Directions: Read the following text carefully and then translate
the underlined segments into Chinese, Your translation should be written neatly
on ANSWER SHEET 2. Television has transformed politics in the United States by changing the
way in which information is distributed, by altering political campaigns, and
changing citizens’ patterns of response to politics. By giving citizen’s
independent access to the candidates, television dismissed the role of the
political party in the selection of the major party candidates. By cantering
politics on the person of candidates, television accelerated the citizen’s focus
on character rather than issues. Television has altered the
forms of political communication as well. (47) The messages on which most of
us rely are briefer than they once were, the stump speech, a political speech
given by travelling politicians and lasting 1.5 to 2 hours, which characterized
nineteenth-century political discourse, has given way to the 30 second
advertisement and then 10 second "sound bite" in broadcast news.
Increasingly the audience for speeches is not that standing in front of the
politician but rather the viewing audience who will hear and see a clip of the
speech on the news. In these abbreviated forms, much of what
consisted the traditional political discourse of earlier ages has been lost.
(48) In 15 or 30 seconds, a speaker can’t establish the historical context
that shaped the issue in question, cannot detail the probable causes of the
problem, and cannot examine alternative proposals to argue that one is
preferable to others. In clips, politicians assert but do not
argue. Because television is an intimate medium, speaking
through it required a changed political style that was more conversational,
personal, and visual than that of the old-style stump speech. Reliance on
television means that increasingly our political world contains memorable
pictures rather than memorable words. Schools teach us not analyze words and
print. (49) However, in a world in which politics is increasingly visual,
informed citizenship requires a new set of skills.
Recognizing the power of television’s pictures, politicians craft
televisual and staged events, called pseudo-events, designed to attract media
coverage. (50) Politicians, their speechwriters and their public relations
advisers for televised consumption have crafted much of the political activity
we see on television news. Sound bites in news and answers to questions in
debates increasingly sound like advertisements.