I. Phrase Translation

CPPCC 中国人民政治协商会议(Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference)

UNESCO 联合国教科文组织(United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization)

ASEM 亚欧会议 (Asia-Europe Meeting)

China-ASEAN Expo 中国一东盟博览会

SWOT analysis SWOT分析，强弱利弊分析（strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)

Global Sourcing 全球采购

Information Asymmetry 信息不对称

Shanghai World Expo 上海世界博览会

Innocent Presumption 无罪推定

The Civil Law System 大陆法/成文法（the civil law system）

The Book of Rites 礼记

Mencius 孟子

Consecutive Interpreting 交替传译

The House of Commons （英国）下议院；（加拿大）众议院

A Farewell To Arms 《永别了，武器》

全国人民代表大会 NPC National People’s Congress

外交部 Ministry of Foreign Affairs

会展经济 exhibition economy

注册会计师 CPA Certified Public Accountant

次贷危机 subprime mortgage crisis

董事会 board of directors

中国证监会 CSRC China Securities Regulatory Commission

廉政公署 ICAC Independent Commission Against Corruption

暂行规定 provisional regulation，interim provisions

有罪推定 Presumption of guilt

佛经翻译 translation of Buddhist Scripture

百年老店 century-old shop

论语 The Analects of Confucius

三国演义 The Romance of the Three Kingdoms

南方都市报 Southern Metropolis Daily

II. Passage translation

Section A Chinese to English

Population aging has become a world-wide phenomenon. Moreover, it has not only come to stay but, especially in the developing countries, it will become more felt and acute with the passage of time. Its repercussions are so wide-ranging and manifold that they can only be ignored at a tremendous cost to society.

The growing rate of population aging poses many challenges which have to be faced realistically. A number of decisions have to be taken with the cooperation of every social institution, be it the State, Non-Governmental Organizations, the community, the family members and last but not least, the older persons themselves. Each has a very important role to play in ensuring a sustainable development for the elderly population.

Governments and civil society including organizations of older persons, academia, community-based organizations and the private sector need to help in capacity building on aging issues. As the Shanghai Implementation Strategy points out, “A life-course and inter-sectoral approach to health and well-being is the best approach to ensure that both current and future generations of older persons remain healthy and active”.

The gap between the projected increases of the older population and the consequently required services, combined with the parallel development of the personnel needed to carry out these services, creates a pressing and urgent need to train appropriate staff. Training programmes have to be tailored to the nature of the participants, the work they are doing and the needs entailed. Though the basic issues dealt with might often be the same, the approach differs. It will be important in the not too distant future to explore innovative ways of providing education and training in rural and remote areas and to apply, as much as possible, the new and emerging communication technologies to facilitate and enhance these programmes.

Every member of society should realize that aging is a process. Consequently, older persons are to be seen as equal citizens of any society, sharing the same rights like other citizens. Any form of discrimination is to be eradicated.

Section B English to Chinese

韶关市地处粤北山区，与湖南、江西交界，素有“三省通衢”之誉，是古代岭南通往中原的最重要关口，今天更是广东通往内地的交通枢纽——京广铁路、京珠高速公路、国道105线、106线、107线、323线、在建的武广铁路、规划中的韶赣铁路、广乐高速公路和韶赣高速公路均经过韶关。韶关还拥有丰富的土地、矿产、动植物、旅游和水资源。这些都为韶关的协调和可持续发展奠定了坚实的物质基础。改革开放以来，韶关城乡面貌发生了举世瞩目的变化。随着珠江三角洲的产业升级转型，越来越多的企业家将目光投向韶关市，一个拥有巨大发展优势和发展前景的理想地。(完）

 

 

广东外贸2010年MTI硕士入学考试 第3卷：百科写作

一、名词解释

01. 据香港《文汇报》报道，在第61届的法兰克福书展中，Google表示有意透过Google Books计划，将数以百万计的书籍电子化，供读者在网上阅读。书展中的另一热话，即Google的另一计划──Google Editions，希望通过完善的网络连结设定令读者随时随地能以手提电话或电子书进行阅读，以挑战亚马逊刚于上周推出的Kindle电子书。正当Google的计划如箭在弦，欧盟却提出在Google现存近100万本的典藏中，有近90万本仍受版权法所保护，亦即是说，Google Books及Google Editions两大计划必与欧盟法律龃龉。

02. 今年以来全世界主要资本市场IPO的规模，中国的融资额是900亿元，全球所有的融资额加起来是3000亿元，中国当之不让的成为世界最大的IPO市场，第二名是香港，第三名是美国，美国IPO的总额是纽约交易所和纳斯达克，因此我们是远远领先于其他成熟的市场。分析市场和创业板的时候，关键要看是否可以适应社会和经济发展的需求，换句话说，是否有足够的上市资源。

03. 中国传统文化是一种理性的文化，越是科学发达，人们的文化水准提高，认识能力增强的情况下，越是有利于中国传统文化的传播。在人们没有文化愚昧的情况下，中国传统文化是不易推广与传播的，因为它不具备传播这种文化的软件与硬件。在中国历史上，无论什么时候，哪一个封建王朝都没有真正彻底的贯彻中国传统文化，所以，中国的传统文化从来都没有像《圣经》文化和《古兰经》文化那样，左右一个国家的政治经济的命运。现在最有利于中国传统文化的彻底贯彻，而这种贯彻是民主的、自由的，人们自觉自愿地接受的，不愿接受马上就可以反对，而不像欧洲中世纪历史上的《圣经》文化。

04. 最高法院院长肖扬在提交给全国人大的工作报告中提出，未来最高法院在出台重要司法解释之前，将通过互联网等媒体予以公布，广泛征求有关部门、专家学者和社会各界意见。中国属大陆法系国家，从原则上说，立法权专属于宪法所规定的立法机构，主要是人大及行政部门，司法机关的职能则是严格地适用这些法律。但事实上，因为立法者永远都不可能是全能的，不可能预知未来，因而，法律全书不可能覆盖人间全部法律关系。更何况，中国社会正处于迅速变革中，而诸多领域的法律要么存在空白，要么迅速落后于现实情况。在这种情况下，审判机关制定一定范围内的法律规则，实有必要，”司法解释”由此应运而生。

二、应用写作（40分）请根据以下信息，撰写一份会议通知。

本报讯：全国弹簧行业产品质量分析暨2009弹簧行业技术交流及产品展示会，将于4月16-19日在山东省济南市召开。这次会议由机械工业通用零部件产品质量监督检测中心、全国弹簧标准化技术委员会主办。会上将通报国内外弹簧行业质量现状和发展趋势，并通过技术讲座和交流，为企业提供体系认证与ISO9000标准2009版转换、弹簧标准化、产品质量国家监督抽查的要求与程序等信息。大会还将举办圆柱螺旋弹簧、钢板弹簧、碟形弹簧、气弹簧等产品技术及装备的展示活动，并结合专题讲座、发布等方式进行洽谈、交易。

三、命题写作（60分）请根据下文写一篇不少于800字的文章。

18世纪初，在德国的匹兹堡大学，有位哲学和医学教授白令葛，他非常喜欢研究化石。一天，几个学生给他带来了一些他从没见过的奇妙的化石，其中不仅绘有飞鸟、昆虫以及其他珍禽异兽，还刻着类似希伯来文的古老而又难以理解的石头书。教授看后十分兴奋，立即跟学生一起到了发现化石的现场，又挖出若干块化石。这是匹兹堡的郊外，有着古老的地层，是教授经常采集化石并乐此不疲的地方。从那一天起，教授便废寝忘食地埋头整理那些采集到的标本。那时，人类对化石的研究和认识还处于起步阶段。经过数十载的辛劳，教授的研究终于结出了果实——一本精美的、有21张化石图片的专著出版了，书名为《匹兹堡石志》。然而，没过多久，一个让善良的人们永远无法想到的悲剧发生了。一天，当教授再度对化石进行研究时，突然发现有些化石中竟刻着自己的名字。他恍然大悟——可怜的教授为之耗尽了毕生心血、孜孜以求进行科学研究的客体竟然是伪造的！原来，这些是学生们事先把动物形象和文字雕刻在石灰岩上，然后埋入地下做出的人造化石。事实上，这不仅仅是学生们的恶作剧，也是其他教授为了戏弄他而暗地里设置的一个陷阱。在经历了这一严酷的打击后不久，白令葛教授也即将走完他的人生之路。在将要离别人世的时候，教授本着一个学者的良心，尽自己的最大努力回收那些已出售的书，并把它们付之一炬。“决不能让这些错误的研究成果流传到后世。”这是一位误入歧途的科学家惊醒之后的唯一信念。当白令葛教授亲手点燃焚烧《匹兹堡石志》的火焰时，我们看到了一个失败科学家的人性的光辉。

 

广东外贸2010年MTI硕士入学考试  第1卷：基础英语

Part 1: Grammar and Vocabulary. （30 P）01. Although she gives badly ____ titles to her musical compositions, they ____ unusual combinations of materials including classical music patterns and rhythms, electronic sounds, and bird songs.
A. conventional / incorporate
B. eccentric / deploy
C. traditional / exclude
D. imaginative / disguise
02. Even though the folktales Perroult collected and retold were not solely French in origin, his versions of them were so decidedly French in style that later anthologies of French folktales have never ____ them.
A. excluded
B. admired
C. collected
D. comprehended
03. In arguing against assertions that environmental catastrophe is imminent, her book does not ridicule all predictions of doom but rather claims that the risks of harm have in many cases been ____.
A. exaggerated
B. ignored
C. scrutinized
D. derided
04. There seems to be no ____ the reading public’s thirst for books about the 1960’s: indeed, the normal level of interest has ____ recently because of a spate of popular television documentaries.
A. quenching / moderated
B. whetting / mushroomed
C. slaking / increased
D. ignoring / transformed
05. Despite a tendency to be overtly ____, the poetry of the Middle Ages often sparks the imagination and provides lively entertainment, as well as pious sentiments.
A. diverting
B. emotional
C. didactic
D. romantic
06. One of the first ____ of reduced burning in Amazon rain forests was the chestnut industry: smoke tends to drive out the insect that, by pollinating chestnut tree, allow chestnuts to develop.
A. reformers
B. discoveries
C. casualties
D. beneficiaries
07. The research committee urged the archaeologist to ____ her claim that the tomb she has discovered was that of Alexander the Great, since her initial report has been based only on ____.
A. disseminate / supposition
B. withdraw / evidence
C. undercut / caprice
D. document / conjecture
08. Although Heron is well known for the broad comedy in the movies she has directed previously, her new film is less inclined to ____: the gags are fewer and subtler.
A. understatement
B. preciosity
C. symbolism
D. melodrama
09. Bebop’s legacy is ____ one: bebop may have won jazz the right to be taken seriously as an art form, but it ____ jazz’s mass audience, which turned to other forms of music such as rock and pop.
A. a mixed / alienated
B. a troubled / seduced
C. an ambiguous / aggrandized
D. a valuable / refined
10. The exhibition’s importance lies in its ____: curators have gathered a diverse array of significant works from many different museums.
A. homogeneity
B. sophistry
C. scope
D. farsightedness
11. Despite the fact that the commission’s report treats a vitally important topic, the report will be ____ read because its prose is so ____ that understanding it requires an enormous effort.
A. seldom / transparent
B. carefully / pellucid
C. little / turgid
D. eagerly / digressive
12. Carleton would still rank among the great ____ of nineteenth century American art even if the circumstance of her life and career were less ____ than they are.
A. celebrities / obscure
B. failures / illustrious
C. charlatans / impeccable
D. enigmas / mysterious
13. Although based on an actual event, the film lacks ____: the director shuffles events, simplifies the tangle of relationships, and ____ documentary truth for dramatic power.
A. conviction / embraces
B. expressiveness / exaggerates
C. verisimilitude / sacrifices
D. realism / substitutes
14. When Adolph Ochs became the publisher of The New York Times, he endowed the paper with a uniquely ____ tone, avoiding the ____ editorials that characterized other major papers of the time.
A. abstruse / scholarly
B. dispassionate / shrill
C. argumentative / tendentious
D. cosmopolitan / timely
15. There are as good fish in the sea ____ ever came out of it.
A. than
B. like
C. as
D. so
16. All the President’s Men ____ one of the important books for historians who study the Watergate Scandal.
A. remain
B. remains
C. remained
D. is remaining
17. “You ____ borrow my notes provided you take care of them”, I told my friend.
A. could
B. should
C. must
D. can
18. If only the patient ____ a different treatment instead of using the antibiotics, he might still be alive now.
A. had received
B. received
C. should receive
D. were receiving
19. Linda was ____ the experiment a month ago, but she changed her mind at the last minute.
A. to start
B. to have started
C. to be starting
D. to have been starting
20. She ____ fifty or so when I first met her at the conference.
A. must be
B. had been
C. could be
D. must have been
21. It is not ____ much the language as the background that makes the book difficult to understand.
A. that
B. as
C. so
D. very
22. The committee has anticipated the problems that ____ in the road construction project.
A. arise
B. will arise
C. arose
D. have arisen
23. The student said there were a few points in the essay he ____ impossible to comprehend.
A. had found
B. finds
C. has found
D. would find
24. He would have finished his college education, but he ____ to quit and find a job to support his family.
A. had had
B. has
C. had
D. would have
25. The research requires more money than ____.
A. have been put in
B. has been put in
C. being put in
D. to be put in
26. Overpopulation poses a terrible threat to the human race. Yet it is probably ____ a threat to the human race than environmental destruction.
A. no more
B. not more
C. even more
D. much more
27. It is not uncommon for there ____ problems of communication between the old and the young.
A. being
B. would be
C. be
D. to be
28. ____ at in his way, the situation does not seem so desperate.
A. Looking
B. Looked
C. Being looked
D. To look
29. It is absolutely essential that William ____ his study in spite of some learning difficulties.
A. will continue
B. continued
C. continue
D. continues
30. The painting he bought at the street market the other day was a _____ forgery.
A. man-made
B. natural
C. crude
D. real
Part 2: Reading Comprehension. （40 P）
Passage A
On New Year’s Day, 50,000 inmates in Kenyan jails went without lunch. This was not some mass hunger strike to highlight poor living conditions. It was an extraordinary humanitarian gesture: the money that would have been spent on their lunches went to the charity Food Aid to help feed an estimated 3. 5 million Kenyans who, because of a severe drought, are threatened with starvation. The drought is big news in Africa, affecting huge areas of east Africa and the Horn. If you are reading this in the west, however, you may not be aware of it—the media is not interested in old stories. Even if you do know about the drought, you may not be aware that it is devastating one group of people disproportionately: the pastoralists. There are 20 million nomadic or semi-nomadic herders in this region, and they are fast becoming some of the poorest people in the continent. Their plight encapsulates Africa’s perennial problem with drought and famine.
How so? It comes down to the reluctance of governments, aid agencies and foreign lenders to support the herders’ traditional way of life. Instead they have tended to try to turn them into commercial ranchers or agriculturalists, even though it has been demonstrated time and again that pastoralists are well adapted to their harsh environments, and that moving livestock according to the seasons or climatic changes makes their methods far more viable than agriculture in sub-Saharan drylands.
Furthermore, African pastoralist systems are often more productive, in terms of protein and cash per hectare, than Australian, American and other African ranches in similar climatic conditions. They make a substantial contribution to their countries’ national economies. In Kenya, for example, the turnover of the pastoralist sector is worth $800 million per year. In countries such as Burkina Faso, Eritrea and Ethiopia, hides from pastoralists’ herds make up over 10 per cent of export earnings. Despite this productivity, pastoralists still starve and their animals perish when drought hits. One reason is that only a trickle of the profits goes to the herders themselves; the lion’s share is pocketed by traders. This is partly because the herders only sell much of their stock during times of drought and famine, when they need the cash to buy food, and the terms of trade in this situation never work in their favour. Another reason is the lack of investment in herding areas.
Funding bodies such as the World Bank and-USAID tried to address some of the problems in the 1960s, investing millions of dollars in commercial beef and dairy production. It didn’t work. Firstly, no one bothered to consult the pastoralists about what they wanted. Secondly, rearing livestock took precedence over human progress. The policies and strategies of international development agencies more or less mirrored the thinking of their colonial predecessors. They were based on two false assumptions: that pastoralism is primitive and inefficient, which led to numerous failed schemes aimed at converting herders to modern ranching models; and that Africa’s drylands can support commercial ranching. They cannot. Most of Africa’s herders live in areas with unpredictable weather systems that are totally unsuited to commercial ranching.
What the pastoralists need is support for their traditional lifestyle. Over the past few years, funders and policy-makers have been starting to get the message. One example is intervention by governments to ensure that pastoralists get fair prices for their cattle when they sell them in times of drought, so that they can afford to buy fodder for their remaining livestock and cereals to keep themselves and their families alive（the problem in African famines is not so much a lack of food as a lack of money to buy it）. Another example is a drought early-warning system run by the Kenyan government and the World Bank that has helped avert livestock deaths.
This is all promising, but more needs to be done. Some African governments still favour forcing pastoralists to settle. They should heed the latest scientific research demonstrating the productivity of traditional cattle-herding. Ultimately, sustainable rural development in pastoralist areas will depend on increasing trade, so one thing going for them is the growing demand for livestock products: there will likely be an additional 2 billion consumers worldwide by 2020, the vast majority in developing countries. To ensure that pastoralists benefit, it will be crucial to give them a greater say in local policies. Other key tasks include giving a greater say to women, who play critical roles in livestock production. The rich world should pay proper attention to the plight of the pastoralists. Leaving them dependent on foreign food aid is unsustainable and will lead to more resentment, conflict, environmental degradation and malnutrition. It is in the rich world’s interests to help out.
01. Which of the following CANNOT be concluded from the passage?
A. Forcing Africa’s nomadic herders to become ranchers will save them from drought.
B. The difference between pastoralist and agriculturalist is vital to the African people.
C. The rich world should give more support to the African people to overcome drought.
D. Environmental degradation should be the major concern in developing Africa’s pastoralism.
02. The word “encapsulates” in the sentence “Their plight encapsulates Africa’s perennial problem with drought and famine.”（para. l） can be replaced by ____.
A. concludes.
B. involves.
C. represents.
D. aggravates.
03. What is the author’s attitude toward African drought and traditional lifestyle of pastoralism?
A. Neutral and indifferent.
B. Sympathetic and understanding.
C. Critical and vehement.
D. Subjective and fatalistic.

04. When the author writes “the policies and strategies of international development agencies more or less mirrored the thinking of their colonial predecessors.”（para. 4）, he implies all the following EXCEPT that the aid agencies did not ____.
A. have an objective view of the situation in Africa
B. understand the unpredictable weather systems there
C. feel themselves superior in decision making
D. care about the development of the local people
05. The author’s main purpose in writing this article is ____.
A. to evaluate the living conditions of Kenyan pastoralists
B. to give suggestions on the support of the traditional pastoralism in Africa
C. to illustrate the difference between commercial ranching and pastoralism
D. to criticize the colonial thinking of western aid agencies
Passage B
Civil-Liberties advocates reeling from the recent revelations on surveillance had something else to worry about last week: the privacy of the billions of search queries made on sites like Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft. As part of a long-running court case, the government has asked those companies to turn over information on its users’ search behavior. All but Google have handed over data, and now the Department of Justice（DOJ） has moved to compel the search giant to turn over the goods.
What makes this case different is that the intended use of the information is not related to national security, but the government’s continuing attempt to police Internet pornography. In 1998, Congress passed the Child Online Protection Act（COPA）, but courts have blocked its implementation due to First Amendment concerns. In its appeal, the DOJ wants to prove how easy it is to inadvertently stumble upon pore. In order to conduct a controlled experiment—to be performed by a UC Berkeley professor of statistics—the DOJ wants to use a large sample of actual search terms from the different search engines. It would then use those terms to do its own searches, employing the different kinds of filters each search engine offers, in an attempt to quantify how often “material that is harmful to minors” might appear. Google contends that since it is not a party to the case, the government has not right to demand its proprietary information to perform its test. “We intend to resist their motion vigorously,” said Google attorney Nicole Wong.
DOJ spokesperson Charles Miller says that the government is requesting only the actual search terms, and not anything that would link the queries to those who made them. （The DOJ is also demanding a list of a million Web sites that Google indexes to determine the degree to which objectionable sites are searched. ） Originally, the government asked for a treasure trove of all searches made in June and July 2005; the request has been scaled back to one week’s worth of search queries.
One oddity about the DOJ’s strategy is that the experiment could conceivably sink its own case. If the built-in filters that each search engine provides are effective in blocking porn sites, the government will have wound up proving what the opposition has said all along—you don’t need to suppress speech to protect minors on the Net. “We think that our filtering technology does a good job protecting minors from inadvertently seeing adult content,” says Ramez Naam, group program manager of MSN Search.
Though the government intends to use these data specifically for its COPA-related test, it’s possible that the information could lead to further investigations and, perhaps, subpoenas to find out who was doing the searching. “What if certain search terms indicated that people were contemplating terrorist actions or other criminal activities?” Says the DOJ’s Miller, “I’m assuming that if something raised alarms, we would hand it over to the proper authorities.” Privacy advocates fear that if the government request is upheld, it will open the door to further government examination of search behavior. One solution would be for Google to stop storing the information, but the company hopes to eventually use the personal information of consenting customers to improve search performance. “Search is a window into people’s personalities,” says Kurt Opsahl, an Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney. “They should be able to take advantage of the Internet without worrying about Big Brother looking over their shoulders.”
01. When the American government asked Google, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft to turn over information on its users’ search behavior, the major intention is ____.
A. to protect national security
B. to help protect personal freedom
C. to monitor Internet pornography
D. to implement the Child Online Protection Act
02. Google refused to turn over “its proprietary information”（para. 2） required by DOJ as it believes that ____.
A. it is not involved in the court case
B. users’ privacy is most important
C. the government has violated the First Amendment
D. search terms is the company’s business secret
03. The phrase “scaled back to” in the sentence “the request has been scaled back to one week’s worth of search queries”（para. 3） can be replaced by ____.
A. maximized to
B. minimized to
C. returned to
D. reduced to
04. In the sentence “One oddity about the DOJ’s strategy is that the experiment could conceivably sink its own case.”（para. 4）, the expression “sink its own case” most probably means that ____.
A. counterattack the opposition
B. lead to blocking of porn sites
C. provide evidence to disprove the case
D. give full ground to support the case

05. When Kurt Opsahl says that “They should be able to take advantage of the Internet without worrying about Big Brother looking over their shoulders.”（para. 5）, the expression “Big Brother” is used to refer to ____.
A. a friend or relative showing much concern
B. a colleague who is much more experienced
C. a dominating and all-powerful ruling power
D. a benevolent and democratic organization

Part 3: Answering Questions. （20 P）
Passage A
Millions of elderly Germans received a notice from the Health & Social Security Ministry earlier this month that struck a damaging blow to the welfare state. The statement informed them that their pensions were being cut. The reductions come as a stop-gap measure to control Germany’s ballooning pension crisis. Not surprisingly, it was an unwelcome change for senior citizens such as Sabine Wetzel, a 67-year-old retired bank teller, who was told her state pension would be cut by $12. 30, or 1% to $1,156. 20 a month. “It was a real shock,” she says. “My pension had always gone up in the past.”
There’s more bad news on the way. On Mar. 11, Germany’s lower house of Parliament passed a bill gradually cutting state pensions—which have been rising steadily since World War II—from 53% of average wages now to 46% by 2020. And Germany is not alone. Governments across Western Europe are racing to curb pension benefits. In Italy, the government plans to raise the minimum retirement age from 57 to 60, while France will require that civil servants put in 40 years rather than 37. 5 to qualify for a full pension. The reforms are coming despite tough opposition from unions, leftist politicians, and pensioners’ groups.
The explanation is simple: Europeans are living longer and having fewer children. By 2030 there will only be two workers per pensioner, compared with four in 2000. With fewer young workers paying into the system, cuts are being made to cover a growing shortfall. The gap between money coming in and payments going out could top $10 billion this year in Germany alone. “In the future, a state pension alone will no longer be enough to maintain the living standards employees had before they retired,” says German Health & Social Security Minister Ulla Schmidt. Says Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti: “The welfare state is producing too few cradles and too few graves.”
Of course, those population trends have been forecast for years. Some countries, such as Britain and the Netherlands, have responded by making individuals and their employers assume more of the responsibility for pensions. But many Continental governments dragged their feet. Now, the rapid runup in costs is finally forcing them to act. State-funded pension payments make up around 12% of gross domestic product in Germany and France and 15% in Italy—two percentage points more than 20 years ago. Pensions account for an average 21% of government spending across the European Union. The U. S. Social Security system, by contrast, consumes just 4.8% of GDP. The rising cost is having serious repercussions on key European nations’ commitments to fiscal restraint. “Governments have no choice but to make pension reform a priority,” says Antonio Cabral, deputy director of the European Commission’s Directorate General for Economic & Financial Affairs.
Just as worrisome is the toll being exacted on the private sector, corporate contributions to state pension systems—which make up 19. 5% of total gross pay in Germany—add to Europe’s already bloated labor costs. That, in turn, blunts manufacturers’ competitiveness and keeps unemployment rates high. According to the Institute of German Economics in Cologne, benefit costs reached a record 41. 7% of gross wages in Germany last year, compared with 37.4% a decade before. French cement manufacturer Lafarge says pension cost of $121 million contributed to a 9% fall in operating profits last year.
To cope, Germany and most of its EU partners are using tax breaks to encourage employees to put money into private pension schemes. But even if private pensions become more popular, European governments will have to increase minimum retirement ages and reduce public pensions. While today’s seniors complain about reduced benefits, the next generation of retirees may look back on their parents’ pension checks with envy.

Questions
Paraphrase Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti’s statement “The welfare state is producing too few cradles and too few graves”? What is implied by the last sentence of the passage “While today’s seniors complain about reduced benefits, the next generation of retirees may look back on their parents’ pension checks with envy”?

Passage B
In the old days, it was all done with cakes. For Marcel Proust, it was a visit to Mother’s for tea and madeleines that provided the access to “the vast structure of recollection” that was to become his masterpiece on memory and nostalgia, “Remembrance of Past Things.” These days, it’s not necessary to evoke the past: you can’t move without tripping over it.
In an age zooming forward technologically, why are all the backward glances? The Oxford English Dictionary’s first definition of nostalgia reads: “acute longing for familiar surroundings; severe homesickness.” With the speed of computers doubling every 18 months, and the net doubling in size in about half that, no wonder we’re aching for familiar surroundings. Since the cornerstone of the Information Age is change, anything enduring becomes precious. “People are looking for something authentic,” says McLaren. Trouble is, nostalgia has succumbed to trends in marketing, demographics and technology. “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” says Michael J. Wolf, senior partner at Booz-Allen & Hamilton in New York. “These are the new good old days.”
Baby boomers form the core of the nostalgia market. The boomers, defined by American demographers as those born between 1946 and 1964, are living long and prosperous lives. In both Europe and America, they remain the Holy Grail for admen, and their past has become everyone’s present. In a study on “entertainment imprinting,” two American marketing professors, Robert Schindler and Morris Holbrook, asked people ranging in age from 16 to 86 which popular music from the past they liked best. People’s favorite songs, they found, tended to be those that were popular when they were about 24, with their affection for pop songs diminishing on either side of that age. Doubtless Microsoft knows about entertainment imprinting, or at least nostalgia. The company hawks its latest Explorer to the strains of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” just as it launched Windows 98 to the tune of “Start Me up” by the Rolling Stones. Boomers remember both tunes from their 20s.
If boomers are one market that values memories, exiles are another. According to the International Organization of Migration, more than 150 million people live today in a country other than the one where they were born—double the number that did so in 1965. This mass movement has sources as dire as tyranny and as luxurious as the freedoms of an EU passport. But exiles and refugees share one thing: homes left behind. Type in “nostalgia” on the search engine Google, and one of the first sites that pop up is the nostalgia page of The Iranian, an online site for Iran’s exiles, most of whom fled after 1978’s Islamic revolution. Perhaps the savviest exploitation of nostalgia has been the secondhand-book site alibris. com, which features stories of clients’ rediscovering long-lost books on it. One John Mason Mings writes of the glories of finding a book with information on “Kickapoo Joy Juice,” ad dreaded medicine of his youth. A Pennsylvanian waxes over alibris’s recovery of his first-grade primer” Down cherry Street.” The Net doesn’t merely facilitate nostalgia—it promotes it. Web-based auction houses have helped jump-start markets for vintage items, form marbles to Apple Macintoshes.
Cutting-edge technology, designed to be transient, has even bred its own instanostalgia. Last year a $666 Apple I went for $18,000 to a British collector at a San Francisco auction. “Historic! Microsoft Multiplan for Macintosh” crows one item on eBay’s vintage Apple section. Surf to The Net Nostalgia Quiz to puzzle over questions like “In the old days, Altavista used to have which one of these URLs?”
Those who don’t remember their history are condemned to repeat it. Or so entertainment moguls hope, as they market “70s TV hits like “Charlie’s Angels” and “Scooby Doo,” out next year, to a generation that can’t remember them the first time round. If you’ve missed a Puff Daddy track or a “Sopranos” episode, panic not. The megahits of today are destined to be the golden oldies of 2020, says Christopher Nurko of the branding consultant FutureBrand. “I guarantee you, Madonna’s music will be used to sell everything,” he says. “God help me, I hope it’s not selling insurance.” It could be. When we traffic in the past, nothing’s sacred.
Questions
Explain the beginning sentence “In the old days, it was all done with cakes.” What is the other big group besides baby boomers which values memories? What do these people share? What is “nostalgia market”? What do they sell in the nostalgia market?

Part 4: Writing. （30 P）
Please reflect on the following opinion and write an essay of about 400 words elaborating your view with a well-defined title.
Some people believe the key of the reform in the education system is a well-shared awareness that educations is there, instead of simply offering the knowledge important to the students, to improve the students in an all-round way, and especially to guide them to a careful pondering over such fundamental issues as life itself and social responsibility. An undue emphasis on knowledge-education and the resultant ignorance over the guidance to the students to a proper understanding of life will bring us nothing but a large number of “memorizing machines”. We can never expect a group of young people well prepared for the real social life.

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