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English英语译成Chinese汉语: Sam Spade at Starbucks General field: 社会科学 Detailed field: 新闻学
原文文本 - English英语 If you attend a certain sort of conference, hang out at a certain sort of coffee shop or visit a certain sort of university, you’ve probably run into some of these wonderful young people who are doing good. Typically, they’ve spent a year studying abroad. They’ve traveled in the poorer regions of the world. Now they have devoted themselves to a purpose larger than self.
Often they are bursting with enthusiasm for some social entrepreneurship project: making a cheap water-purification system, starting a company that will empower Rwandan women by selling their crafts in boutiques around the world.
These people are refreshingly uncynical. Their hip service ethos is setting the moral tone for the age. Idealistic and uplifting, their worldview is spread by enlightened advertising campaigns, from Bennetton years ago to everything Apple has ever done.
It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does have some shortcomings. In the first place, many of these social entrepreneurs think they can evade politics. They have little faith in the political process and believe that real change happens on the ground beneath it.
That’s a delusion. You can cram all the nongovernmental organizations you want into a country, but if there is no rule of law and if the ruling class is predatory then your achievements won’t add up to much.
Furthermore, important issues always spark disagreement. Unless there is a healthy political process to resolve disputes, the ensuing hatred and conflict will destroy everything the altruists are trying to build.
There’s little social progress without political progress. Unfortunately, many of today’s young activists are really good at thinking locally and globally, but not as good at thinking nationally and regionally.
Second, the prevailing service religion underestimates the problem of disorder. Many of the activists talk as if the world can be healed if we could only insert more care, compassion and resources into it.
History is not kind to this assumption. Most poverty and suffering — whether in a country, a family or a person — flows from disorganization. A stable social order is an artificial accomplishment, the result of an accumulation of habits, hectoring, moral stricture and physical coercion. Once order is dissolved, it takes hard measures to restore it.
Yet one rarely hears social entrepreneurs talk about professional policing, honest courts or strict standards of behavior; it’s more uplifting to talk about microloans and sustainable agriculture.
In short, there’s only so much good you can do unless you are willing to confront corruption, venality and disorder head-on. So if I could, presumptuously, recommend a reading list to help these activists fill in the gaps in the prevailing service ethos, I’d start with the novels of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler, or at least the movies based on them.
The noir heroes like Sam Spade in “The Maltese Falcon” served as models for a generation of Americans, and they put the focus squarely on venality, corruption and disorder and how you should behave in the face of it.
A noir hero is a moral realist. He assumes that everybody is dappled with virtue and vice, especially himself. He makes no social-class distinction and only provisional moral distinctions between the private eyes like himself and the criminals he pursues. The assumption in a Hammett book is that the good guy has a spotty past, does spotty things and that the private eye and the criminal are two sides to the same personality.
He (or she — the women in these stories follow the same code) adopts a layered personality. He hardens himself on the outside in order to protect whatever is left of the finer self within.
He is reticent, allergic to self-righteousness and appears unfeeling, but he is motivated by a disillusioned sense of honor. The world often rewards the wrong things, but each job comes with obligations and even if everything is decaying you should still take pride in your work. Under the cynical mask, there is still a basic sense of good order, that crime should be punished and bad behavior shouldn’t go uncorrected. He knows he’s not going to be uplifted by his work; that to tackle the hard jobs he’ll have to risk coarsening himself, but he doggedly plows ahead.
This worldview had a huge influence as a generation confronted crime, corruption, fascism and communism. I’m not sure I can see today’s social entrepreneurs wearing fedoras and trench coats. But noir’s moral realism would be a nice supplement to today’s prevailing ethos. It would fold some hardheadedness in with today’s service mentality. It would focus attention on the core issues: order and rule of law. And it would be necessary. Contemporary Washington, not to mention parts of the developing world, may be less seedy than the cities in the noir stories, but they are equally laced with self-deception and self-dealing.
(This piece of translation is only for practice and non-profit purposes.)
English英语译成Chinese汉语: Marketwatch：8月游戏销量再度跳水 Video game sales slump again in August General field: 技术/工程设计 Detailed field: 游戏/视频游戏/博彩/赌场
原文文本 - English英语 Video game sales fell again in the month of August to even weaker-than-expected levels, as strong sales of the latest "Madden NFL" game failed to boost sales of other new titles and game consoles.
Sales of game software in the U.S. fell by 14% in August compared to the same month last year, according to data released by the NPD Group late Thursday.
Analysts had been expecting a drop of closer to 10%, on average. New releases for the month were led by strong sales of "Madden NFL 11," but other releases such as "Mafia II" and "Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days" failed to outperform big titles from last August, which included the popular "Batman: Arkham Asylum."
"This year the top 10 games sold 3.3 million units as opposed to 4.1 million for the top 10 last year," Anita Frazier of NPD said in Thursday's report.
Game sales were in a slump all summer. The industry is expected to see improvement in September, with the release of the expected blockbuster "Halo Reach" from Microsoft Corp. /quotes/comstock/15*!msft/quotes/nls/msft (MSFT 27.02, 0.13, 0.48%) and the new PlayStation Move motion control platform from Sony Corp. /quotes/comstock/13*!sne/quotes/nls/sne (SNE 36.32, -0.24, -0.66%) (JP:6758 3,020, -20.00, -0.66%)
Among game consoles, only the PlayStation 3 saw a gain in unit sales from July, moving 226,000 units compared to 210,000 units the month before. The Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the Wii from Nintendo /quotes/comstock/11i!ntdoy (NTDOY 35.11, 0.11, 0.31%) (JP:7974 23,450, 90.00, 0.39%) saw unit sales fall from July.
Electronic Arts /quotes/comstock/15*!erts/quotes/nls/erts (ERTS 15.18, 0.10, 0.66%) had the strongest month among publishers, with "Madden NFL 11" selling more than 1.8 million units for the PS3 and 360 platforms. That's up 14% from the previous iteration's performance last August.
"Mafia II" from Take-Two Interactive /quotes/comstock/15*!ttwo/quotes/nls/ttwo (TTWO 11.99, 0.52, 4.53%) was the only other new release to make the top-10 list for the month. Activision Blizzard's /quotes/comstock/15*!atvi/quotes/nls/atvi (ATVI 12.30, 0.22, 1.82%) "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2" continued to sell strong nine months after its release, ranking 8th for the month.
6 years of translation and interpreting experience in IT, business, finance, publishing, mining, project management and non-profit.
Over 200,000 words of translation for market surveys, joint venture contracts, news releases, presentations, financial statements, business correspondences. Customers include: WIPO (law), Sina.com (internet/technology), The Nielsen Company (market research), Interstar (luxury/outlet/retails), Radiolite Tradings (chemicals/mining), etc.
Previous customers include: The Nielsen Company (market research), Interstar (luxury/outlet/retails), Sina.com (internet/technology), Radiolite Tradings (chemicals/mining), etc.
Over 200 hours of consecutive interpreting experience. Recent tasks include:
- Live broadcast of Shenzhen X's return to earth by CCTV English News Channel. (June 2013)
- Prof. Ezra Vogel's lecture at Peking University, special lecture of Beijing Forum. (May 2013)
- China book release events of Breaking Away, by Jane Stevenson & Bilal Kaafarani. (Dec 2012)
- OPM Symposium 2012, PMI, Las Vegas. (Nov 2012)
- Humus, landscape design exhibition week of Prof. Mario Terzio & Lecture of Dr. Gerald Bast at Tsinghua Uni. (Oct 2012)
关键词： Chinese, media, market, culture, business, philanthropy, development, literature
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