研究生《学术英语翻译》课程作业-1
班级：(填8/9/10/11班) 姓名：学号：得分：
英译汉原文：
If a martian graced our planet, it would bestruck by one remarkable similarity amongEarth’s living creatures and a key difference.Concerning similarity, it would note that allliving things are designedon the basis ofhighly conserved developmentalsystemsthat read an (almost)universal language encodedin DNA basepairs. As such, life isarranged hierarchicallywith a foundationof discrete, unblendableunits (codons, and,for the most part,genes) capable of combiningto create increasinglycomplex and virtuallylimitless varietiesof both species and individualorganisms. Incontrast, it would noticethe absence of a universalcode of communication.
If our martian naturalistwere meticulous,it might notethat the faculty mediatinghuman communication appears remarkablydifferent from that of other livingcreatures;it might further note that the humanfaculty of language appears to be organizedlike the genetic code—hierarchical, generative,recursive, and virtually limitless withrespect to its scope of expression. With thesepieces in hand, this martian might begin towonder how the genetic code changed in sucha way as to generate a vast number of mutuallyincomprehensible communication systemsacross species while maintaining clarityof comprehension within a given species. Themartian would have stumbled onto some ofthe essential problems surrounding thequestion of language evolution, and of howhumans acquired the faculty of language.
（提示：faculty of language译为“语言官能”）。