2015考研英语冲刺之翻译模拟练习题（3）

　　Economics, as we know it, is the social science concerned with the production, distribution, exchange, and consumption of goods and services. Economists focus on the way in which individuals, groups, business enterprises, and governments seek to achieve efficiently any economic objective they select. (1) Other fields of study also contribute to this knowledge: Psychology and ethics try to explain how objectives are formed, history records changes in human objectives, and sociology interprets human behavior in social contexts.

　　Standard economics can be divided into two major fields. (2) The first, price theory or microeconomics, explains how the interplay of supply and demand in competitive markets creates a multitude of individual prices, wage rates, profit margins, and rental changes. Microeconomics assumes that people behave rationally. Consumers try to spend their income in ways that give them as much pleasure as possible. As economists say, they maximize utility. For their part, entrepreneurs seek as much profit as they can extract from their operations.

　　The second field, macroeconomics, deals with modern explanations of national income and employment. Macroeconomics dates from the book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1935), by the British economist John Maynard Keynes. His explanation of prosperity and depression centers on the total or aggregate demand for goods and services by consumers, business investors, and governments, (3) Because, according to Keynes, inadequate total demand increases unemployment, the indicated cure is either more investment by businesses or more spending and consequently larger budget deficits by government.

　　Economic issues have occupied people’s minds throughout the ages. (4) Aristotle and Plato in ancient Greece wrote about problems of wealth, property, and trade, both of whom were prejudiced against commerce, feeling that to live by trade was undesirable. The Romans borrowed their economic ideas from the Greeks and showed the same contempt for trade. (5) During the Middle Ages the economic ideas of the Roman Catholic church were expressed in the law of the church, which condemned the taking of interest for money loaned and regarded commerce as inferior to agriculture.

　　Economics as a subject of modern study, distinguishable from moral philosophy and politics, dates from the work, Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776), by the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith. Mercantilism and physiocracy were precursors of the classical economics of Smith and his 19th-century successors.

　　答案

　　1.其他领域的研究也有助于对此的理解：心理学和伦理学试图解释目标是如何形成的，历史记录着人们所追求的目标的变化，社会学则从社会环境的角度来解释人们的行为。

　　2.第一个领域，价格理论或微观经济学，解释在竞争的市场中供需间的相互作用是怎样导致了大量的个别价格、工资率、利润空间和租金的变化。

　　3.因为，按照凯恩斯的理论，不充分的总体需求会增加失业，建议的解决方式是企业扩大投资或政府增加开支，继而增加预算赤字。

　　4.古希腊的亚里士多德和柏图都在著作中谈到财富、财产和贸易问题，两人都对商业持有偏见，认为靠生意来谋生是不足取的。

　　5.在中世纪，罗马天主教会的经济学思想表达在其教法中，教法谴责从借贷中获利的行为，并认为商业地位劣于农业。

　　总体分析

　　本文主要介绍了经济学的研究发展历史。

　　第一段：经济学的定义及研究对象。

　　第二、三段：经济学的两大领域：微观经济学和宏观经济学。

　　第四、五段：经济学研究的古代和现代理论。