???? 又是一年考研时。2020年是一个特殊的年份，年初一场突如其来的新冠疫情让我们记忆犹新。可想而知，今年考研肯定逃不开“疫情”这两个字。所谓猜题，就是站在出卷人的角度，揣摩他会关注什么话题，青睐什么类型的材料。今年是众志成城、全民抗疫的一年，也让我们的爱国热情空前高涨。之前我说过今年的材料可能会偏红专不是没 理的，外媒的恶意攻击和泼脏水，让从雪人等外媒上选材更加困难，考官可能会将目光转向国内的领导人讲话、政经等材料，或是干脆规避

热点，从有一定年代的“老旧”文本上选材也很安全。

? 今年我所选的材料正是第二种，借史观今。这也是今年6月刚发布的上海翻译家协会举办的第17届“上译”杯翻译竞赛原文，由于篇幅限制只选了其中几段，主要讲的是历史上伦敦爆发的大瘟疫，当时人们的恐慌心理，和今年年初我们所经历的并无二致。无责任押题并不担保押中，只是为了开阔大家的思路，揭示一种命题方向。材料本身难度较大文学性较强，适合考名校的同学考前练手。以下是原文（并没有答案，因为官方也还没有公布优秀译文）：

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don’t come any closer（excerpt）
jill lepore

when the plague came to london in 1665, londoners lost their wits. they consulted astrologers, quacks, the bible. they searched their bodies for signs, tokens of the disease: lumps, blisters, black spots. they begged for prophecies; they paid for predictions; they prayed; they yowled. they closed their eyes; they covered their ears. they wept in the street. they read alarming almanacs: “certain it is, books frighted them terribly.”the government, keen to contain the panic, attempted“to suppress the printing of such books as terrify’d the people,”according to daniel defoe, in “a journal of the plague year” , a history that he wrote in tandem with an advice manual called “due preparations for the plague” , in 1722, a year when people feared that the disease might leap across the english channel again, after having journeyed from the middle east to marseille and points north on a merchant ship. defoe hoped that his books would be useful “both to us and to posterity, though we should be spared from that portion of this bitter cup.”that bitter cup has come out of its cupboard.

in 1665, the skittish fled to the country, and alike the wise, and those who tarried had reason for remorse: by the time they decided to leave, “there was hardly a horse to be bought or hired in the whole city,” defoe recounted, and, in the event, the gates had been shut, and all were trapped. everyone behaved badly, though the rich behaved the worst: having failed to heed warnings to provision, they sent their poor servants out for supplies. “this necessity of going out of our houses to buy provisions, was in a great measure the ruin of the whole city,” defoe wrote. one in five londoners died, notwithstanding the precautions taken by merchants. the butcher refused to hand the cook a cut of meat; she had to take it off the hook herself. and he wouldn’t touch her money; she had to drop her coins into a bucket of vinegar. bear that in mind when you run out of purell.

“sorrow and sadness sat upon every face,” defoe wrote. the government’s stricture on the publication of terrifying books proved pointless, there being plenty of terror to be read on the streets. you could read the weekly bills of mortality, or count the bodies as they piled up in the lanes. you could read the orders published by the mayor: “if any person shall have visited any man known to be infected of the plague, or entered willingly into any known infected house, being not allowed: the house wherein he inhabiteth shall be shut up.” and you could read the signs on the doors of those infected houses, guarded by watchmen, each door marked by a foot-long red cross, above which was to be printed, in letters big enough to be read at a distance, “lord, have mercy upon us.”

材料有删节，完整版请戳第17届“上译”杯翻译竞赛（不仅可以作为英译中材料，也可能作为基英的阅读材料哦）

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