第一部分：英译汉

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway — With plant species disappearing at an alarming rate, scientists and governments are creating a global network of plant banks to store seeds and sprouts, precious genetic resources that may be needed for man to adapt the world’s food supply to climate change.

This week, the flagship of that effort, the Global Seed Vault near here, received its first seeds, millions of them. Bored into 　　the middle of a frozen Arctic mountain topped with snow, the vault’s goal is to store and protect samples of every type of seed from every seed collection in the world.

As of Thursday, thousands of neatly stacked and labeled gray boxes of seeds — peas from Nigeria, corn from Mexico — reside in this glazed cavelike structure, forming a sort of backup hard drive, in case natural disasters or human errors erase the seeds from the outside world.

Descending almost 500 feet under the permafrost, the entrance tunnel to the seed vault is designed to withstand bomb blasts and earthquakes. An automated digital monitoring system controls temperature and provides security akin to a missile silo or Fort Knox. No one person has all the codes for entrance.

The Global Vault is part of a broader effort to gather and systematize information about plants and their genes, which climate change experts say may indeed prove more valuable than gold. In Leuven, Belgium, scientists are scouring the world for banana samples and preserving their shoots in liquid nitrogen before they become extinct. A similar effort is under way in France on coffee plants. A number of plants, most from the tropics, do not produce seeds that can be stored.

For years, a hodgepodge network of seed banks has been amassing seed and shoot collections in a haphazard manner. Labs in Mexico banked corn species. Those in Nigeria banked cassava. Now these scattershot efforts are being urgently consolidated and systematized, in part because of better technology to preserve plant genes and in part because of the rising alarm about climate change and its impact on world food production.

“We started thinking about this post-9/11 and on the heels of Hurricane Katrina,” said Cary Fowler, president of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, a nonprofit group that runs the vault. “Everyone was saying, why didn’t anyone prepare for a hurricane before? We knew it was going to happen.

“Well, we are losing biodiversity every day — it’s a kind of drip, drip, drip. It’s also inevitable. We need to do something about it.”

This week the urgency of the problem was underscored as wheat prices rose to record highs and wheat stores dropped to the lowest level in 35 years. A series of droughts and new diseases cut wheat production in many parts of the world. “The erosion of plants’ genetic resources is really going fast,” said Dr. Rony Swennen, head of the division of crop biotechnology at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, who has preserved half of the world’s 1,200 banana types. “We’re at a critical moment and if we don’t act fast, we’re going to lose a lot of plants that we may need.”

The United Nations International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources, ratified in 2004, created a formal global network for banking and sharing seeds, as well as for studying their genetic traits. Last year, its database received thousands of new seeds.

A system of plant banks could be crucial in responding to climate crises since it could identify genetic material and plant strains better able to cope with a changed environment.

Here at the Global Vault, hundreds of gray boxes containing seeds from places ranging from Syria to Mexico were moved this week into a freezing vault to be placed in suspended animation. They harbor a vast range of qualities, like the ability to withstand drier, warmer climate.

天之聪网校参考译文：

挪威朗伊尔城—植物物种灭绝速度惊人，科学界和各国政府现正努力创建一个全球性的植物银行系统，以备不时之需。植物银行用来存储种子和苗芽，为人类保存珍贵的植物基因资源，帮助人类适应气候变化对粮食生产带来的影响。

本周位于朗伊尔城附近的全球种子库接收了第一批共计数百万粒种子。这座全球最大的种子库位于北极附近一座终年冰封、白雪皑皑的大山内部。全球种子库建立的初衷是要存储来自世界各地的各种各类植物种子。

截止到周四，该种子库共存储了数千箱种子。这些灰色箱子码放整齐、标示清晰，收集了包括尼日利亚豌豆和墨西哥玉米等多种植物的种子样本。这座酷似山洞的种子库内层涂釉，起着“备份硬盘”的关键作用：一旦外部世界的种子因为天灾人祸灭绝了，存储在这里的种子就可以派上用场。

该种子库的入口隧道位于永冻层下约500英尺，可以抵御爆炸和地震的冲击。种子库内有一个自动数字监测系统，可以像导弹发射井或诺克斯堡黄金地库那样控制库内温度，确保安全。同时，进入种子库的密码由数人共同管理。

全球种子库及其他相关项目旨在收集、整理植物及其基因的相关信息，气候变化专家称，这些植物基因的价值甚至超过黄金。为防止香蕉物种灭绝，比利时鲁汶的科学家们正在全世界收集香蕉样本，将其种苗保存在液态氮里。法国也正在对咖啡树基因资源进行类似收集、保护工作。有些植物特别是一些热带植物没有可以用于储存的种子。

多年来，全球种子银行系统一直进行种子及芽苗的收储工作，但缺乏系统性，如：墨西哥的种子库收储玉米样本，尼日利亚的种子库收储木薯样本。现在正抓紧对这些种子库进行系统性整合，一方面是因为植物基因存储技术提高了，另一方面是因为人们对气候变化及其对全球粮食生产所带来的影响的认识不断加强。

非营利性组织全球农作物多样性信托基金负责运营这家全球种子库。“在‘9﹒11’恐怖袭击以及卡特里娜飓风之后我们就开始考虑如何开展工作了，”该基金主席卡里•福勒说，“大家都在说，为什么没有人为飓风灾害做应急准备呢？毕竟我们都知道飓风迟早会发生。”

他说，“现在每天都有物种在灭绝，在一点点消失，物种灭绝是不可避免的。但我们必须对此有所作为才行。”

本周，小麦价格连创新高，小麦储量降至35年来的最低点，突显了采取行动的紧迫性。许多地区旱灾和新病害频发，造成小麦减产。比利时鲁汶天主教大学农作物生物技术系主任罗尼﹒斯文奈恩对全球1200个香蕉品种的收集取样工作完成了一半。他说：“植物基因资源消失的速度确实很快，我们处在一个关键时期。如果我们不及时行动的话，许多人类未来可能赖以生存的植物物种将走向灭绝。”

按照2004年批准通过的《联合国国际植物基因资源条约》而建立的全球种子银行系统旨在存储和共享植物种子资源并对其基因特性进行研究。去年，全球种子银行系统共接收了数千个种子样本。

种子银行系统可以帮助确定那些环境适应能力较强的基因物质和植物品种，这对人类应对气候变化至关重要。

本周，数百箱来自于叙利亚和墨西哥等世界各地的植物种子样本送达全球种子库进行冷冻休眠储存。这些种子样本分别具有抗旱、耐热等各种遗传特性。

第二部分：汉译英

中国人民选择和平发展道路，是基于中国的传统文化、惨痛的历史和现实的巨大成就所作出的明智选择。

中国是一个有5000年历史的文明古国，有着与外来文化取长补短、兼容并蓄的传统。我们的祖先历来强调“以和为贵”。历史上，中国在对外交往中始终强调亲仁善邻、和而不同。2000多年前，中国与周边国家有使节往来、商品交易、文化交流，汉朝张骞出使西域开辟了陆上“丝绸之路”。1000多年前，中国对外交往海陆并重，盛况空前，茶叶、丝绸、瓷器等商品远销亚欧诸多国家；600多年前，中国明代航海家郑和率领舰队“七下西洋”，足迹遍及亚非30多个国家和地区，带去的是先进的农耕和手工艺技术，还有精美的产品和真诚的友谊。这样的文化传统决定了今天的中国必然选择和平发展延续历史，并融入当今世界和平与发展的潮流。

从19世纪80年代之后的鸦片战争、甲午战争，到庚子之乱乃至20世纪30年代的日本侵华战争，中国惨遭东西方列强的屠戮和极其野蛮的经济掠夺；再加上封建腐败和连年内乱，中国主权沦丧、生灵涂炭、国力衰弱、民不聊生。深重的灾难、惨痛的事实使中华民族深知和平之珍贵、发展之重要。这样的历史实践形成了中国人民渴望和平、企求安定的心理，坚定了中国人民走和平发展道路的信念。

1949年新中国成立后，我们在发展道路上艰辛探索，既经历过成功的喜悦，也经受过失败的挫折。从1978年开始，中国开启了新的征程，从计划转向市场，从封闭转向开放，从自成一体转向融入经济全球化，走独立自主地建设中国特色社会主义的道路，取得了举世瞩目的辉煌成就。实践充分证明，坚持走和平发展的道路是正确的，既符合中国国情，又顺应时代潮流。中国将沿着这条和平发展的道路，坚定不移地走下去。

官方参考译文：

The choice by the Chinese people to follow a peaceful path to development is a wise decision based on China's traditional culture, painful history and her tremendous achievements at the current stage.

China is an ancient civilization boasting 5,000 years' history with the tradition of seeking mutual complementarities, accommodation and integration with foreign cultures. Our ancestors have always underscored the "cherishing of harmony". In China's history of interactions with the outside world, she has consistently focused on the practice of befriending her neighbors while pursuing harmony out of a respect for differences. More than 2,000 years ago, China had exchanges of envoys, trade in commodities and cultural interchanges with her neighboring countries, with the westward trip by envoy Zhang Qian of Han Dynasty chartering out a "silk road" in the Euro-Asia continent. More than 1,000 years ago, China was carrying out exchanges with the outside world over both land and sea, achieving an unprecedented prosperity and selling such commodities as tea, silk and porcelain to many countries in Asia and Europe. 600 years ago, Voyager Zheng He of Ming Dynasty in China led his fleet to the West Seas for seven times, reaching out to more than 30 countries and regions across Asia and Africa. He brought along with him not only advanced agricultural and handicraft techniques, but also exquisite products and sincere friendship. Such a cultural heritage has decided that today's China will inevitably choose peaceful development to sustain the continuity of history as well as to align herself into the currents of peace and development in the global context.

From the Opium War and the First Sino-Japanese War after the 1840s, China's War on Foreign Invaders 1900 to the Japanese War of Aggression against China in 1930s, China was subject to the butchering of the then strong powers in the West and East and their extremely barbarian economic depredation. This, coupled with feudal corruption and years of successive civil strife and chaos, led to the loss of China's sovereignty and the horrendous suffering of her people, her national strength failing and people barely surviving. The grave disasters and the harsh facts have ingrained deeply into the Chinese nation the value of peace and the importance of development. Such a historic experience has shaped the psychology of the Chinese people in our quest for peace and hope for stability, consolidating our belief in following a path to peaceful development.

After the founding of New China in 1949, we have made arduous explorations in the course of our development, going through both the joys of success and the frustrations of failure. Starting from 1978, China has embarked on a new journey of transforming from a planned to a market economy, from cloistered up to opening up, from exclusive self-sustaining to integration into globalization. By following a path of building socialism with Chinese characteristics in an independent and self-reliant manner, we have scored glorious achievements that attracted worldwide attention. Practice has amply demonstrated that it is right to adhere to a path of peaceful development, as it conforms to both China's reality and the trend of the times. China will unswervingly march onward alongside this path to peaceful development.

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