7. Farley was a tall, slender man with a slow manner. Or perhaps he was just sleepy. He seemed to take forever to unlock the offices and let Morris inside.
—Michael Crichton: The Terminal Man, NY 1972, p.148
8. They have to cut a beautiful live oak wood, that took hundreds of years to grow, for a concrete racetrack.
—National Geographic, April 1976, p.546
9. Immediately after lunch there arrived a delicate, difficult piece of work which would take several hours and necessitated putting everything else aside.
—George Orwell: 1984，1949/1961, p.91
最后一种即第三种译法，比较特别：由不定式动词在意义上的客体（下例中的“Cathedral lights”）充任“take”的主语，请看下例：
10. The cathedral lights took us a year to make and we had to work untill midnight to finish them off.
—Ronafd Blythe; Akenfield ~ Portrait of an
English Village, Penguin Books, 1969/ 1975, p.145
以上所列三种译法，一般可替换使用而不悖原义，如上列例也可写作：
(A) To make the cathedral lights took us a year.…
(B) It took us a year to make the cathedral lights...
(C) We took a year to make the cathedral lights,…
当然，上列例10虽有四种可能的表达法，但在具体上下文中还得根据言语条件择优选用其中的某一译法。
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