2019年翻译资格考试中级笔译模拟试题十

　　汉语常被认为是一种非常古老的语言。从某种意义上说，这种说法不免失之偏颇。人类所有的语言都可追溯到朦胧的史前时期，但目前我们还无法确定这些语言是否都同宗同源。//五千年前华夏祖先说汉语的方法同英语人士的祖先说英语的方式大致相似。而从另一种意义上说，汉语确实也是一种很古老的语言。今天所存留下来的最早的汉字已有近四千年的历史 .// 这些文字均为甲骨雕文。大部分铭文为神谕圣旨，内容大都与政治事件和宗教活动有关，有些则是关于天气和战争的记录。// 汉语有丰富的古代文字作品，源远流长，远非其他一种语言的文字可与之媲美。一些最古老的文字属象形文字。//

　　参考答案

　　Chinese is often termed a very old language. In a sense such a statement is misleading. All human languages go back to the dim uncertainty of prehistory， and at present we have no way of knowing for sure whether or not they can all be traced back to the same root.// Five thousand years ago the ancestors of Chinese people spoke an early form of Chinese language in much the same way that the ancestors of English-speaking people were using an early form of the English language. In a sense， however， Chinese is indeed a very old language. The earliest written forms of Chinese in existence today date back nearly 4，000 years.// These writings are incisions on bones and tortoise shell. Most of the inscriptions are oracular， dealing mostly with political and religious events， or with weather or warfare.// Chinese has an abundance of ancient writings that reach back continuously in time further than the writings of any other language in the world. Some of the earliest written Chinese characters were quite pictographic.//