英语翻译中级口译-47
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1. Help! I Can"t Cope
A friend who had lived in New York during the 1970s was recently here for a brief visit. I asked him what, in this ever- changing city. he found to be most startlingly changed. He thought for a moment before answering. "Probably the visible increase in prostitution," he replied.
My astonishment at **ment was so palpable that he felt obliged to explain. "Haven"t you noticed," he asked with surprise, "all these young women standing furtively in doorways? You never used to see that when I was here."
I couldn"t resist my laughter. "They"re not prostitutes," I clarified. "They"re smokers."
For indeed they are. Most American office buildings no longer allow smoking on the premises, driving those who can"t resist the urge onto the streets. The sight of them, lounging on "coffee breaks" near the entrances to their workplace, puffing away, has become ubiquitous. Since most new smokers apparently are women, my friend"s confusion was understandable. And there are more than ever since September 11.
leftist
Stress is probably better measured anecdotally than statistically. I"m not aware of surveys on this matter, but anyone living in New York these days has stories of friends who, amid the scares of 9-11 and its aftermath, have sought solace in cigarettes. I used to go to a gym in the Metlife Building over Grand Central Terminal. Some days so many people stood outside, tensely smoking, that I assumed an evacuation had just been ordered. At least three friends who"d given up tobacco have lapsed back into the habit, claiming they couldn"t calm their nerves any other way. Others have increased their previously reduced intakes. Some, in their quest for a crutch, have begun smoking for the first time. In modern Manhattan the frantic puff has become the preferred alternative to the silent scream.
New Yorkers, of course, are coping in more imaginative ways, as well. A friend swears he knows someone who has stashed a canoe in his closet in case he needs to escape Manhattan by river. Another says he has moved a heavy objet d"art into his office so that he can smash the window if a firebomb makes the elevator or the staircase impassable. A women working on one of the lowers of her office building has acquired a rope long enough to lower herself to the ground; one who works at the top of a skyscraper tells me she"s looking into the purchase of a parachute. Still others have stocked up on such items of antiterrorist chic as flame-retardant ponchos, anthrax-antidote antibiotics and heavy-duty gas masks.
Recent polls indicate that American women are more stressed than men. Over 50 percent in one national survey of 1,000 adults admitted to being "very" or "somewhat" worried in the wake of the terrorist assaults. The anthrax scare may have receded. But recent incidents, from the airplane crash in New York Borough of Queens to the arrest of the London "shoe-bomber" to rumors of suitcase nukes, seem to have had permanently unsettling effects. Take food. A surprising number of people are apparently unable to touc
h their plates. Others are eating too much, seeking reassurance in "comfort food." Given the alternatives, smoking seems a reasonable refuge; after all, the long-term threat of cancer seems far more remote these days than the prospect of explosive incineration.
2. The Ballooning Pension Crisis in Western Europe
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 **e as a stop-gap measure to control Germany"s ballooning pension crisis. Not surprisingly, it was an **e change for senior citizens such as Sabine Wetzel, a 67-year-old retired bank teller, who was told that her state pension would be cut by $12.30 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 March 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 alo
ne. 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 **ing despite tough opposition from unions, leftist politicians, and pensioners" groups.

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