剑桥雅思系列真题是剑桥大学考试委员会外语考试部出版各类考试真题的唯一官方出版社出版的权威教材，书中包含最新的雅思全真试题资料，是各类雅思考生备考过程中必不可少的参考书。非常适合学生自学的习题解答和听力录音文本。
Passage1
参考译文
How much higher? How much faster?
—Limits to human sporting performance are not yet in sight—
多高?多快?
——人类的运动极限没有尽头
Since the early years of the twentieth century, when the International Athletic Federation began keeping records, there has been a steady improvement in how fast athletes run, how high they jump and how far they are able to hurl massive objects, themselves included, through space. For the so-called power events — that require a relatively brief, explosive release of energy, like the 100-metre sprint and the long jump — times and distances have improved ten to twenty per cent. In the endurance events the results have been more dramatic. At the 1908 Olympics, John Hayes of the U.S. team ran a marathon in a time of 2:55:18. In 1999, Morocco’s Khalid Khannouchi set a new world record of 2:05:42, almost thirty per cent faster.
自从20世纪早期国际田联开始记录成绩以来，运动员奔跑的速度，跳的高度，投掷重物的距离都在稳步提髙。在那些需要爆发力的项目，比如100米跑和跳远项目中，时间和距离都提高了10%-20%。在耐力项目中，运动成绩提高得更多。1908年的奥运会上，美国队的约翰?海因跑出了2小时55分18秒的马拉松成绩。在1999年，摩洛哥的选手海耶斯以2小时05分42秒的成绩创造了新的世界记录，几乎提高了30%。
No one theory can explain improvements in performance, but the most important factor has been genetics. ‘The athlete must choose his parents carefully,’ says Jesus Dapena, a sports scientist at Indiana University, invoking an oftcited adage. Over the past century, the composition of the human gene pool has not changed appreciably, but with increasing global participation in athletics — and greater rewards to tempt athletes — it is more likely that individuals possessing the unique complement of genes for athletic performance can be identified early. ‘Was there someone like [sprinter] Michael Johnson in the 1920s?’ Dapena asks. ‘I’m sure there was, but his talent was probably never realised.’
没有任何一个人的理论可以解释成绩的提高，但是最重要的因素是基因。印第安纳大学的运动科学家Jesus Dapena援引一常用谚语说“运动员必须小心选择自己的父母。”在过去的一个世纪里，人类基因库的成分并没有显著地变化，只是全世界有越来越多的人参与了这项运动，诱惑运动员提髙成绩的物质奖励也越来越多，因此现在比以往更有可能尽早发现那些独具运动员基因的个体。Dapena问道：“在20世纪20年代，能找到像短跑运动员迈克?杰克逊一样的人吗?我敢肯定是能的，只是人们从未意识到他身上具有的才能。”
Identifying genetically talented individuals is only the first step. Michael Yessis, an emeritus professor of Sports Science at California State University at Fullerton, maintains that ‘genetics only determines about one third of what an athlete can do. But with the right training we can go much further with that one third than we’ve been going.’ Yessis believes that U.S. runners, despite their impressive achievements, are ‘running on their genetics’. By applying more scientific methods, ‘they’re going to go much faster’. These methods include strength training that duplicates what they are doing in their running events as well as plyometrics, a technique pioneered in the former Soviet Union.
识别基因优秀的个体只是第一步。加州大学FuUerton分校的运动科学系的退休教授Michael Yessis认为基因在运动员的表现上只起三分之一的作用。但是，辅以正确的训练，我们可以做得更好。他认为美国的赛跑选手尽管已取得了众多骄人成绩，但他们是“靠他们的基因在跑”。通过使用更多的科学训练方法，“他们将跑得更快”。这些方法包括力量训练。这些训练再现运动员在比赛中的动作，并应用了前苏联首先使用的一种训练技巧——增强式训练模式。
Whereas most exercises are designed to build up strength or endurance, plyometrics focuses on increasing power — the rate at which an athlete can expend energy. When a sprinter runs, Yessis explains, her foot stays in contact with the ground for just under a tenth of a second, half of which is devoted to landing and the other half to pushing off. Plyometric exercises help athletes make the best use of this brief interval.
虽然绝大多数的训练用来提高力量或者持久性，增强式训练注重提高力——即运动员使用能量的速度。Yessis解释到，在一个短跑运动员跑步时，她的脚和地面接触少于1/10秒，在这1/10秒中，一半的时间用于着地，另一半的时间用于蹬地。增强式训练能帮助运动员最好地利用这一短暂的间隙。
Nutrition is another area that sports trainers have failed to address adequately. ‘Many athletes are not getting the best nutrition, even through supplements,’ Yessis insists. Each activity has its own nutritional needs. Few coaches, for instance, understand how deficiencies in trace minerals can lead to injuries.
营养是另一个没有得到运动教练足够重视的方面。Yessis坚称，即使吃了补品，很多运动员也没有得到最好的营养。毎一项活动都有自己的营养需求。到目前为止，几乎没有教练懂得微量矿物质的缺乏是怎样使运动员受伤的。
Focused training will also play a role in enabling records to be broken. ‘If we applied the Russian training model to some of the outstanding runners we have in this country,’ Yessis asserts, ‘they would be breaking records left and right.’ He will not predict by how much, however: ‘Exactly what the limits are it’s hard to say, but there will be increases even if only by hundredths of a second, as long as our training continues to improve.’
在打破记录方面，集中训练也起了作用。Yessis断言：“如果对我们国内的一些杰出赛跑运动员采取俄罗斯的训练模式，他们将会经常破记录。”但是，他没有预测能在多大程度上破记录。“实际上极限在什么地方是很难说的，但是只要我们的训练不断增强，就会有提高，哪怕只有1/100秒。”
One of the most important new methodologies is biomechanics, the study of the body in motion. A biomechanic films an athlete in action and then digitizes her performance, recording the motion of every joint and limb in three dimensions. By applying Newton’s laws to these motions, ‘we can say that this athlete’s run is not fast enough; that this one is not using his arms strongly enough during take-off,’ says Dapena, who uses these methods to help high jumpers. To date, however, biomechanics has made only a small difference to athletic performance.
最重要的新方法之一就是生物力学，研究运动中身体的学科。生物力学将一个在运动中的运动员拍下来，然后将她的表现资料数字化，在三维空间上记录下每一个关节和肢体的运动。通过在三维空间采用牛顿定律，“我们可以得出结论：这个运动员的奔跑速度不够快，在起跑的过程中并没有强有力地使用胳膊，”Dapena说道。Dapena用这些方法帮助跳高运动员。然而，到目前为止，生物力学对运动员的进步起到的作用不大。
Revolutionary ideas still come from the athletes themselves. For example, during the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, a relatively unknown high jumper named Dick Fosbury won the gold by going over the bar backwards, in complete contradiction of all the received high-jumping wisdom, a move instantly dubbed the Fosbury flop. Fosbury himself did not know what he was doing. That understanding took the later analysis of biomechanics specialists, who put their minds to comprehending something that was too complex and unorthodox ever to have been invented through their own mathematical simulations. Fosbury also required another element that lies behind many improvements in athletic performance: an innovation in athletic equipment. In Fosbury’s case, it was the cushions that jumpers land on. Traditionally, high jumpers would land in pits filled with sawdust. But by Fosbury’s time, sawdust pits had been replaced by soft foam cushions, ideal for flopping.
革命性的观点同样还来自运动员自己。比如，在1968年墨西哥城的奥运会上，一个相对来说不是很出名的运动员迪克?F，使用了一个向后跳跃的方法获得了金牌，他的这个方法和当时已有的跳髙方法完全不同，马上被命名为F式落法(既背越式)。他本人并不知道他正在做什么。生物力学专家后来对他的方法进行了分析，并理解了这一方法。这些专家绞尽脑汁去理解这种过于复杂和非传统的方法，而这一方法在他们自己的数学模拟中都没有出现过。F式落法还需要另一个条件来提高运动员的成绩：运动装备上的革新。在迪克?F例子中，这一元素正是运动员着陆的垫子。传统意义上，跳髙运动员都会着陆在填满木屑的深坑里。但是到了迪克?F的年代，填满木屑的深坑被软泡沫垫子代替了，而这种垫子是这种跳法再理想不过的装备了。
In the end, most people who examine human performance are humbled by the resourcefulness of athletes and the powers of the human body. ‘Once you study athletics, you learn that it’s a vexingly complex issue,’ says John S. Raglin, a sports psychologist at Indiana University. ‘Core performance is not a simple or mundane thing of higher, faster, longer. So many variables enter into the equation, and our understanding in many cases is fundamental. We've got a long way to go.’ For the foreseeable future, records will be made to be broken.
终于，大多数研究人员被运动员的充沛的体力和人类身体的力量所折服了。“一旦你开始研究运动，你就会发现这是一个令人懊恼的复杂的问题/印第安纳大学的运动心理学家John S. Raglin说：“不是简简单单的更高，更快，更强就可以提髙核心成绩的。有很多的变量要引入这一方程式，我们对很多情况的理解都是最基本的。我们还有很长的路要走。”在可预见的将来，记录将被打破。
Passage2
参考译文
THE NATURE AND AIMS OF ARCHAEOLOGY
考古学的本质和目的
Archaeology is partly the discovery of the treasures of the past, partly the careful work of the scientific analyst, partly the exercise of the creative imagination. It is toiling in the sun on an excavation in the Middle East, it is working with living Inuit in the snows of Alaska, and it is investigating the sewers of Roman Britain. But it is also the painstaking task of interpretation, so that we come to understand what these things mean for the human story. And it is the conservation of the world’s cultural heritage against looting and careless harm.
考古学部分是对过去财富的发现，部分是科学分析的严谨工作，部分是创造性想像的练习。同时也是在阳光下辛苦地在中东挖掘，在雪中的阿拉斯加和因纽特人一起工作，研究罗马大不列颠的下水道。但是它也是辛苦解释工作，以使我们理解在人类历史中这些东西代表了什么。它保持了世界文化遗产，使之免受掠夺和疏忽的伤害。
Archaeology, then, is both a physical activity out in the field, and an intellectual pursuit in the study or laboratory. That is part of its great attraction. The rich mixture of danger and detective work has also made it the perfect vehicle for fiction writers and film-makers, from Agatha Christie with Murder in Mesopotamia to Stephen Spielberg with Indiana Jones. However far from reality such portrayals are, they capture the essential truth that archaeology is an exciting quest — the quest for knowledge about ourselves and our past.
考古学既是一个在田野的体力活动，也是在书房或实验室的智力追求。这正是它的巨大吸引力的一部分。这种充满了危险和侦探性质的工作的混合体是小说作家和电影导演的完美载体，?克里斯蒂的《东方快车谋杀案》到斯蒂芬?斯皮尔伯格的《夺宝奇兵》。虽然这些描述和现实差距甚远，但是它们抓住了最本质的事实：考古学是一个令人激动的探询，一个对关于我们自身和过去知识的探询。
But how does archaeology relate to disciplines such as anthropology and history, that are also concerned with the human story? Is archaeology itself a science? And what are the responsibilities of the archaeologist in today’s world?
但是考古学是怎样和诸如人类学和历史学这样的学科相联系呢，这些学科也同样研究人类历史?考古学本身是一门科学吗?考古学家在今天低界中的责任是什么?
Anthropology, at its broadest, is the study of humanity — our physical characteristics as animals and our unique non-biological characteristics that we call culture. Culture in this sense includes what the anthropologist, Edward Tylor, summarised in 1871 as ‘knowledge, belief, art, morals, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. Anthropologists also use the term ‘culture’ in a more restricted sense when they refer to the ‘culture’ of a particular society, meaning the non-biological characteristics unique to that society, which distinguish it from other societies. Anthropology is thus a broad discipline — so broad that it is generally broken down into three smaller disciplines: physical anthropology, cultural anthropology and archaeology.
最广义的人类学是研究人类的科学，包括我们作为动物的身体特征以及被我们称为文化的人类特有的非生物特征。在这种意义上的文化包括了人类学家爱德华?泰勒在1871年总结的“作为社会成员的个体所习得的包括知识、信仰、艺术，道德、习俗以及其他一切能力和习惯。”而当人类学家谈到某个特定社会的文化时，这个文化就是狭义的概念，指这个社会的独特的非生物特征，这一特征使该社会区别于其他社会。人类学是一个非常宽泛的学科，通常分为三个更小的学科：体质人类学、文化人类学和考古学。
Physical anthropology, or biological anthropology as it is also called, concerns the study of human biological or physical characteristics and how they evolved. Cultural anthropology — or social anthropology — analyses human culture and society. Two of its branches are ethnography (the study at first hand of individual living cultures) and ethnology (which sets out to compare cultures using ethnographic evidence to derive general principles about human society).
体质人类学或者生物人类学，正如其名字一样，关注于人类生物或体质特征的研究以及这些特征是怎样发展的。文化人类学或者社会人类学分析人类文化和社会。它的两个分支是人种志(对单个活文化的第一手研究)和民族学(从人种出发，比较各不同文化，得出关于人类社会的通用法则)。
Archaeology is the ‘past tense of cultural anthropology’. Whereas cultural anthropologists will often base their conclusions on the experience of living within contemporary communities, archaeologists study past societies primarily through their material remains — the buildings, tools, and other artefacts that constitute what is known as the material culture left over from former societies.
考古学是“文化人类学的过去时”。文化人类学家经常把他们的结论建立在目前社区的生活经历上，然而考古学家主要通过残存的物质研究过去社会——建筑、工具和其他人工制品，这些构成了过去社会留下來的物质文化。
Nevertheless, one of the most important tasks for the archaeologist today is to know how to interpret material culture in human terms. How were those pots used? Why are some dwellings round and others square? Here the methods of archaeology and ethnography overlap. Archaeologists in recent decades have developed ‘ethnoarchaeology’, where, like ethnographers, they live among contemporary communities, but with the specific purpose of learning how such societies use material culture — how they make their tools and weapons, why they build their settlements where they do, and so on. Moreover, archaeology has an active role to play in the field of conservation. Heritage studies constitutes a developing field, where it is realised that the world’s cultural heritage is a diminishing resource which holds different meanings for different people.
然而，今天的考古学家最重要的任务之一就是知道如何解读从前的物质文化。那些罐子是怎么用的?为什么有些住所是圆形的，而有些是方形的?在这里，考古学和人种学的方法重合了。几十年来，考古学家延伸出了种族文化考古学，和人种学者一样，他们住在当代的社区中，但是他们带着特定的目的，就是要了解社会是如何使用物质文化的，比如人们是怎样制造工具和武器，人们为什么要在现在的地方建立住所，等等。而且，考古学在保护遗址方面起了积极的作用。传统研究构成了一个不断发展的领域，在这个领域里，人们认识到世界的文化遗产是一个正在减少的资源，这一资源对不同的人们有着不同的意义。
If, then, archaeology deals with the past, in what way does it differ from history? In the broadest sense, just as archaeology is an aspect of anthropology, so too is it a part of history — where we mean the whole history of humankind from its beginnings over three million years ago. Indeed, for more than ninety-nine per cent of that huge span of time, archaeology — the study of past material culture — is the only significant source of information. Conventional historical sources begin only with the introduction of written records around 3,000 BC in western Asia, and much later in most other parts of the world.
如果考古学只研究过去，那么它有什么是区别于历史学的呢?就最广义的意义而言，考古学是人类学的一个方面，同时也是历史学的一部分，在这里的历史是指3百万年前人类产生以来的所有人类历史。实际上，在那段漫长的岁月里，超过99%的时间，考古学这一研究过去的物质文化的学科是惟一有意义的信息资源。传统的历史始于公元前3000左右西亚的文字记载，而世界的其他大多数地区的历史要比这晚很多。
A commonly drawn distinction is between pre-history, i.e. the period before written records — and history in the narrow sense, meaning the study of the past using written evidence. To archaeology, which studies all cultures and periods, whether with or without writing, the distinction between history and pre-history is a convenient dividing line that recognises the importance of the written word, but in no way lessens the importance of the useful information contained in oral histories.
人们一般是这样把人类的历史一分为二的：史前(即文字记录出现以前的时期)和狭义的历史即有文字见证的这段历史。对于研究所有文化和所有时期的考古学而言，不管有没有文字，历史和史前的区别只是承认文字重要性的传统分界线，绝不会减少包含在口述史中有用信息的重要性。
Since the aim of archaeology is the understanding of humankind, it is a humanistic study, and since it deals with the human past, it is a historical discipline. But it differs from the study of written history in a fundamental way. The material the archaeologist finds does not tell us directly what to think. Historical records make statements, offer opinions and pass judgements. The objects the archaeologists discover, on the other hand, tell us nothing directly in themselves. In this respect, the practice of the archaeologist is rather like that of the scientist, who collects data, conducts experiments, formulates a hypothesis, tests the hypothesis against more data, and then, in conclusion, devises a model that seems best to summarise the pattern observed in the data. The archaeologist has to develop a picture of the past, just as the scientist has to develop a coherent view of the natural world.
由于考古学的目的是理解人类，所以它是一个人文主义的学科。而且，由于考古学研究的是人类的过去，所以它是一个有关历史的学科，但是它在根本上区别于文字历史的研究。考古学家发现的物质不会直接告诉我们去思考什么。历史记载是一种声明，意见及评判。在另一方面，考古学家发现的物体本身并未直接吿诉我们什么。从这个角度来说，考古学家的实践更像科学家的实践。科学家收集数据，进行实验，提出假设，用更多的数据验证假设，然后得出结论，设计模型，而这一模型看起来最适合总结在数据中观察到的模式。而考古学家需要描画出关于过去的一幅图画，正如科学家需要建立一个关于自然世界的连贯的思维框架。
Passage3
参考译文
The Problem of Scarce Resources
稀缺资源的问题
Section A
The problem of how health-care resources should be allocated or apportioned, so that they are distributed in both the most just and most efficient way, is not a new one. Every health system in an economically developed society is faced with the need to decide (either formally or informally) what proportion of the community’s total resources should be spent on health-care; how resources are to be apportioned; what diseases and disabilities and which forms of treatment are to be given priority; which members of the community are to be given special consideration in respect of their health needs; and which forms of treatment are the most cost-effective.
A
卫生保健资源应该如何分配或指定以保证它们能以最公平、最有效的方式分布，这个问题已经不算新了。在经济发达的社会，每一个卫生系统都需要做出决定(正式或非正式)：在卫生保健方面投入资源应占社会全部资源的多大比例?这些资源应该如何分配?什么样的疾病和残疾以及什么形式的治疗应该享有优先权?社会中的哪部分成员应该在卫生需求方面给予特别关照?什么形式的治疗是最节省成本的?
Section B
What is new is that, from the 1950s onwards, there have been certain general changes in outlook about the finitude of resources as a whole and of health-care resources in particular, as well as more specific changes regarding the clientele of health-care resources and the cost to the community of those resources. Thus, in the 1950s and 1960s, there emerged an awareness in Western societies that resources for the provision of fossil fuel energy were finite and exhaustible and that the capacity of nature or the environment to sustain economic development and population was also finite. In other words, we became aware of the obvious fact that there were ‘limits to growth’. The new consciousness that there were also severe limits to health-care resources was part of this general revelation of the obvious. Looking back, it now seems quite incredible that in the national health systems that emerged in many countries in the years immediately after the 1939-45 World War, it was assumed without question that all the basic health needs of any community could be satisfied, at least in principle; the ‘invisible hand’ of economic progress would provide.
B
新近的发展是，自20世纪50年代以来，人们看待资源有限性及卫生资源有限性的态度都有了总体的改变，另外关于使用卫生资源的用户和社区所需做出的开支方面也有了具体的变化。在20世纪50年代和60年代，西方社会意识到：化石燃料能源的供应资源是有限的，并能被耗尽，自然界或环境维持经济发展和人口增长的能力也是有限的。换句话说，我们开始意识到一个显而易见的事实，就是增长是有限制的。卫生保健资源同样也会有一些限制的新观念就是这个显而易见的亊实的一部分。回溯起来，有一个观点现在看来不可思议：在1939年到1945年的世界大战结束后的几年内，很多国家建立了国民卫生体系，人们认为这样的国民卫生体系至少在理论上能够满足任何人群的所有基础卫生需求，经济增长中“看不见的手”将提供一切所需。
Section C
However, at exactly the same time as this new realisation of the finite character of health-care resources was sinking in, an awareness of a contrary kind was developing in Western societies: that people have a basic right to health-care as a necessary condition of a proper human life. Like education, political and legal processes and institutions, public order, communication, transport and money supply, health-care came to be seen as one of the fundamental social facilities necessary for people to exercise their other rights as autonomous human beings. People are not in a position to exercise personal liberty and to be self-determining if they are poverty-stricken, or deprived of basic education, or do not live within a context of law and order. In the same way, basic health-care is a condition of the exercise of autonomy.
C
然而，就在这种认为卫生资源是有限的新思想销声匿迹的同时，一种相反的思想在西方社会发展起来了。这种思想认为享受卫生保健是人们的一项基本权利，而这种权利是人们正常生活的必要条件。像教育、、法律程序、机构、公共秩序、沟通、交通和金钱供给一样，卫生保健被看作是人们行使作为自治人类的权利的必需的一项基本社会的设施。如果为贫穷而苦恼，或者被剥夺了基础教育，或者没有生活在法律法规的框架下，那么人们就不能拥有个人自由，自主行事。同样，基础卫生保健也是人实现自由的一个条件。
Section D
Although the language of ‘rights’ sometimes leads to confusion, by the late 1970s it was recognised in most societies that people have a right to health-care (though there has been considerable resistance in the United States to the idea that there is a formal right to health-care). It is also accepted that this right generates an obligation or duty for the state to ensure that adequate health-care resources are provided out of the public purse. The state has no obligation to provide a health-care system itself, but to ensure that such a system is provided. Put another way, basic health-care is now recognised as a ‘public good’, rather than a ‘private good’ that one is expected to buy for oneself. As the 1976 declaration of the World Health Organisation put it: ‘The enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health is one of the fundamental rights of every human being without distinction of race, religion, political belief, economic or social condition.’ As has just been remarked, in a liberal society basic health is seen as one of the indispensable conditions for the exercise of personal autonomy.
D
虽然权利这个词有时在语言上会混淆，但是到20世纪70年代晚期，大多数社会都承认人们有享受卫生保健的权利(虽然在美国，人们享有卫生保健的正式权利这一观点受到了相当大的抵触)。还有一个观点也是被普遍接受的：这种权利使得国家有义务有责任确保从公共预算中划拨足够的资金提供卫生服务。国家本身没有义务去建立卫生健康体系，但是有义务去保证这样一个体系的存在。换句话说，基础卫生保健是一种公共产品，而不是需要花钱去购买的私人产品。世界卫生组织在1976年的宣言中写道;“享受可能达到的最髙标准的健康是每一个人的基本权利，不因种族、宗教、、经济或社会情境而异。”正如刚才所提到的，在一个自由的社会，基础卫生是行使个人自治的一个必不可少的条件。
Section E
Just at the time when it became obvious that health-care resources could not possibly meet the demands being made upon them, people were demanding that their fundamental right to health-care be satisfied by the state. The second set of more specific changes that have led to the present concern about the distribution of health-care resources stems from the dramatic rise in health costs in most OECD1 countries, accompanied by large-scale demographic and social changes which have meant, to take one example, that elderly people are now major (and relatively very expensive) consumers of health-care resources. Thus in OECD countries as a whole, health costs increased from 3.8% of GDP2 in 1960 to 7% of GDP in 1980, and it has been predicted that the proportion of health costs to GDP will continue to increase. (In the US the current figure is about 12% of GDP, and in Australia about 7.8% of GDP.)
E
当卫生保健资源不能满足需求的这一现象比较明显的时候，人们要求国家满足他们享有卫生保健的这一基本权利。大规模的人口数量及社会的变化导致大多数经济合作发展组织的国家的卫生费用急剧增加，这再一次引发了一系列改变，使人们开始关注医疗卫生资源的分配问题。例如，老年人现在是最主要的(相对来说也是最昂贵的)卫生健康资源消费者。在欧共体总体中，健康资源的消费从I960年占GDP的3.8%到1980年的7%,而且这一增长趋势将会持续。(在美国，目前的数字是占GDP的12%，澳大利亚是7.8%)。
As a consequence, during the 1980s a kind of doomsday scenario (analogous to similar doomsday extrapolations about energy needs and fossil fuels or about population increases) was projected by health administrators, economists and politicians. In this scenario, ever-rising health costs were matched against static or declining resources.
结果，在20世纪80年代在各国卫生部长、，比如关于能源需求和燃料问题，或是人口增长问题)在这样的论调中，他们认为资源是稳定的或是减少的，而医疗费用却是不断上涨的。