48.（Despite these alarming statistics, the scale of the threat that smoking posesto women's health has received surprisingly little attention. Smokingjs still seen bymany as a mainly male problem, perhaps because men were the first to take up thehabit and therefore the first to suffer the ill effects.）This is no longer the case.Women who smoke like men will die like men. WHO estimates that inindustrialized countries, smoking rates amongst men and women are very similar,at around 30 per cent; in a large number of developed countries, smoking is nowmore common among teenage girlsthan boys. As women took up .smoking later than men, the full impact of smoking on theirhealth has yet to be seen. But it is clear from countries where women smokedlongest,such as the United Kingdom and the United States, that smoking causesthe same diseases in women as in men and the gap between their death rates isnarrowing.
【正确答案】：尽管这些统计数据使人惊恐，但令人吃惊的是，吸烟对女性健康造成威胁的严重程度并未引起人们的注意。很多人仍然认为吸烟主要是男性的问题，这可能是因为男性是最先染上吸烟习惯的。所以他们也是最先的受害者。
【题目解析】：括号部分包括两个复杂句。这种情况一般是把主句和从句单独译出，再根据句子各部分的逻辑关系重新整合。在第一个句子中，despite这个介词引导让步状语，表示“虽然，尽管”，alarming意为“令人惊恐的，令人担忧的”，scale是主语，意为“规模；程度”，这个主语带了两个后置定语，分别是一个介词短语和一个定语从句。这个从句中的惯用表达pose a threat to sb.表示“对…造成威胁”。little一词为否定意义的形容词，意为“几乎没有”，翻译时需要特别注意。第二个句子中出现了be seen as这样的被动结构，翻译时一般通过添加主语“人们”译成主动结构，使它更符合中文表达习惯。because引导的原因状语从句中to take up the habit是一个惯用表达，意为“养成这一习惯”，suffer表示“遭受…的损害/痛苦”；ill effects意为“不良做用，副作用”。因为to suffer the ill effects是个后置定语，修饰the first，可以把这部分直接译成名词“最先的受害者”，使得译文表达更为简洁。
