孙晶楠：托福TPO25阅读第二篇(原文+翻译)

　　文/孙晶楠

　　作者简介：新航道北京学校托福阅读主讲，大学英语四、六级写作主讲。 美国Syracuse University交流生，专业英语八级，英语语言文学及人力资源管理双学位，曾担任高校专业英语讲师，并获得高校教师资格证书，专业技术职称，翻译专业资格证书，以及“全国高校中青年骨干教师”称号。对英语学习有独到的见解，擅长在课堂中融入中西方文化知识。理智，风趣。深信“care and diligence bring luck”。

　　ETS发布了托福TPO25和TPO26，前面我为大家翻译了篇阅读，本文，笔者继续为大家奉上第二篇阅读：The Decline of Venetian Shipping的翻译，希望广大同学参考译文的准备考试。

　　TPO 25 READING TWO

　　The Decline of Venetian Shipping

　　In the late thirteenth century, northern Italian cities such as Genoa, Florence, and Venice began an economic resurgence that made them into the most important economic centers of Europe. By the seventeenth century, however, other European powers had taken over, as the Italian cities lost much of their economic might.

　　This decline can be seen clearly in the changes that affected Venetian shipping and trade. First, Venic’s intermediary functions in the Adriatic Sea, where it had dominated the business of shipping for other parties, were lost to direct trading. In the fifteenth century there was little problem recruiting sailors to row the galleys (large ships propelled by oars):

　　guilds (business associations) were required to provide rowers, and through a draft system free citizens served compulsorily when called for. In the early sixteenth century the shortage of rowers was not serious because the demand for galleys was limited by a move to round ships (round-hulled ships with more cargo space), with required fewer rowers. But the shortage of crews proved to be a greater and greater problem, despite continuous appeal to Venic’s tradition of maritime greatness. Even though sailors’ wages doubled among the northern Italian cities from 1550 to 1590, this did not elicit an increased supply.

　　The problem in shipping extended to the Arsenale, Venice’s huge and powerful shipyard. Timber ran short, and it was necessary to procure it from father and father away. In ancient Roman times, the Italian peninsula had great forest of fir preferred for warships, but scarcity was apparent as early as the early fourteenth century. Arsenale officers first brought timber from the foothills of the Alps, then from north toward Trieste, and finally from across the Adriatic. Private shipbuilders were required to buy their oak abroad. As the costs of shipbuilding rose, Venice clung to its outdated standard while the Dutch were innovation in the lighter and more easily handled ships.

　　The step from buying foreign timber to buying foreign ships was regarded as a short one, especially when complaints were heard in the latter sixteenth century that the standards and traditions of the Arsenale were running down. Work was stretched out and done poorly. Older workers had been allowed to stop work a half hour before the regular time, and in 1601 younger works left with them. Merchants complained that the privileges reserved for Venetian-built and owned ships were first extended to those Venetians who bought ships from abroad and then to foreign-built and owned vessels. Historian Frederic Lane observes that after the loss of ships in battle in the late sixteenth century, the shipbuilding industry no long had the capacity to recover that it had displayed at the start of the century.

　　The conventional explanation for the loss of Venetian dominance in trade is establishment of the Portuguese direct sea route to the East, replacing the overland Silk Road from the Black sea and the highly profitable Indian Ocean-caravan-eastern Mediterranean route to Venice. The Portuguese Vasco da Gama’s Voyaga around southern Africa to India took place at the end of the fifteenth century, and by 1502 the trans- Abrabian caravan route had been cut off by political unrest.

　　The Venetian Council finally allowed round ships to enter the trade that was previously reserved for merchant galleys, thus reducing transport cost by one third. Prices of spices delivered by ship from the eastern Mediterranean came to equal those of spices transported by Paortuguese vessels, but the increase in quantity with both routes in operation drove the price far down. Gradually, Venice’s role as a storage and distribution center for spices and silk, dyes cotton, and gold decayed, and by the early seventeenth century Venice had lost its monopoly in markets such as France and southern Germany.来源：北京新航道托福培训

　　Venetian shipping had started to decline from about 1530-before the entry into the Mediterranean of large volumes of Dutch and Britishshipping-and was clearly outclassed by the end of the century. A contemporary of Shakespeare (1564-1616) observed that the productivity of Italian shipping had declined, compared with that of the British, because of conservatism and loss of expertise. Moreover, Italian sailors were deserting and emigrating, and captains, no longer recruited from the ranks of nobles, were weak on navigations.

　　This decline can be seen clearly in the changes that affected Venetian shipping and trade. First, Venic’s intermediary functions in the Adriatic Sea, where it had dominated the business of shipping for other parties, were lost to direct trading. century there was little In the fifteenth problem recruiting sailors to row the galleys (large ships propelled by oars): guilds (business associations) were required to provide rowers, and through a draft system free citizens served compulsorily when called for. In the early sixteenth century the shortage of rowers was not serious because the demand for galleys was limited by a move to round ships (round-hulled ships with more cargo space), with required fewer rowers. But the shortage of crews proved to be a greater and greater problem, despite continuous appeal to Venic’s tradition of maritime greatness. Even though sailors’ wages doubled among the northern Italian cities from 1550 to 1590, this did not elicit an increased supply.

　　TPO 25 阅读第二篇文章参考译文：

　　威尼斯航运的衰落

　　在十三世纪晚期，意大利北部的城市如：热那亚(港口市)，佛罗伦萨(意都市)和威尼斯(港口市)开始了经济复苏，使得它们成为了欧洲最重要的经济中心。然而到了17世纪，随着意大利城市失去了许多经济势力，使得其他欧洲权势开始掌控经济中心。

　　受到影响从而发生改变的威尼斯船舶运输和贸易，清晰的映射出经济的衰退。首先，威尼斯在能够支配其他团体船舶运输贸易的亚得里亚海的贸易中介功能败给了直接交易。在十五世纪，雇佣划船工来划大海船(靠桨手驱动的大船)已经成了问题。行会(商业协会)被要求提供桨手，并在必要的时候通过起草制度让强制公民们服役。而到了十六世纪早期，桨手的缺少已经不是很严重了，桨帆共用的大海船的需求因为圆船(有存储空间的圆形大船)的出现而受到限制，因为这种圆船几乎不需要桨手。持续不断地呼吁威尼斯海员伟大的传统，但是船员的不足反而是更大更大的问题。即使在1550到1590年间意大利北部城市海员的工资涨到两倍，但是并没有引起海员数量的增加。

　　航运的问题还扩大到了兵船厂，威尼斯规模最有力度的造船厂。木材短缺，那么就必须从很远的地方将木材运输过来。在古罗马时代，意大利半岛有大面积的冷杉木森林来制造战船。兵船厂的人员首先从阿尔卑斯山麓地区购买木材，然后在北部里亚斯特购买木材，最终在亚德里亚海购买木材。私人造船家也需要去购买他们的橡木船板。随着造船业费用的上升，当荷兰人开始实施使船更轻便，更容易操作的革新时，威尼斯却还坚持着它过时的造船标准。

　　从购买外国的木材到购买外国的船只时间是短暂的，尤其是在十六世纪后期因兵船厂造船标准及传统的下降而传出投诉信息。工作程序繁琐冗长，并且质量低下。老员工允许在规定的时间段有半个小时的休息时间，并且在1601年，年轻的员工们也保持了这种习惯。商人们抱怨威尼斯居民和拥有私家船只拥有者享有特权，这种特权拓展到了从国外购买船只的威尼斯人，然后又扩展到了国外建造并拥有船只的人。历史学家弗雷德里克雷恩评论说，在十六世纪后期，随着船只数量在战争中的耗损，造船工业已经没有能力再恢复到世纪初的繁荣昌盛。

　　威尼斯贸易主导地位的丢失的传统解释是葡萄牙人到达东部的直接航线取代了陆地上从黑海出发的丝绸之路和印度洋东洋商队有利可图的地中海航线到达威尼斯。十五世纪末葡萄牙人达伽马开始了环绕南非到达印度的航行，1502年横穿阿拉伯的商队路线被动荡的政治局面所切断。

　　最终，威尼斯议会同意将圆形船加入到以前残留的商业划桨船贸易中，因此减少了三分之一的运输成本。从东地中海通过航运来运输香料的价格与通过葡萄牙船舶运输香料的价格是一样的，但是随着两条路线运行数量的增加驱使着香料价格一路下跌。渐渐的，威尼斯就承担了一个香料，丝绸，染色棉花和黄金的仓储和配销中心的角色，在十七世纪早起，威尼斯如法国和德国南部一样失去了它的市场垄断权。

　　自1530年(大量荷兰人和英国航运进入到地中海之前)威尼斯航运开始衰落。莎士比亚时代(1564-1616)就已经注意到相比于英国，意大利航运因为其保守思想和缺少专门技术而导致生产力下降。此外，意大利海员的匮乏和迁移，不再从贵族阶级雇佣船长都导致航运的衰弱。

　　上面就是关于托福TPO25阅读第二篇：The Decline of Venetian Shipping(威尼斯航运的衰落)的原文及翻译，希望考生认真研究TPO真题，陆续我会为大家翻译余下的几篇，敬请关注。

　　托福考试信息点击