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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