Advanced Week 191

写在前面的话

“ScalersTalk 口译进阶小组”的前身是“ScalersTalk 交传小组”，成立于 2015 年 2 月，现阶段，小组继续专注高级阶段的交替传译与同声传译训练，在巩固语言基本功的同时训练各类口译技能，从而为承担正式场合的口译打下坚实基础。

本周复盘说明

第 191 周训练材料选用了两篇关于气候变化以及经济发展的演讲，小组成员利用该材料练习了交替传译和同声传译，并学习原文的词汇、表达和句型句式。设备建议：你需要电脑或手机播放音频、手机发送语音。本日志整理的是 Tim Jackson 的演讲 An economic reality check的部分内容。

第 191 周——知识点整理

段落一

And this, this is where it gets interesting, because it turns out that human beings have something of an appetite for novelty. We love new stuff -- new material stuff for sure -- but also new ideas, new adventures, new experiences. But the materiality matters too, because in every society that anthropologists have looked at, material stuff operates as a kind of language -- a language of goods, a symbolic language that we use to tell each other stories -- stories, for example, about how important we are. Status-driven, conspicuous consumption thrives from the language of novelty. And here, all of a sudden, we have a system that is locking economic structure with social logic -- the economic institutions, and who we are as people, locked together to drive an engine of growth. And this engine is not just economic value; it is pulling material resources relentlessly through the system, driven by our own insatiable appetites, driven in fact by a sense of anxiety.

参考译文

这是其有趣之处，证实了人们喜欢追求新奇的事物。我们喜欢新的东西--新的物质的东西，当然，还有新的想法，新的冒险，新的经历。但是物质也很重要。因为在每一个社会中，人类学家都把物质材料当做一种语言--物品的语言，一种象征性的语言。我们可以用来讲故事。例如，我们是多么的重要。追求地位的，炫耀性消费繁荣于新奇的语言。突然，我们有一个体系，连接经济结构和社会逻辑--经济制度和我们连接一起，驱动增长的引擎。这一引擎并不仅仅是经济价值。它把物质资源无情地从体制中抽走。这种驱动来自我们贪婪的欲望，一种焦虑感。

解析

• anthropologist: 人类学家

• conspicuous consumption: 炫耀性消费

• economic institutions: 经济制度

• relentless: strict, cruel, or determined, without ever stopping

段落二

Adam Smith, 200 years ago, spoke about our desire for a life without shame. A life without shame: in his day, what that meant was a linen shirt, and today, well, you still need the shirt, but you need the hybrid car, the HDTV, two holidays a year in the sun, the netbook and iPad, the list goes on -- an almost inexhaustible supply of goods, driven by this anxiety. And even if we don't want them, we need to buy them, because, if we don't buy them, the system crashes. And to stop it crashing over the last two to three decades, we've expanded the money supply, expanded credit and debt, so that people can keep buying stuff. And of course, that expansion was deeply implicated in the crisis.

参考译文

亚当斯密在200年前谈到，我们渴望过一种没有羞耻的生活。一种没有羞耻的生活，在他的时代，意味着一件亚麻短袖。但是今天，你仍然需要短袖，你也需要混合动力汽车，高清电视，一年两个假期，笔记本电脑，平板，还有很多--几乎无穷无尽的物品供应，都来自于焦虑感。即使我们不想要它们，也必须买，因为如果我们不买，这一体系就会崩塌。为了防止这种情况的出现，在过去的二三十年，我们扩大货币供应，扩大债权债务，让人们可以持续买东西。当然，这种扩张深深隐含着危机。

解析

• linen: 亚麻

• insatiable: (especially of a desire or need) too great to be satisfied

• hybrid car: a car that has both a petrol or diesel engine and an electric motor 混合动力汽车（指内燃，电力两用汽车）

• HDTV: high-definition TV 高清电视

• credit and debt： 债权债务

段落三

But this -- I just want to show you some data here. This is what it looks like, essentially, this credit and debt system, just for the U.K. This was the last 15 years before the crash, and you can see there, consumer debt rose dramatically. It was above the GDP for three years in a row just before the crisis. And in the mean time, personal savings absolutely plummeted. The savings ratio, net savings, were below zero in the middle of 2008, just before the crash. This is people expanding debt, drawing down their savings, just to stay in the game. This is a strange, rather perverse, story, just to put it in very simple terms. It's a story about us, people, being persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about.

参考译文

但是，我想要展示一些数据。就是这些。本质上，这是信贷体系，描述的是英国。这是崩盘前的十五年，你可以看到，消费债务快速增长，连续3年超过GDP。同时，个人储蓄骤降，储蓄率，净储蓄，在2008年中期降到零以下。人们扩大债务，降低储蓄，仅仅是为了继续这场游戏。这是非常奇怪，反常的事情。简单来说，这个故事关于我们自己。人们总是被说服把我们没有的钱花在我们不需要的东西上，为了留下并不持久的印象给那些我们并不关心的人。

解析

• This was the last 15 years before the crash ... It was above the GDP for three years in a row just before the crisis ... were below zero in the middle of 2008, just before the crash. 这几句话中都带有before the crash/ before the crisis/ before the crash, 为了避免重复，仅在第一句话将其翻译出来，后面几句可以将其略去，轻巧处理。

• savings ratio: 储蓄率

• net savings: 净储蓄

• perverse: strange and not what most people would expect or enjoy

• People, being persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to create impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about:

  • 这句话较长，在顺译时要注意断句： people, being persuaded to spend money we don’t have/ on things we don’t need/ to create impressions that won’t last/ on people we don’t care about. 人们总是被说服把我们没有的钱花在我们不需要的东西上，为了留下并不持久的印象给那些我们并不关心的人。