本文作者不详，选自于陈忠诚选编的《法律英语五十篇》，属于典型的非文学翻译。法律翻译是非文学翻译的重要分支，要求内容紧密，语言精确，特别强调忠实于原文，不改变句子结构，以十分准确和简练的语言来传达原意。

As recently as the early 1960s, the phrase "environmental law" would probably have produced little more than a puzzled look, even from many lawyers.

早在六十年代初，甚至连许多律师接触到“环保法”这个词儿，大半也只会感到纳闷而已。

Such issues as clean air, pure water and freedom from noise pollution were not important public concern.

当时，诸如空气清新、水质洁净、无噪声污染之类的问题，都不是公众怎么了不起的关切所在。

There were, of course, numerous state and some federal laws intended to protect America's rivers and streams from excessive industrial pollution and to guard wildlife from the depredations of man.

当然，已经有了许多州法和一些联邦法，其立法意图是保护美国的江河，使之免受过分的工业污染并保护野生生物不受人类的掠夺。

But these regulations were generally ignored.

可是对这些规定，人们一般都置之不理。

With enforcement power dispersed among many federal, state and local agencies, most of which were seriously undermanned, and with noncompliance penalties so slight as to have little more than harassment value,there were few incentives to obey the laws.

由于执法的权力分散在许许多多的联邦、州和地方等三级机关（而这些机关大多人手严重不足），也由于因违法而科处的罚款微不足道（从而只有恼人心烦的意义），人们就缺乏服从法律的劲头了。

Indeed, many environmental statutes were so little publicized and so vaguely worded that their existence was hardly known and their meaning was scarcely understood.

说真的，许多环境法的宣传工作之薄弱与措词之含糊，让人简直不知道有环境法，而环境法的意义也就无人了解了。

Then, in 1962, came a book called Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

不久以后，在1962年雷切尔・卡森所著、名为《沉默的春天》一书同世了。

A powerful indictment of America's disregard of ecology, Silent Spring was aimed chiefly at the wholesale use of chemical pesticides, especially DDT.

〈沉默的春天》有力地控诉了美国之忽视生态，它主要是针对大规模使用农药一特别是滴滴涕。

In 1965 a court action took place that ranks in environmental importance with the publication of Silent Spring.

1965年又发生了一件诉讼，其对环境之重要意义，不亚于《沉默的春天》的出版。

That was the reversal by a court of appeals of a Federal Power Commission decision to grant a license for a Consolidated Edison power plant at Storm King Mountain on the Hudson River in New York.

某上诉法院驳回了联邦电力委员会关于向纽约哈得逊河畔施多姆金山爱迪生联合发电厂颁发许可的决定。

The court ordered new proceedings that were to "include as a basic concern the preservation of natural beauty and of national historic shrines".

该法院命重新处理该案并“以保护自然美和历史名胜为基本注意事项”。

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