2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：数字图画

　　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。

　　Painting by numbers

　　数字图画

　　Digital analysis is invading the world of theconnoisseur

　　数字分析正侵蚀艺术品鉴赏界

　　JUDGING artistic styles, and the similarities between them, might be thought one bastion ofhuman skill that machines could never storm.

　　对艺术风格，跟他们之间的相似之处的评价，可能被认为是一块机器无法侵犯的人类技艺圣地。

　　Not so, if Lior Shamir at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan is correct.

　　并非如此，加入密歇根州老孙死理工大学的Lior Shamir没错的话。

　　A paper he has just published in Leonardo suggests that computers may have just as good aneye for style as humans do—and,

　　他刚刚在李奥纳多发表的一篇文章之处电脑的眼力可能不必人类差——而且，

　　in some cases, may see connections between artists that human critics have missed.

　　某些情况下，电脑甚至能够发现一些评论家忽略的，艺术家之间的相似之处。

　　Dr Shamir, a computer scientist, presented 57 images by each of nine painters—SalvadorDalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Vasily Kandinsky, Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock,Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mark Rothko and Vincent van Gogh—to a computer, to see what itmade of them.

　　博士Shamir，一位计算机专家，将Salvador Dalí, Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Vasily Kandinsky,Claude Monet, Jackson Pollock, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Mark Rothko和 Vincent van Gogh九位画家的每人57幅作品扫描到计算机中，看看它能得出什么。

　　The computer broke the images into a number of so-called numerical descriptors.

　　于是电脑将图像分解为许多所谓的数字描述符。

　　These descriptors quantified texturesand colours, the statistical distribution of edges across a canvas,

　　这些解析符将质地和颜色量化，帆布的边缘的统计分布，特定种类的形状的分布，

　　the distributions of particular types of shape, the intensity of the colour of individual pointson a painting,

　　一幅作品上独立的点的颜色的深浅，还有任何蕾丝不规则碎片的本质，

　　and also the nature of any fractal-like patterns within it.

　　不规则碎片是指大小不同形状相似的特质，比如雪花的边缘。

　　All told, the computer identified 4,027 different numerical descriptors.

　　结果，电脑总共确认了4027种不同的解析符。

　　Once their values had been established for each of the 513 artworks that had been fed intoit,

　　一旦它们对于这513件被反哺给电脑的每件艺术品的价值被确立，

　　it was ready to do the analysis.

　　计算机马上可以开始分析。

　　Dr Shamir's aim was to look for quantifiable ways of distinguishing between the work ofdifferent artists.

　　博士Shamir的目的事项寻找区分不同艺术家作品的可量化的方法。

　　If such things could be established, it might make the task of deciding who painted what alittle easier.

　　如果上述事实能够被证实成立，区分各个画家的作品的工作将会简单一点儿。

　　Such decisions matter because, even excluding deliberate forgeries, there are manypaintings in existence that cannot conclusively be attributed to a master rather than hispupils,

　　这样的决定对我们很重要，因为即使是在排除有意伪造之后，任然有许多作品不能被确认出自某位画家，而非他的学生，

　　or that may be honestly made copies whose provenance is now lost.

　　或是某个出处无可探寻的逼真的复制品。

　　To look for such distinguishing features, Dr Shamir programmed the computer to use astatistical method that scores the strength of the distance between the values of two ormore descriptors for each pair of artists.

　　为了寻找这种能有助于区分的特质，Shamir博士设法使计算机能利用一个统计学方法来评价用来比较每两位画家的两个以上的描述符的价值之间距离的大小。

　　As a result, he was able to rank each of the 4,027 descriptors by how useful it was atdiscriminating between artists.

　　最后，他就能根据描述符分辨艺术家的能力来给它们打分。

　　Surprisingly, the values of 19 of the 20 most informative descriptors showed dramaticallyhigher similarities between Van Gogh and Pollock than between Van Gogh and painters suchas Monet and Renoir,

　　令人吃惊的是，在提供的消息最有用的20种描述符中，有19种显示出梵高和波洛克作品之间的相似度，要远远高于梵高和像莫内和雷诺瓦的画家之间，

　　who conventional art criticism would think more closely related to Van Gogh's oeuvre thanPollock's is.

　　而传统的评论家认为后者的作品与梵高作品更接近。相反地，达利和恩斯特的作品的差距却比预期要大。

　　What is interesting, according to Dr Shamir, is that no single feature makes Pollock's artisticstyle similar to Van Gogh's.

　　有趣的是，Shamir博士指出，没有一个特质能单独证明波洛克的艺术风格与梵高的相似。

　　Instead, the connection is based on a broad set of image-content descriptors which reflectmany aspects of the two artists' styles,

　　相反，他们的联系是在长长的一系列反映了这两名画家的许多艺术风格的图像内容解析符的基础上形成的，

　　including a shared preference for low-level textures and shapes, and similarities in the waysthey employed lines and edges.

　　风格中包括，他们都偏爱低档面料跟外形，他们勾勒线和边的方式相似。

　　What was intended, then, as a way of improving the ability to distinguish betweendifferent hands has also thrown up a new way of looking for stylistic similarities.

　　于是，原本用来宜于区分不同画家的作品的方法，也能用来寻找艺术家的不同风格。

　　Whether Pollock was actually influenced by Van Gogh, or merely happened upon a similarway of doing things through a similar artistic sensibility, is not clear.

　　虽然波洛克实际上到底是受到了梵高的影响，还是仅仅是由于在处在相似的艺术风气下，不得而知。

　　But it gives art historians a new line of investigation to pursue.

　　但是它给艺术历史学家提供了一条新的线索。

　　词语解释

　　1.criticism n.批评;评论

　　He is impervious to criticism.

　　他对批评我行我素。

　　2.connoisseur n.鉴识家;内行

　　He is a connoisseur of antique furniture.

　　他是古家俱鉴定家。

　　3.bastion n.棱堡;堡垒

　　These clubs are the last bastions of male privilege.

　　这些俱乐部是男性特权的最后棱堡。

　　4.connection n.联系;关系;连接

　　What is the connection between the two ideas?

　　这两个概念之间有何联系?

　　5.present v.提出;赠送;呈现

　　He bought me a valuable diamond ring as a birthday present.

　　他给我买了一只贵重的钻戒作生日礼物。

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