剑桥雅思15Test1阅读Passage3原文及翻译：什么是探索?

每年年中左右，国内“雅思图”都要翘首期盼一件重要大事的来临:雅思真题的发布。无论是备考初期、后期,甚至已经考过雅思的学生，也无论是学生还是老师,都会密切关注新题的发布。今年6月初,《剑15》如约而至、作为国内雅思培训的领军机构，新航道也时间为考生们带来了这太《剑桥雅思真题全解15:学术类》(以下简称《剑15全解》)。

本次我们盛情邀请了新航道全国冬分校最的学科带头人来组织编写这本《剑15全解》。其中，对于以客观选择题为主的听力与阅读部分，仍然请各校团队进行解题思路方面的指导;对于以主观题为主的写作与口语部分，我们则邀请了官方认证考官撰写地道的高分范文，作为官方范文之外的补充。下文中详细整理了剑桥雅思15Test1阅读Passage3原文及翻译：什么是探索?，一起来看一下吧！

剑桥15电子版本，请扫描二维码，暗号“优化+剑桥15全解”，会有老师联系并发送资料。

1剑桥雅思15Test1阅读Passage3原文

What is exploration?

We are all explorers. Our desire to discover, and then share that new-found knowledge, is part of what makes us human ——indeed, this has played an important part in our success as a species. Long before the first caveman slumped down beside the fire and grunted news that there were plenty of wildebeest over yonder, our ancestors had learnt the value of sending out scouts to investigate the unknown. This questing nature of ours undoubtedly helped our species spread around the globe, just as it nowadays no doubt helps the last nomadic Penan maintain their existence in the depleted forests of Borneo, and a visitor negotiate the subways of New York.

Over the years, we've come to think of explorers as a peculiar breed - different from the rest of us, different from those of us who are merely 'well travelled', even; and perhaps there is a type of person more suited to seeking out the new, a type of caveman more inclined to risk venturing out. That, however, doesn't take away from the fact that we all have this enquiring instinct, even today; and that in all sorts of professions ——whether artist, marine biologist or astronomer ——borders of the unknown are being tested each day.

Thomas Hardy set some of his novels in Egdon Heath, a fictional area of uncultivated land, and used the landscape to suggest the desires and fears of his characters. He is delving into matters we all recognise because they are common to humanity. This is surely an act of exploration, and into a world as remote as the author chooses. Explorer and travel writer Peter Fleming talks of the moment when the explorer returns to the existence he has left behind with his loved ones. The traveller 'who has for weeks or months seen himself only as a puny and irrelevant alien crawling laboriously over a country in which he has no roots and no background, suddenly encounters his other self, a relatively solid figure, with a place in the minds of certain people'.

In this book about the exploration of the earth's surface, I have confined myself to those whose travels were real and who also aimed at more than personal discovery. But that still left me with another problem: the word 'explorer' has become associated with a past era. We think back to a golden age, as if exploration peaked somehow in the 19th century ——as if the process of discovery is now on the decline, though the truth is that we have named only one and a half million of this planet's species, and there may be more than 10 million —— and that's not including bacteria. We have studied only 5 per cent of the species we know. We have scarcely mapped the ocean floors, and know even less about ourselves; we fully understand the workings of only 10 per cent of our brains.

Here is how some of today's 'explorers' define the word. Ran Fiennes, dubbed the 'greatest living explorer', said, 'An explorer is someone who has done something that no human has done before - and also done something scientifically useful.' Chris Bonington, a leading mountaineer, felt exploration was to be found in the act of physically touching the unknown: 'You have to have gone somewhere new.' Then Robin Hanbury-Tenison, a campaigner on behalf of remote so-called 'tribal' peoples, said, 'A traveller simply records information about some far-off world, and reports back; but an explorer changes the world? Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed Arabia's Empty Quarter in 1946, and belongs to an era of unmechanised travel now lost to the rest of us, told me, 'If I'd gone across by camel when I could have gone by car, it would have been a stunt.' To him, exploration meant bringing back information from a remote place regardless of any great self-discovery.

Each definition is slightly different - and tends to reflect the field of endeavour of each pioneer. It was the same whoever I asked: the prominent historian would say exploration was a thing of the past, the cutting-edge scientist would say it was of the present. And so on. They each set their own particular criteria; the common factor in their approach being that they all had, unlike many of us who simply enjoy travel or discovering new things, both a very definite objective from the outset and also a desire to record their findings.

I'd best declare my own bias. As a writer, I'm interested in the exploration of ideas. I've done a great many expeditions and each one was unique. I've lived for months alone with isolated groups of people all around the world, even two 'uncontacted tribes'. But none of these things is of the slightest interest to anyone unless, through my books, I've found a new slant, explored a new idea. Why? Because the world has moved on. The time has long passed for the great continental voyages - another walk to the poles, another crossing of the Empty Quarter. We know how the land surface of our planet lies; exploration of it is now down to the details —— the habits of microbes, say, or the grazing behaviour of buffalo. Aside from the deep sea and deep underground, ifs the era of specialists. However, this is to disregard the role the human mind has in conveying remote places; and this is what interests me: how a fresh interpretation, even of a well-travelled route, can give its readers new insights.

2剑桥雅思15Test1阅读Passage3原文翻译

什么是探索?

我们都是探索者。我们对发现而后分享那些新知识的渴望，是我们被称为人类的部分原因-确实，这种渴望对人类这一物种取得成功起了重要作用。早在个穴居人跌坐在篝火旁，咕哝着说那边有一群牛羚的消息之前，我们的祖先已然知晓派出侦察员探索未知领域的重要性。毫无疑问，这种探索天性帮助了人类物种遍布全球，正如当今，它无疑也帮助着最后的游牧民族本南族在婆罗洲贫瘠的森林中维持生存，同样帮助着纽约的游客摸清地铁线路。

多年以来，我们一直认为探索者是个奇特物种-跟我们都不一样，甚至与那些只是“交游甚广”的人也有区别。也许确有一类人更适合寻找新事物，有一类穴居人更倾向于冒险探索。但是，即使在今天我们也无法改变的一个事实是这种探究的天性 是我们所共有的。而且无论是艺术家、海洋生物学家还是天文学家，各种各样的职业每天都在试探未知的边界。

Thomas Hardy 以他虚构的爱敦荒原为背景，创作了一些小说，他利用这片荒芜的土地来体现他角色的渴望和恐惧。他探究的是我们都能辨识的事物，因为它们是人类所共有的。这无疑就是一种探索的体现，并且这种探索的深度全凭作者的选择。探险家和游记作家 Peter Fleming 老是谈起探险家回归生活的那一刻，回到那个被他抛在身后、有着他的朋友至亲的生活。这个旅行者“在几周甚至几个月内，将自己看作卑微的、无关紧要的异乡人，艰难地在孤苦无依的异国穿行，突然撞见了在某些人心中占有一席之地的另一个自我，一个更为实在的形象”。

在这本关于探索地球表面的书中，我专注于那些在现实中旅行的探索者，他们的目标不仅仅是个人发现。但是另一个问题又来了：“探索者”一词已经与过去的时代联系在一起。我们回想起一个黄金时代，就好像探索在19世纪莫名其妙达到顶峰-就好像现在的探索过程正在走下坡路，尽管事实是：我们只给这个星球上150万个物种命名，而地球物种的总量超过千万，这还不包括细菌。我们才研究了人类已知物种的5%，几乎没有绘制过海床地形图，我们对自己的了解更是稀少;我们只能完全搞懂大脑运作方式的10%。

以下是当今一些“探索者”定义这个词的方式。Ran Fiennes被称为“最伟大的还在世的探险家”，他说：“探索者是做了以前没人做过的事情之人，也做了一些有科学价值的事情。”杰出的登山者Chris Bonington认为，探索是要通过物理接触未知事物的行为来进行的：“你必须去一个新地方。”然后，代表偏远的所谓“部落”民族的活动家Robin Hanbury-Tenison说：“旅行者只是记录并报告一些遥远世界的信息，而探索者改变了世界。”Wilfred Thesiger 曾于1946年越过阿拉伯的空白之地(阿拉伯半岛鲁布哈里沙漠的别名。-译者注)，他属于非机械化旅行的时代，而非机械化旅行现在对我们来说已经丢失了。他告诉我：“如果我本来可以开车去却选择骑骆驼的话，那就是个噱头。”对他来说，探索意味着从遥远的地方带回信息，而不去考虑任何伟大的自我发现。

每个定义都略有不同一-这些定义都倾向于反映每个先驱的奋斗领域。无论我问谁，都体现了这一点：的历史学家会说探索是过去的事，走在前沿的科学家会说探索是现在的事，等等。他们都有自己的特定标准;然而他们都会使用相同的方法论，不像我们中的许多人只是喜欢旅行或发现新事物，他们从一开始就有明确的目标，也渴望记录他们的发现。

我声明我自己的偏见。作为作家，我对思维探索很感兴趣。我进行了很多次实地探险，每一次都。我曾与世界各地与世隔绝的人们一起生活数月，甚至有两个“未被发现的部落”。但是不会有任何人对这些事情感兴趣，除非我在书中提出了新见解、开发了新观点。为什么?因为世界不断前行。伟大的大陆航行时代已经过去了一一再次到达南北极，又一次横穿空白之地。我们已知地球表面大体如何;现在，对它的探索需要更精细专业化--例如微生物的习性或水牛的食草行为。除了深海和地下(这种我们连大体如何都未知的领域)，这都是一个的探索时代。但是，这样的精细划分也无视掉了人类思维在传达遥远区域信息时扮演的角色;而这正是我感兴趣的：一条久行之路，如何全新解读，才能让读者耳目一新。