 35)When that happens, it is not a mistake: it is mankind’s instinct for moral reasoning in action, an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.

31. 事實并非如此，因為這種問法是以人們對人的權利有一種共識為基礎的，而這種共識并不存在。

32. 有些哲學家論證說，權利只存在于社會契約中，是責任與權益交換的一部分。

33. 這種說法從一開始就將討論引向兩個極端，它使人們認為應該這樣對待動物：要么像對人類自身一樣關切體諒，要么完全冷漠無情。

34. 這類人持極端看法，認為人與動物在各相關方面都不相同，對待動物無須考慮道德問題。

35. 這種反應并不是錯誤，這是人類用道德觀念進行推理的本能在起作用。這種本能應該得到鼓勵，而不應該遭到嘲笑。