2019年翻译资格考试中级笔译练习题：孤儿院不利于儿童智力发展

　　孤儿院不利于儿童智力发展

　　心理学家一直认为，在孤儿院这种机构长大的孩子，智力的发展会受到影响，但是他们从未找到直接的证据来证明这一点。现在，他们找到了。在罗马尼亚，进行了一项很特别的实验，历经数年，对家庭领养和机构收养两种方式对孩子智力的影响进行了比较研究。

　　该研究发现，被领养的稚童，4岁时平均智商明显高于在孤儿院呆了4年的同龄儿童，而且差距很大——高达8点。研究还表明，孩子越早被家庭领养，智商越高，而2岁后才从孤儿院进入家庭的，虽然情况因人而异，但一般而言，智力发展不大。但是，这两组儿童的智商均明显低于由亲生父母抚养的一个对照组。

　　有些发展心理学家对此项研究及其赞助人提出了尖锐的批评，认为他们研究的问题，答案是不言自明的。但以前对孤儿院收养和家庭领养的对比实验本身都存在严重缺陷，主要在于，谁也不知道那些进孤儿院的孩子与进家庭的孩子是否有什么不为人知的差异。专家称，通过这次新的研究，人们将不再怀疑机构收养的弊端，——而且能促使人们赶紧在法律允许的国家领养孩子。

　　“多数人凭直觉就知道，生活在家庭里比生活在孤儿院好，”威斯康辛大学一位没有参加过此项研究的心理学家说道。“但其他国家的政府并不喜欢别人教他们如何根据直觉处理政策问题。”“这研究重要性在于，”他认为，“它给出了客观数据，说明如果你同意跨国领养，那么就请加快进度，让孩子们快些进入家庭。”近年，许多国家，包括罗马尼亚，禁止或严格限制美国家庭领养当地儿童。而在其他国家，领养手续可以拖上好几个月。2006年，美国人共从海外领养了20679名儿童，其中超过一半来自中国、危地马拉和俄罗斯。

　　90年代末，研究人员接触过罗马尼亚官员，希望在那里进行些研究。当时罗马尼亚正在设法改善孤儿院的环境。90年代早期用条件极差的仓库收容弃儿的做法，曾让罗马尼亚的孤儿院臭名远扬。研究人员获准开始追踪观察136个弃婴。他们对孩子做成长测试，然后随机抽取，有些送往布加勒斯特的六大孤儿院收养，有些则送往经过仔细筛选的领养家庭。能为孩子提供“高质量的照料服务”。

　　在54个月后进行的智商测试中，被家庭领养的孩子平均智商为81，而继续留在孤儿院的孩子则为73。研究者发现，最早被家庭领养的孩子智力成长幅度最大。而对照组中在亲生家庭成长的同龄儿童，平均智商达到109。“全世界不同的国家、以及同一国家不同的机构和环境，都千差万别，”“但我想从这些研究结果中可以把它们分为许多不同的种类，包括收养机构、暴力家庭，或者不合适的领养家庭。”

　　在设定研究计划时，研究人员提出了一个关于把孩子关到孤儿院的伦理问题，这种做法被疑对孩子有害。“如果政府考虑用其他方案替代孤儿院收容制度，那说明政府已经认定替代方案优于现行制度。”研究者们这样写道。

　　专家认为，机构收容中的任何共同因素都可能有延缓或阻碍智力发展的作用，包括严厉的控制和对孩子个人习惯和需求差异的漠视。最糟糕的是，孩子们和护理员接触非常有限。

　　在一些孤儿院里，一位护理员要同时照顾20多个孩子。这些证据说明，孩子们需要及时的关爱，需要大人理解他们独特的需求，知道他们何时饥饿何时痛苦，待他们足够大了，会放手让他们四处乱爬乱摸，并确保他们的安全。

　　参考译文

　　Orphanages Stunt Mental Growth By BENEDICT CAREY

　　Psychologists have long believed that growing up in an institution like an orphanage stunts children's mental development but have never had direct evidence to back it up. Now they do, from an extraordinary years-long experiment in Romania that compared the effects of foster care with those of institutional child-rearing.

　　The study found that toddlers placed in foster families developed significantly higher I. Q.'s by age , on average, than peers who spent those years in an orphanage. The difference was large - eight points - and the study found that the earlier children joined a foster family, the better they did. Children who moved from institutional care to families after age made few gains on average, though the experience varied from child to child. Both groups, however, had significantly lower I. Q.'s than a comparison group of children raised by their biological families.

　　Some developmental psychologists had sharply criticized the study and its sponsor for researching a question whose answer seemed obvious. But previous attempts to compare institutional and foster care suffered from serious flaws, mainly because no one knew whether children who landed in orphanages were different in unknown ways from those in foster care.

　　Experts said the new study should put to rest any doubts about the harmful effects of Institutionalization _ and might help speed up adoptions from countries that still allow them. " Most of us take it as almost intuitive that being in a family is better for humans than being in an orphanage," said a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin, who was not involved in the research. "But other governments don't like to be told how to handle policy issues based on intuition." "What makes this study important," he went on, "is that it gives objective data to say that if you're going to allow international adoptions, then it's a good idea to speed things up and get kids into families quickly. In recent years many countries, including Romania, have banned or sharply restricted American families from adopting local children. In other countries, adoption procedures can drag on for many months. In 2006, Americans adopted 20,679 children from abroad, more than half of them from China, Guatemala and Russia.

　　The researchers approached Romanian officials in the late 1990s about conducting the study.

　　The country had been working to improve conditions at its orphanages, which became infamous in the early 1990s as Dickensian warehouses for abandoned children. After gaining clearance from the government, the researchers began to track 136 children who had been abandoned at birth.

　　They administered developmental tests to the children, and then randomly assigned them to continue at one of Bucharest's six large orphanages, or join an adoptive family. The foster families were carefully screened and provided "very high-quality care".

　　On I. Q. tests taken at 54, months, the foster children scored an average of 81, compared to 73 among the children who continued in an institution .The children who moved into foster care at the youngest ages tended to show the most improvement, the researchers found. The comparison group of youngsters who grew up in their biological families had an average I. Q. of 109 at the same age. "Institutions and environments vary enormously across the world and within countries," "but I think these findings generalize to many situations, from kids in institutions to those in abusive households and even bad foster care arrangements." In setting up the study, the researchers directly addressed the ethical issue of assign/ng children to institutional care, which was suspected to be harmful. "If a government is to consider alternatives to institutional care for abandoned children, it must know how the alternative compares to the standard care it provides." they wrote.

　　Any number of factors common to institutions could work to delay or blunt intellectual development, experts say: the regimentation, the indifference to individual differences in children's habits and needs; and most of all, the limited access to caregivers, who in some institutions can be responsible for more than 20 children at a time. The evidence seems to say that for humans, kids need a lot of responsive care giving, an adult who recognizes their distinct cry, knows when they're hungry or in pain, and gives them the opportunity to crawl around and handle different things, safely, when they're ready.