TEXT K
First read the questions.
39. The Agency for International Development is a ___ organization.
A. new B. regional C. UN D. US
40. According to NDS's statistics, the number of babies the average Phil ipino woman bears dropped by ___ between 1960 and 1993.
A.4.1 B.6.4 C.2.3 D.2.9
Now go through TEXT K quickly to answer questions 39 and 40.
When representatives from 170 nations gather in Cairo next month for the th ird International Conference on Population and Development, they will vote on th e largest population-control plan in history. It is ambitious. Not only does it call for a host of “reproductive fights” and aim to freeze world population at 7 2 billion people by 2050; it also calls for billions of dollars in new governme nt spending on the issue-US $ 13.2 billion by the end of the century.
Some of the plan's provisions have already aroused opposition, most notabl y from Pope John Paul II. All this has been gleefully covered by the newspapers. Yet scant attention has been paid to many of the dubious social and economic ass umptions that underlie the plan. In particular, it is interesting to see how the se programmes are being sold in places like the Philippines, on the front lines of the population debate. For the way the proponents of population control have gone about pushing their programmes raises serious doubts about the integrity of their studies, their ultimate value to development, and the role of foreign-aid groups.
Although population-control measures in the Philippines never reached the coercive levels they did in India, they were not popular. This time, proponents have learned their lesson. For the past few years, they have been quietly laying the groundwork for Cairo. Rather than attack the issue head-on, it has been red efined in terms of a host of new“reproductive rights”to which the solution is invariably a government-funded initiative.
We have just had a good taste of this in the Philippines. The National Sta tistics Office recently published the results of the 1993 National Demographic S urvey（NDS）,which happens to have been funded by the U.S. Agency for Internationa l Development. It is probably mere coincidence, but the NDS report, published on the eve of the Cairo meeting, nicely supports the thrust of the Cairo Declarati on. That is, it has found a connection between mothers' and children's health an d fertility behaviour. The implication is that large-scale government family-pla nning programmes are essential if health issues are to be addressed.
But the demographic survey seems to have been selective about what facts i t would report and connections it would make. Take the health issue. The documen t concludes that the high risk of infant, child and maternal mortality is associ ated with pregnancies where mothers are too young, too old, or have already had several children. But a discussion of poverty is missing from the list of factor s related to health. It would be difficult to deny that poverty, lack of access to safe water, poor housing, poor hygiene and unsanitary conditions all have a s trong bearing on the health of the mother and child. Although the NDS collected data on housing characteristics, it did not include any data on income.
A closer look at the fertility behaviour of the poor is important because of the extensive literature on the “replacement effect” of high infant mortali ty . Statistical studies in various countries show high fertility among the poor as a rational desire to have children who will survive into adulthood to help take care of them. This helps to explain why many poor women have babies at such sho rt intervals. The 1993 NDS would have been a good opportunity to verify the vali dity of this behaviour in the Philippines.
The NDS avoided collecting data on socio-economic variables that would have a serious effect on these health issues. But, in one area, it made painstaking efforts to quantify fertility preference to derive figures for planned and unpla nned pregnancies. It concluded that “if all unwanted births were avoided, the t o tal fertility rate would be 2.9 children, which is almost 30% less than the obse rved rate. ”This, too, was used to establish an “unmet” need requiring a gove rnment programme.
Yet the NDS's own numbers suggest that Filipinos are aware of their option s . The total fertility rote——the number of babies the average woman bears over her lifetime——has dropped to 4.1 in 1993 from 6.4 in 1960. Some 61% used contr aceptives, just a few percentage points short of the 65-80% rate prevailing in E urope, North America and most of East Asia. The delay of marriage by Filipinos t o the age of 23 years represents a reduction of the risk of pregnancy by 19% giv en the 35 years of their reproductive life.
In short, the Philippines has its problems but its people are not as ignor ant as the population-control lobby would suppose. Unfortunately, this lobby has development dollars, organizational muscle and support of the media. “We've b ui lt a consensus about population as a global issue and family planning as a healt h issue,” says the UN's Naris Sadik, host of the conference. Yes, they have. A nd now we know how.
Part IV Translation
Section A：
加拿大的溫哥華1986年剛剛度過(guò)百歲生日，但城市的發(fā)展令世界矚目。以港立市，以港興市，是許多港口城市生存發(fā)展的道路。經(jīng)過(guò)百年開(kāi)發(fā)建設(shè)，有著天然不凍良港的溫哥華，成為舉世聞名的港口城市，同亞洲、大洋洲、歐洲、拉丁美洲均有定期班輪，年貨物吞吐量達(dá)到8，000萬(wàn)噸，全市就業(yè)人口中有三分之一從事貿(mào)易與運(yùn)輸行業(yè)。
溫哥華（Vancouver）的輝煌是溫哥華人智慧和勤奮的結(jié)晶，其中包括多民族的貢獻(xiàn)。加拿大地廣人稀，國(guó)土面積比中國(guó)還大，人口卻不足3000萬(wàn)。吸收外來(lái)移民，是加拿大長(zhǎng)期奉行的國(guó)策?？梢哉f(shuō)，加拿大除了印第安人外，無(wú)一不是外來(lái)移民，不同的只是時(shí)間長(zhǎng)短而已。溫哥華則更是世界上屈指可數(shù)的多民族城市。現(xiàn)今180萬(wàn)溫哥華居民中，有一半不是在本地出生的，每4個(gè)居民中就有一個(gè)是亞洲人。而25萬(wàn)華人對(duì)溫哥華的經(jīng)濟(jì)轉(zhuǎn)型起著決定性的作用。他們其中有一半是近5年才來(lái)到溫哥華地區(qū)的，使溫哥華成為亞洲以外的中國(guó)人聚居地。
Section B：
In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.
In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children （or males） is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.
Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family -they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.
First read the questions.
39. The Agency for International Development is a ___ organization.
A. new B. regional C. UN D. US
40. According to NDS's statistics, the number of babies the average Phil ipino woman bears dropped by ___ between 1960 and 1993.
A.4.1 B.6.4 C.2.3 D.2.9
Now go through TEXT K quickly to answer questions 39 and 40.
When representatives from 170 nations gather in Cairo next month for the th ird International Conference on Population and Development, they will vote on th e largest population-control plan in history. It is ambitious. Not only does it call for a host of “reproductive fights” and aim to freeze world population at 7 2 billion people by 2050; it also calls for billions of dollars in new governme nt spending on the issue-US $ 13.2 billion by the end of the century.
Some of the plan's provisions have already aroused opposition, most notabl y from Pope John Paul II. All this has been gleefully covered by the newspapers. Yet scant attention has been paid to many of the dubious social and economic ass umptions that underlie the plan. In particular, it is interesting to see how the se programmes are being sold in places like the Philippines, on the front lines of the population debate. For the way the proponents of population control have gone about pushing their programmes raises serious doubts about the integrity of their studies, their ultimate value to development, and the role of foreign-aid groups.
Although population-control measures in the Philippines never reached the coercive levels they did in India, they were not popular. This time, proponents have learned their lesson. For the past few years, they have been quietly laying the groundwork for Cairo. Rather than attack the issue head-on, it has been red efined in terms of a host of new“reproductive rights”to which the solution is invariably a government-funded initiative.
We have just had a good taste of this in the Philippines. The National Sta tistics Office recently published the results of the 1993 National Demographic S urvey（NDS）,which happens to have been funded by the U.S. Agency for Internationa l Development. It is probably mere coincidence, but the NDS report, published on the eve of the Cairo meeting, nicely supports the thrust of the Cairo Declarati on. That is, it has found a connection between mothers' and children's health an d fertility behaviour. The implication is that large-scale government family-pla nning programmes are essential if health issues are to be addressed.
But the demographic survey seems to have been selective about what facts i t would report and connections it would make. Take the health issue. The documen t concludes that the high risk of infant, child and maternal mortality is associ ated with pregnancies where mothers are too young, too old, or have already had several children. But a discussion of poverty is missing from the list of factor s related to health. It would be difficult to deny that poverty, lack of access to safe water, poor housing, poor hygiene and unsanitary conditions all have a s trong bearing on the health of the mother and child. Although the NDS collected data on housing characteristics, it did not include any data on income.
A closer look at the fertility behaviour of the poor is important because of the extensive literature on the “replacement effect” of high infant mortali ty . Statistical studies in various countries show high fertility among the poor as a rational desire to have children who will survive into adulthood to help take care of them. This helps to explain why many poor women have babies at such sho rt intervals. The 1993 NDS would have been a good opportunity to verify the vali dity of this behaviour in the Philippines.
The NDS avoided collecting data on socio-economic variables that would have a serious effect on these health issues. But, in one area, it made painstaking efforts to quantify fertility preference to derive figures for planned and unpla nned pregnancies. It concluded that “if all unwanted births were avoided, the t o tal fertility rate would be 2.9 children, which is almost 30% less than the obse rved rate. ”This, too, was used to establish an “unmet” need requiring a gove rnment programme.
Yet the NDS's own numbers suggest that Filipinos are aware of their option s . The total fertility rote——the number of babies the average woman bears over her lifetime——has dropped to 4.1 in 1993 from 6.4 in 1960. Some 61% used contr aceptives, just a few percentage points short of the 65-80% rate prevailing in E urope, North America and most of East Asia. The delay of marriage by Filipinos t o the age of 23 years represents a reduction of the risk of pregnancy by 19% giv en the 35 years of their reproductive life.
In short, the Philippines has its problems but its people are not as ignor ant as the population-control lobby would suppose. Unfortunately, this lobby has development dollars, organizational muscle and support of the media. “We've b ui lt a consensus about population as a global issue and family planning as a healt h issue,” says the UN's Naris Sadik, host of the conference. Yes, they have. A nd now we know how.
Part IV Translation
Section A：
加拿大的溫哥華1986年剛剛度過(guò)百歲生日，但城市的發(fā)展令世界矚目。以港立市，以港興市，是許多港口城市生存發(fā)展的道路。經(jīng)過(guò)百年開(kāi)發(fā)建設(shè)，有著天然不凍良港的溫哥華，成為舉世聞名的港口城市，同亞洲、大洋洲、歐洲、拉丁美洲均有定期班輪，年貨物吞吐量達(dá)到8，000萬(wàn)噸，全市就業(yè)人口中有三分之一從事貿(mào)易與運(yùn)輸行業(yè)。
溫哥華（Vancouver）的輝煌是溫哥華人智慧和勤奮的結(jié)晶，其中包括多民族的貢獻(xiàn)。加拿大地廣人稀，國(guó)土面積比中國(guó)還大，人口卻不足3000萬(wàn)。吸收外來(lái)移民，是加拿大長(zhǎng)期奉行的國(guó)策?？梢哉f(shuō)，加拿大除了印第安人外，無(wú)一不是外來(lái)移民，不同的只是時(shí)間長(zhǎng)短而已。溫哥華則更是世界上屈指可數(shù)的多民族城市。現(xiàn)今180萬(wàn)溫哥華居民中，有一半不是在本地出生的，每4個(gè)居民中就有一個(gè)是亞洲人。而25萬(wàn)華人對(duì)溫哥華的經(jīng)濟(jì)轉(zhuǎn)型起著決定性的作用。他們其中有一半是近5年才來(lái)到溫哥華地區(qū)的，使溫哥華成為亞洲以外的中國(guó)人聚居地。
Section B：
In some societies people want children for what might be called familial reasons: to extend the family line or the family name, to propitiate the ancestors; to enable the proper functioning of religious rituals involving the family. Such reasons may seem thin in the modern, secularized society but they have been and are powerful indeed in other places.
In addition, one class of family reasons shares a border with the following category, namely, having children in order to maintain or improve a marriage: to hold the husband or occupy the wife; to repair or rejuvenate the marriage; to increase the number of children on the assumption that family happiness lies that way. The point is underlined by its converse: in some societies the failure to bear children （or males） is a threat to the marriage and a ready cause for divorce.
Beyond all that is the profound significance of children to the very institution of the family itself. To many people, husband and wife alone do not seem a proper family -they need children to enrich the circle, to validate its family character, to gather the redemptive influence of offspring. Children need the family, but the family seems also to need children, as the social institution uniquely available, at least in principle, for security, comfort, assurance, and direction in a changing, often hostile, world. To most people, such a home base, in the literal sense, needs more than one person for sustenance and in generational extension.