下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

时间:2022年12月11日

/

来源:江城子

/

编辑:本站小编

收藏本文

下载本文

下面是小编为大家收集的下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题,本文共12篇,仅供参考,欢迎大家阅读,一起分享。本文原稿由网友“江城子”提供。

篇1:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

Inside the Pop-up Economy

几千块就能开家小店?英国出现“快闪店”电商平台

In the dirge of news about retail failure, where once impregnable institutions like House of Fraser and Marks and Spencer are now husks of their former selves, the high street would seem to be in mortal danger. Right? Wrong, says Ross Bailey, a 26-year-old retail entrepreneur: “The problem is that most high-street stores are crap.”

零售企业纷纷倒下。曾经坚不可摧的House of Fraser和马莎百货(Marks and Spencer)如今都只剩下一具躯壳。挽歌唱响,高街零售业似乎走到了生死关头。难道不对吗?当然不对!在26岁的零售企业家罗斯·贝利(Ross Bailey)看来,“问题出在大多数高街百货商店品质堪忧。”

Lest we forget, 90 per cent of sales are still made in bricks-and-mortar buildings. But shorter leases, changing consumer loyalties and online stores have changed the way we shop. And traditional stores are increasingly being replaced by more short-term “pop-up” solutions.

先提醒一句,目前社会消费品销售总额的90%仍是在实体店完成的。但随着商铺租约的缩短,消费者忠诚度不断变化,加上电商的发展,我们的购物方式也在改变。此外,传统商店正逐步让位于经营期限更短的“快闪”(Pop-up)模式。

“The death of the high street is grossly exaggerated,” Bailey continues. “It dies when it’s homogenous and uninteresting. When it’s done right, it’s a totally different story.”

“高街的衰亡被过分夸大了。”贝利接着说道,“如果高街零售商继续同质化经营和无趣,消亡是不可避免的。但如果经营得当,情况会完全不同。”

In , Bailey founded Appear Here, an online marketplace for short-term retail designed to disrupt the commercial space. Brands go to the website to search for a space, book a time slot and earmark a budget and then Appear Here connects them with a landlord.

,贝利创建了零售商铺短租平台Appear Here,旨在颠覆商业地产市场。品牌可以通过该平台搜索场地,列出时间段和预算,而Appear Here则会为他们介绍房东。

If the brand and the landlord are a match, the deal goes ahead. Some shops pop up for only a week, others rent for years – either way, it’s a “pay as you go” business, where even the most powerful brands can test a new market without long-term commitment.

如果品牌与房东的要求匹配,就达成交易。一些商铺仅摆设一周时间,有些则会租上数年——无论哪种,都采取“现收现付”模式。就连那些最有影响力的品牌都可以通过这种模式来试水新市场,而不必签下长期合约。

Today, Bailey oversees a network that includes 160,000 brands and 6,000 retail spaces, throughout London, Paris and New York, and represents every kind of business, from the tiniest market-stall artisans to the most powerful brands in the world, such as Apple, Nike and Louis Vuitton. And the shops just keep popping.

如今,贝利的服务范围包括16万个品牌和6000个零售场地,覆盖了伦敦、巴黎和纽约全城,遍布每一个行业——从最微小的市场摆摊手艺人,到苹果、耐克和路易威登等全球最有影响力的品牌。且快闪商店还在持续增多。

This week, Appear Here launches its next innovation, a six-part collection of modular furniture designed for short-term retail. The pieces can be rented by the week, come in three different finishes, and include everything the modern shopkeeper might need, from a hanging rail to a fitting room to a shelving unit and a cash desk.

日前,Appear Here推出了又一项创新:由6部分组成的模块家具。这套家具专门为短租零售而设计。家具可以按周租赁,有三种不同漆面,包括了现代商店可能用到的一切:从衣架、试衣间,到货架和收银台。

The collection was designed by Richard Found, whose day job is tending to the look of luxury commercial spaces. He describes the fixtures as “ego-less”, with a focus on “pure design”. All can be adapted to any environment and it’s sleek, simple – and idiot-proof.

这套家具由理查德·方德(Richard Found)设计,他的正业是为奢侈品牌设计门店。在他眼中,这些固定装置做到了“无我”,专注于“纯设计”。所有装置都能适应各种环境,造型流线,简洁,且易于安装。

The incentives for such a collaboration are many. First, it will scale the business, increasing Appear Here’s profile as a one-stop pop-up platform through which you can also staff and service your store. Second, it will offer even the humblest of retailers a little more luxury gloss.

合作设计这样一套家具是出于多项考虑。首先,这样能促进规模化运营,提升Appear Here作为一站式快闪平台的形象——人们可以通过该平台为商店雇人和购买服务。其次,这能为哪怕是最不起眼的零售商增添一丝高级感。

Both are feeling bullish about the future of the high street. But they insist it must adapt. “Your store doesn’t need to be in one place anymore,” says Bailey. “Before, if you didn’t have your store, your business was over because where would the person find you? Now you’ve always got a presence that exists.”

对于高街零售业的未来,二人都持乐观态度。但他们坚称高街必须适应新形势。“你的商店没必要固守在一个地方。”贝利表示,“以前,倘若没有自己的店面,你的生意就完了,因为人们该去哪里找你?但现在你永远都有实体窗口。”

And he’s persuasive on the power of the pop-up as a marketing tool. “Digital direct-to-consumer brands are now paying so much for digital advertising.” With social-media reach and the right user-friendly experience, “one little shop can create something that builds a connection with millions of people that don’t even happen to walk past it. Experience is a currency that spreads.”

此外,他关于快闪店营销功能的看法也非常有说服力。“目前,直接面向消费者(DTC)的数字品牌在数字广告方面投入巨大。”有了社交媒体的宣传,再能提供友好的用户体验,“一家小店可以与数百万消费者建立联系,哪怕这些消费者并没有亲自路过。体验就是流通货币。”

Bailey’s hope is that the pop-up will help make the high street “a place of discovery” once more. “Anyone can have a shop,” he says.

贝利希望,快闪模式能帮助高街零售商店再一次成为“充满发现之地”。 “人人都能开店。”

Some of his favourite anecdotes concern the more unusual enterprises he’s helped bring to life – like the parents who, in lieu of an iPad, bought their son a ?600 birthday pop-up from which to launch his T-shirt brand for two weeks.

他最喜欢讲的一些趣事,就是他帮助实现的那些不寻常的店铺——例如,一对父母花费600英镑,给他们的儿子买了一个为期两周的快闪店作为生日礼物,而不是iPad,用来发布他的T恤品牌。

篇2:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

Love the Way You Walk

迷恋你的步伐

Listen carefully to the footsteps in the family home, especially if it has wooden floors unmuffled by carpets, and you can probably work out who it is that is walking about. The features most commonly used to identify people are faces, voices, finger prints and retinal scans. But their “behavioural biometrics”, such as the way they walk, are also giveaways.

仔细听家里的脚步声,特别是家里铺的是木地板而又没有地毯消声的话,你大概可以辨认出是谁在走动。最常用于身份识别的体征是面容、声音、指纹和视网膜扫描。但步态等“生物行为特征”也是可循之迹。

Researchers have, for several years, used video cameras and computers to analyse people’s gaits, and are now quite good at it. But translating such knowledge into a practical identification system can be tricky – especially if that system is supposed to be covert. Cameras are often visible, are fiddly to set up, require good lighting and may have their view obscured by other people. So a team led by Krikor Ozanyan of the University of Manchester, in England and Patricia Scully of the National University of Ireland, in Galway have been looking for a better way to recognise gait. Their answer: pressure-sensitive mats.

近年来,研究人员一直在用摄像机和计算机分析人的步态,目前技术已经相当成熟。但要将这些知识转化为实用的识别系统并不容易,尤其是还需要实现隐蔽性。摄像机往往容易被看到,安装也较为繁琐,又需要有足够的光线,而且镜头还可能被他人遮挡。因此,英国曼彻斯特大学的克里科尔·奥赞扬(Krikor Ozanyan)和爱尔兰国立大学戈尔韦的帕特丽夏·斯高莉(Patricia Scully)带领的团队一直在探索更好的识别步态的方法。他们的解决方案是使用压敏垫。

In themselves, such mats are nothing new. They have been part of security systems for donkeys’ years. But Dr Ozanyan and Dr Scully use a sophisticated version that can record the amount of pressure applied in different places as someone walks across it. These measurements form a pattern unique to the walker. Dr Ozanyan and Dr Scully therefore turned, as is now commonplace for anything to do with pattern recognition, to an artificial-intelligence system that uses machine learning to disentangle and recognise such patterns.

压敏垫本身并不是什么新发明,长久以来一直是安保系统的一部分。但奥赞扬和斯高莉使用的是更精密的压敏垫,可以在有人走过时记录步伐在不同位置产生的压力值。这些测量数据构成了步行者独有的步态模式。于是,两位研究人员按照如今识别模式的普遍做法,把数据输入一套人工智能系统,运用机器学习来梳理并识别这些模式。

It seems to work. In a study published earlier this year the two researchers tested their system on a database of footsteps trodden by 127 different people. They found that its error rate in identifying who was who was a mere 0.7%. And Dr Scully says that even without a database of footsteps to work with the system can determine someone’s sex (women and men, with wide and narrow pelvises respectively, walk in different ways) and guess, with reasonable accuracy, a subject’s age.

这看来行得通。在今年早前发表的一项研究中,两位研究人员运用127人的足迹数据测试了该系统。他们发现,系统识别身份的错误率仅为0.7%。斯高莉说,即使不搭配使用足迹数据库,系统也能确定受试者的性别(女性骨盆宽,男性骨盆窄,因而行走方式不同),并可以还算准确地估计出其年龄。

A mat-based gait-recognition system has the advantage that it would work in any lighting conditions – even pitch-darkness. And though it might fail to identify someone if, say, she was wearing stilettos and had been entered into the database while wearing trainers, it would be very hard to fool it by mimicking the gait of an individual who was allowed admission to a particular place.

压敏垫步态识别系统的优点是可以在任何光照条件下工作,即使一片漆黑也没问题。如果数据库之前输入的是某人穿运动鞋时的步态,当她换成穿高跟鞋走路时,系统可能就无法识别了。但是,如果想模仿某人的步态来欺骗系统以获准进入特定地点会非常困难。

The latest phase of Dr Ozanyan’s and Dr Scully’s project is a redesign of the mat. The old mats contained arrays of individual pressure sensors. The new ones contain grids of optical fibres. Light-emitting diodes distributed along two adjoining edges of a mat transmit light into the fibres. Sensors on the opposite edges (and thus the opposite ends of the optical fibres) measure how much of that light is received. Any pressure applied to part of the mat causes a distortion in the fibres and a consequent change in the amount of light transmitted. Both the location and amount of change can be plotted and analysed by the machine-learning system.

奥赞扬和斯高莉的研究项目的最新进展是经过重新设计的压敏垫。原来的垫子包含由单个压力传感器组成的阵列。新的垫子则包含多组光纤网格。分布在垫子相邻两条边上的发光二极管将光传输到光纤中。安装在对面两条边上(也就是光纤的另一端)的传感器测量接收到的光量。施加到垫子上某处的任何压力都会引起光纤变形,进而导致传输光量的变化。机器学习系统可以识别并分析变化发生的位置和变化的量。

Dr Ozanyan says that the team have built a demonstration fibre-optic mat, two metres long and a metre wide, using materials that cost £100 ($130). They are now talking to companies about commercialising it. One application might be in health care, particularly for the elderly. A fibre-optic mat installed in a nursing home or an old person’s own residence could monitor changes in an individual’s gait that presage certain illnesses. That would provide early warning of someone being at greater risk of falling over, say, or of their cognition becoming impaired.

奥赞扬说,该团队已制成了一块两米长、一米宽的演示用光纤垫,材料成本为100英镑(130美元)。他们正与多家公司洽谈,希望将其商业化。医疗保健或许会是应用领域之一,特别是在照护老年人方面。将光纤垫安装在养老院或老人自己家中,可以监测一个人步态的变化,预测某些疾病。这将提供早期预警,例如提醒某人较有可能摔倒或出现认知受损。

Gait analysis might also be used as a security measure in the workplace, monitoring access to restricted areas, such as parts of military bases, server farms or laboratories dealing with hazardous materials. In these cases, employees would need to agree to their gaits being scanned, just as they would agree to the scanning of their faces or retinas for optical security systems.

步态分析也可作为工作场所的安保措施,用于监控限制区域的人员进出,例如军事基地、服务器农场,或处理危险品的实验室。在这些情况下,员工需要同意系统扫描自己的步态,就像同意光学安保系统扫描自己的面部或视网膜那样。

Perhaps the most intriguing use of gait-recognition mats, though, would be in public places, such as airports. For that to work, the footsteps of those to be recognised would need to have been stored in a database, which would be harder to arrange than the collection of mugshots and fingerprints that existing airport security systems rely on. Some people, however, might volunteer for it. Many aircrew or preregistered frequent flyers would welcome anything that speeded up one of the most tiresome parts of modern travel.

不过,步态识别垫最吸引人的用途可能在公共场所,例如机场。要实现这一点,被识别者的步态资料需要被提前存储到数据库中,而这会比机场现有安全系统所倚赖的面部照片和指纹更难收集。但有些人可能会自愿提供。任何革新,若能加速安检这一现代出行中最烦人的环节之一,许多空勤人员或预先登记的飞行常客都会欢迎它。

篇3:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

The End of the Space Age

太空时代的结束

Inner space is useful. Outer space is history

研究内太空才有用,让外太空研究成为历史

How big is the Earth? Any encyclopedia will give you an answer: its equatorial diameter is 12,756km, or, for those who prefer to think that way, 7,926 miles. Ah, but then there is the atmosphere. Should that count? Perhaps the planet’s true diameter is actually nearer 13,000km, including all its air. But even that may no longer be an adequate measure. For the Earth now reaches farther still. The vacuum surrounding it buzzes with artificial satellites, forming a sort of technosphere beyond the atmosphere. Most of these satellites circle only a few hundred kilometres above the planet’s solid surface. Many, though, form a ring like Saturn’s at a distance of 36,000km, the place at which an object takes 24 hours to orbit the Earth and thus hovers continuously over the same point of the planet.

地球有多大?任何一本百科全书都会给你答案:赤道直径是12756公里,或者,用英里来表达7926英里。嗯,但是大气层有多大呢?也能计算吗? 包括空气(大气层)在内,地球的直径可能接近13000公里。甚至连这个数据也不够充分。因为现在地球的变化太大(远离平静的状态)。包围大气层的外部空间人造卫星来去匆匆,形成一个在大气层外面的所谓技术层。大部分卫星绕行高度离地球地表仅几百公里。然而,在距地球36000公里的轨道上物体绕转地球一周的时间为24小时,这个物体飞行时持续面对的是地球上的不变的同一个点,这样许多地球同步卫星的运行会形成一个类似的土星环。

Viewed this way, the Earth is quite a lot larger than the traditional textbook answer. And viewed this way, the Space Age has been a roaring success. Telecommunications, weather forecasting, agriculture, forestry and even the search for minerals have all been revolutionised. So has warfare. No power can any longer mobilise its armed forces in secret. The exact location of every building on the planet can be known. And satellite-based global-positioning systems will guide a smart bomb to that location on demand.

从这个方面看,地球比传统的教科书上的回答其实要大很多。这样看来,太空时代已经有了相当的成功。电信业,天气预测,农业,林业,甚至是在矿藏搜寻方面都有了彻底变革。战争也同样如此,再也没有政府能秘密地调兵遣将。这颗星球上的每一幢建筑物的位置都能被精确掌握。基于卫星的全球定位系统能按要求指引智能炸弹到达目标。

Yet none of this was the Space Age as envisaged by the enthusiastic “space cadets” who got the whole thing going. Though engineers like Wernher von Braun, who built the rockets for both Germany’s second-world-war V2 project and America’s cold-war Apollo project, sold their souls to the military establishment in order to pursue their dreams of space travel by the only means then available, most of them had their eyes on a higher prize. “First Men to a Geostationary Orbit” does not have quite the same ring as “First Men to the Moon”, a book von Braun wrote in 1958. The vision being sold in the 1950s and 1960s, when the early space rockets were flying, was of adventure and exploration. The facts of the American space project and its Soviet counterpart elided seamlessly into the fantasy of “Star Trek” and “: A Space Odyssey”. Other planets may or may not have been inhabited by aliens, but they, and even other stars, were there for the taking. That the taking would begin in the lifetimes of people then alive was widely assumed to be true.

然而没有这些推动太空事业发展的太空学员的满腔热情,太空时代便无法想象。工程师们为了实现遨游太空的梦想全身心地投入到军事机构中,这是唯一的可以获得使用的途径。比如工程师Wernher Braun,他为二战时期的德国V2计划和冷战时期的美国阿波罗计划分别建造了火箭。虽然他们中很多人是为了获得高额的奖金。工程师Wernher Braun在1958年的一本书中写道,第一个到达与地球同步轨道的人并没有得到第一个到达月球的人同样的花环。二十世纪五六十年代,当早期的意在探索冒险的太空火箭升空时,太空遨游的幻想就更热切了。事实上,美国的太空计划署和苏联的太空部门已经忽略了像“星际旅行”和“2001:太空冒险”这样的完美的幻想。

No longer. It is quite conceivable that 36,000km will prove the limit of human ambition. It is equally conceivable that the fantasy-made-reality of human space flight will return to fantasy. It is likely that the Space Age is over.

从此不再幻想。36000公里成为人类抱负的极限,这件事会相当可信。人类太空飞翔的梦想成为现实,而退回想象也将变得同样可信。换言之,太空时代即将结束。

Bye-bye, sci-fi

再见,科学幻想

Today’s space cadets will, no doubt, oppose that claim vigorously. They will, in particular, point to the private ventures of people like Elon Musk in America and Sir Richard Branson in Britain, who hope to make human space flight commercially viable. Indeed, the enterprise of such people might do just that. But the market seems small and vulnerable. One part, space tourism, is a luxury service that is, in any case, unlikely to go beyond low-Earth orbit at best (the cost of getting even as far as the moon would reduce the number of potential clients to a handful). The other source of revenue is ferrying astronauts to the benighted International Space Station (ISS), surely the biggest waste of money, at $100 billion and counting, that has ever been built in the name of science.

毫无疑问,今天的太空学员们会强烈反对这个声称。他们尤其会提到希望以商业方式实现太空飞翔的个人冒险者,比如美国的Elon Musk和英国的Sir Richard Branson。这些计划冒险的人果真也会像太空学员们一样予以反对。但是这个市场似乎很小也很脆弱。一方面,太空旅行是一项奢侈的服务,不像冲出地球低轨道那么容易(这些如同与月球距离一般可观的巨额花费使潜在客人的数字减少到几个)。另外一方面,是把宇航员飞渡到蒙昧的国际太空站(ISS)所需要的资金来源,无疑是最大的浪费,已经花了千亿美金却还在增长,那个曾经是以科学的名义建立起来的。

The reason for that second objective is also the reason for thinking might, in the history books of the future, be seen as the year when the space cadets’ dream finally died. It marks the end of America’s space-shuttle programme, whose last mission is planned to launch on July 8th. The shuttle was supposed to be a reusable truck that would make the business of putting people into orbit quotidian. Instead, it has been nothing but trouble. Twice, it has killed its crew. If it had been seen as the experimental vehicle it actually is, that would not have been a particular cause for concern; test pilots are killed all the time. But the pretence was maintained that the shuttle was a workaday craft. The technical term used by NASA, “Space Transportation System”, says it all.

上面提到的第二个理由也许将成为另外一个理由,即未来的历史书将把视作太空学员梦想破灭的一年。它标志着美国航天计划的结束,该计划的最后使命是完成7月8日的发射。太空飞船被假设为一辆能重复使用的货车以期实现把人送往同步轨道的商业事宜。事实是它什么也没完成却带来了麻烦。它曾两次失事扼杀全部乘员(哥伦比亚号和挑战者号)。事实上它只是个试验性运输工具,要不它不应该有让人焦虑的特别理由;宇航员不时的被害。但是太空飞船只是一架普通飞机的假设需要维护。其使用的科学术语是NASA,其实它只是一个“太空运输系统”。

But the shuttle is now over. The ISS is due to be de-orbited, in the inelegant jargon of the field, in 2020. Once that happens, the game will be up. There is no appetite to return to the moon, let alone push on to Mars, El Dorado of space exploration. The technology could be there, but the passion has gone – at least in the traditional spacefaring powers, America and Russia.

太空飞船事业即将结束。到,ISS将被重设轨道(这个领域的不雅的术语)。事情一旦发生,游戏就将终结。再也没有重返月球的欲望,更不用谈火星推进计划,太空探险的El Dorado计划。技术仍然存在,但是激情已然消失——至少就传统的太空强国,美国和苏联而言。

The space cadets’ other hope, China, might pick up the baton. Certainly it claims it wishes, like President John Kennedy 50 years ago, to send people to the surface of the moon and return them safely to Earth. But the date for doing so seems elastic. There is none of Kennedy’s “by the end of the decade” bravura about the announcements from Beijing. Moreover, even if China succeeds in matching America’s distant triumph, it still faces the question, “what next?” The chances are that the Chinese government, like Richard Nixon’s in 1972, will say “job done” and pull the plug on the whole shebang.

太空学员们的另一个希望之地,中国,也许将拾起接力棒。确定中国就像50年之前的约翰·肯尼迪一样宣布并希望要把人类送达月球表面并安全返回地球。但完成这一愿望的日期看起来是有弹性的。来自北京的宣告缺乏肯尼迪的坚信“到这个年代末”。(阿波罗11号在1969年7月20日登陆月球)。而且,即使中国成功地对接了美国的遥远的胜利,它仍需面对这个问题,“接下来怎么样?”属于中国领导人的那一时刻,是否会像1972年的尼克松一样说“任务完成了”然后拔下整个系统的插头呢。

No bucks, no Buck Rogers

没有激情,也没有太空英雄

With luck, robotic exploration of the solar system will continue. But even there, the risk is of diminishing returns. Every planet has now been visited, and every planet with a solid surface bar Mercury has been landed on. Asteroids, moons and comets have all been added to the stamp album. Unless life turns up on Mars, or somewhere even more unexpected, public interest in the whole thing is likely to wane. And it is the public that pays for it all.

好在针对太阳系的机器探测仍将持续。但即便如此,风险犹存,因为回报越来越少。现在太阳系中的每颗行星都已经被侦察过,每一颗表面是固体的行星,使者Mercury都已经登陆过。小行星,卫星和彗星已经增加到集邮册里。除非火星上出现生命,或者出现未曾预料之地,公众对探索宇宙的兴趣可能越来越弱。而为它买单的依然是广大的民众。

The future, then, looks bounded by that new outer limit of planet Earth, the geostationary orbit. Within it, the buzz of activity will continue to grow and fill the vacuum. This part of space will be tamed by humanity, as the species has tamed so many wildernesses in the past. Outside it, though, the vacuum will remain empty. There may be occasional forays, just as men sometimes leave their huddled research bases in Antarctica to scuttle briefly across the ice cap before returning, for warmth, food and company, to base. But humanity’s dreams of a future beyond that final frontier have, largely, faded.

那么,未来看来要被限制在地球的新的外边界之内,即同步轨道。在这层空间里,各种活动的嗡嗡声将继续增长而充满了整个空间。这部分空间将被人类驯服,就像在过去物种驯服了这么多的荒野。而36000之外的空间仍将是空的。可能也会有偶尔的突袭,就像在南极考察的人们有时为了温暖、食物和朋友离开他们的扎堆而设的研究基地,在返回之前,这些基地早已沉没在南极洲的冰盖之下。但人类想超越领域最前沿的未来梦想已经,褪色很多。

篇4:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

Tech and Privacy: Facebook’s Third Act

技术和隐私:Facebook的第三幕

A New Business Model Could Make the Company Harder to Break up

一种新的商业模式可能会使这家公司更难被分拆

The first big overhaul for Facebook came in -14. Internet users were carrying out ever more tasks on smartphones rather than desktop or laptop computers. Mark Zuckerberg opted to follow them, concentrating on Facebook’s mobile app ahead of its website, and buying up two fast-growing communication apps, WhatsApp and Instagram. It worked. Facebook increased its market valuation from around $60bn at the end of 2012 to – for a brief period in – more than $600bn.

Facebook的第一次重大变革发生在2012至间。那时互联网用户越来越多地在智能手机上执行任务,而不是在台式机或笔记本电脑上。马克·扎克伯格选择顺势而动,把注意力从网站转移到手机应用上,并收购了两个快速发展的通信应用WhatsApp和Instagram。这种做法成功了。Facebook的市值从底的约600亿美元增加到的6000多亿美元(尽管只维持了很短一段时间)。

On March 6th Mr Zuckerberg announced Facebook’s next pivot. As well as its existing moneymaking enterprise, selling targeted ads on its public social networks, it is building a “privacy-focused platform” around WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger. The apps will be integrated, he said, and messages sent through them encrypted end-to-end, so that even Facebook cannot read them. While it was not made explicit, it is clear what the business model will be. Mr Zuckerberg wants all manner of businesses to use its messaging networks to provide services and accept payments. Facebook will take a cut.

本月6日,扎克伯格宣布了Facebook的下一个发展重点。除了在其公共社交网络上销售定向广告这项现有的盈利业务之外,公司正在围绕WhatsApp、Instagram和Messenger建立一个“专注隐私安全的平台”。扎克伯格说,Facebook将整合这三个应用,并为三方之间发送的消息提供端到端加密,就连Facebook自己也无法读取。虽然没有明确说明,但这个大平台将采用的商业模式显而易见。扎克伯格希望各类企业都能利用Facebook的消息传递网络来提供服务并接受付款,Facebook则从中抽成。

A big shift was overdue at Facebook given the privacy and political scandals that have battered the firm. Even Mr Zuckerberg, who often appears incapable of seeing the gravity of Facebook’s situation, seemed to grasp the irony of it putting privacy first. “Frankly we don’t currently have a strong reputation for building privacy protective services,” he noted.

鉴于隐私和政治丑闻的沉重打击,Facebook早就该推动一场重大的转变了。即使是看似常常无法认识到Facebook严峻处境的扎克伯格,似乎也领会到公司将隐私放在第一位透出的讽刺意味。“坦率地说,目前我们在建立保护隐私的服务方面声望不高。”他指出。 Still, he intends to do it. Mr Zuckerberg claims that users will benefit from his plan to integrate its messaging apps into a single, encrypted network. The content of messages will be safe from prying eyes of authoritarian snoops and criminals, as well as from Facebook itself. It will make messaging more convenient, and make profitable new services possible. But caution is warranted for three reasons.

不过,他还是打算做出改变。扎克伯格称,把多个消息应用整合成单一加密网络的计划将让用户受益。威权政府的密探、犯罪分子以及Facebook本身都将无法窥探消息的内容。消息发送会变得更加方便,有利可图的新服务也将成为可能。但对此需持谨慎态度,理由有三。

The first is that Facebook has long been accused of misleading the public on privacy and security, so the potential benefits Mr Zuckerberg touts deserve to be treated sceptically. He is also probably underselling the benefits that running integrated messaging networks brings to his firm, even if they are encrypted so that Facebook cannot see the content. The metadata alone, ie, who is talking to whom, when and for how long, will still allow Facebook to target advertisements precisely, meaning its ad model will still function.

首先,鉴于Facebook长期被指斥在隐私和安全方面误导公众,对于扎克伯格大力宣扬的潜在益处我们理应抱持怀疑观望的态度。扎克伯格也有可能在淡化运营集成消息网络给他的公司带来的好处,即使Facebook无法看到加密的内容。单是谁和谁在何时交流了多久的元数据就能让Facebook精准地投放广告,这意味着其广告业务模式仍能正常运作。

End-to-end encryption will also make Facebook’s business cheaper to run. Because it will be mathematically impossible to moderate encrypted communications, the firm will have an excuse to take less responsibility for content running through its apps, limiting its moderation costs.

端到端加密还会降低Facebook的业务运营成本。确切来讲加密信息是无法审核的,公司也就会有借口对通过其应用发出的内容负更少的责任,从而控制其审核成本。

If it can make the changes, Facebook’s dominance over messaging would probably increase. The newfound user-benefits of a more integrated Facebook might make it harder for regulators to argue that Mr Zuckerberg’s firm should be broken up.

如果计划中的改变能够落实,Facebook在消息应用领域的主导地位可能会增强。一个更集成的Facebook新带来的用户利益可能会让监管机构更难主张将Facebook分拆。

Facebook’s plans in India provide some insight into the new model. It has built a payment system into WhatsApp, the country’s most-used messaging app. The system is waiting for regulatory approval. The market is huge. In the rest of the world, too, users are likely to be drawn in by the convenience of Facebook’s new networks. Mr Zuckerberg’s latest strategy is ingenious but may contain twists.

从Facebook在印度的计划可以一窥其新模式。它已在印度最流行的消息应用WhatsApp中创建了支付系统,正在等待监管部门批准。这个市场非常庞大。在世界其他地方,用户也可能被Facebook的新网络带来的便利所吸引。扎克伯格最新的策略很有创意,但也可能隐藏了花招。

篇5:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

Appealing Returns

丰厚诱人的回报

Contingent fees, in which clients pay lawyers only if a case is won, have long been a feature of America’s legal system. Many other countries used to bar them, wary of importing America’s ambulance-chasing culture. But a belated acceptance of their benefits means they are now widely allowed. “No-win, no-fee” arrangements help shift risks from parties to a suit to their lawyers, and make it less likely that a would-be plaintiff decides not to press a strong case for fear of a big financial loss.

只有在胜诉后才需要向律师付费的“风险代理收费制”一直是美国法律体系的一个特色。其他许多国家曾禁止这种操作,担心将美国的讼棍文化“引狼入室”。但这种收费制的好处终于得到迟来的认可,如今已被广泛采用。有了“不赢不收钱”的协定,风险就从诉讼各方转移到了他们的律师身上,也就不大会发生原本颇有些胜算,却因为害怕白白烧钱而放弃打官司的情况。

They accepted money from third parties to fund cases in exchange for some of the winnings. Litigation finance has since taken off. Fortune 500 companies and New York’s elite law firms increasingly tap outside capital when pursuing multi-million-dollar suits.

他们接受第三方的资金来支付诉讼开支,作为交换,向对方支付部分诉讼赔偿所得。自那之后,诉讼融资业务蓬勃发展起来。《财富》世界500强公司和纽约的精英律师事务所在打数百万美元的官司时,越来越多地利用外部资本。

Funds that invest in litigation are on the rise. In the past 18 months some 30 have launched; over $2bn has been raised. Last year Burford Capital, an industry heavyweight, put $1.3bn into cases – more than triple the amount it deployed in . Lee Drucker of Lake Whillans, a firm that funds lawsuits, says he gets calls weekly from institutional investors seeking an asset uncorrelated with the rest of the market – payouts from lawsuits bear no relation to interest-rate rises or stock market swings.

投资于诉讼案件的基金逐步增多。过去18个月里成立了约30支这样的基金,融资超过20亿美元。去年,业界“大腕”伯福德资本(Burford Capital)为资助诉讼案件投入了13亿美元,是投入金额的三倍多。诉讼资助公司Lake Whillans的李·德鲁克(Lee Drucker)说他每周都会接到机构投资者的电话,他们想寻觅一种与市场其余部分不相关的资产——诉讼赔偿金与利率上涨或股市起伏没有任何关联。

Such outside funding does not just enable plaintiffs to pursue potentially lucrative cases. It also allows law firms to hedge risk. Some clients, worried about the misaligned incentives caused by law firms’ sky-high hourly rates, insist on partial or full contingency-payment schemes. Outside funding lets firms recoup some revenue even if they do not win a case. “Firms that lose are still going to take a bath,” says Nicholas Kajon of Stevens & Lee. “But the write-off won’t be quite as bad.”

这样的外部资金不仅能让原告方发起有可能会带来大笔赔偿金的诉讼,还能让律师事务所对冲风险。一些委托人担心律师事务所按小时收取的天价费用会造成不当激励,因而坚持部分或全部采用风险代理付费方案。有了外部资金,律师事务所就算没能赢得诉讼也能挽回部分收入。“输了官司,律所还是会亏一大笔钱,”Stevens & Lee律师事务所的尼古拉斯·卡永(Nicholas Kajon)说,“但会少亏一些。”

Returns are usually a multiple of the investment or a percentage of the settlement, or some combination of the two. Funders of a winning suit can expect to double, triple or quadruple their money. Cases that are up for appeal, where the timespan is short – usually 18-24 months – and the chance of a loss slimmer, offer lower returns. New cases that are expected to take years offer higher potential payouts.

诉讼投资的收益通常为投资额的一个倍数或赔偿金的一定比例,或者两者兼有。胜诉案件的资助者所获收益可能会是其出资金额的二到四倍。准备上诉的案子审理时间短——通常在18到24个月之间,败诉的可能性相对较低,投资回报也较低。那些预计将耗时多年的新案子可能会带来更高的回报。

A maturing market means more sophisticated offerings. To spread risk, funders are bundling cases into portfolios and taking a share of the proceeds. Last year Burford ploughed $726m into portfolio deals, compared with $72m into stand-alone suits.

市场日渐成熟,出现了更复杂的投资方式。为了分散风险,诉讼融资机构将案件打包成投资组合,从中抽取一部分收益。伯福德去年投入了7.26亿美元用于组合投资各类案件,而在单个案件上的投入为7200万美元。

As funders compete for high-quality investments, opportunities in new markets arise. Bentham IMF, a litigation funder based in New York, has joined Kobre & Kim, a law firm, to set up a $30m fund for Israeli startups to pursue claims against multinationals – for example, over trade-secret violations. A burgeoning secondary market is likely to develop further, allowing investors to cash out before long-running suits are closed. Burford recently sold its stake in an arbitration case concerning two Argentine airlines for a return of 736%. Such mouth-watering profits should keep luring capital into the courtroom.

随着诉讼融资公司争相抢夺高质量的投资项目,在新市场中也出现了机会。总部设在纽约的诉讼融资公司Bentham IMF与高博金律师事务所(Kobre & Kim)共同设立了一个规模达3000万美元的基金专门支持以色列的创业公司向跨国公司索赔——例如在侵害商业机密方面。一个新兴的二级市场看来会进一步发展,让投资者得以先一步套现离场,而不用等待一宗旷日持久的诉讼案尘埃落定。伯福德近期出售了自己在一个涉及两家阿根廷航空公司的仲裁案中的股份,回报率达736%。如此令人垂涎的利润水平应该会吸引资本源源不断地流向法庭。

篇6:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

Unprecedented Medical Case Shows How Cancer Spread from Organ Donor to Four Recipients

骇人:癌症细胞竟随器官移植传播

An extraordinary and terrifying medical case revealed in the July issue of the American Journal of Transplantation proves that organ transplants can pass not only certain infectious diseases to recipients, but in rare cases, also cancer.

《美国移植杂志》七月刊披露的一个离奇骇人的病例证实,器官移植不但会把某些传染性疾病传给器官接受者,在极少数情况下还会把癌症传给接受者。

Patients known to have malignant tumors are often not able to donate their organs, but that was not the case of a 53-year-old woman who died of a stroke in . She had no known conditions that could prevent doctors from transplanting her organs, and repeated tests revealed no sign of cancer. The woman’s kidneys, lungs, liver and heart were transplanted into donor recipients, but instead of saving their lives, they infected four of the five recipients with cancer, while the fifth died of unrelated causes shortly after the transplant.

已知患有恶性肿瘤的病人通常不能捐献自己的器官,但死于中风的一名53岁女性并不属于这种情况。她没有任何已知的病症阻止医生移植她的器官,而反复的检查也没有显示出癌症的迹象。这名女性的肾、肺、肝及心脏被移植给了几个器官接受者,结果非但没有救这些人的命,反而让五个接受者中的四人都染上了癌症,而第五个人在接受器官移植后不久就因其他原因去世。

The four organ recipients had recovered well after the transplants, but 16 months later, the woman who had received the donor’s lung fell ill and was subsequently diagnosed with cancer in the lymph nodes in her chest. Unfortunately, we live in an age when someone is diagnosed with cancer every couple of minutes, but what made this case remarkable was that tests showed the cancerous cells were actually breast cancer cells. Further DNA analysis revealed that they had come from the organ donor.

四个器官接受者在接受移植后一开始都恢复得不错,但16个月之后,接受肺移植的女性就病倒了,随后被诊断出胸部的淋巴结有癌细胞。不幸的是,我们生活在一个每几分钟就有人被诊断出癌症的年代,但这个病例的离奇之处在于,测试结果显示,这些癌细胞实际上是乳腺癌细胞。进一步的DNA分析揭示,乳腺癌细胞来自器官捐赠者。

The lung recipient’s cancer spread and she died about a year after her disease was discovered. At the time, the remaining three organ recipients were notified that the deceased had become infected with cancer from the organ she had received, and advised to get themselves tested regularly just to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to them. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough…

接受肺移植女性的癌细胞扩散,并在发现癌症一年后去世。此时医院告知其余三位器官接受者,逝者的癌症来自她被移植的器官,并建议他们定期做检查,确保他们不会同样染上癌症。不幸的是,这样的防范还不够……

In , four years after the transplant, the liver recipient was diagnosed with breast cancer cells in her liver. She was given the option of undergoing another transplant, but she refused for fear of potential complications. She opted for radiation treatment, which proved successful at first, but the cancer returned, and she died in .

,在接受器官移植四年后,接受肝移植的人被诊断出肝脏中有乳腺癌细胞。医生给她的选择是再一次接受肝移植,但她因担心出现潜在并发症拒绝了。她选择接受放射疗法,一开始还比较成功,但后来癌症复发,她于去世。

The person who had received the left kidney in 2007, was diagnosed with cancer in , six years after the transplant. The disease had already spread to several organs when it was discovered, and the patient passed away two months later.

20接受左肾移植的人于,也就是移植6年后,被诊断出癌症。发现癌症时癌细胞已经扩散到几个器官,病人于两个月后离世。

The right kidney was transplanted into a 32-year-old man. In 2011, tests revealed breast cancer cells in his transplanted organ, but he underwent another surgery to have the kidney removed, underwent chemotherapy and stopped taking medicine that suppressed his immune system. He has been cancer free for 10 years.

右肾被移植到一个32岁的男子身上。20,检查结果显示,在他被移植的器官内发现了乳腺癌细胞,但他做了一个摘除肾脏的手术,接受了化疗,并停服抑制免疫系统的药物。如今距离他癌症痊愈已有十年。

“Many reports have shown that cancer transmission can occur in solid organ transplantation,” the authors of the recently published case note wrote. “However, this is the first report describing breast cancer transmission after a multi-organ procedure from one donor to four recipients.”

最近这篇病例解析报告的作者写道:“许多报告显示,癌症传播可能在实体器官移植中发生。不过,这是首份描述一对四多器官移植中乳腺癌传播的病例报告。”

It’s worth pointing out that while terrifying, this case is incredibly rare. Dr. Lewis Teperman, director of organ transplantation at Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, New York, writes that passing cancer through organ donation is “very uncommon”, with chances varying between 0.01 and 0.05 percent.

值得指出的是,尽管很骇人,这种情况还是十分罕见的。位于纽约新海德公园的诺斯维尔保健集团器官移植中心主任路易斯·塔伯曼医生写道,通过器官移植传播癌症“很不寻常”,几率只有0.01%到0.05%之间。

It’s not clear exactly how the breast cancer remained undetected during the screening performed before the transplants, or how it was able to grow in each of the four patients. Researchers believe that the donor may have had “micro metastases”, groups of cells too small to be detected by imaging tests, and that immunosuppressant drugs played a part in helping the cancer spread. Such drugs are taken by organ recipients so that their bodies don’t reject the new organs, but that means that the cancer cells aren’t rejected either.

目前还不清楚为什么器官移植前的筛查没有检测出乳腺癌细胞,以及癌细胞为什么会在四个接受者体内生长。研究人员认为,捐赠者身上的癌细胞也许有过“微转移”,只是细胞群太小,影像学检查检测不到。此外,器官接受者服用的免疫抑制剂也有助于癌细胞扩散。接受者服用这种药物是为了让身体不排斥新器官,不过这意味着癌细胞也不受排斥。

“This extraordinary case points out the often fatal consequences of donor-derived breast cancer,” researchers concluded, “and suggests that removal of the donor organ and restoration of immunity can induce complete remission.”

研究人员得出结论说:“这个离奇病例说明,源于捐赠者的乳腺癌通常是致命的,并指出,摘除捐赠移植的器官、恢复免疫系统的正常运转可以免受其害。”

篇7:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

How to Make College Cheaper

怎样才能让大学更便宜一些

Better management would allow American universities to do more with less

改善下管理就能让美国大学少花钱多办事

Derek Bok, a former president of Harvard, once observed that “universities share one characteristic with compulsive gamblers and exiled royalty: there is never enough money to satisfy their desires.” This is a bit hard on compulsive gamblers and exiled royals. America’s universities have raised their fees five times as fast as inflation over the past 30 years. Student debt in America exceeds credit-card debt. Yet still the universities keep sending begging letters to alumni and philanthropists.

哈佛前校长德里克·博克曾经注意到,“大学与病态性赌徒和流亡皇族们有一个共同特征:永远没有足够的钱来满足他们的欲望。”这对于病态性赌徒和流亡皇族们未免有些刻薄。在过去30年中,美国大学提高费用的速度是通货膨胀速度的5倍。在美国的学生债务超过信用卡债务。然而,大学依然向校友们和慈善家们发募捐信。

This insatiable appetite for money was bad enough during the boom years. It is truly irritating now that middle-class incomes are stagnant and students are struggling to find good jobs. Hence a flurry of new thinking about higher education. Are universities inevitably expensive? Vance Fried, of Oklahoma State University, recently conducted a fascinating thought experiment, backed up by detailed calculations. Is it possible to provide a first-class undergraduate education for $6,700 a year rather than the $25,900 charged by public research universities or the $51,500 charged by their private peers? He concluded that it is.

在经济景气的年份,这种对金钱贪得无厌的胃口让人厌烦。而在目前中产阶级收入缩水、学生为找一份好工作绞尽脑汁之际,这种胃口简直是让人愤怒。因此也就有了一阵对高等教育的重新思考。大学是不是非要如此昂贵呢?最近,俄克拉荷马州立大学的Vance Fried完成了一个迷人的思维实验(有详细计算支持)。提供第一流的本科教育仅花费6700美元,而非公立研究型大学收取的25900美元或私立研究型大学收取的51500美元,这是否可能?Vance Fried认为答案是肯定的。

Mr Fried shunned easy solutions. He insisted that students should live in residential colleges, just as they do at Harvard and Yale. He did not suggest getting rid of football stadiums (which usually pay for themselves) or scrimping on bed-and-board.

Vance Fried回避了简单的解决方案。他认为学生应当在寄宿制大学学习生活——正如哈佛和耶鲁现在那样。他并没有建议去掉足球场(足球场可以自给自足)或者节省膳宿费用。

His cost-cutting strategies were as follows. First, separate the funding of teaching and research. Research is a public good, he reasoned, but there is no reason why undergraduates should pay for it. Second, increase the student-teacher ratio. Business and law schools achieve good results with big classes. Why not other colleges? Mr Fried thinks that universities will be able to mix some small classes with big ones even if they have fewer teachers. Third, eliminate or consolidate programmes that attract few students. Fourth, puncture administrative bloat. The cost of administration per student soared by 61% in real terms between 1993 and 2007. Private research universities spend $7,000 a year per student on “administrative support”: not only deans and department heads but also psychologists, counsellors, human-resources implementation managers and so on. That is more than the entire cost of educating a student under Mr Fried’s scheme.

他削减开支的策略如下。第一,将教学和学术研究的资金分离开来。他认为,学术研究是一种公益,不过大学生就应当为此买单毫无道理可言。第二,增加学生与老师人数的比率。商学院和法学院上的是大课,但是收效更佳。其他学院为什么就不能呢?Vance Fried认为,即便学校的老师再少一些,大学也能够将许多小班跟大班混在一起。第三,剔除或者加强那些不能很好吸引学生的课程。第四,削弱行政膨胀。实际上,行政管理的费用在1993年至2007年之间上涨了61%。私立研究型大学一年在每位学生“行政支持”上要花掉7000美元。所谓行政支持,对象不仅有院长、系主任,还有心理学家、辅导员、人事科的执行人员等等。这比Vance Fried方案下培养一位学生的全部费用都要多。

Veteran university-watchers may dismiss Mr Fried’s ideas as pie in the sky. (“The only part of college not mired in tradition is the price,” grumbles Ben Wildavsky, a co-editor of “Reinventing Higher Education”.) Yet some universities are beginning to squeeze costs. The University of Minnesota’s new campus in Rochester has defined teaching as “job one”. The Harrisburg University of Science and Technology has abolished tenure and merged academic departments. Regents at the University of Texas are talking about a $10,000 undergraduate degree.

资深大学观察家或许会对Vance Fried的主意不屑一顾,认为那是天方夜谭。(《重塑高等教育》的合著者Ben Wildavsky批评说,大学价钱飙升,其余的东西保持传统,改革阻力很大)。不过,一些大学正在开始挤压成本。明尼苏达州大学在罗切斯特市的新校区已经将教学定义为“第一工作”。哈里斯堡科技大学已经废除了终身职位并合并了学术部门。德克萨斯大学的校董们开始谈论10000美元的本科学位。

Mr Fried fails to mention an obvious source of savings. Americans could complete their undergraduate degrees in three years (as is normal elsewhere), instead of four. In practice, most American students take even longer than four years, not least because so many work to pay their tuition. Surprisingly, America’s future chainsaw-wielding corporate titans take a leisurely two years to complete their MBAs; most Europeans need only one.

Vance Fried忘了提及一种显而易见的节省开支的渠道。美国人可以用3年取得本科学位,而不是4年。(在其他国家也很正常)。实际上,许多美国人取得学位的时间都要超过4年——尤其是因为要做许多工作来支付学费。奇怪的是,美国未来的企业巨头需两年,方可从容完成MBA学位,大多数欧洲人只需要1年。

Shai Reshef, an educational entrepreneur-turned-philanthropist, is pioneering an even more radical idea. His University of the People offers free higher education (not counting the few hundred dollars it costs to process applications and mark exams), pitching itself to poor people in America and the rest of the world. The university does this by exploiting three resources: the goodwill of academic volunteers who want to help the poor, the availability of free “courseware” on the internet and the power of social networking. Some 2,000 academic volunteers have designed the courses and given the university some credibility. Tutors direct the students, who so far number 1,000 or so and hail from around the world, to the online courses. They also help to organise them into study groups, and then supervise from afar, dropping in on discussions and marking tests. Mr Reshef pays for incidental expenses with $2m of his own money and donations.

一位受过教育的企业家出身的慈善家Shai Reshef提出了更为激进的观点。他的人民大学提供免费高等教育(过程应用和改卷子的数百美元不算在内),向美国和世界其他地方的穷人推销自己的学校。这所大学利用三种资源来运转:想要帮助穷人的学术志愿者的善意、互联网上可获得的免费“课件”和社交网络。约个学术志愿者设计了课程,使大学有了一些信誉。指导老师们将那些迄今已有1000左右来自世界各地的学生带到网络课程。老师们同样帮助学生组织学习小组,在远方监督他们,不时加入探讨、进行考试。Shai Reshef额外支付200万的花费,这些钱来自自己的腰包或者募捐。

There are plenty of questions about Mr Reshef’s project. Can you really build a university on volunteerism and goodwill? Can students really be relied upon to do most of the teaching themselves? Will free courseware remain free? (Newspapers that used to give away content online are now putting up pay barriers.)

关于Shai Reshef的项目有诸多疑问。大学能真正地建立在志愿者服务和善意上吗?学生们是否真正能够自己完成那些教学?免费的课件会一直免费吗?(过去其内容在网上免费派送的报纸现在纷纷设置支付障碍)

Mr Reshef’s university has yet to win accreditation, which could take years. But he can take comfort from Clayton Christensen’s classic book “The Innovator’s Dilemma”. Mr Christensen points out that innovators often start by offering products that are cheaper, but markedly inferior. Quickly, however, they learn how to improve their offerings. Even if Mr Reshef fails, there are plenty of other disruptive innovators around. In America, one tertiary student in ten already studies exclusively online. One in four does so at least some of the time, and a growing number of bodies, including elite universities, think-tanks, governments and international organisations, are putting first-rate material online.

Shai Reshef的大学目前还在资格鉴定中,这可能会耗时数年。不过,他能够从克莱顿·克里斯坦森的经典大作《创新者的窘境》中获取慰藉。克里斯坦森指出,创新者经常从提供价廉物不美的产品起步。不过,很快他们就学会改进他们的产品。即便Shai Reshef失败了,依然存在许多有破坏性的创新者。在美国,十分之一的受高等教育学生已经完全通过网络学习。四分之一的学生至少在某段时间通过网络学习。不断增加的实体,如精英大学、智囊、政府和国际组织将一流的资料放到网上。

The coming campus rumpus

即将到来的大学争吵

Sometimes when academics grouse that there is “never enough money”, they are justified – big science costs big bucks. But higher education is nevertheless marred by inefficiencies and skewed incentives. Students pay to be taught, but their professors are rewarded almost entirely for research. Mr Fried’s calculations suggest that one can slash costs without sacrificing much that students value. Mr Reshef’s experiment may fail, but there is no doubt that universities need more experimenters. The cost of tuition cannot forever rise faster than students’ ability to pay. Industries that cease to offer value for money sooner or later get shaken up. American universities are ripe for shaking.

有些时候,当一些学者抱怨说“钱总是不够”时,他们是情有可原的——科学研究耗资巨大。然而,高等教育还是陷入了低效率和刺激不当的泥淖。学生们为受教育而掏腰包,而他们的教授却几乎完全从科研中得到回报。Fried的计算表明,可以削减成本,同时不牺牲学生所珍视的那些东西。Reshef的实验或许会失败,不过大学毫无疑问需要更多的实验者。学费的增长不能一直超过学生的支付能力。不再能为(消费者花的)钱提供价值的行业一定迟早面临巨变。美国大学作出改变的时机已经成熟。

篇8:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

新疆:各族人民安居乐业的美好家园

驻巴基斯坦大使姚敬在巴主流媒体发表署名文章

7月5日

新疆是中国距离巴基斯坦最近的地方。我们经常说的“中巴友谊比山高”,指的就是新疆与巴基斯坦之间的喀喇昆仑山脉。作为中巴经济走廊的起点和“一带一路”中国丝绸之路经济带建设核心区,新疆正迎来前所未有的发展机遇。

1978年至,中国新疆实现跨越式发展,人民生活水平不断提高。新疆地区生产总值由39.07亿元人民币增长至1.15万亿元,人均生产总值由313元增长至48000元,分别增长294倍和153倍。旅游业成为高质量发展的重要引擎,去年来疆旅游人数突破1.5亿人次、增长40%以上。

新疆最大的魅力在于多民族和睦共处、多元文化荟萃。新疆现有清真寺、教堂、寺院等宗教活动场所2.5万座,其中清真寺2.44万座,平均每530位穆斯林就拥有一座清真寺。今天新疆人口达2500万,维吾尔、汉、哈萨克、回、柯尔克孜、蒙古、锡伯、塔吉克、东乡等56个民族齐全,少数民族人口占总人口的59.9%。各族人民像石榴籽那样紧紧抱在一起,像珍视自己的生命一样珍视民族团结。

新疆经济社会发展之所以取得显著成就,得益于中国政府坚定坚决地严厉打击恐怖活动、切实维护社会稳定的政策措施。从20世纪90年代以来,中国境内外恐怖、分裂、极端“三股势力”在新疆策划并组织实施了数千起暴力恐怖事件,造成大量无辜各族群众伤亡。其中,乌鲁木齐“7·5”打砸抢烧严重暴力犯罪事件,造成197人死亡、1700多人受伤。新疆一度处于被恐怖主义吞噬的危险边缘。

在借鉴吸收国际社会反恐经验的基础上,中国政府采取了一系列去极端化措施,包括设立职业技能教育培训中心。教培中心以学习国家通用语言文字、法律知识、职业技能和开展去极端化工作为主要内容,为受到极端思想影响的群众免费提供职业技能培训,帮助其掌握一技之长,实现自力更生。培训期间向学员发放劳动报酬,尊重和保护不同民族、不同信仰学员的正常风俗习惯。学员结业后可获推荐在当地企业就业。

新疆去极端化工作已取得明显成效,新疆已近3年未发生暴力恐怖案件,刑事、治安案件大幅下降,社会治安状况明显好转。极端主义渗透得到有效遏制。现在新疆不仅美丽,而且很安全。但一段时间以来,西方舆论中总是有部分杂音,一些人攻击教培中心是“监狱”、“集中营”,“严重侵犯了人权”。这主要有两部分人,一部分从未到过新疆,只是道听途说、人云亦云,缺乏对现实的了解;还有一部分人是别有用心、颠倒黑白,企图抹黑中国形象,企图将中国维护国际社会稳定的努力同宗教相挂钩,有意离间中国和穆斯林国家关系。

针对第一种情况,中国愿意“请进来”,通过沟通增信释疑。近期,我们邀请了包括联合国、伊斯兰合作组织等国际机构代表团和巴基斯坦、马来西亚、土耳其、沙特等一些国家的官方和媒体人士到新疆实地参访,到教培中心同学员面对面交流。大家亲眼看到了当地穆斯林安居乐业、充分享有宗教信仰自由等情况,高度赞赏中国政府奉行的民族宗教自由政策,积极肯定中方预防性反恐和去极端化努力。针对第二种情况,中国知道永远也叫不醒装睡的人,不指望他们能说中国的好话。我们相信事实胜于雄辩,谎言终究无法掩盖真相。

巴基斯坦曾长期受恐怖主义威胁,但在巴政府、军队和人民的积极努力下,付出巨大牺牲,现在巴已基本消灭这一公害,社会安全得到有效维护。多年来,中巴双方合作打击“三股势力”,保障中巴经济走廊建设安全。我们支持巴基斯坦将国家反恐行动计划进行到底,愿继续共同加强反恐能力建设,加强反恐国际合作,为维护两国安全利益和地区和平稳定发挥积极作用。考生如果怕自己错过考试报名时间和考试时间的话,可以 免费预约短信提醒,届时会以短信的方式提醒大家报名和考试时间。

Xinjiang: A Sweet and Peaceful Homeland for People of All Ethnics Group

Signed Article by Ambassador Yao Jing on Pakistani Newspapers

5 July

Xinjiang is the nearest place of China to Pakistan. When we say that “Sino-Pakistan friendship is higher than mountains”, it refers to the Karakoram Mountains between Xinjiang and Pakistan. As the starting point for China-Pakistan Economic Corridor and the hub area of the “Belt and Road” Initiative, Xinjiang is facing unprecedented opportunities for development.

From 1978 to , Xinjiang has made great improvement in people’s living standards. The GDP of Xinjiang increased from 3.9 billion yuan to 1.15 trillion yuan ($168.6 billion) and the per capita GDP increased from 313 yuan to 48,000 yuan ($7000), an increase of 294 times and 153 times respectively. Tourism has become an important engine for high-quality development. Last year, the number of domestic and international tourists in Xinjiang exceeded 150 million, an increase of more than 40%.

The greatest charm of Xinjiang lies in the multi-ethnic harmony and diversity in cultures. There are 25,000 places for religious activities, including 24,400 mosques. On average, there is one mosque for every 530 Muslims. Xinjiang has a population of 25 million and hosts all 56 ethnic groups in China such as Uygur, Han, Kazakh, Hui, Kirgiz, Mongolia, Tajik, etc. The minority population accounts for 59.9% of the total population. The people of all ethnic groups hold together like pomegranate seeds, cherishing national unity as much as their own lives.

The remarkable economic and social development that Xinjiang has achieved attributed to the policy of the Chinese government in firmly cracking down on terrorism and safeguarding social stability. Since the 1990’s, terrorists, extremists and separatists inside and outside China have planned and organized thousands of violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, resulting in a large number of casualties of innocent people of all ethnic groups. Among these attacks are some notorious cases. On 5 July , mobs smashed the city of Urumqi, causing 197 deaths and more than 1,700 injuries. At that time, Xinjiang was on the verge of being swallowed by terrorism.

By combining anti-terrorism experience of the international community with the ground situation, the Chinese government has taken a series of deradicalization measures, including establishing the vocation and education training center. Lessons on official language of China, Chinese laws, vocational training and deradicalization were offered for free, so trainees can master a skill and achieve self-reliance after the training. During the training, customs and habits of different ethnic groups and different religions are respected. After the training is completed, trainees are recommended jobs in local enterprises.

Deradicalization in Xinjiang has been proven effective with remarkable outcomes. For nearly 3 years, no violent terrorist attacks have taken place in Xinjiang. Number of criminal and public security cases also decreased sharply, and the infiltration of extremism has been effectively curbed. Today, Xinjiang is not only as beautiful as it used to be, but also much safer. It becomes a beautiful home for people of all ethnics to live and work in peace. Despite all the development in Xinjiang, in the past few months, there have been some noises by Western media. Some attacked the training center as “prisons” or “concentration camps”, which “seriously violated human rights”. Among those who make voices, some have never been to Xinjiang, their allegation is based on rumours or imagination; some have hidden motives, who intentionally twist the truth to discredit China or provoke conflict between China and Muslim countries by linking the effort of Chinese government in maintaining social stability with “religion repression”.

For those who do not have a chance to know what is happening in Xinjinga, they are welcome to visit Xinjiang truth with their own eyes. Recently, representatives from international organizations including the UN, OIC, and government officials and media groups from Pakistan, Malaysia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and some other countries visited Xinjiang and met face-to-face with the trainees. They witnessed how local Muslims lived and worked in peace and fully enjoy the freedom of religion. They highly appreciated the ethnic and religious policies of China, and firmly supported China’s preventive anti-terrorism and deradicalization efforts. For those who pretend to be asleep, we know that they can never be awakened. We believe that facts speak louder than words, while lies cannot hide the truth.

Pakistan has long been disturbed by terrorism. Under the joint efforts of the Pakistani government, the armed forces and the people, terrorism has been basically eliminated with tremendous sacrifices paid by the society. Social security has been effectively maintained. China and Pakistan have cooperated with each other in combating the “three forces” over the years, and jointly safeguarded the construction of the CPEC. China supports Pakistan in its efforts in carrying out the National Action Plan on Anti-terrorism. China is ready to jointly enhance counter-terrorism capacity, and beef up international cooperation with Pakistan. Working hand in hand, China and Pakistan will play a more positive role in safeguarding the security of the two brotherly countries, as well as the peace and stability in the region.

篇9:下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题

The Future of News back to the Coffee House

新闻产业的未来,重回咖啡屋时代

The internet is taking the news industry back to the conversational culture of the era before mass media

互联网正在将新闻产业带回到大众传媒出现前的时代。

Three hundred years ago news travelled by word of mouth or letter, and circulated in taverns and coffee houses in the form of pamphlets, newsletters and broadsides. “The Coffee houses particularly are very commodious for a free Conversation, and for reading at an easier Rate all manner of printed News,” noted one observer. Everything changed in 1833 when the first mass-audience newspaper, the New York Sun, pioneered the use of advertising to reduce the cost of news, thus giving advertisers access to a wider audience. At the time of the launch America’s bestselling paper sold just 4,500 copies a day; the Sun, with its steam press, soon reached 15,000. The penny press, followed by radio and television, turned news from a two-way conversation into a one-way broadcast, with a relatively small number of firms controlling the media.

三百年前,新闻以口头或书面形式传播,并且以小册子、简报的形式在小餐馆或咖啡屋中流传。据一名观察员说,咖啡屋是进行自由交谈的不二选择,并且也是休闲阅读的理想场所。但是事情在1883年发生重大转变,第一个面向大众的报纸,纽约《太阳报》诞生,并且首次引入广告来降低新闻成本,一举两得地为赞助商寻到更多的观众。当纽约报纸面世时,美国销量最好的杂志每天可以卖4500份;但是《太阳报》却很快达到15000的销量。报纸以及随后而来的广播、电视将新闻传播方式从两方面的交流变为一方面的由少数公司控制的传播。

Now, as our special report explains, the news industry is returning to something closer to the coffee house. The internet is making news more participatory, social, diverse and partisan, reviving the discursive ethos of the era before mass media. That will have profound effects on society and politics.

现在,正如我们的特别报道所言,新闻产业正在向之前咖啡屋相近转变。互联网使新闻变得更易参与,更具有社会性,更容易听到不同的声音,让新闻从大众传媒时代重回百家争鸣的盛况。这对社会及政治将产生重大影响。

In much of the world, the mass media are flourishing. Newspaper circulation rose globally by 6% between and 2009, helped by particularly strong demand in places like India, where 110m papers are now sold daily. But those global figures mask a sharp decline in readership in rich countries.

在世界大部分地区,大众传媒都在蓬勃发展。世界范围内的报纸销量从到20增长了6%,特别是有巨大需求的印度地区,每天就有1亿1千万的销量。但在富裕国家读者人数却大幅下降。

Over the past decade, throughout the Western world, people have been giving up newspapers and TV news and keeping up with events in profoundly different ways. Most strikingly, ordinary people are increasingly involved in compiling, sharing, filtering, discussing and distributing news. Twitter lets people anywhere report what they are seeing. Classified documents are published in their thousands online. Mobile-phone footage of Arab uprisings and American tornadoes is posted on social-networking sites and shown on television newscasts. An amateur video taken during the Japanese earthquake has been watched 15m times on YouTube. “Crowdsourcing” projects bring readers and journalists together to sift through troves of documents, from the expense claims of British politicians to Sarah Palin’s e-mails. Social-networking sites help people find, discuss and share news with their friends.

过去十年整个西方世界中,人们逐渐放弃报纸和电视,而是通过其它的方式与时俱进。更引人著目的是更多的普通民众参与到新闻的收集、分享、筛选和讨论中。推特使人们可以随时随地将他们的所见所闻相互分享。各种各样的文件被无数在线用户上传。手机拍客们拍摄的阿拉伯**以及美国龙卷风的视频和照片在社交网络中广泛传播并且为电视报道所引用。YouTube上一部摄于日本地震期间的相关视频被浏览一千五百万次。“众包”将读者与记者紧密联系在了一起,共同处理各种新闻文件,从英国政客的消费声明到Sarah Palin的邮件。社交网络为人们与好友之间寻找、讨论和分享新闻提供了平台。

And it is not just readers who are challenging the media elite. Technology firms including Google, Facebook and Twitter have become important (some say too important) conduits of news. Celebrities and world leaders, including Barack Obama and Hugo Chávez, publish updates directly via social networks; many countries now make raw data available through “open government” initiatives. The internet lets people read newspapers or watch television channels from around the world: The Guardian, a British newspaper, now has more online readers abroad than at home. The web has allowed new providers of news, from individual bloggers to sites such as the Huffington Post, to rise to prominence in a very short space of time. And it has made possible entirely new approaches to journalism, such as that practised by WikiLeaks, which provides an anonymous way for whistleblowers to publish documents. The news agenda is no longer controlled by a few press barons and state outlets, like the BBC.

不仅仅是读者在向传统传媒发起挑战。包括谷歌、脸谱、推特在内的科技公司也逐渐成为新闻传播的重要渠道。包括奥巴马在内的许多名流和政要通过社交网络公布他们的实时动态。互联网打破了人们阅读报纸及收看电视频道的地域限制:《卫报》,一份英国报纸,现在较其本土读者有更多的网上读者。从博客到类似Huffington Post的网站,互联网使更多人成为新闻的可能提供者,在很短时间内就获得大量关注。互联网也为新闻的发布提供了一种全新的可能,正如维基解密所做的那样,为揭密者提供匿名发布信息的平台。新闻媒体再也不会为少数传媒巨头或部分政府部门所控制,就像BBC。

In principle, every liberal should celebrate this. A more participatory and social news environment, with a remarkable diversity and range of news sources, is a good thing. A Texan who once had to rely on the Houston Chronicle to interpret the world can now collect information from myriad different sources. Authoritarian rulers everywhere have more to fear. So what, many will say, if journalists have less stable careers? All the same, two areas of concern stand out.

原则上来说,每个自由主义人士都应该为此庆祝。一个更具有参与性与社会性的新闻环境,一个更加集思广益、百家争鸣的新闻环境是值得庆祝的。德克萨斯人曾经必须依靠Houston Chronicle来与外界保持联系,但现在却可以通过无数的渠道得到他们想要的消息。专治统治者忧心忡忡。但也有很多人发问,这会不会对记者这个职业产生冲击呢?同样引起关注的还有两点。

The first worry is the loss of “accountability journalism”, which holds the powerful to account. Shrinking revenues have reduced the amount and quality of investigative and local political reporting in the print press.

首先就是担心负责任的媒体会越来越少,这些媒体会对他们报道的内容负责。经费的减少降低了调查研究和本地政治报道的数量和质量。

But old-style journalism was never quite as morally upstanding as journalists like to think. Indeed, the News of the World, a British newspaper which has been caught hacking into people’s mobile phones, is a very traditional sort of scandal sheet. Meantime, the internet is spawning new forms of accountability. A growing band of non-profit outfits such as ProPublica, the Sunlight Foundation and WikiLeaks are helping to fill the gap left by the decline of watchdog media. This is still a work in progress, but the degree of activity and experimentation provides cause for optimism.

但传统传媒却并不总是像记者所想像的一样高尚。世界新闻报,一份英国报纸,被指证窃听人们的手机,这是非常普遍的丑闻之一。同时,互联网正在传播一种新的责任形式。一些个还在增加的非盈利组织,像Propublica、Sunlight Foundation以及wikiLeaks,正在帮助减小由于“看门狗”媒体下降带来的断带。这是一项仍未完成的任务,但是活动和实验的程度为乐观主义者提供了信心。

The second concern has to do with partisanship. In the mass-media era local monopolies often had to be relatively impartial to maximise their appeal to readers and advertisers. In a more competitive world the money seems to be in creating an echo chamber for people’s prejudices: thus Fox News, a conservative American cable-news channel, makes more profits than its less strident rivals, CNN and MSNBC, combined.

第二个值得关注的就是党派性。在大众传媒时代,地方寡头必须保持相对的公正性以吸引读者和赞助商。在一个更具有竞争性的世界中,金钱似乎正在为偏见提供肥沃的土壤:就像Fox News,一家美国保守派有线新闻电视台,比没有它言语犀利的两家CNN和MSNBC合起来赚得还要多。

In one way the increasing availability of partisan news is to be welcomed. In the past many people – especially right-wing Americans, since most American television was left-leaning – had nothing to watch that reflected their views. But as news is becoming more opinionated, both politics and the facts are suffering: witness some American conservatives’ insistence that Barack Obama was born outside America, and others’ refusal to accept that taxes must rise.

在某种情况下,大量政党新闻的涌入是会被欢迎的。在过去,许多人——特别是右翼人士,因为大多数美国电视是左倾的——在电视上找不到反应他们政治立场的节目。政治与事实都在忍受固执己见的新闻的打击:有人坚称奥巴马是在国外出生的,也有人拒绝接受税收必须上调。

What is to be done? At a societal level, not much. The transformation of the news business is unstoppable, and attempts to reverse it are doomed to failure. But there are steps individuals can take to mitigate these worries. As producers of new journalism, they can be scrupulous with facts and transparent with their sources. As consumers, they can be catholic in their tastes and demanding in their standards. And although this transformation does raise concerns, there is much to celebrate in the noisy, diverse, vociferous, argumentative and stridently alive environment of the news business in the age of the internet. The coffee house is back. Enjoy it.

有什么需要做的呢?在社会层面需要我们做的并不多。新闻产业的转型势不可挡,任何意图阻止转型的行为都注定失败。但个人确实可以采取有效措施来减轻前面提到的几种担心。大众作为新式传媒的缔造者,可以自己对所谓事实的真实性把关并公开信息来源。而作为新闻受众的时候,大众可以接触更多领域的信息并且降低需求的标准。虽然转型确实带来了一些麻烦,但更值得庆祝的是在互联网时代有这样一个集思广益、百家争鸣的新闻平台。咖啡屋时代即将回归。与它共舞吧!

篇10:翻译资格考试一级笔译练习题

如何吸引更多中国游客?

程学源大使在斯里兰卡主流媒体发表专栏文章

7月23日

在来到斯里兰卡之前,我难以想象在这六万多平方公里的土地上,遍布着这么多的世界奇观。康提湖的湖光山色,加勒古城的烂漫古朴,科伦坡的绚丽多彩,狮子岩的惊险刺激,都让人赞叹不已。许多中国游客都像我一样被这些美景所吸引。

在中国驻斯里兰卡使馆的大力支持和推动下,中国赴斯里兰卡的旅游人数已达到每年近30万人次,在斯迎来的外国游客中数量稳居前列。但与同为中国近邻的泰国相比,斯里兰卡所吸引的中国游客数量却又不值得一提了,赴泰中国游客已突破千万。

究其原因,我想主要有几个方面。首先是语言障碍。很多中国游客不习惯英语运用,更不懂僧伽罗语等当地语言,中文导游陪同和讲解十分必要,而斯里兰卡当地懂中文的导游人数又极少,但又不允许中国的导游陪同游客前来。另一方面,中国人对中国美食情有独钟,出门在外仍然是“中国胃”,但由于工作签证很难申请,开办中餐厅很不容易,所以斯里兰卡的中餐厅数量有限,有时无法满足中国游客的需求。此外,中国游客习惯了中国烟酒,在斯旅游期间无法买到中国烟酒,甚至不允许携带本人自用的少量中国香烟,这种在很多其他国家所没有的限制让中国游客不习惯。

事实上,这些便利性、体验感和幸福感恰恰是中国游客最为关注的一点,也是他们决定旅游目的地的关键因素之一。我注意到前不久泰国国家旅游局答中国记者问时强调,20该局对中国市场的推广重点在增加便利性和幸福感上,希望到达泰国的中国朋友得到高品质的旅游体验。

中国是全球最大的游客来源地,中国出境旅游人数、境外旅游消费已连续多年位居世界第一。中国旅游市场的庞大是其他很多国家无法比拟和想象的,而旅游业带动的航空、酒店、交通和餐饮等其他行业的增长也是相当可观的。当前中斯关系发展已进入快车道,两国正如火如荼地共建“一带一路”,各领域交往日益频密,中斯旅游合作的前景亦十分广阔。

如果斯里兰卡能不断改善旅游环境,像泰国一样关注提升游客的舒适度,切实解决前面所说的那些对中国游客的障碍,我相信未来会有更多的中国游客慕名而来,为斯里兰卡带来更多的消费,也为当地经济增长注入更强劲的动力。

How to Attract More Chinese Tourists to Sri Lanka?

Published by Ambassador Cheng Xueyuan on Sri Lankan Newspaper

23 July

Before being nominated as the Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka and arriving at the country to assume my office, I could hardly imagine that there are so many world wonders on this tropical island of over 60,000 square kilometers. The graceful lake and mountains of Kandy, the quaint and ancient city of Galle, the gorgeous and colorful Colombo, and the breathtaking thrills of Lion Rock are all amazing and stunning. Many Chinese tourists have been attracted to these beautiful sceneries with pleasant surprise like me.

With the strong support and promotion of the Sri Lankan government as well as the Chinese Embassy in Sri Lanka, the number of Chinese tourists to Sri Lanka has reached nearly 300,000 annually and ranks the top among foreign tourists to Sri Lanka. However, this number is only a peanut while comparing with the number of Chinese tourists attracted by Thailand, which is also a neighbor of China. In , Chinese tourists to Thailand have exceeded 10 million.

The reasons mainly include following aspects. Firstly is language barrier. Many Chinese tourists are not accustomed to English language, much less the Sinhalese or Tamil language. Chinese-speaking tour guides’ accompany and interpretation is a must for them. But there are very few Chinese-speaking local guides here, and Chinese guides are prohibited from entering Sri Lanka and accompanying with tourists. Besides, Chinese people always have “Chinese stomach” when traveling. They show strong preference to Chinese food. However, it is difficult for a Chinese chef to obtain a working visa to work in or set up a Chinese restaurant. Therefore, the number of Chinese restaurants in Sri Lanka is limited and sometimes cannot meet needs of Chinese tourists. In addition, a large percentage of Chinese tourists are accustomed to Chinese tobacco and alcohol, which is a reality that the tourism industries in Sri Lanka has to consider seriously, although it is not healthy at all and should not be encouraged. The tourists cannot buy Chinese tobacco and alcohol during their stay, and even not allowed to bring a few Chinese cigarettes with them for their personal own use when entering this island. These restrictions make Chinese tourists unaccustomed, which don’t exist or at least have some level of exemption or tolerance in many other countries.

In fact, conveniences, experiences and happiness are precisely what Chinese tourists most care about, and one of the key factors in their decision-making of travel destinations. I noticed that the Tourism Authority of Thailand emphasized in an interview that the promotion of the Chinese market in 2019 will focus on increasing convenience and happiness, hoping all Chinese friends in Thailand would enjoy high-quality experience.

China is the world’s largest source of tourists with large scale of outbound tourists and ranks No.1 in overseas consumption in the world for many years. The size of China’s tourism market is too huge to imagine and compare by many other countries. The growth of related industries such as aviation, hotels, transportation and catering promoted by the tourism industry is also considerable. At present, the Sino-Sri Lanka relations has stepped into a fast development period. The implementation of Belt and Road Initiative between the two countries is in full swing, the exchanges in various fields are increasingly frequent, and the prospect for Sino-Sri Lanka tourism cooperation is also promising.

I’m fully confident that if Sri Lanka could continuously improve the tourism environment, focus on improving the comfort of foreign tourists as much as Thailand, adjust relevant regulations in accordance with Sri Lankan laws, ease the existing obstacles for foreign tourists effectively, more and more Chinese tourists will be attracted to Sri Lanka, which will stimulate tourism, consumption and stronger vitality to local economy growth.

篇11:翻译资格考试(catti)一级笔译材料

Conscious Decoupling

A new book explains how managers struggle with changing customer behavior

Think about the companies like Uber and Airbnb that have burst through into public consciousness in the past ten years. While many of them depend on the internet, their success is not down to any particular technological innovation of their own design. Instead, their secret lies in their business model.

Thales Teixeira of the Harvard Business School argues that the principle that underlies a lot of these models is called decoupling. In his book “Unlocking the Customer Value Chain”, he explains how this concept applies across a wide range of industries.

Buying a product will involve at least four stages. First, customers will evaluate the items available; then they will choose one or two; then they will buy them; finally they will consume them. In the traditional model, the first three took place inside a single retail store. Customers would look at the TVs or dishwashers on offer, pick one they liked with a price they could afford, pay at the till and then take the item home or arrange for the retailer to deliver it.

These steps are all part of what Mr Teixeira calls the “customer value chain”. Disrupters have muscled in on some parts of this chain. One example is the practice of “showrooming”. Shoppers enter an electrical store like Best Buy and examine what’s on offer. But instead of purchasing the item in the store, they buy it online. Amazon has even created an app allowing customers to scan a product’s bar code, or take its picture, and discover its online price. The selection of products has been decoupled from their purchase.

Other examples of the decoupling process cited by Mr Teixeira include Zipcar, where driving a car is separated from purchasing and maintaining it; TiVo, where watching TV is delinked from sitting through ads; and Birchbox, where customers are sent samples of beauty products, eliminating the need to visit a store to try them.

This is not, as the author points out, a particularly new idea. Budget airlines like Ryanair have long since decoupled flying from the services and amenities that usually accompanied it. Passengers have to pay separately for the extras, like seat selection and the carrying of baggage. Other airlines have followed suit.

Customer services have for some time been disrupted by a trend with the ugly name of disintermediation, the cutting out of middlemen. Most holidays are now purchased directly, rather than via travel agents; shares are bought via low-commission services, rather than through advisory stockbrokers. New entrants can gain market share if they can offer customers a lower cost or greater convenience. Decoupling doesn’t subtract middlemen but still results in lower costs to the consumer.

The beauty of the decoupling approach is that the only limit to innovation is imagination, rather than technical brilliance. For example, Mr Teixeira cites Trov, a company which allows customers to buy insurance solely for specific items for specific periods of time. If you want to insure your latest smart phone for a two-week holiday, you can do so; and then insure it again for a weekend trip later in the year. The need for insurance is decoupled from the hassle of buying an annual policy.

Suppose that you like a restaurant’s ambience, but not its food. In theory, you could book a table but order the food from elsewhere, paying separately for the service and the cooking. If 3D printers become ubiquitous, design and manufacture could be decoupled, with consumers paying for the digital blueprint.

Mr Teixeira argues that decoupling is a customer-driven phenomenon-bottom-up rather than top-down. Successful businesses will spot how consumer tastes are shifting, and that may involve looking at other industries as well as their own. For example, they can look at the success of Netflix’s subscription-based model; what works for TV programmes may also work for other goods and services. Already, there are companies that will deliver socks or perfume on a regular basis, decoupling this from a trip to the mall.

The challenge for existing managers is that they must worry about more than whether their overall costs are lower than those of their immediate rivals. If a part of their process is inefficient, or inconvenient for consumers, the decouplers may well grab hold of it.

自觉脱钩

一本新书分析管理者如何努力应对不断变化的客户行为

优步和爱彼迎等公司在过去十年里异军突起,闯入公众视野。虽然它们当中有许多都依赖互联网,但其成功却并非源自任何自己创造的特定的技术创新。相反,它们的秘诀是商业模式。

哈佛商学院的塔莱斯·特谢拉认为,这许多商业模式的背后是同一个原理——“脱钩”。在《解锁客户价值链》一书中,他解释了这一概念如何适用于众多行业。

购买一件产品至少涉及四个阶段。首先顾客会评估市面上的产品,从中选择一两件,然后掏钱购买,最后是使用。在传统模式中,前三阶段发生在同一家零售店内。顾客会查看在售的电视机或洗碗机,选出自己心仪的、价格又合适的产品,到收银台付款,然后将商品带回家或由零售商安排送货上门。

这些步骤都是特谢拉所说的“客户价值链”的一部分。现在,颠覆者已强势介入这一链条的某些环节。“展厅”现象的出现便是个例子。购物者走进百思买这样的电器商店,研究出售的货品。但他们不在店内购买,而是会网购。亚马逊甚至设计了一个应用,让客户扫描产品条形码或拍个照就能了解产品的网上售价。产品的挑选和购买环节脱钩了。

特谢拉举出的其他“脱钩”例子还有:美国汽车共享公司zipcar让开车和买车及养车脱钩,数字录像机Tivo让人们在看电视时不必再看插播的广告,还有提供美容产品在线订阅服务的Birchbox,顾客会收到其寄送的美容产品小样,无需去某家商店试用。

正如特谢拉所指出的,这不是什么特别新潮的概念。像瑞安航空这样的廉价航空公司早已让飞行和通常与之捆绑在一起的服务与便利设施脱钩。乘客必须为选座位和行李托运等额外服务另行付费。其他航空公司已纷纷效仿。

客户服务环节被去中介化(即去除中间商)这一趋势颠覆已有一段时日。如今人们大多直接购买度假产品,而不是通过旅行社;从低收费的服务商购入股票,而不是通过提供咨询服务的股票经纪商。新进入的商家如果能为客户提供更低的成本或更大的便利,就能获得市场份额。脱钩并不去除中间商,却仍为消费者降低了成本。

有了脱钩这种方式,想象力而非技术水平就成了创新的唯一限制。这就是脱钩的妙处。特谢拉举了保险公司Trov的例子,它允许客户仅在特定时间段为特定项目购买保险。想在度假时为新买的智能手机投保两周?完全可以。还想等到今年晚些时候某次周末旅行时再为手机投保?也没问题。保险需求与麻烦的按年投保脱钩了。

假设你喜欢某家餐厅的环境氛围,但不中意它的食物。理论上讲,你可以预订餐桌,再从别家餐厅点菜,为餐厅服务和菜品分别付费。假如3D打印机得到普及,设计和制造就可能脱钩,消费者可以单独为数字设计图付费。

特谢拉认为,脱钩是一种由客户驱动的现象,自下而上、而非自上而下地进行。成功的企业会察觉消费者的口味如何变化,为此,它们除了要审视自己所在的行业,还可能需要观察其他行业的发展。例如,它们可借鉴Netflix订阅模式的成功经验,因为适用于电视节目的模式也许同样适用于其他商品和服务。已经有公司定期给顾客递送袜子或香水,使购买这些商品的行为与逛商场脱钩。

在位管理者面临的挑战是,他们不能单单关心自己的整体成本是否低于直接竞争对手。只要他们的某个经营环节效率低下,或者令消费者感到不便,“脱钩分子”就可能乘虚而入,夺取市场份额。

篇12:翻译资格考试(catti)一级笔译材料

Online Education: Patient Learning

A new kind of online school wants to teach nursing, and more

“I have been this close to buying a nursing school.” This is not a sentence you expect to hear from a startup founder. Nursing seems a world away from the high-tech whizziness of Silicon Valley. And, to use a venture-capital cliché, it does not scale easily. Austen Allred, boss of Lambda School, sees things differently. His two-year-old firm matches labour supply and demand by providing fast, efficient training to potential employees. It offers five online courses that prepare candidates to write software at technology firms. Training nurses, more of which are sorely needed to care for America’s ageing population, is not an illogical next step – especially when many nursing schools have to turn people away.

Instead of responding to the threat of joblessness posed by automation with a universal basic income, Mr Allred wants to help people to switch jobs faster. Unlike most online courses, Lambda does not charge students up front to attend (though admissions are competitive) and online tuition is live and interactive, not recorded. Full-time students attend for nine months, Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm San Francisco time. Latecomers risk falling behind. In most recent classes, 85% of students who began a course finished it.

The school only starts getting paid back for its services after its students have landed a job which pays them more than $50,000 a year, something Lambda expends significant energy to help them do. Around 70% of those enrolled do so within six months of graduation. Lambda then gets a cut of about a sixth of their income for the next two years, until they have paid about $30,000. (Or they can pay $20,000 up front.)

The firm devotes about a third of its time and resources to finding jobs for its graduates, an unusually high share. Another third goes to recruiting students and the rest to teaching. Courses are created with employers’ requirements in mind. For its web-development programme, the list given to Lambda by companies runs to 280 items. Unlike coding, nursing cannot be taught entirely over the internet, so Lambda wants to co-operate with nursing schools across America that could provide the necessary hands-on instruction.

After nursing, Lambda plans to work its way down the list of professions with the biggest job shortages. It is also examining the problem from the other side, identifying available jobs that require skills akin to those of victims of automation – truckers displaced by self-driving lorries or call-centre workers replaced by robocalls.

Lambda’s quirks set it apart in Silicon Valley, but Mr Allred is not the first to recognise the value of work-focused education and training. Germany is famed for its widespread vocational training and apprenticeships. Closer to California, the University of Waterloo, a technology-oriented Canadian institution, has had gainful employment within the field of study as one of its core goals since it was founded 62 years ago. Students seeking an internship can enroll in a special scheme which matches them with firms. Norah McRae, who runs the programme, says that most universities spend little time finding work for the graduates, or teaching the skills they need to prosper in the job market. Too often students are treated as cash cows to be milked for research funding.

But Ms McRae is also concerned that programmes like Lambda School, though well-meaning, risk undermining existing educational institutions by offering a quicker route to work. The kind of intense optimisation which Lambda espouses cannot, she worries, replace conventional learning, which strives to create not just capable workers but rounded individuals.

Such fears presuppose that Lambda can succeed beyond even Mr Allred’s wildest dreams – or those of the venture capitalists who pumped $30m into the firm in January, valuing it at $150m. Student numbers, and so upfront costs, are growing faster than revenues. If Lambda can turn a profit by offering people a stab at a decent job that would be a fine lesson in capitalism.

在线教育:学习护理

一种新型网校想要教授护理和其他很多职业技能

“我离收购一所护理学校只有一步之遥了。”人们不会想到这样的话竟是出自一位创业公司的创始人之口。护理行业似乎与硅谷的前沿科技风马牛不相及。而且用风险投资的套话来说,这个行业不容易很快做大。但兰姆达学校的老板奥斯丁·奥尔雷德有不同的看法。成立于两年前的兰姆达提供快速、高效的培训,为职场输送新人,以此匹配劳动力供需。公司目前提供五门在线课程,为科技公司培训程序员。下一步它准备开展护士培训,这并非不合逻辑——人口老龄化的美国亟需更多护士,尤其是在当前很多护校无力招收更多学生的情况下。

奥尔雷德希望帮助人们更快地转行,而不是用所谓的“全民基本收入”来应对自动化带来的失业威胁。与大多数在线课程不同,兰姆达并不在开课前收学费(尽管入学竞争激烈),其在线教学也是实时互动,而不是事先录制的。全日制学生的学制为九个月,授课时间为旧金山时间周一到周五的上午8点至下午5点。中途入学者可能会跟不上进度。在近期大部分课程中,85%的学生修完了自己选的课程。

只有在学员谋得一份年薪超过五万美元的工作后,学校才开始收取服务回报。而为了帮学生找到一份这样的工作,兰姆达花费了大量精力。约70%的学员在毕业后六个月内达到了这个目标。在此后的两年里,兰姆达会抽取学员收入的约六分之一,最终累计收取约三万美元。如果学员一次性付清,则为两万美元。

兰姆达将三分之一左右的时间和资源花在为毕业学员找工作上,这么高的比重不常见。另外三分之一用于招生,三分之一用于教学。课程是根据雇主的要求而设计的。在它的网站开发课程中,企业开给兰姆达的需求多达280项。而护理有别于编程,不可能完全通过互联网教授,因此兰姆达希望与全美各地能提供必要操作实训的护校合作。

在开展护理培训后,兰姆达还计划逐个进军其他人员最紧缺的职业。同时它也从另一面审视问题,为那些被自动化淘汰的人员(例如被无人驾驶货车取代的卡车司机,或者被自动语音呼叫取代的呼叫中心员工)找到需要类似技能的就业岗位。

兰姆达的另类做法在硅谷独树一帜,但要说认识到以工作为导向的教育与培训的价值的,奥尔雷德并非第一人。德国就以职业培训和学徒制的普及而闻名。离加州更近些的滑铁卢大学是加拿大一所技术型大学。自62年前创办以来,该校一直将找到与学生专业对口的较高收入工作作为自己的核心目标之一。想找实习机会的学生可以注册一个将他们与企业相匹配的特别项目。负责该项目的诺拉·麦克雷表示,多数大学很少花时间帮助毕业生就业,也很少教授他们在就业市场获得成功所需的技能。很多时候,学生们都被当成了捞取研究经费的摇钱树。

但麦克雷也担心,像兰姆达学校这样的培训项目虽然出发点不错,但可能会因为提供就业上的捷径而损害现有的教育体系。她担心兰姆达倡导的那种密集型的优化培训并非是对传统教育的一种好的替代,因为后者致力培养的不仅是能胜任工作的员工,还是全面发展的个体。

不过这种担忧成立的前提是兰姆达取得的成功要远远超出奥尔雷德本人的想象——或者那些今年1月向兰姆达投资3000万美元、对其估值1.5亿美元的风险投资家们的想象。目前,学生人数的增长以及由此带来的前期成本的增速——超过了收入的增速。如果兰姆达能通过帮助人们拿下一份体面工作来赢利,那还真会是资本主义的一条有益经验。

翻译考试一级口译段落练习题

翻译资格考试

计算机一级考试的注意事项

笔译考试常用翻译技巧:拆句法和合并法

一级建造师执业资格考试大纲内容

下载下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题(精选12篇)
下半年翻译资格考试一级笔译考试精选习题.doc
将本文的Word文档下载到电脑,方便收藏和打印
推荐度:
点击下载文档
点击下载本文文档