剑桥雅思13Test3阅读passage1真题翻译

剑桥雅思13Test3阅读passage1-The coconut palm椰子树

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.

For millennia, the coconut has been central to the lives of Polynesian and Asian peoples. In the western world, on the other hand, coconuts have always been exotic and unusual, sometimes rare. The Italian merchant traveller Marco Polo apparently saw coconuts in South Asia in the late 13th century, and among the mid-14th-century travel writings of Sir John Mandeville there is mention of ‘great Notes of Ynde’ (great Nuts of India). Today, images of palm-fringed tropical beaches are cliches in the west to sell holidays, chocolate bars, fizzy drinks and even romance.

数千年来,椰子在波利尼西亚和亚洲各民族人的生活中一直十分重要。但在西方,椰子却一直是外来的、不同寻常的,有时甚至十分罕见。13世纪末,意大利远途商客马可·波罗在南亚见到了椰子。14世纪中期,在约翰·曼德维尔爵士的游记中提到了“ greatNuts of ynde”(即“印度大坚果”)。如今,在西方推销度假胜地、巧克力、汽水甚至贩售浪漫时,棕榈树环绕的热带海滩都成了司空见惯的形象。

Typically, we envisage coconuts as brown cannonballs that, when opened, provide sweet white flesh. But we see only part of the fruit and none of the plant from which they come. The coconut palm has a smooth, slender, grey trunk, up to 30 metres tall. This is an important source of timber for building houses, and is increasingly being used as a replacement for endangered hardwoods in the furniture construction industry. The trunk is surmounted by a rosette of leaves, each of which may be up to six metres long. The leaves have hard veins in their centres which, in many parts of the world, are used as brushes after the green part of the leaf has been stripped away. Immature coconut flowers are tightly clustered together among the leaves at the top of the trunk. The flower stems may be tapped for their sap to produce a drink, and the sap can also be reduced by boiling to produce a type of sugar used for cooking.

我们常常把椰子想象成棕色的炮弹,打开时里面呈现出甜美的白色果肉。但我们只见到长出来的水果部分,而未曾认识它所赖以生长的植株。椰子树的灰色树干光滑细长,可以长到30米高。它是建造房屋的重要木料,并且在家具制造行业,正逐步取代濒危的硬木品种。它的树干顶部簇拥着棕榈叶,每片可长达6米。这些叶片的中央生有硬质的叶脉。在世界很多地方,人们会去掉叶子绿色的部分,将剩下的部分制成刷子。尚未成熟的椰子花苞会紧紧地簇拥在树干顶部的树叶中间。人们会提取花茎的汁液来做成饮品,也可以煮沸后做成一种烹饪使用的糖。

Coconut palms produce as many as seventy fruits per year, weighing more than a kilogram each. The wall of the fruit has three layers: a waterproof outer layer, a fibrous middle layer and a hard, inner layer. The thick fibrous middle layer produces coconut fibre, ‘coir’，which has numerous uses and is particularly important in manufacturing ropes. The woody innermost layer, the shell, with its three prominent ‘eyes，，surrounds the seed. An important product obtained from the shell is charcoal, which is widely used in various industries as well as in the home as a cooking fuel. When broken in half, the shells are also used as bowls in many parts of Asia.

椰树每年可长出多达70个椰果,每个都超过1公斤。椰子壁分为3层:防水的外果皮、纤维层的中果皮、质地坚硬的内果皮。厚厚的中果皮纤维可以做成椰子纤维,即“椰衣”,它有很多用途,尤其是用来做绳索。坚硬的最内层果皮即椰壳上带有3个突出的“眼晴”,它们围绕着种子。椰壳很重要的一项用途是做木炭,除了在家中用作烹饪燃料以外,这种木炭还广泛用于其他行业。在亚洲许多地方,人们还把椰壳剖成两半当碗用。

Inside the shell are the nutrients (endosperm) needed by the developing seed. Initially, the endosperm is a sweetish liquid, coconut water, which is enjoyed as a drink, but also provides the hormones which encourage other plants to grow more rapidly and produce higher yields. As the fruit matures, the coconut water gradually solidifies to form the brilliant white, fat-rich, edible flesh or meat. Dried coconut flesh, ‘copra，，is made into coconut oil and coconut milk, which are widely used in cooking in different parts of the world, as well as in cosmetics. A derivative of coconut fat, glycerine, acquired strategic importance in a quite different sphere, as Alfred Nobel introduced the world to his nitroglycerine-based invention: dynamite.

榔壳内是种子发育所需的营养物质(即胚乳)。最初,胚乳是一种甘甜的液体,即椰子汁,它可以作为饮品享用,同时也提供一种激素,可以促使其他植物更快速地生长并提高产量。随着果实的成熟,椰子汁逐渐凝固,形成亮白色、富含脂肪的可食用果肉或椰肉风干的椰肉即“椰仁干”可以制成椰子油和椰奶,它广泛应用于化妆品及世界各地的烹饪中。阿尔弗雷德·诺贝尔发明了以硝酸甘油为原料的炸药后,椰子油的衍生品甘油便在一个完全不同的领域起着战略性作用。

Their biology would appear to make coconuts the great maritime voyagers and coastal colonizers of the plant world. The large, energy-rich fruits are able to float in water and tolerate salt, but cannot remain viable indefinitely; studies suggest after about 110 days at sea they are no longer able to germinate. Literally cast onto desert island shores, with little more than sand to grow in and exposed to the full glare of the tropical sun, coconut seeds are able to germinate and root. The air pocket in the seed, created as the endosperm solidifies, protects the embryo. In addition, the fibrous fruit wall that helped it to float during the voyage stores moisture that can be taken up by the roots of the coconut seedling as it starts to grow.

椰子的生物特征使其成为植物界伟大的海上漂流能手和沿海入侵者。这些富含能量的大型椰子既能漂浮又能耐盐,但不能永远保持活性。研究表明,椰子在海上漂浮约110天后,就无法发芽了。而毫不夸张地说,将椰子种子扔在不毛的岛屿海滨,不需要比沙土好多少的土壤,哪怕有热带阳光的暴晒,它依然能够生根发芽。因为在胚乳固化时种子中形成的气囊保护着胚胎。此外,有助于椰子在漂流期间漂浮的纤维壁能储存水分,可用于椰子幼苗开始生长时的根部所需。

There have been centuries of academic debate over the origins of the coconut. There were no coconut palms in West Africa, the Caribbean or the east coast of the Americas before the voyages of the European explorers Vasco da Gama and Columbus in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. 16th century trade and human migration patterns reveal that Arab traders and European sailors are likely to have moved coconuts from South and Southeast Asia to Africa and then across the Atlantic to the east coast of America. But the origin of coconuts discovered along the west coast of America by 16th century sailors has been the subject of centuries of discussion. Two diametrically opposed origins have been proposed: that they came from Asia, or that they were native to America. Both suggestions have problems.In Asia, there is a large degree of coconut diversity and evidence of millennia of human use 一 but there are no relatives growing in the wild. In America, there are close coconut relatives, but no evidence that coconuts are indigenous. These problems have led to the intriguing suggestion that coconuts originated on coral islands in the Pacific and were dispersed from there.

数个世纪以来,学术界一直在争论揶子的起源。在15世纪末和16世纪初欧洲探险家瓦斯科·达·伽马和哥伦布开始航海活动之前,西非、加勒比海以及美洲东海岸还没有槨子树。16世纪的贸易和人口迁移活动表明,阿拉伯商人和欧洲水手很可能从南亚和东南亚将椰子带到了非洲,然后穿过大西洋到达美洲东海岸。但是,对于16世纪水手们在美洲西海岸发现的椰子起源何处,几个世纪以来一直存在争议。人们已经提出了两个截然相反的起源说:一是它们来自亚洲,另一个是它们原产于美洲。这两种说法都存在问题、在亚洲,榔子种类繁多,且大量证据表明那里的人们使用椰子已有千年历史,但在野外还没有发现榔子的同系植物。而在美洲有榔子的同系植物,但没有证据表明椰子是本土物种、上述问题引发了一个有趣的观点,即椰子起源于太平洋的珊瑚岛,并从那里扩散到世界各地。

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