经济学人文章精选100篇

这篇文章有几个非常有意思的句子和表达，我贴出来，大家一起赏析一下： 佳句篇：   Sentence 1. He helped popularise the idea that some diseases not previously thought to have a bacterial cause were actually infections, which ruffled many scientific feathers when it was first suggested. 解析： Ruffle弄皱的意思 Ruffle one’s feathers惹怒（想想逆毛流撸猫） The idea that ...用的是同位语从句，不太多，常用搭配是the evidence that，the concept that 等。That后从句解释idea, concept或evidence等。 Which的指代问题。Which指代的不是上文任何一个出现的单词或词组，而是Dr. Cochran的这波操作。Sentence 2. Ashkenazim generally do well in IQ tests, scoring 12-15 points above the mean value of 100, and have contributed disproportionately to the intellectual and cultural life of the West, as the careers of Freud, Einstein and Mahler, pictured above, affirm. disproportionately不成比例地 主干and复合句+非谓语动词scoring+as引导的从句（插入后置定语） 每个部分都不难，集合到一起就对理解产生障碍了。Sentence 3. But in the Middle Ages, success in Christian society tended to be violently aristocratic (warfare and land), rather than peacefully meritocratic (banking and trade). 这个句子不难，为什么拿出来是因为这个violently的用法。简单来讲，这一个单词乍一看是作aristocratic的副词，实则在翻译（以及理解）当中，我们必须单独翻译成一个实意的成分，而且作副词处理。 Aristocratic贵族统治 Meritocratic德治Sentence 4. That small, reproductively isolated groups of people are susceptible to genetic disease is well known. 主语从句，注意 5. Most of the dozen or so disease genes that are common in them belong to one of two types: they are involved either in the storage in nerve cells of special fats called sphingolipids, which form part of the insulating outer sheaths that allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals, or in DNA repair. 典型长句，如何解析？ Most of the dozen or so  disease genes that are common in them  belong to one of two types: Or so大约 斜体作的是disease genes they are involved either in the storage in nerve cells of special fats called sphingolipids, which form part of the insulating outer sheaths that allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals, or in DNA repair. either or后面是两个in... 第一个in后面的which form part of the insulating outer sheaths解释的是Sphingolipids that allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals解释的是sheaths。 也就是说，（非限制性）定语从句后面紧接另一个定语从句。 第二个in后面很简单，但！！！文章最后一段有解释，对于 文章结构 至关重要。Sentence 6&7. Thus, the theory goes, the pressure  to keep the sickle-cell gene in the population because of its malaria-protective effects balances the pressure  to drive it out because of its anaemia-causing effects. It therefore persists without becoming ubiquitous. 两句话放一起。 主干已加黑。很有意思的句子，工整、对仗，而又解释非常清楚。 下一句，persist和ubiquitous用词极其精准，整句话像外科手术般，精准简练。作者还是怕读者一下子没读懂，用简单而又高效的句子总结下。写作手法很老练高超，字字玑珠，像极了宝马M3。Sentence 8. Genes that promote intelligence in an individual when present as a single copy create disease when present as a double copy. 乍一看没什么稀奇，再一看，把一个comparison分别放在了主语和谓语的修饰成分中，可谓老辣。 作何解？ That promote intelligence对genes做了一个限定，指的是genes的其中一种特征，然后用when说明了适用情况。 Create谓语的主语也是genes，但这时候是没有限定的genes。Create disease做的是限定，其实对应的是promote intelligence。后面同样用一个when来说明范围。 简单来讲，genes的含义做了一个缩小和限定，又在create的时候恢复了genes的双重功能含义。 Promote intelligence和create diseases一个对应，尽管成分差别很大。 两个when的对比。 可谓神句。Sentence 9. An Israeli clinic devoted to treating people with Gaucher's has vastly more engineers, scientists, accountants and lawyers on its books than would be expected by chance. Than (what) would be expected by chance. 省略了what。。。你能理解吗？ 还有这个books，这个同语境关联强烈。好的表达： 1. ruffle one’s feather 2. Tremble at the thought 3. Affirm作不及物动词（Ashkenazim generally do well in IQ tests, scoring 12-15 points above the mean value of 100, and have contributed disproportionately to the intellectual and cultural life of the West, as the careers of Freud, Einstein and Mahler, pictured above, affirm. ） 4. aristocratic . meritocratic 5. Exact a price类似用法 exert influence附原文及翻译： Natural genius? 天生我才？ The high intelligence of Ashkenazi Jews may be a result of their persecuted past 德系犹太人的高智商或许是因为曾经遭受迫害的后果 THE idea that some ethnic groups may, on average, be more intelligent than others is one of those hypotheses that dare not speak its name. But Gregory Cochran, a noted scientific iconoclast, is prepared to say it anyway. He is that rare bird, a scientist who works independently of any institution. He helped popularise the idea that some diseases not previously thought to have a bacterial cause were actually infections, which ruffled many scientific feathers when it was first suggested. And more controversially still, he has suggested that homosexuality is caused by an infection. 某些少数民族的平均智商高于其他民族这一说法，是很多不敢公开的假设之一。不过著名的科学狂人Gregory Cochran 决意要做第一个吃螃蟹的人。他很特别，总是独立工作而不属于任何机构。某些曾被诊断并非病菌引起的疾病，其实病源来自传染病。这一观点因他的推动受到了关注。此观点一经提出，就受到了许多科学家的反对。这还不算，更具争议的是，他认为同性恋也是由传染病引起的。 Even he, however, might tremble at the thought of what he is about to do. Together with Jason Hardy and Henry Harpending, of the University of Utah, he is publishing, in a forthcoming edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, a paper which not only suggests that one group of humanity is more intelligent than the others, but explains the process that has brought this about. The group in question are Ashkenazi Jews. The process is natural selection. 然而就算是Cochran，也为自己接下来要做的事捏了一把汗。他准备同Utah大学的Jason Hardy与Henry Harpending一同，在最新一期的《生物社会科学杂志》发表一篇论文，文中不仅提出了某一少数民族比其他民族更聪明这一观点，还解释了这一结果产生的过程。文中两大主角就是德系犹太人和自然选择。 History before science 不管是否科学，先来看看历史 Ashkenazim generally do well in IQ tests, scoring 12-15 points above the mean value of 100, and have contributed disproportionately to the intellectual and cultural life of the West, as the careers of Freud, Einstein and Mahler, pictured above, affirm. They also suffer more often than most people from a number of nasty genetic diseases, such as Tay-Sachs and breast cancer. These facts, however, have previously been thought unrelated. The former has been put down to social effects, such as a strong tradition of valuing education. The latter was seen as a consequence of genetic isolation. Even now, Ashkenazim tend to marry among themselves. In the past they did so almost exclusively. 德系犹太人不仅在IQ测试上表现不俗，正常人一般在100分左右，而他们大多都能得个112-115分，而且虽然人数不多，但他们在欧洲知识、文化生活中的地位却举足轻重。想想弗洛伊德、爱因斯坦、马勒，我们就会点头称是了。但同时，他们中患有如泰-萨克斯病、乳腺癌这类严重的遗传疾病的比率明显高于其他种族。这些事实，最初被人们认为是毫无联系的。前者被说成是社会原因引起的，如浓烈的价值观教育的传统；后者则被说成是基因隔离的结果，不过即使是现在，德系犹太人还是愿意同本族人结婚，在过去，就更是如此了。 Dr Cochran, however, suspects that the intelligence and the diseases are intimately linked. His argument is that the unusual history of the Ashkenazim has subjected them to unique evolutionary pressures that have resulted in this paradoxical state of affairs. 但Cochran博士对以上两点表示质疑，并认为德系犹太人的天赋异禀与痛病缠身联系密切。他认为正是异常的历史环境强加给了德系犹太人独有的进化压力，才导致了这些看似奇怪的现象。 Ashkenazi history begins with the Jewish rebellion against Roman rule in the first century AD. When this was crushed, Jewish refugees fled in all directions. The descendants of those who fled to Europe became known as Ashkenazim. 德系犹太人的历史源于公元1世纪。犹太人在反对罗马人的统治失败后，犹太难民四散而逃，逃亡欧洲的犹太后裔就是如今的德系犹太人。 In the Middle Ages, European Jews were subjected to legal discrimination, one effect of which was to drive them into money-related professions such as banking and tax farming which were often disdained by, or forbidden to, Christians. This, along with the low level of intermarriage with their gentile neighbours (which modern genetic analysis confirms was the case), is Dr Cochran's starting point. 在中世纪，欧洲的犹太人在法律上地位很不平等，结果之一就是他们不得不从事与金钱相关的职业，如被人看不起或不准基督徒涉足的银行或征税工作，此外，他们只能与邻居中社会地位较低的非犹太人通婚（这种状况通过现代基因学分析得到了证实）。上述就是Cochran 博士论文的起点。 He argues that the professions occupied by European Jews were all ones that put a premium on intelligence. Of course, it is hard to prove that this intelligence premium existed in the Middle Ages, but it is certainly true that it exists in the modern versions of those occupations. Several studies have shown that intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, is highly correlated with income in jobs such as banking. 他认为欧洲犹太人从事的职业都是些需要一定智商的职业，虽不能证明这些职业在中世纪时就是这样了，但在当代它们确实如此。一些研究表明，智力水平（按智力测试的标准来算）与工资水平（如那些从事银行工作的人）联系密切。 What can, however, be shown from the historical records is that European Jews at the top of their professions in the Middle Ages raised more children to adulthood than those at the bottom. Of course, that was true of successful gentiles as well. But in the Middle Ages, success in Christian society tended to be violently aristocratic (warfare and land), rather than peacefully meritocratic (banking and trade). 这些历史记录证明了，那些在欧洲工作地位较高的犹太家庭子女存活率要高于那些地位较低的犹太家庭。情况对于那些其他种族的也是一样的。但在中世纪，基督教社会中所谓的成功多是贵族通过战争与土地强争豪取，而非通过量才而用（如从事银行或贸易工作）和平地获得。 Put these two things together—a correlation of intelligence and success, and a correlation of success and fecundity—and you have circumstances that favour the spread of genes that enhance intelligence. The questions are, do such genes exist, and what are they if they do? Dr Cochran thinks they do exist, and that they are exactly the genes that cause the inherited diseases which afflict Ashkenazi society. 把智力与成功的关联以及成功与生殖力的关系合二为一，你就具备了有利于智商提高的基因传播的条件。问题是这种智商基因确实存在吗？假如它果真存在的话，那究竟是什么呢？科克伦博士认为它们的确存在，而且正是那种引起折磨德系犹太人遗传疾病的基因。 That small, reproductively isolated groups of people are susceptible to genetic disease is well known. Constant mating with even distant relatives reduces genetic diversity, and some disease genes will thus, randomly, become more common. But the very randomness of this process means there should be no discernible pattern about which disease genes increase in frequency. In the case of Ashkenazim, Dr Cochran argues, this is not the case. Most of the dozen or so disease genes that are common in them belong to one of two types: they are involved either in the storage in nerve cells of special fats called sphingolipids, which form part of the insulating outer sheaths that allow nerve cells to transmit electrical signals, or in DNA repair. The former genes cause neurological diseases, such as Tay- Sachs, Gaucher's and Niemann-Pick. The latter cause cancer. 众所周知，越是人口稀少并且生育范围狭小的种族就越易患遗传疾病。总是于同族人通婚，就算不是近亲，也会较少遗传的多样性，同时也会使某些致病基因没有规律地在该种族内部泛滥起来。而这种无规律性意味着人们不知道何类致病基因会被大量传播。但对德系犹太人来说，Cochran 医生指出，情况却并非如此。他们当中最常见的十几种疾病基因基本上可以归结于两类：一类参与神经细胞中鞘脂类特殊脂肪）的储存。鞘脂组成一部分绝缘外层鞘，允许神经细胞发射电子信号。另一类参与DNA 的修复。前者基因会引发神经性疾病，如泰萨二氏病、脑苷脂沉积病和神经鞘磷脂沉积病；而后者会导致癌症。 That does not look random. And what is even less random is that in several cases the genes for particular diseases come in different varieties, each the result of an independent original mutation. This really does suggest the mutated genes are being preserved by natural selection. But it does not answer the question of how evolution can favour genetic diseases. However, in certain circumstances, evolution can. 上述看起来并非毫无规律。而且更趋于规律的表现就是，在一些病例中，特殊疾病的致病基因来自于不同的变体，而每个变体都是独立的原基因变异的结果。这就印证了变异基因是自然选择保留下来的结果，可它却不能回答自然选择为什么会成了遗传疾病的帮凶，但在一些特殊的条件下，进化能够产生这样的结果。 West Africans, and people of West African descent, are susceptible to a disease called sickle-cell anaemia that is virtually unknown elsewhere. The anaemia develops in those whose red blood cells contain a particular type of haemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen. But the disease occurs only in those who have two copies of the gene for the disease-causing haemoglobin (one copy from each parent). Those who have only one copy have no symptoms. They are, however, protected against malaria, one of the biggest killers in that part of the world. Thus, the theory goes, the pressure to keep the sickle-cell gene in the population because of its malaria-protective effects balances the pressure to drive it out because of its anaemia-causing effects. It therefore persists without becoming ubiquitous. 如西非人以及他们的后代易患一种叫做镰状细胞性贫血的疾病，这种病在西非之外几乎都没人听说过。贫血症发于那些红血球中含有一种特殊的血红蛋白，其蛋白质中含有氧气的人。但这种镰状细胞性贫血症只会发生在同时有两组这种致病的血红蛋白（父母都有这种血红蛋白）的人身上。而那些只有一组的人不但不会患这种贫血症，也不会患疟疾，该病被称为非洲的头号杀手。因此，我们可以这样说，抵御疟疾的特性使得镰状细胞在得以人体中存活下来，同时这种细胞导致贫血症的特性也会被人体排斥，只有在为保持这两种状态而产生的压力达到平衡时，才不会有任何一个特性占据上风。 Dr Cochran argues that something similar happened to the Ashkenazim. Genes that promote intelligence in an individual when present as a single copy create disease when present as a double copy. His thesis is not as strong as the sickle-cell/malaria theory, because he has not proved that any of his disease genes do actually affect intelligence. But the area of operation of some of them suggests that they might. Cochran博士认为，德系犹太人也面临着同样的情况，他们的某些基因如果以单组出现就可以提高智力，一旦以双组出现就会引起疾病。显然，该理论并不如他的镰状细胞/疟疾理论那样具有说服力，因为他尚未证明任何一种致病基因确实能够影响智力，但是某些基因的活动区域显示它们或许真能影响智力。 The sphingolipid-storage diseases, Tay-Sachs, Gaucher's and Niemann-Pick, all involve extra growth and branching of the protuberances that connect nerve cells together. Too much of this (as caused in those with double copies) is clearly pathological. But it may be that those with single copies experience a more limited, but still enhanced, protuberance growth. That would yield better linkage between brain cells, and might thus lead to increased intelligence. Indeed, in the case of Gaucher's disease, the only one of the three in which people routinely live to adulthood, there is evidence that those with full symptoms are more intelligent than the average. An Israeli clinic devoted to treating people with Gaucher's has vastly more engineers, scientists, accountants and lawyers on its books than would be expected by chance. 鞘脂储存类疾病，如泰萨二氏病、脑苷脂沉积病和神经鞘磷脂沉积病，都涉及到连接神经细胞的凸起的多余生长和分叉。显然，这种生长和分叉太多的话就会引起疾病。但是，也有可能，仅有单份致病基因的人会出现比较有限的、但仍然加强了的凸起生长。这将有助于加强脑细胞之间的连接，或许因此导致智力提高。实际上，在脑苷脂沉积病的例子中，在三分之一能够活到成年的患者中，确实有证据表明完全发病的人拥有高于平均值的智商。根据一家专门治疗脑苷脂沉积病的以色列诊所的医疗记录，患者中的工程师、科学家、会计和律师的比例多于常人。 Why a failure of the DNA-repair system should boost intelligence is unclear—and is, perhaps, the weakest part of the thesis, although evidence is emerging that one of the genes in question is involved in regulating the early growth of the brain. But the thesis also has a strong point: it makes a clear and testable prediction. This is that people with a single copy of the gene for Tay-Sachs, or that for Gaucher's, or that for Niemann-Pick should be more intelligent than average. Dr Cochran and his colleagues predict they will be so by about five IQ points. If that turns out to be the case, it will strengthen the idea that, albeit unwillingly, Ashkenazi Jews have been part of an accidental experiment in eugenics. It has brought them some advantages. But, like the deliberate eugenics experiments of the 20th century, it has also exacted a terrible price. 为什么基因修复系统失灵会提高智力，现在还不清楚原因何在。虽然，陆续有证据表明产生问题的基因之一参与了调节大脑的早期发育，但是这仍是该论题最薄弱的环节。不过，该理论也有令人信服的地方：它对于拥有单份泰萨二氏病或脑苷脂沉积病或神经鞘磷脂沉积病基因的人会比普通人更聪明做出了明确而可检验的预测。Cochran 博士和他的同事认为，这些人的智商因此会比平均水平高出5 个点。尽管有人不愿接受，假如确实如此的话，它将有力地证明，德系犹太人在不经意间经历了优生实验，而这为他们带来了智商上的优势。但是，如同发生在20 世纪的人为的优生实验一样，它同样让他们付出了可怕的代价。