2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：早期的热气球

　　2015考研英语复习正是强化复习阶段，考研英语阅读在考研英语中占了40分，所以考研英语阅读是英语科目中重要的一项。新东方名师范猛老师曾建议过考研生需要坚持每天泛读10-15分钟的英文原刊。强烈推荐了杂志《经济学人》.杂志中的文章也是考研英语的主要材料来源.希望考研考生认真阅读，快速提高考研英语阅读水平。

　　Early ballooning

　　早期的热气球

　　Shifting perspectives

　　转变的观点

　　Two rich tales about men, machines

　　两个有关男人、机械的精彩故事

　　Falling Upwards: How We Took to the Air.ByRichard Holmes.

　　《向上降落》：我们是如何升空的

　　England and the Aeroplane: Militarism, Modernity and Machines.By David Edgerton

　　《英格兰和飞机》：军国主义，现代性和机械制造

　　RICHARD HOLMES, a British author and academic, is something of a Romantic, renownedfor biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In his last book, “TheAge of Wonder”, which came out in 2008, he wrote about science and Romanticism and theircommon commitment to discovery. In his new book, “Falling Upwards”, he combines thetwo again to tell the stories of Europe's early balloonists.

　　理查德霍尔姆斯是英国的一位作家兼大学老师，生性有点儿浪漫，以为波比雪莱和塞缪尔泰勒柯尔律治作传而出名。在他上一本书《奇迹年代》中，他写了有关科学、浪漫以及它们值得探索的共同点。在新书“向上降落”中，他将二者再度结合，讲述了欧洲早期热气球飞行者的故事。

　　Mr Holmes's love of balloons was kindled at a village fete and his enthusiasm is one of thebook's many pleasures. He refers to the euphoric tone that features in many first-handballooning narratives, and it is hard not to discern something similarly joyous in thissecond-hand account. He describes men and women wrapped up in fur coats under theirhydrogen-filled bubbles, fuelled by cold chicken and champagne and looking back to earth tosee mankind “for what it really is”.

　　霍尔姆斯先生迷上热气球始于一次乡村节日，他的狂热是本书众多有意思的地方之一。书中他参考了在许多一手的热气球叙事中偏爱运用的欢乐的口吻，所以在他这篇二手的文章中也不难看出类似的欢乐。在他的描述中，男人和女人醉心于穿着皮毛大衣窝在充满氢气的泡泡中，靠生冷的鸡肉和香槟来补充能量，藐看着地球上的人类，看看“他们究竟是什么”。

　　The pioneers included John Money, who took off from Norwich one day in 1785, came down20 miles from land and was rescued after five hours in the sea; and Sophie Blanchard, darlingof the French revolutionary balloonists, whose “basket” was a decorative silver gondolashaped like a child's cradle and who was appointed Aeronaute des Fêtes Officielles by animpressed Napoleon.

　　热气球飞行事业的先驱中有约翰曼尼，他在1785年的一天从诺维奇起飞，下降到距地面20英里的位置，五小时以后在海中得以被救;还有法国革命性热气球驾驶员的爱人苏菲布兰卡德，她的“热气球下的篮子”是装饰性的银色贡多拉，形状似孩童的摇篮。她还被了不起的拿破仑任命为法国官方节日的热气球驾驶员.

　　Mr Holmes makes much of the esoteric side of ballooning, but the book is at its best whenexamining its more serious applications. In the American civil war, for example, both Northand South put observers in tethered balloons to scope out enemy movements. And duringthe Prussian siege of Paris in 1870-71, balloonists managed to fly out of (if not back into) thecity to communicate with the French government in exile in Tours. But the most thrillingtale belongs to Sweden, and Salomon Andree's doomed attempt to fly a balloon fromSpitsbergen to the North Pole in 1896. Andree's craft came down on the ice, and he and hiscompanions were unable to walk out of the wilderness. Diaries and film, found with themen's bodies over 30 years later, fill in the poignant details.

　　霍尔姆斯先生在书中介绍了很多热气球的偏门功用，但书中最大的亮点却出现在描述它更正统应用的地方。举个例子，在美国南北战争时期，南北双方均让自己的观察员在系留气球上观测敌方的动向。再有就是在1870到1871，普鲁士围攻巴黎期间，热气球驾驶员设法飞出城市去和法国流亡政府沟通。但是最刺激的故事发生在瑞典。1896年，所罗门安德蕾进行了命中注定的一次尝试：从斯匹次卑尔根岛乘热气球飞到北极。他的船身落到了冰上，他和同伴无力从荒野中走出来。30年后，他的日记和胶卷连同他的尸体才被人发现，日记和胶卷中记录的满是辛酸的细节。

　　“Falling Upwards” contains much of the historian's apparatus, such as footnotes andbibliography, but its epilogue refers modestly to what has gone before as “a cluster oftrue balloon stories”. It does feel a touch light on the more technical aspects of ballooning,and says little about the French Montgolfier brothers who are credited as its inventors. Thatthough seems a small price to pay for such a spirited work.

　　“向上降落”中包含许多历史学家的写作特质，像脚注和参考文献，但其后记却适度提起了“一系列真实的热气球故事”之前所发生的事情。感觉像是更多探讨了热气球科技层面的东西，而对于公认的热气球发明者法国的蒙戈菲尔兄弟却几乎没提。在这本令人鼓舞的作品中，算是些许美中不足吧。

　　Mr Holmes's tale ends at the start of the 20th century when the business of flight was beinghanded over to the airship and the aeroplane. As David Edgerton's sure-footed essay makesclear, flying in this next age was a rather more serious affair. Aeroplanes, he notes,were—and to a considerable extent still are—primarily weapons of war, created to serve“national purposes”.

　　霍尔姆斯先生的故事结束于20世纪期初，当时正值飞行事业向飞艇和飞机转型。大卫艾哲顿在其确凿的论文中明确说，飞行在下一个时代会是更加严肃的一件大事。他解释说，飞机曾经是，且以后在很大程度上也仍然是战争中最主要的武器，造飞机的主要目的在于“服务国家”。

　　By examining Britain through the lens of its aviation industry, Mr Edgerton suggests that thecountry's recent history is both more militant and more technical than many historiansclaim. British emphasis on the bomber, rather than the fighter plane, he argues, “represented a technological way of warfare” that accepted the killing of the enemy bymachines. It was certainly brutal: in the second world war 60,000 Britons were killed bybombing; 118,000 Germans died in Hamburg alone.

　　通过观察镜头中英国的航空工业，埃哲顿先生表明，英国近代历史要比很多历史学家声称的更加好战且科技更发达。相比于战斗机，英国人更多使用轰炸机，他还说，“呈现科技手段的战争”接受机器歼敌这一事实。这确实很残酷：二战期间，有60,000英国人被轰炸致死;而德国仅汉堡一个城市就有118,000人死亡。

　　Like Mr Holmes's balloonists, Mr Edgerton sees Britain from an unusual perspective. Hedigs into research and development spending and the activities of long-gone governmentministries in an effort to challenge versions of history that have become fixated on Britain'sdecline. In the 22 years since his book's first edition Mr Edgerton says such “declinism” haswaned—something he ascribes particularly to New Labour and the birth of a cooler Britannia.He himself can also take some credit; his arguments provide sound backing for the idea thatmodern Britain is as much a warfare state as a welfare one.

　　和霍尔莫斯先生的热气球飞行者的故事一样，艾哲顿先生也从一个不同角度来窥见英国。他深入挖掘已经没落的政府部门的研发开支和各种活动，以此向英国衰落历史的既定版本质疑。自从这本书的首版面市以来的22年里，艾哲顿先生表示，持这种“衰落论”观点的人已经越来越少——他把一些原因特别归于新工党的出现和一个更冷静的大不列颠的诞生。他自己的努力也可以算作一份功劳;他的论点声援了一个观点，那就是现代英国战火虽尤平，但鲜有硝烟，人民过上了还算幸福的生活。

　　词语解释

　　1.commitment to 恪守承诺

　　The only guarantee that he won't is robb'scommitment to marry frey's daughter.

　　弗瑞承诺可以不这么干，唯一的条件是罗伯答应与他的女儿结婚。

　　So the company increased its commitment todevelopmental assignments and invented newones.

　　因此，公司增加了对发展性任务和新开发任务的投入。

　　2.combine to 结合

　　Proposals that the savings banks combine to start a commonly owned online bank have sofar got nowhere.

　　然而联合所有储蓄银行开办一间国有的网上银行的提案至今仍被搁置。

　　The detector and arrays combine to make the icecube neutrino observatory.

　　探测器和阵列共同构成了冰立方天文台的主体部分。

　　3.wrap up 包裹;圆满完成

　　Make sure you wrap up in the cold wind.

　　冷风中，你一定要穿暖。

　　Please wrap up this sweater for me.

　　请为我把这件毛衣包起来。

　　4.manage to 达成，设法

　　The rest of europe may well manage to muddle through.

　　而欧洲其余国家也许能很好地设法渡过此难关。

　　Many people wonder why google didn't manage to build successful social services.

　　很多人不知道为什么google没能在社交网络领域取得成功。

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