职称考试--第一讲：Bees and Colour(高)－敬请关注“中国商务翻译网”

职称考试--第一讲：Bees and Colour(高)

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Bees and Colour

On our table in the garden we put a blue card, and all around this blue
card we put a number of different grey cards. These grey cards are of all
possible shades of grey and include white and black. On each card a watch-glass
is placed. The watch-glass on the blue card has some syrup in it; all the
others are empty. After a short time bees find the syrup, and they come
for it again and again. Then, after some hours, we take away the watch-glass
of syrup which was on the blue card and put an empty one in its place.
Now what do the bees do? They still go straight to the blue card, although
there is no syrup there. They do not go to any of the grey cards, in spite
of the fact that one of the grey cards is of exactly the same brightness
as the blue card. Thus the bees do not mistake any shade of grey for blue.
In this way we have proved that they do really see blue as a colour.
We can find out in just the same way what other colours bees can see. It
turns out that bees can see various colours, but these insects differ from
us as regards their colour-sense in two very interesting ways. Suppose
we train bees to come to a red card, and, having done so, we put the red
card on the table in garden among the set of different grey cards. This
time we fine that the bees mistake red for dark grey of black. They cannot
distinguish between them. This means that red is not a colour at all for
bees; for them it is just dark grey or black.
That is one strange fact; here is another. A rainbow is red on one edge,
violet on the other. Outside the violet of the rainbow there is another
colour which we cannot see at all. This colour beyond the violet, invisible
to us, is called the ultra-violet. Although it is invisible, we know that
the ultra-violet is there because it affects a photographic plate. Now,
although we are unable to see ultra-violet light, bees can do so; for them
ultra-violet is a colour. Thus bees see a colour which we cannot even imagine.
This has been found out by training bees to come for syrup to various parts
of a spectrum, or artificial rainbow, thrown by a prism on a table in a
dark room. Is such an experiment the insects can be taught to fly to the
ultra-violet, which for us is just darkness.

1. shades of grey意为“深浅不同的各种灰色”，shade可解释为“色度”。如：
The shirt is light blue and its collar a deeper shade.
此外，shade还可有引申意义，如：all shades of meaning(各层意义)。
1. go straight to意为“一直走向”，文章中的意思是“一直飞向”。go straight
to也可说成go right to,意思不变。
3. mistake A for B意思是“把A误认为B”。如：
Twins look so alike that I often mistake one for the other.
4. turn out 意为“原来（是）”，“结果（是）”，“证明（是）”。如：
We did not know his identity before, but he turned out to be a famous scientist.
5. as regards意为“关于，至于”，相当于concerning。
6. 现在分词完成时，用作状语。