1997年英译汉试题及参考译文 Do animals have rights?This is how the question is usually put.It sounds like a useful，ground-clearing way to start.（71）Actually，it isnt，because it assumes that there is an agreed account of human rights，which is something the world does not have. On one view of rights，to be sure，it necessarily follows that animals have none.72）Some philosophers argue that rights exist only within a social contract，as part of an exchange of duties and entitlements.Therefore，animals cannot have rights.The idea of punishing a tiger that kills somebody is absurd，for exactly the same reason，so is the idea that tigers have ringhts.However，this is only one account，and by no means an uncontested one.It denies rights not only to animals but also to some people—for instance，to infants，the mentally incapable and future generations.In addition，it is unclear what force a contract can have for people who never consented to it:how do you reply to somebody who saysI dont like this contract? The point is this without agreement on the rights of people，arguing about the rights of animals is fruitless.（73）It leads the discussion to extremes at the outset:it invites you to think that animals should be treated either with the consideration humans extend to other humans，or with no consideration at all.This is a false choice.Better to start with another，more fundamental question:is the way we treat animals a moral issue at all? Many deny it.（74）Arguing from the view that humans are different from animals in every relevant respect，extremists of this kind think that animals lie outside the area of moral choice.Any regard for the suffering of animals is seen as a mistake—a sentimental displacement of feeling that should properly be directed to other humans. This view，which holds that torturing a monkey is morally equivalent to chopping wood，may seem bravelylogical.In fact it is simply shallow:the ethical equivalent of learning to crawl—is to weigh others interests against one s own.This in turn requires sympathy and imagination:without which there is no capacity for moral thought.To see an animal in pain is enough，for most，to engage sympathy.（75）When that happens，it is not a mistake:it is mankinds instinct for moral reasoning in action，an instinct that should be encouraged rather than laughed at.
They were by far，the largest and most distant objects that scientists had ever detected:a strip of enormous cosmic clouds some 15 billion lightyears from earth.
（71）But even more important，it was the farthest that scientists had been able to look into the past，for what they were seeing were the patterns and structures that existed 15 billion yeays ago.That was just about the moment that the universe was born.What the researchers found was at once both amazing and expected:the US National Aeronautics and Space Administrations Cosmic Background Explorer satellite—Cobe—had discovered landmark evidence that the universe did in fact begin with the primeval explosion that has become known as the Big Bang（the theory that the universe originated in an explosion from a single mass of energy）.
（72）The existence of the giant clouds was virtually required for the Big Bang，first put forward in the 1920s，to maintain its reign as the dominant explanation of the cosmos.According to the theory，the universe burst into being as a submicroscopic，unimaginably dense knot of pure energy that flew outward in all directions，emitting radiation as it went，condensing into particles and then into atoms of gas.Over billions of years，the gas was compressed by gravity into galaxies，stars，plants and eventually，even humans.
Cobe is designed to see just the biggest structures，but astronomers would like to see much smaller hot spots as well，the seeds of local objects like clusters and superclusters of galaxies.They shouldnt have long to wait.（73）Astrophysicists working with groundbased detectors at the South Pole and balloonborne instruments are closing in on such structures，and may report their findings soon.
（74）If the small hot spots look as expected，that will be a triumph for yet another scientific idea，a refinement of the Big Bang called the inflationary universe theory.Inflation says that very early on，the universe expanded in size by more than a trillion trillion trillion trillionfold in much less than a second，propelled by a sort of antigravity.（75）Odd though it sounds，cosmic inflation is a scientifically plausible consequence of some respected ideas in elementaryparticle physics，and many astrophysicists have been convinced for the better part of a decade that it is true.
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