今年翻译考题的出题思路与往年不同，往年都是翻译一篇文章中五句长难句，相对容易些，而今年则翻译这篇文章中的前两段，且考题也只提供那两个段落，虽然在信息量上大抵相等，但难度却大了许多，原因在于：由原来句内衔接的考察，转向句与句之间衔接的考察，也就是语篇衔接能力的考察；由句内结构的考察，转向篇章信息紧凑度的考察，也就是信息整体把握能力的考察，也可以说是信息焦点的考察；由原来有规律可循的句子翻译，转向漫无边际的语篇翻译。

就当前情况而言，语篇翻译是大势所趋。几年前，不论英语专业还是非英语专业考试，句子翻译似乎占翻译考察的半壁江山，至少是半壁江山，就连英语专业硕士入学考试都以句子翻译作为考察点，但随着语篇语言学和语篇翻译研究的出现，句子翻译渐渐地退出了各种考试。非英语专业考研英语翻译考察，则选择相对容易接受的语篇中划线语句翻译的形式，但这种形式只能是一种过渡形式，语篇翻译考察是迟早的事情，因为现实中极少出现只言片语翻译的情况，特别是对即将入门的硕士研究生而言。

就本质而言，语篇翻译也并非是洪水猛兽。一个语篇，小到一个词，大到一部著作，中等的就是由几个段落组成的，其中有几个段落构成的语篇，通常是各类考试的出题点，因此只要把握住每个语篇中段落构成的句子，以句子作为翻译操作的切入点，道理是一样的，只是多了一道工序，即句子与句子之间需要添加起衔接作用的连词，以便语篇行文连贯，信息紧凑。

随着句子翻译转变为语篇翻译，阅卷的采分点也随之发生改变，由原来句子翻译中的采分点，转向以信息传达、语言表达、语篇衔接等采分点。

2012年考研翻译试题同本年的阅读题大体一样，也属于经济类题材，出自《经济学家》（The Economist）2011年5月26日“经济学焦点”（Economics Focus，或曰“经济聚焦”）栏目的一篇题为“人才外流还是人才挽留”（Drain or Gain?）的专业文章，兹引录如下：

Economics focus

Drain or gain?

Poor countries can end up benefiting when their brightest citizens emigrate

May 26th 2011

WHEN people in rich countries worry about migration, they tend to think of low-paid incomers who compete for jobs as construction workers, dishwashers or farmhands. When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest decamping to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in the developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada and Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.

Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. By some estimates, two-thirds of highly educated Cape Verdeans live outside the country. A big survey of Indian households carried out in 2004 asked about family members who had moved abroad. It found that nearly 40% of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3% of all Indians over the age of 25. This “brain drain” has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.

Many now take issue with this view (see article). Several economists reckon that the brain-drain hypothesis fails to account for the effects of remittances, for the beneficial effects of returning migrants, and for the possibility that being able to migrate to greener pastures induces people to get more education. Some argue that once these factors are taken into account, an exodus of highly skilled people could turn out to be a net benefit to the countries they leave. Recent studies of migration from countries as far apart as Ghana, Fiji, India and Romania have found support for this “brain gain” idea.

The most obvious way in which migrants repay their homelands is through remittances. Workers from developing countries remitted a total of $325 billion in 2010, according to the World Bank. In Lebanon, Lesotho, Nepal, Tajikistan and a few other places, remittances are more than 20% of GDP. A skilled migrant may earn several multiples of what his income would have been had he stayed at home. A study of Romanian migrants to America found that the average emigrant earned almost $12,000 a year more in America than he would have done in his native land, a huge premium for someone from a country where income per person is around $7,500 (at market exchange rates).

It is true that many skilled migrants have been educated and trained partly at the expense of their (often cash-strapped) governments. Some argue that poor countries should therefore rethink how much they spend on higher education. Indians, for example, often debate whether their government should continue to subsidise the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), its elite engineering schools, when large numbers of IIT graduates end up in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street. But a new study of remittances sent home by Ghanaian migrants suggests that on average they transfer enough over their working lives to cover the amount spent on educating them several times over. The study finds that once remittances are taken into account, the cost of education would have to be 5.6 times the official figure to make it a losing proposition for Ghana.

There are more subtle ways in which the departure of some skilled people may aid poorer countries. Some emigrants would have been jobless had they stayed. Studies have found that unemployment rates among young people with college degrees in countries like Morocco and Tunisia are several multiples of those among the poorly educated, perhaps because graduates are more demanding. Migration may lead to a more productive pairing of people’s skills and jobs. Some of the benefits of this improved match then flow back to the migrant’s home country, most directly via remittances.

The possibility of emigration may even have beneficial effects on those who choose to stay, by giving people in poor countries an incentive to invest in education. A study of Cape Verdeans finds that an increase of ten percentage points in young people’s perceived probability of emigrating raises the probability of their completing secondary school by around eight points. Another study looks at Fiji. A series of coups beginning in 1987 was seen by Fijians of Indian origin as permanently harming their prospects in the country by limiting their share of government jobs and political power. This set off a wave of emigration. Yet young Indians in Fiji became more likely to go to university even as the outlook at home dimmed, in part because Australia, Canada and New Zealand, three of the top destinations for Fijians, put more emphasis on attracting skilled migrants. Since some of those who got more education ended up staying, the skill levels of the resident Fijian population soared.

Passport to riches

Migrants can also affect their home country directly. In a recent book about the Indian diaspora, Devesh Kapur of the University of Pennsylvania argues that Indians in Silicon Valley helped shape the regulatory structure for India’s home-grown venture-capital industry. He also argues that these people helped Indian software companies break into the American market by vouching for their quality. Finally, migrants may return home, often with skills that would have been hard to pick up had they never gone abroad. The study of Romanian migrants found that returnees earned an average of 12-14% more than similar people who had stayed at home. Letting educated people go where they want looks like the brainy option.

http://www.economist.com/node/18741763

引文中划线段落为2012年翻译考试的原文出处。为便于考生参考，本解析仍以考题语段为主，给出参考译文：

原文：

When people in developing countries worry about migration, they are usually concerned at the prospect of their best and brightest departure to Silicon Valley or to hospitals and universities in the developed world. These are the kind of workers that countries like Britain, Canada and Australia try to attract by using immigration rules that privilege college graduates.

Lots of studies have found that well-educated people from developing countries are particularly likely to emigrate. A big survey of Indian households in 2004 found that nearly 40%of emigrants had more than a high-school education, compared with around 3.3%of all Indians over the age of 25.This "brain drain "has long bothered policymakers in poor countries. They fear that it hurts their economies, depriving them of much-needed skilled workers who could have taught at their universities, worked in their hospitals and come up with clever new products for their factories to make.

参考译文：

身处发展中国家，为迁居而忧虑之时，人们通常关注的是去往美国硅谷，或发达国家的医院和高校的美好前景。这类人往往是英、加、澳等国，采用有益于高校毕业生的移民政策，竞相争取的对象。

众多研究业已表明，发展中国家饱受教育的优秀人士，移民倾向较大。2004年，一项基于印度家庭的大型调查表明，近40%的移居者为高中以上学历，该教育水平相当于印度25岁以上人口的3%左右。人才流失一直困扰着发展中国家的决策者，他们怕人才流失会殃及国家经济，夺走技术紧缺人才，他们可任教于高校，可任职于医院，可给工厂发明新产品。（贾洪伟拟译）