长难句求教

寻玉

一、"Reform" in American has been sterile because it can imagine no change except through the extension of this metaphor of a race, wider inclusion of competitors, "a piece of the action", as it were, for the disenfranchised.


二、
It can be inferred from the passage that a characteristic of the ethnological research on Native American conducted during the nineteeth centuary was the use of which of the following.


请各位大侠能不能再翻译的同时，把句子机构说明以下。（第二句不用咯~不过我想知道be use of 是什么意思）


跪谢~

picopink

一、"Reform" in American has been sterile because it can imagine no change except through the extension of this metaphor of a race, wider inclusion of competitors, "a piece of the action", as it were, for the disenfranchised.
“改革”在美国是无效的，因为除了上文比喻的竞争会扩大——让更多竞争者加入竞赛，让失意者分到一块蛋糕——以外，没有任何改变。

It can be inferred from the passage that a characteristic of the ethnological research on Native American conducted during the nineteeth centuary was the use of which of the following.
be the use of 是“用了。。的方法”的意思。

不要跪谢了，我也在摸索阅读，一起加油吧！！

寻玉

一、"Reform" in American has been sterile because it can imagine no change except through the extension of this metaphor of a race, wider inclusion of competitors, "a piece of the action", as it were, for the disenfranchised.
“改革”在美国是无效的，因为除了上文比喻的竞争会扩大——让更多竞争者加入竞赛，让失意者分到一块蛋糕——以外，没有任何改变。

It can be inferred from the passage that a characteristic of the ethnological research on Native American conducted during the nineteeth centuary was the use of which of the following.
be the use of 是“用了。。的方法”的意思。

不要跪谢了，我也在摸索阅读，一起加油吧！！

-- by 会员 picopink (2011/8/1 18:19:31)

You are so nice
但是，第一句话的翻译在杨继的《GMAT阅读精解》中有，但是我始终没有弄清楚，这句话的结构——这么多逗号，还有“a piece of the action” 是意译为分一杯羹么？ "as it were" 中 it 指什么？ 为什么用were ？ 是表示虚拟语气么？ 这句话我看了很多遍完全没有看懂。


第二句，整句话的翻译是“ 可以从文中推断出，19世纪人类文化学研究印第安人的一个特点用来如下的哪个方法”， ？ 这个和杨继的的翻译“19世纪，人类文化学研究印第安人有何特点”哪个更正确？？