经济学人双语版-中层管理者

经济学人双语版:中层管理者

Business商业报道

Middle managers中层管理者

In praise of David Brent赞扬大卫?布兰特

Middle managers are not as useless as people think

中层管理者并不像人们认为的那样没有用处

IN “UNDERCOVER BOSS”, a British television programme,company chiefs disguise thems elves and work on the shop floorof their own companies.

英国有一档电视节目叫“卧底老板”，公司老板乔装打扮后，下到自己公司一线与员工一起工作。

The climax comes when the boss reveals his true identity to his co-workers.

当老板向一起工作的员工揭开自己的真实身份时，节目达到了高潮。

Much to his surprise, the shop-floor grunts often have no clue who he is.

让老板感到吃惊的是，这些基层员工常常不知道自己的老板是谁。

The cult of the chief executive has reached absurd proportions.

对于首席执行官的狂热已经达到了一种荒谬的地步，

Business magazines splash their smug faces on glossy covers, and give them all the credi t forachievements to which thousands of others have contributed.

商业期刊的封面上尽是他们的大幅照片，个个自命不凡。数千员工辛苦劳动取得的功劳全部记在他们的头上。

Yet a recent study by Antoinette Schoar, an economist at MIT, found that the person at t he topaccounted for just 5% of a Fortune 500 firm's performance.

但最近麻省理工学院经济学家安托瓦内特?斯考尔进行的一项研究发现，在财富500强公司中，最高领导对公司业绩的贡献仅有5%。

Some bosses believe their own hype: a survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, our sis tercompany, found that many were convinced that their own words and actions were the key tomotivating employees.

有些老板非常相信自己的号召力，经济学人智库“我们的姊妹公司”进行的一项调查发现，许多老板对自己的言行对员工的感召深信不移。

Yet when the same survey asked workers what they thought, more said that it was theirr elationship with their line manager that counted.

但该调查也征询了员工的看法，很多员工表示，他们与现场主管的关系更为重要。

As Marcus Buckingham, a management writer, once quipped,

“People join companies but leavemanagers.”

这正应了管理学作家马库斯?贝克汉姆的一句妙语：公司员工进来时看公司，出去时看领导。

Yet middle managers could hardly be less fashionable.

然而，中层管理者可能是最不风光的职位。

Companies sack them by the truckload. Sitcoms such as “The Office” mock them.

公司大批大批地对他们进行解雇。情景剧《办公室》就是这些人的真实写照。

The days of general managers who know “a little about lots” are completely over, claims LyndaGratton of London Business School in “The Shift”, a new book.

伦敦商学院的琳达?布兰顿在他的新书《大转移》中断言，总经理事无巨细管理公司的日子早已过去。

Knowledge workers often receive feedback from peers working on the same project, she observes.

她观察到，知识工人常从在一个项目中工作的同事那里获得反馈。

Technology helps them monitor each other's output, with little need for supervision by a middlemanager.

他们可以借助技术手段来监控彼此的产出情况，不再需要中层管理者的监督。

Many firms have become nimbler by removing unnecessary bureaucracy.

很多公司通过清除不必要的繁文缛节而变得更加灵活。

Unilever, a consumer-goods firm, used to have as many as 36 tiers of management; now it has,by some counts, only six.

消费品公司联合利华过去管理上有36个层级，有人发现现在只剩下了6个。

But cutting out too much of the middle can start to look like corporate hara-kiri.

但是砍掉这么多的中间管理层对公司来说，也许无异于切腹自杀。

Ethan Mollick, of Wharton Business School in Pennsylvania, argues that firms should nurt uremanagers with the initiative to balance the needs of day-to-day operations against th e need toimplement the board's strategy. Middle managers also act as a crucial filter.

宾夕法尼亚沃顿商学院的伊桑?莫立克认为，公司应该用创新精神培养管理者，使他们既能搞好日常管理工作，又能贯彻董事会战略。中层管理人员就像一个过滤器，作用十分重要。

A large firm may have tens of thousands of employees. The CEO cannot possibly listen to them all.

一家大公司可能有数万员工，公司的CEO不可能听到他们每个人的声音。

重点词汇：

1.television n.电视机；电视节目

He turned up the volume on the television.

他把电视机的音量调大了。

2.disguise v.掩饰；假装

She could not disguise her amusement at his mistake.

她对他的错误忍俊不禁。

3.reveal v.显示；透露

Several withered trees on the sides of the road reveal the desolation here.

道路两旁的几棵枯木显示出这里的荒凉。

4.grunt n.咕哝；呼噜声

The inspector gave a grunt of approval.

督学咕哝着表示赞同。

5.glossy a.光滑的；有光泽的

He tickled gently at its glossy carapace, but the stubborn beetle would not budge.

他轻轻地搔着甲虫光滑的壳，但这只固执的甲虫就是不动。

文章出处：https://www.sodocs.net/doc/2518424278.html,/html/radio/jingjixuerenshuangyuban/20141231/94877.html。

经济学人科技类文章中英双语

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来源于https://www.sodocs.net/doc/2518424278.html,/wordpress/（The Economist《经济学人》中文版）和https://www.sodocs.net/doc/2518424278.html,/（《The Economist》《经济学人》中文版） 11月10, 2008 [2008.11.08] 美国大选：无限期望 America's election：Great expectations NO ONE should doubt the magnitude of what Barack Obama achieved this week. When the president-elect was born, in 1961, many states, and not just in the South, had laws on their books that enforced segregation, banned mixed-race unions like that of his parents and restricted voting rights. This week America can claim more credibly that any other western country to have at last become politically colour-blind. Other milestones along the road to civil rights have been passed amid bitterness and bloodshed. This one was marked by joy, white as well as black (see article). 相信无人质疑奥巴马于本周取胜的重要意义。这位新总统出生于1961年，那时美国很多州的法律都要求强化种族分离、禁止像奥巴马父母那样的跨族通婚、限制选举权利；这些不仅限于南部地区，而出现在全国范围内。从本周开始，美国可以更加自信的宣称：任何其他的西方国家都变得有些政治色盲了。在通向民权的道路上，其它里程碑似的重大历史事件都是在痛苦与血泊中通过的；而此次总统选举则以愉快著称，受到了包括白人及黑人在内的全国选民的称赞。 Mr Obama lost the white vote, it is true, by 43-55%; but he won almost exactly same share of it as the last three (white) Democratic candidates; Bill Clinton, Al Gore and John Kerry. And he won heavily among younger white voters. America will now have a president with half-brothers in Kenya, old schoolmates in Indonesia and a view of the world that seems to be based on respect rather than confrontation. 奥巴马丢掉了大约43%-55%的白人选票，这是不争的事实；但他与过去三位白人民主党候选人–克林顿、戈尔和肯尼迪–得到的白人选票几乎相同。同时，他在年轻一代的白人选民中取得了重大胜利。这位新总统有一个同父异母的兄弟在肯尼亚，有老同学在印尼，他的世界观似乎建立在尊重而不是对抗的基础之上。 That matters. Under George Bush America’s international standing has sunk to awful lows. This week Americans voted in record-smashing numbers for many reasons, but one of them was an abhorrence of how their shining city’s reputation has been tarnished. Their country will now be easier for its friends to like and harder for its foes to hate. 这很重要。在布什治下，美国的国际声誉降到了糟糕地步。本周美国选民的投票数量突破了历史纪录，其中原因很多，有一个就是他们对曾经辉煌无比的城市形象已然黯淡无光而感到愤恨。现在他们的国家将会更易赢得朋友的喜爱，而不易引起敌人的仇恨。 In its own way the election illustrates this redeeming effect. For the past eight years the debacle in Florida in 2000 has been cited (not always fairly) as an example of shabby American politics. Yet here was a clear victory delivered by millions of volunteers-and by the intelligent use of technology to ride a wave of excitement that is all too rare in most democracies. Mr Obama showed that, with the right message, a candidate with no money or machine behind him can build his own.

经济学人双语版1

Europe's debt crisis 欧洲债务危机 Spot the pattern 看变化模式 Jul 5th 2011, 18:55 by R.A. | WASHINGTON 2011年7月5日18：55 R.A./华盛顿 HERE'S a chart showing the yields on 10-year Greek debt over the past three months. See the pattern? 本图显示的是在过去3个月10年期希腊债券的收益率。变化模式看清楚了吧？ There's a spike, followed by a decline, followed by a higher spike, followed by a decline to a higher trough, and so on. European leaders keep taking steps to avert disaster, and each time markets are less assuaged. 有个尖峰，接着是下跌，然后又是稍高一些的尖峰，接着跌入一个较高的波谷，如此反复。欧洲国家的领导人一直在采取措施避免灾难，而每一次市场都没有大的起色。 The latest spike corresponds to the stalemate over the IMF's willingness to continue making bail-out payments without a new, long-term rescue package in place (and the corresponding disagreement over how to rollover Greek debt, plus the drama surrounding the passage of Greece's new austerity plan). The IMF agreed to keep paying, French and German banks seemed willing to sign on to a rollover plan, and Greece got its new austerity programme through parliament. But it wasn't long before trouble kicked up again. 最近的尖峰反映了这样一个困境：国际货币基金组织愿意继续救助，但又没有制定出一个长期的一揽子救助计划（同时也反映出如何缓解希腊债务各方存在分歧，以及希腊的新紧缩计划能否通过依然有变数）。国际货币基金组织同意继续提供支付，法国和德国的银行似乎愿意签署资金周转计划书，希腊国会通过了新的紧缩计划。但是，没过多久，麻烦又来了。 Moody's and Standard and Poor's have both suggested that the agreed-upon rollover plan might well constitute a default. Since that's precisely the outcome European leaders were hoping to avoid, this news has sent everyone scurrying to come up with a new and better deal. Meanwhile, Moody's has cut Portugal's debt rating to junk. Portugal may well need a new rescue package, which will surely include debate over the fate of creditors, which will mean more questions about bank finances and more brinksmanship. And the European economy continues to slow, even as the European Central Bank continues to tighten policy. 穆迪和标准普尔都暗示，商定好的周转计划很可能得不到执行。因为这种结果正是欧洲国家的领导人们想避免的，所以这条消息让每个人都急不可待地要制定出一个新的、更好的解决办法。与此同时，穆迪公司已经将葡萄牙的债务评级降至垃圾级。葡萄牙很可能需要一个新的一揽子救援计划，这必将包括对债权人命运的辩论，而辩论的内容将更多的是关于银行财政方面的问题和边缘政策。欧洲经济增长速度持续放缓，尽管欧洲央行继续收紧货币政策。 I don't know that there's any broad lesson here, other than: for all the steps already taken by European leaders, the euro zone hasn't really gotten any closer to solving the underlying issues of insolvency and institutional weakness.

经济学人中英对照文章 Northern lights

Northern lights 北极光 The Nordic countries are reinventing their model of capitalism, says Adrian Wooldridge 艾德里-伍尔德里奇（Adrian Wooldridge）指出北欧国家正在重塑它们的资本主义模式 THIRTY YEARS AGO Margaret Thatcher turned Britain into the world’s leading centre of “thinking the unthinkable”. Today that distinction has pas sed to Sweden. The streets of Stockholm are awash with the blood of sacred cows. The think-tanks are brimful of new ideas. The erstwhile champion of the “third way” is now pursuing a far more interesting brand of politics. 三十年前马格丽特-撒切尔（Margaret Thatcher）将英国转变成了一个在全世界首屈一指“敢于想不可想象之事”的中心。今天这项荣耀则移到了瑞典头上。斯德哥尔摩的大街上充满着打破禁忌局限所产生的新气象。智囊机构的好点子层出不穷。之前身为“第三条道路”[1]的拥护者，如今瑞典所追求的政治模式要比过去有趣得多。 Sweden has reduced public spending as a proportion of GDP from 67% in 1993 to 49% today. It could soon have a smaller state than Britain. It has also cut the top marginal tax rate by 27 percentage points since 1983, to 57%, and scrapped a mare’s nest of taxes on property, gifts, wealth and inheritance. This year it is cutting the corporate-tax rate from 26.3% to 22%. 瑞典政府开支占国民生产总值（GDP）的比例已从1993年的67%降到了今天的49%。很快其政府规模将会比英国更小。同时，瑞典的最高边际税率已降到了57%，比1983年整整低了27个百分点，而且瑞典政府也已取消了大量混乱不堪的财产税，馈赠税以及继承税。今年瑞典将会把企业所得税从26.3%下调到22%。 Sweden has also donned the golden straitjacket of fiscal orthodoxy with its pledge to produce a fiscal surplus over the economic cycle. Its public debt fell from 70% of GDP in 1993 to 37% in 2010, and its budget moved from an 11% deficit to a surplus of 0.3% over the same period. This allowed a country with a small, open economy to recover quickly from the financial storm of 2007-08. Sweden has also put its pension system on a sound foundation, replacing a defined-benefit system with a defined-contribution one and making automatic adjustments for longer life expectancy. 瑞典也披上了“黄金紧身衣”[2]——承诺会在这个经济周期内达到财政预算盈余。其政府债务占GDP的比例已从已从1993年的70%减少到了2010年的37%。同期瑞典政府预算也从11%的赤字转变至0.3%的盈余。所有这些行动使这个开放的小经济体迅速地从2007-08的金融风暴中恢复过来。瑞典同时也打稳了其退休金制度的基础，将约定提存制度改成了约定给付制度[3]，并让退休金根据平均寿命的增长自动进行调整。

宜家的成功秘诀(中英文对照)摘自经济学人

宜家的成功秘诀 摘自：《经济学人》 高效的运营，精细的税务规划，加上严格的控制 以下段落的顺序已被随机打乱，请各位自己动手排列成一篇完整通顺的文章。 开个玩笑而已。但如果你有过在宜家购物的经验，那么你对把家具组件打包带回家再拼装时的种种麻烦和挫败感一定不会感到陌生。可是无数的消费者对此并没有怨言，只因为两点：宜家的产品不但时髦，而且非常便宜。 2009年9月份接任宜家集团执行总裁的麦克奥尔森说“我们讨厌浪费”。他指着一个鲜红色的“Ektorp”沙发，神情中显露出些许自豪。去年他的设计团队想到了一个办法，使常用的三座沙发在包装时占据的空间更小，同样大的空间能够放进去的沙发数量就能多一倍。这个方法使沙发的价格也相应地下降了100欧元（约合135美元），而且使运输过程中产生的二氧化碳也大幅度减少。节约是宜家企业文化中的核心理念。奥尔森认为这一理念可以追溯到公司的发源地斯马兰，瑞典南部一个贫穷的地区。他说那里的居民“倔强、节俭、善于过精打细算的日子。”自从英格瓦坎普拉德在1943年创办宜家以来，公司就一直致力于让“条件有限的人能够像有钱人一样布置自己的家”。 宜家给外界的印象是一个具有环保意识、社会责任感强的公司。奥尔森毫不掩饰他对宜家支持慈善事业和只使用可再生能源的肯定。他说他希望和自己一块儿工作的人是快乐的、诚实的、习惯于独立思考的。公司200名高管中有40%是女性，这一点令他也颇感自豪。 宜家的经营业绩是相当不错的。在2010财政年度，宜家的销售额增长7.7%，达到231亿欧元，净利润上升了6.1%，达到27亿欧元。法国的Conforama和英国的Habitat及其他业内竞争对手都难以望其项背。尽管80%的销售额来自于经济受创的欧洲地区，宜家仍凭借其强大的品牌效应和廉价政策成功度过了经济危机。2010年宜家在西班牙和意大利的销售额分别上涨了8.2%和11.3%。在保加利亚和罗马尼亚，宜家也是经营的有声有色，并且正计划进一步拓展在中欧和东欧地区的业务。 以节俭闻名的德国人是宜家最大的主顾，他们的消费量占宜家的总销售额的15%。宜家甚至已经融入了德国的文化：2009年在汉堡的一间剧院里上演了一部与之有关的戏剧《来自瑞典的奇迹》，该戏剧采用瑞典民歌曲调演唱的方式展现了这个“家具业始祖”的发展历程。 然而在宜家清新的形象背后，却是一个极具瑞典特征、本能般低调、甚至在某些人眼里等级制度森严的公司。所有六名监督委员会的成员均为瑞典人（84岁的坎普拉德现任高级顾问）。几年来，有关公司在亚洲使用童工和购买活鹅鹅毛的批评之声一直不绝于耳。有记者透露，坎普拉德年轻时曾支持过瑞典的法西斯组织；他在一封公开信中已经就此致歉。 近来，在拥有12家门店的俄罗斯，宜家遇到一些麻烦。虽然宜家一向致力于反腐败运动，并冻结了在俄罗斯的投资以抗议政府的监管不力，但去年它却卷入到了一场丑闻之中。两名驻俄罗斯的高管被解雇，原因据称是一名分包商为获得其位于圣彼得堡的商场的供电而向他人行贿，但两名高管对此事却充耳不闻。

《经济学人》杂志原版英文(The Economist整理版4-5)

Digest Of The. Economist. 2006(4-5) Hot to trot A new service hopes to do for texting what Skype did for voice calls TALK is cheap—particularly since the appearance of voice-over-internet services such as Skype. Such services, which make possible very cheap (or even free) calls by routing part or all of each call over the internet, have forced traditional telecoms firms to cut their prices. And now the same thing could be about to happen to mobilephone text messages, following the launch this week of Hotxt, a British start-up. Users download the Hotxt software to their handsets, just as they would a game or a ringtone. They choose a user name, and can then exchange as many messages as they like with other Hotxt users for ￡1 ($1.75) per week. The messages are sent as data packets across the internet, rather than being routed through operators' textmessaging infrastructure. As a result, users pay only a tiny data-transport charge, typically of a penny or so per message. Since text messages typically cost 10p, this is a big saving—particularly for the cost-conscious teenagers at whom the service is aimed. Most teenagers in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, pay for their mobile phones on a “pre-paid” basis, rather than having a monthly contract with a regular bill. Pre-paid tariffs are far more expensive: bundles of free texts and other special deals, which can reduce the cost of text messaging, are generally not available. For a teenager who sends seven messages a day, Hotxt can cut the cost of texting by 75%, saving ￡210 per year, says Doug Richard, the firm's co-founder. For really intensive text-messagers, the savings could be even bigger: Josh Dhaliwal of mobileYouth, a market-research firm, says that some teenagers—chiefly boys aged 15-16 and girls aged 14-15—are “supertexters” who send as many as 50 messages per day. While this sounds like good news for users, it could prove painful for mobile operators. Text-messaging accounts for around 20% of a typical operator's revenues. With margins on text messages in excess of 90%, texting also accounts for nearly half of an operator's profits. Mr Richard is confident that there is no legal way that operators can block his service; they could raise data-transport costs, but that would undermine their own efforts to push new services. Hotxt plans to launch in other countries soon. “The challenge is getting that initial momentum,” says Mr Dhaliwal. Hotxt needs to persuade people to sign up, so that they will persuade their friends to sign up, and so on. Unlike Skype, Hotxt is not free, so users may be less inclined to give it a try. But as Skype has also shown, once a disruptive, low-cost communications service starts to spread, it can quickly become very big indeed. And that in turn can lead to lower prices, not just for its users, but for everyone. A discerning view A new way of processing X-rays gives much clearer images X-RAYS are the mysterious phenomenon for which Wilhelm R?ntgen was awarded the first Nobel prize in physics, in 1901. Since then, they have shed their mystery and found widespread use in medicine and industry, where they are used to reveal the inner properties of solid bodies. Some properties, however, are more easily discerned than others. Conventional Xray imaging relies on the fact that different materials absorb the radiation to different degrees. In a medical context, for example, bones absorb X-rays readily, and so show up white on an X-radiograph, which is a photographic negative. But Xrays are less good at discriminating between different forms of soft tissue, such as muscles, tendons, fat and blood vessels. That, however, could soon change. For Franz Pfeiffer of the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland, and his colleagues report, in the April edition of Nature Physics, that they have manipulated standard X-ray imaging techniques to show many more details of the inner body. The trick needed to discern this fine detail, according to Dr Pfeiffer, is a simple one. The researchers took advantage not only of how tissues absorb X-rays but also of how much they slow their passage. This slowing can be seen as changes in the phase of the radiation that emerges—in other words of the relative positions of the peaks and troughs of the waves of which X-rays are composed. Subtle changes in phase are easily picked up, so doctors can detect even small variations in the composition of the tissue under investigation, such as might be caused by the early stages of breast cancer. Indeed, this trick—known as phase-contrast imaging—is already used routinely in optical microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. Until now, however, no one had thought to use it for medical X-radiography. To perform their trick, the researchers used a series of three devices called transmission gratings. They placed one between the source of the X-rays and the body under examination, and two between the body and the X-ray detector that forms the image. The first grating gathers information on the phases of the X-rays passing through it. The second and third work together to produce the