剑桥雅思6 Test1阅读Passage2原文翻译 Delivering the Goods 货物运输
剑桥雅思6第一套题目阅读第二篇文章的主题为国际贸易运输货物方式的变化。文章先概括了国际贸易在近期的快速发展，然后分析其背后的原因，指出货物运输方式和物品的变化起到很大作用，随后详细说明具体的变化有哪些。结构还是比较清晰的。下面是具体每一段的翻译。
点击查看这篇雅思阅读对应的答案解析和重点词汇：
雅思真题阅读词汇 剑桥雅思6 test 1 passage 2 货物运输
剑桥雅思6 Test1阅读Passage2答案解析 Delivering the Goods 货物运输
剑桥雅思6 Test 1 Passage 2阅读原文翻译
自然段A
International trade is growing at a startling pace. While the global economy has been expanding at a bit over 3% a year, the volume of trade has been rising at a compound annual rate of about twice that. Foreign products, from meat to machinery, play a more important role in almost every economy in the world, and foreign markets now tempt businesses that never much worried about sales beyond their nation’s borders.
国际贸易正以惊人的速度增长。尽管全球经济以每年3％的速度扩张，但贸易量却以每年约两倍的复合年增长率增长。从肉类到机械，外国产品在世界上几乎每个经济体中都扮演着更重要的角色。现在的外国市场吸引着哪些从不担心境外销售的企业。
自然段B
What lies behind this explosion in international commerce? The general worldwide decline in trade barriers, such as customs duties and import quotas, is surely one explanation. The economic opening of countries that have traditionally been minor players is another. But one force behind the import-export boom has passed all but unnoticed: the rapidly falling cost of getting goods to market. Theoretically, in the world of trade, shipping costs do not matter. Goods, once they have been made, are assumed to move instantly and at no cost from place to place. The real world, however, is full of frictions. Cheap labour may make Chinese clothing competitive in America, but if delays in shipment tie up working capital and cause winter coats to arrive in spring, trade may lose its advantages.
国际贸易爆炸性增长背后的原因是什么？全世界范围内诸如关税和进口配额等贸易壁垒的普遍下降无疑是一种解释。传统上，一直是次要角色的国家的经济开放是另一种解释。但是，进出口热潮背后的一种力量被忽文章来自老烤鸭雅思略了，即将商品推向市场的成本的迅速下降。从理论上讲，在贸易世界中，运输成本并不重要。货物一旦制成，就被认为可以立刻并且毫无成本地在不同地方之间移动。但是，现实世界充满摩擦。廉价劳动力可能会使中国服装在美国具有竞争力。但是，如果运输延误占用了营运资金并导致冬季大衣在春季到达，贸易可能会失去其优势。
自然段C
At the turn of the 20th century, agriculture and manufacturing were the two most important sectors almost everywhere, accounting for about 70% of total output in Germany, Italy and France, and 40-50% in America, Britain and Japan. International commerce was therefore dominated by raw materials, such as wheat, wood and iron ore, or processed commodities, such as meat and steel. But these sorts of products are heavy and bulky and the cost of transporting them relatively high.
20世纪初，农业和制造业几乎是世界上最重要的两个部门，占到德国、意大利和法国总产量的70％，美国、英国和日本的40-50％。因此，国际贸易以诸如小麦，木材和铁矿石之类的原材料，或诸如肉类和钢铁之类的加工商品为主。但是这些产品十分笨重，而且运输成本较高。
自然段D
Countries still trade disproportionately with their geographic neighbours. Over time, however, world output has shifted into goods whose worth is unrelated to their size and weight. Today, it is finished manufactured products that dominate the flow of trade, and, thanks to technological advances such as lightweight components, manufactured goods themselves have tended to become lighter and less bulky. As a result, less transportation is required for every dollar’s worth of imports or exports.
各国仍然与其地理上的邻国进行不成比例的贸易。但是，随着时间的流逝，世界产出已经转移到其价值与大小和重量无关的商品上。如今，制成品主导着贸易的流动。由于诸如轻量化组件之类的技术进步，制成品本身变得更轻，体积更小。结果，每进口或出口一美元产品所需的运输量就变少了。
自然段E
To see how this influences trade, consider the business of making disk drives for computers. Most of the world’s disk-drive manufacturing is concentrated in South-east Asia. This is possible only because disk drives, while valuable, are small and light and so cost little to ship. Computer manufacturers in Japan or Texas will not face hugely bigger freight bills if they import drives from Singapore rather than purchasing them on the domestic market. Distance therefore poses no obstacle to the globalisation of the disk-drive industry.
要了解这如何影响贸易，可以考虑下为计算机制造磁盘驱动器的业务。世界上大多数磁盘驱动器的制造都集中在东南亚。这之所以成为可能是因为磁盘驱动器虽然价值很高，但又小又轻，因此运输成本很小。如果日本或德州的计算机制造商从新加坡进口驱动器而不是在国内市场上购买驱动器，他们并不会面临高的太多的运费。因此，距离对磁盘驱动器行业的全球化没有任何障碍。
自然段Ｆ
This is even more true of the fast-growing information industries. Films and compact discs cost little to transport, even by aeroplane. Computer software can be ‘exported’ without ever loading it onto a ship, simply by transmitting it over telephone lines from one country to another, so freight rates and cargo-handling schedules become insignificant factors in deciding where to make the product. Businesses can locate based on other considerations, such as the availability of labour, while worrying less about the cost of delivering their output.
在迅速发展的信息产业中，情况更是如此。胶卷和光盘即使用飞机运输成本也很低。计算机软件可以通过电话线从一个国家传输到另一个国家实现出口，而无需将其装载到船上。因此运费和货物装卸安排对于决定在哪里生产该产品并不重要。企业可以基于其他考虑（例如劳动力）来定位，而不必担心交付产品的成本。
自然段G
In many countries deregulation has helped to drive the process along. But, behind the scenes, a series of technological innovations known broadly as containerisation and intermodal transportation has led to swift productivity improvements in cargo-handling. Forty years ago, the process of exporting or importing involved a great many stages of handling, which risked portions of the shipment being damaged or stolen along the way. The invention of the container crane made it possible to load and unload containers without capsizing the ship and the adoption of standard container sizes allowed almost any box to be transported on any ship. By 1967, dual-purpose ships, carrying loose cargo in the hold* and containers on the deck, were giving way to all-container vessels that moved thousands of boxes at a time.
在许多国家，放松管制有助于推动这一进程。但是，在幕后，一系列被称为集装箱化和多式联运的技术创新导致了货物装卸效率的迅速提高。四十年前，进出口过程涉及很多处理阶段，这可能会导致运输途中部分货物被损坏或被盗。集装箱起重机的发明使得装卸集装箱而不颠覆船舶成为可能。采用标准集装箱尺寸使得可以在几乎任何船舶上运输任何箱子。到1967年，把零散货物放在船舱内和在甲板上堆放集装箱的两用船，已被让一次移动数千箱的全集装箱船所取代。
自然段H
The shipping container transformed ocean shipping into a highly efficient, intensely competitive business. But getting the cargo to and from the dock was a different story. National governments, by and large, kept a much firmer hand on truck and railroad tariffs than on charges for ocean freight. This started changing, however, in the mid-1970s, when America began to deregulate its transportation industry. First airlines, then road hauliers and railways, were freed from restrictions on what they could carry, where they could haul it and what price they could charge. Big productivity gains resulted. Between 1985 and 1996, for example, America’s freight railways dramatically reduced their employment, trackage, and their fleets of locomotives – while increasing the amount of cargo they hauled. Europe’s railways have also shown marked, albeit smaller, productivity improvements.
集装箱运输将海运转变为高效，竞争激烈的业务。但是，往返码头运输货物却是另外一回事。总体而言，各国政府对卡车和铁路关税的态度要比对海运更为坚定。但是，这种情况在20世纪70年代中期开始改变，当时美国开始放宽对运输业的管制。首先是航空公司，然后是公路运输公司和铁路。它们的运输物品，运输地点和运输价格不再受到限制。从而大大提高了生产率。例如，在1985年至1996年之间，美国的货运铁路大大减少了他们的员工数量，轨道长度和火车头数量-同时增加了运输的货物量。尽管规模较小，欧洲的铁路也展现出明显的生产率提升。
自然段I
In America the period of huge productivity gains in transportation may be almost over, but in most countries the process still has far to go. State ownership of railways and airlines, regulation of freight rates and toleration of anti-competitive practices, such as cargo-handling monopolies, all keep the cost of shipping unnecessarily high and deter international trade. Bringing these barriers down would help the world’s economies grow even closer.
在美国，运输业大幅提高生产率的时期可能快要结束了，但是在大多数国家，这一过程还有很长的路要走。国家对铁路和航空的所有权，对运费的管理以及对反竞争行为的容忍，例如货物处理的垄断，都使运输成本过高，并阻碍了国际贸易。消除这些障碍将有助于世界经济进一步发展。
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