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English to Chinese: Scotching the snake General field: Other Detailed field: Journalism
Source text - English FIVE years ago a furious mob in Libya’s second city, Benghazi, torched the Italian consulate, the city’s only European diplomatic mission, prompting police gunfire that killed ten people. The rioters’ anger had been sparked when an Italian minister donned a T-shirt sporting a cartoon, originally printed in a Danish newspaper, that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad. But xenophobia had long simmered in the city.
Today Benghazi’s rebellious citizens cheerfully fly the French tricolor, in recognition of France’s crucial, just-in-time dispatch of warplanes to save the city from recapture by forces loyal to Libya’s embattled leader, Muammar Qaddafi. When their revolt began last month, many rebel leaders had bridled at the thought of Western intervention. Now they unanimously welcome the no-fly zone, and pray it may extend to tactical support for their ragtag forces on the ground.
The fast-spreading Arab spring has similarly upended many other givens in the region’s politics. Old alliances have foundered and new ones are emerging as governments grapple with, or are overcome by, forces of change. Leaders have been compelled not merely to pay lip service to their peoples’ demands, but to respond to them. The regional order, always fragile, is now also fluid.
Corralling joint Arab action has always been difficult. With every country now embroiled in internal troubles, the result these days is diplomatic paralysis. In this context, the unprecedented agreement last week by the Arab League’s 22 members to invite the UN Security Council to intervene in Libya was surprising. In part it reflected the accumulated personal annoyance of Arab leaders with Colonel Qaddafi over such misdemeanours as his reported dispatch, in 2004, of a hit squad to assassinate then Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But it also reflected renewed sensitivity to feelings on the “Arab street”, where the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi has inspired powerful sympathies, intensified by the enthusiastic reporting of Al Jazeera, the region’s most popular satellite news channel.
The channel, owned by the immensely rich Qatari royal family, has itself been targeted by Colonel Qaddafi. One of its cameramen in Benghazi, a Qatari national, was killed earlier this month by pro-Qaddafi gunmen, and an Al Jazeera crew remains in detention in the Libyan capital, Tripoli. Such things have a powerful impact in the tiny Gulf state, and may explain why Qatar is so far the only Arab country that looks likely to dispatch warplanes to help impose the no-fly zone. Perhaps more important, Al Jazeera’s star religious commentator, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born preacher linked closely to the Muslim Brotherhood, has blessed both the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi and international action to support it.
The Arab League’s decision was a hugely important endorsement; but it never meant that the League would suddenly engage in war too, despite initial calls from Libyan rebels for Arab help. Since the no-fly zone began to be enforced both the group’s secretary-general, Amr Moussa, and individual members such as Algeria have voiced concern that the operation may be exceeding its mandate to protect Libyan civilians. Mr Moussa says this does not represent criticism of the coalition, and that Arab backing remains solid. But it is clear that some Arab states remain queasy about endorsing what may amount to a programme for regime change.
Others worry that a prolonged or fiercer aerial siege could cause civilian casualties, and an angry popular backlash, building on deeply ingrained distrust of Western intentions. It is significant, also, that Mr Moussa himself is set to retire, and plans to run in post-revolutionary Egypt’s first presidential election. In a region in which leaders have never previously had to bother about pandering to potential voters, calculating the public mood has now become a necessary talent for budding politicians.
Looking for guidance
If the Arabs appear to be sitting on the fence, this is also because the two countries that have traditionally set Arab agendas, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are preoccupied elsewhere. As Libya’s neighbour, Egypt, with a population more than 12 times bigger and a new government predisposed to ejecting dictators, might have played a strong part in Libyan affairs. But not only is Egypt’s much larger army fully occupied by events at home; its new foreign minister, Nabil el-Araby, plans to shift Egyptian policy away from the reliance on America that characterised the three decades of rule by the fallen president, Hosni Mubarak. This will take time to evolve, but more pointedly, says Mr el-Araby, he feels Egypt’s hands are tied because of the estimated 1m Egyptian workers who remain in Libya, mostly in regions under Colonel Qaddafi’s control.
Saudi Arabia’s position is more complicated still. Its ageing, autocratic leaders have been shocked by the fall of Mr Mubarak, a staunch ally, and infuriated by what they see as Western complicity in the wave of pressure for democratic reform. The oil-rich kingdom has also been increasingly distracted by events in neighbouring Yemen and Bahrain.
With King Abdullah and his deputy, Crown Prince Sultan, both in their 80s and ill, and Prince Saud al-Faisal, the foreign minister, also weakened by disease, foreign policy has increasingly devolved to the interior minister, Prince Nayef, aged 78, who is tipped to emerge eventually as king. The tough, short-tempered prince is a conservative, even by Saudi standards. For decades he has seen his main mission as blunting the influence of Iran’s brand of revolutionary Shia Islamism.
Events in Bahrain, an island kingdom that is linked to Saudi Arabia by a causeway and whose Sunni royal family has long been buttressed by Saudi aid, have understandably alarmed Prince Nayef. Not only has Saudi Arabia pushed Bahrain’s rulers to crush the month-old democratic uprising embraced by their majority-Shia subjects. Citing a 1981 mutual defence agreement between the six Sunni Arab monarchies that ring the southern shore of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have jointly dispatched some 2,000 paramilitary police to Bahrain.
The intervention has quietly dismayed the Saudis’ Western allies, who fear comparisons between their zeal for boosting democracy in Libya and their reluctance to do so in Bahrain, which happens to be the home base of America’s Fifth Fleet. Yet the Saudis have not only brushed off complaints; they have also let it be known that more active Saudi backing for the punishment of Colonel Qaddafi is contingent on Western silence over Bahrain, and they have pressed other Arabs to refrain from criticism.
Even Syria, Iran’s closest Arab ally, has explicitly endorsed the Saudi intervention (see article). Its regime, dominated by the minority Alawite sect that is an offshoot of Shia Islam, faces growing unrest, and is wary of provoking a religious backlash from its majority Sunni population.
While the show of Saudi willpower appears to have secured an uncomfortable calm in Bahrain, the potentially much more dangerous problem of Yemen festers (see article). The president of the past 32 years, Ali Abdullah Saleh, now relies almost exclusively for survival on military units run by his family, which were generously armed and trained by Western countries, ostensibly to fight terrorism. These units have been implicated in the sniper attacks in the capital, Sana’a, on March 18th that killed at least 45 unarmed protesters.
The emergence of an open, democratic Libya, linking Egypt and Tunisia in a sweep of new Arab democracies on the southern Mediterranean shore, is certainly a goal worth striving for. But the region’s complexities have a way of undermining the best intentions.
正当沙特强硬的态度似乎给巴林带来一种让人不太自在的平静之时，也门一直潜伏着的危险得多的问题也开始发作。过去32年里一直担任总统的阿里•阿卜杜拉•萨利赫（Ali Abdullah Saleh）如今几乎完全依赖他自己家族掌控的军队来维持统治，西方国家曾为这些部队提供大量武器装备和培训，名义上说是出于反恐目的。这些部队与3月18日首都萨那发生的狙击手袭击事件有牵连，这次袭击杀害了45名手无寸铁的抗议者。
I have been in the translation world for 17 years. Starting from 2002, I passed the way from a translator, advanced translator to an editor in 2005 while I worked for a professional translation company.
In May 2006, I successfully passed the China Accreditation Test for Translators and Interpreters (CATTI) and was awarded Level 2 Translation Proficiency Qualification Certificate. The test was said very difficult and only less than 15% of the examinees passed the Level 2 test for English language in May, 2006.
I have great affection for translation and have been awarded several honors. In 2006, I participated in the Translation Arena Contest held by Chinadaily.com.cn, a famous website in China, and finally won the third prize in that year‐long contest. In 2011, I translated several articles from The Economist magazine on www.ecocn.org website and gained great praises.
In 2006, I became a freelance translator. During the period of fifteen‐year work experience as a translator, I always work with very positive professional attitude. No matter worked at a translation company or worked as a freelance translator, I treated every job seriously and delivered every job on time. Thus, both my working attitude and the projects I have done are always highly evaluated and appreciated.
Also, I majored in automation and worked as an engineer for ten years prior to being a translator. What I learnt both in college and from my engineer work are very helpful to my translation work. They enabled me to better understand technical materials and avoid misunderstanding and mistranslation.
I take translation as my career instead of just a job. With my great affection for translation, my positive professional attitude and my professional skills, I’m sure I shall be able to make better achievements in the cooperation with you.
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