A Frenchman, the psychologist Alfred Binet, published the first standardized test of human intelligence in 1905. (46)But it was an American, Lewis Terman, a psychology professor at Stanford, who thought to divide a_test taker’s "mental age," as revealed by that score, by his or her biological age to derive a number that he called "IQ". It would be hard to think of a pop-scientific coinage that has had a greater impact on the way people think about themselves and others.
(47)No country: embraced the IQ more thoroughly than the U.S., where millions of people have their IQ measured annually, many with a direct descendant of Binet’s original test, although not necessarily for the purpose Bin et intended. He developed his test as a way of identifying public school students who needed extra help in learning, and that is still one of its leading uses.
But the broader and more controversial use of IQ testing has its roots in a theory of intelligence—part science, part sociology—that developed in the late 19th century, before Binet’s work and entirely separate from it. (48)Championed first by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton, it held that intelligence was the most valuable human attribute, and that if people who had a lot of it could be identified and put in leadership positions, all of society would benefit.
Terman believed IQ tests should be used to conduct a great sorting out of the population, so that young people would be assigned on the basis of their scores to particular levels in the school system, which would lead to corresponding socioeconomic destinations in adult life. The beginning of the IQ-testing movement overlapped with the eugenics movement—hugely popular in America and Europe among the "better sort".
In 1958 a British sociologist named Michael Young coined the word "meritocracy" to denote a society that organizes itself according to IQ-test scores. Terman and many other early advocates of IQ testing had in mind the creation of an American meritocracy, though the word didn’t exist then. (49)They believed IQ tests could be the means to create, for the first time ever, a society in which advantage would go to the people who deserved it rather than to those who had been born into it.
In order to believe this, though, you have to believe that merit and a score on an IQ test are the same thing. (50)Long before IQ was invented, America prided itself on beinga country without a class system, in which people of talent and industry would rise and be rewarded. The advent of intelligence tests did not dramatically affect the degree of social mobility in the U.S.—at least not enough for any change to show up in the social-science data.
(47)No country: embraced the IQ more thoroughly than the U.S., where millions of people have their IQ measured annually, many with a direct descendant of Binet’s original test, although not necessarily for the purpose Bin et intended.
参考答案:
美国是世界上最信奉智商测试的国家,无数人每年都进行智商测试,有很多人使用从比内原始的测试题直接派生出来的题目,但其目的不一定符合比内的初衷。
解析:
[原文再现] No country embraced the IQ more thoroughly than the U.S., where millions of people have their IQ measured annually, many with a direct descendant of Binet’s original test, although not necessarily for the purpose Binet intended.
[结构分析] 本句的主干部分为No country embraced the IQ more thoroughly..., than the U.S. 作比较状语从句,省略了embraced the IQ。其后至句末是由关系副词where引导的非限定性定语从句,修饰the U.S.。该从句的主干为millions of people have their IQ measured,其中many with...部分为独立主格结构,作伴随状语。句末although则引起转折。
[译点分析]
(1)no country...the U.S.: no...more than为形容词比较级的否定,表示最高级,翻译时可直接译为“最……”;embrace意为“欣然接受或支持;信奉”,因此,该部分可译为“美国是世界上最信奉智商测试的国家”。
(2)where millions...: 修饰the U.S. 的非限定性定语从句,该定语从句较长,可以译为独立的句子;have their IQ measured为have sth done的结构,译为“测试他们的智商”;descendant本义为“子孙;后代”,此处使用其引申义“派生品;衍生品”。
(3)although not necessarily...: although在此处表转折,应译为“但是;然而”,而不是“尽管;虽然”;necessarily意为“必然地;必要地”。与其前的否定合译为“不一定;未必”;Binet intended为省略关系代词that或which的定语从句,修饰the purpose,可直接译为前置定语。这句话的意思为“但不一定出于比内设想的目的”,可调整译为“但其目的不一定符合比内的初衷”。