《华盛顿邮报》5月21日文章题：听说过有关中国每年培养60万工程师的事吗？
《参考消息》对原文进行了选译，以下为原文全部内容，有助于更深理解文章主旨：
heard the one about the
600,000 chinese engineers?
by gerald w. bracey
sunday, may 21, 2006; page b03
people and organizations create statistics for a purpose -- to call attention to a problem, or to argue for a policy change. americans consume v_______（a） quantities of statistics every day. most zip in and out of our brains, but （1）others somehow take root in the gray matter[1], then move about the culture as something that everyone just "knows."
among such recent attention-getting statistics are 600,000 and 70,000. these are, allegedly, the number of engineers produced in 2004 in china and the united states, respectively. the numbers first drew major notice when they appeared in a fortune magazine story on july 25, 2005. the cover showed a brawny[2] china bullying a scrawny[3] uncle sam on the beach. "is the u.s. a 97-pound weakling[4]?" the cover asked. we're losing our competitive e_______（b）, the article stated, citing the numbers above.
these numbers attained seemingly impeccable credibility when they were featured in a press release last october about a new report from the committee on science, engineering and public policy, a joint group from the national academy of sciences, national academy of engineering and institute of medicine. to dramatize the seriousness of the issue, the academies titled the 543-page report "rising above the gathering storm," an a_________（c） to winston churchill's book "the gathering storm," about events leading up to world war ii.
（2）naturally, given this lofty pedigree[5], the statistics then materialized in the new york times, boston globe, chicago tribune and on many web sites. while times columnist thomas l. friedman did not use these specific numbers in his 2005 b_________（d）, "the world is flat," he did write that asian universities currently produce eight times as many bachelor's degrees in engineering as u.s. universities do.
carl bialik, a columnist with the wall street journal, was suspicious. he had previously examined the fortune numbers and concluded that they were inflated, so he s_________（e） to find their source. the most likely origin for the 600,000 chinese engineers was a 2002 speech by ray bingham, then-chief executive of a semiconductor company. as for the academies' report, deborah stine, who led the study, told bialik that the committee had "assumed fortune did fact-checking on their numbers" and so used them.
the 2004 china statistical yearbook, issued by the chinese government, reports 644,000 engineering graduates that year. but the yearbook merely assembled the numbers sent by provincial governments. the accuracy of these provincial reports is u________（f）, and it is unclear whether the provinces shared common definitions.
in fact, about half of what china calls "engineers" would be called "technicians" at b______（g） in the united states. in addition, the mckinsey study of nine occupations, including engineering, concluded that "fewer than 10 percent of chinese job candidates, on average, would be suitable for work [in a multinational company] in the nine occupations we studied."
（3）after an exhaustive study, researchers at duke university also pummeled[6] the numbers. in a december 2005 analysis, they reported that the united states annually produces 137,437 engineers with at least a bachelor's degree while china produces 351,537. that's more u.s. degrees per million residents than in either other nation.
among major media outlets, thus far only the christian science monitor has joined the wall street journal in examining the competing statistics. in a december 2005 article, the monitor quoted rochester institute of technology professor ron hira as saying: "（4）business groups have been very smart about trying to change the subject from offshoring[7] to the supposed shortfall of u.s. engineers. there's really no serious shortage of engineers.
statistics that end up as conventional wisdom even when they're wrong usually become popular by being presented as fact in a highly visible and respected source -- such as a cover story in fortune or a national academies report.
（5）once a statistic has attained the status of something we all "know," it takes on a charmed life. it is hardly s________（h） that the national academies report gave rise to many citations.
（6）we probably will not be done with the 600,000 and 70,000 false comparison for a long time. if ever.
notes:
1.gray matter (1)【解】(大脑与脊髓的)灰白质 (2)【俚】头脑;智力,点子
2.brawny adj. 肌肉结实的；顽强的
3.scrawny adj. 【美】瘦的;骨瘦如柴的
4.weakling n.体弱的人，懦弱者
5.pedigree n. 1) 家谱,系谱2) 家世,血统,出身:party activists with lower middle class pedigrees are numerous.党内积极分子中中产阶级下层出身的很多。3) 名门世系a man of pedigree 名门望族出身的男子
6.pummel vt. 用拳头打
7.offshoring n.外包
试一试：
1.翻译划线部分英文：
《参考消息》全文：
2.根据翻译和首字母提示，填入适当单词：
（a）americans consume v________ quantities of statistics every day.（美国每天要消耗大量数据。）
（b）we're losing our competitive e_______.（我们就要失去竞争优势了。）
（c）an a_________ to churchill's book "the gathering storm" （暗指丘吉尔的著作《阴云密布》）
（d）in his 2005 b_________（在他2005年的畅销书中）
（e）he s_________ to find their source（他决定寻找数字的来源）
（f）the accuracy of these provincial reports is u________.（每个省的报告是否准确不得而知）
（g）be called "technicians" at b______（最多只能称作“技师”）
（h）it is hardly s________（h）（难怪）
原文对应单词：
(a)vast; (b)edge; (c)allusion; (d)bestseller; (e)sought; (f)unknown; (g)best; (h)surprising