听考研真题|2022年英一阅读1:塑料藏品同样弥足珍贵

People often complain that plastics are too durable. 

【生词】durable adj.耐用的, 持久的

【翻译】人们经常抱怨塑料制品过于耐用。

Water bottles, shopping bags, and other trash litter the planet, from Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, because plastics are everywhere and don’t break down easily. 

【生词】Mount Everest n.埃佛勒斯峰（喜马拉雅山主峰之一，中国称珠穆朗玛峰）, 珠穆朗玛峰

Mariana Trench [地名] [太平洋] 马里亚纳海沟

【翻译】从珠穆朗玛峰到马里亚纳海沟，水瓶、购物袋及其他垃圾遍布全球，这是因为塑料无处不在且不易降解。

But some plastic materials change over time. They crack and frizzle. They “weep”out additives. They melt into sludge. 

【生词】sludge n.泥浆，烂泥, 沉淀物, 泥状雪

All of which creates huge headaches for institutions, such as museums, trying to  preserve culturally important objects. 

【翻译】这一切都给博物馆等机构在保护具有文化价值的文物时带来了巨大困扰。

The variety of plastic objects at risk is dizzying: early radios, avant-garde sculptures, celluloid animation stills from Disney films, the first artificial heart.

【生词】dizzying adj.令人昏乱的

avant-garde adj. 前卫的

sculpture n.雕刻作品, 雕刻艺术

celluloid n.赛璐珞，电影胶片, 假象牙

Certain artifacts are especially vulnerable because some pioneers in plastic art didn’t always know how to mix ingredients properly, says Thea van Oosten, a polymer chemist who, until retiring a few years ago, worked for decades at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE). 

【生词】polymer  n.多聚物, 高分子聚合物

chemist n.药店, 药剂师, 化学家

“It’s like baking a cake: If you don’t have exact amounts, it goes wrong,”she says. “The object you make is already a time bomb.”

【生词】bomb n.炸弹, 核武器; v.轰炸, 疾行, 惨败

And sometimes, it’s not the artist’s fault. In the 1960s, the Italian artist Piero Gilardi began to create hundreds of bright, colorful foam pieces. 

【生词】foam vi.起泡沫, 吐白沫; n.泡沫, 泡沫材料，泡沫状物; vt.使起泡沫

【翻译】有时，这并非艺术家的过错。在20 世纪 60 年代，意大利艺术家皮耶罗·吉拉尔迪开始创作数百件色彩鲜艳、造型独特的泡沫作品。

Those pieces included small beds of roses and other items as well as a few dozen “nature carpets”--large rectangles decorated with foam pumpkins, cabbages, and watermelons. 

【生词】carpet n.地毯,

rectangle n.长方形，矩形

pumpkin n.南瓜

【翻译】这些布置包括几小片玫瑰花床及其他装饰物，以及数十块“自然地毯”——即用泡沫南瓜、卷心菜和西瓜装饰的大尺寸矩形装饰物。

He wanted viewers to walk around on the carpets--which meant they had to be durable.

【翻译】他希望观众能在地毯上走动——这意味着这些地毯必须具备足够的耐用性。

Unfortunately, the polyurethane foam he used is inherently unstable. It’s especially vulnerable to light damage, and by the mid-1990s, Gilardi’s pumpkins, roses, and other figures were splitting and crumbling. 

【生词】polyurethane n.聚氨基甲酸酯, 聚氨酯

inherently adv.天性地，固有地

split v.裂开, 破裂

crumble v.（使）破碎, 坍塌, 崩溃, 无力应付

【翻译】遗憾的是，他所使用的聚氨酯泡沫材料本身就不稳定。这种材料尤其易受光损伤，到了20 世纪 90 年代中期，吉尔达迪制作的南瓜、玫瑰及其他造型作品已开始开裂并逐渐崩解。

Museums locked some of them away in the dark. 

【翻译】博物馆将其中一些藏品锁在黑暗之中。

So van Oosten and colleagues worked to preserve Gilardi’s sculptures. 

【翻译】因此，van Oosten 及其同事致力于保护 Gilardi 的雕塑作品。

They infused some with stabilizing and consolidating chemicals. Van Oosten calls those chemicals “sunscreens”because their goal was to prevent further light damage and rebuild worn polymer fibers. 

【生词】worn  adj.用旧(坏)的, 筋疲力尽的

fiber n.纤维（制品）, 丝

【翻译】他们向其中部分样本注入了稳定与巩固性化学物质。Van Oosten 将这些化学物质称为“防晒剂”，因为其目的在于防止进一步的光损伤，并修复已磨损的聚合物纤维。

She is proud that several sculptures have even gone on display again, albeit sometimes beneath protective cases.

【生词】albeit conj.虽然, 即使

【翻译】她感到自豪的是，多件雕塑作品甚至已重新展出，尽管有时仍被置于保护罩之下。

Despite success stories like van Oosten’s, preservation of plastics will likely get harder. Old objects continue to deteriorate. 

【生词】deteriorate v.恶化，变坏, 衰退

【翻译】尽管已有如van Oosten 案例般的成功案例，但文物的保护工作仍可能面临更大挑战——旧物件仍在持续劣化。

Worse, biodegradable plastics,designed to disintegrate, are increasingly common. 

【生词】biodegradable adj.能进行生物降解的

disintegrate v.碎裂, 崩溃，瓦解

【翻译】更糟糕的是，专为分解而设计的可生物降解塑料正变得越来越普遍。

And more is at stake here than individual objects. 

【翻译】此处所涉利害，已远超单个物件本身。

Joana Lia Ferreira, an assistant professor of conservation and restoration at the NOVA School of Science and Technology, notes that archaeologists first defined the great material ages of human history—Stone Age, Iron Age, and so on—after examining artifacts in museums. 

【生词】archaeologist n.考古学家

【翻译】NOVA科学技术学院保护与修复学助理教授若安娜·利亚·费雷拉指出，考古学家最初是在对博物馆中的文物进行考察后，才首次界定了人类历史中的重大物质时代——石器时代、铁器时代等。

We now live in an age of plastic, she says, “and what we decide to collect today, what we decide to preserve...will have a strong impact on how in the future we’ll be seen.”

【翻译】她说，我们如今生活在一个塑料时代，“我们今天决定收集什么、决定保存什么……都将对未来他人如何看待我们产生深远影响。”