irini

The golden boy and the blob
May 7th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Is Barack Obama’s education secretary too good to be true?

IT IS hard to find anybody with a bad word to say about Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s young education secretary. Margaret Spellings, his predecessor in the Bush administration, calls him “a visionary leader and fellow reformer”. During his confirmation hearings Lamar Alexander, a senator from Tennessee and himself a former education secretary, sounded more like a lovesick schoolgirl than a member of the opposition party: “I think you’re the best.” Enthusiastic without being over-the-top, pragmatic without being a pushover, he is also the perfect embodiment of mens sana in corpore sano—tall and lean, clean-cut and athletic, a Thomas Arnold for the digital age.

Since moving to the Education Department a couple of months ago he has been a tireless preacher of the reform gospel. He supports charter schools and merit pay, accountability and transparency, but also litters his speeches with more unfamiliar ideas. He argues that one of the biggest problems in education is how to attract and use talent. All too often the education system allocates the best teachers to the cushiest schools rather than the toughest. Mr Duncan also stresses the importance of “replicating” success. His department, he says, should promote winning ideas (such as “Teach for America”, a programme that sends high-flying university graduates to teach in underserved schools) rather than merely enforcing the status quo.

Nor is this just talk. Mr Duncan did much to consolidate his reputation as a reformer on May 6th, when the White House announced that it will try to extend Washington, DC’s voucher programme until all 1,716 children taking part have graduated from high school. The Democrat-controlled Congress has been trying to smother the programme by removing funding. But Mr Duncan has vigorously argued that it does not make sense “to take kids out of a school where they’re happy and safe and satisfied and learning”. He and Mr Obama will now try to persuade Congress not to kill the programme.

Mr Duncan is arguably the luckiest education secretary since Jimmy Carter created his department in 1979. He inherits a much richer legacy from the Bush administration than most people imagine, with mounting evidence that George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act did something to boost educational achievement, particularly among poor children. And a growing number of Democrats, many of them black, think the party needs to distance itself from the teachers’ unions. Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark纽瓦克市, argues that “as Democrats we have been wrong on education, and it’s time to get it right.”

At the same time, Mr Duncan is being showered with money by his boss. The stimulus bill will provide him with an extra $100 billion to improve America’s schools, the biggest educational windfall in the country’s history. He also has a $5 billion budget for the specific purpose of encouraging educational innovation.

Mr Duncan is the perfect man to capitalise on these opportunities. His mother founded and ran an after-school programme for poor children on Chicago’s South Side. He spent seven years as the CEO of the Chicago public schools, the third-largest system in the country, closing bad schools and shifting resources to more successful ones. He also has the most valuable resource of any ambitious reformer—a close bond with the president. They have a Harvard education in common, along with roots in Chicago’s Hyde Park district, and frequently play basketball together.

Mr Obama, too, is passionate about education, convinced that it holds the key to two of his most cherished domestic reforms: narrowing the income gap between rich and poor and boosting the productivity of the average worker. The president and his wife are living examples of how education can achieve the American dream. Mr Duncan seldom fails to remind his audience that, thanks to the first family, “Never before has being smart been so cool.” On May 6th the president also demonstrated that he is willing to annoy the teachers’ unions, who regard Washington’s school-voucher programme as the spawn of the devil.

Enemies of promise
Yet it is hard to suppress a feeling that all this is too good to be true. To begin with, Messrs Duncan and Obama have given the voucher scheme only a stay of execution. No new children will be admitted to the scheme, despite its popularity with poor Washingtonians. The stay of execution had a lot to do with political expediency. Ending the scheme immediately would not only have disrupted the education of 1,700 children; it would also have exposed both Mr Duncan and his boss to charges of hypocrisy. Mr Duncan sends his children to school in Virginia, and Mr Obama pays for his two daughters to go to Sidwell Friends.

But the bigger reason to be pessimistic about Mr Duncan is that the education establishment has an astonishing record of neutralising reform-minded politicians. Entrenched vested interests and a decentralised system—with much of the day-to-day decision-making controlled by 16,000 school districts—combine to squash most promises of improvement. The mighty teachers’ unions regularly welcome reforms in theory while destroying them in practice. Bill Bennett, Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, perfectly described this slippery bunch as “the blob”.

The battle between Mr Duncan and the blob is a crucial one. The result of the battle will determine, first, whether it is worth continuing with moderate education reforms—for if these reforms cannot succeed with $100 billion and a golden boy at the helm, they never will. It will also determine whether Mr Obama can deliver on his promise to build the American economy on the rock of well-educated and productive workers rather than the sand of financial speculation. A pity that, however many battles it loses, the blob always seems to win the long war.


考试为重，这几天先不翻译，星期三再做，这两天先看看别人的，昨天预习工作

mens sana in corpore sano你说的这个来自于古罗马诗人尤维纳利斯说过一句话
Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano
健全的精神寓于健全的身体

charter school特许学校，见http://usteacher.blog.sohu.com/57728663.html

A cushy job or situation is pleasant because it does not involve much work or effort. (INFORMAL)

If you replicate someone's experiment, work, or research, you do it yourself in exactly the same way. (FORMAL)

A windfall is a sum of money that you receive unexpectedly or by luck, for example if you win a lottery.

stay of execution死缓

when something is helpful or useful in a particular situation, but sometimes not morally acceptable:

If you accuse someone of hypocrisy, you mean that they pretend to have qualities, beliefs, or feelings that they do not really have.

西德威尔友谊中学

To neutralize something means to prevent it from having any effect or from working properly.

You can use blob to refer to something that you cannot see very clearly, for example because it is in the distance. (INFORMAL)

那个golden boy估计是源于漫画《黄金宝贝/好学流浪汉》

irini

mandate：An authoritative command or instruction.
transfer of the mandate of heaven：君权神授
its victory certainly colours views of the Republican period that preceded the revolution.这个句子很漂亮，“用有色眼光看……”又学到了一个很漂亮的说法
fete：1To celebrate or honor with a festival, a feast, or an elaborate entertainment.
2To pay honor to.我觉得这里两个解释都行的通，但是还是用第二个解释更好一些
dictatorial：独裁的
It collapsed, largely, it seemed, under the weight of its own fecklessness and cruelty, and ended up ruling just Taiwan.这个句子漂亮得很啊，under the weight of用来表示原因，漂亮漂亮，叹为观止
forlornly：adv. sadly; hopelessly, despairingly, desolately
brutally:adv. cruelly, savagely
entanglement:confusion, complication; state of being entangled or ensnared (literal or figurative)
foist:foist something on/upon someone to force someone to accept or deal with something that they do not want
……seemed somewhere on the spectrum between joke and monster：on the spectrum就是大多数都不会写出来的，漂亮漂亮
enthralling：an enthralling activity or event is so interesting or exciting that you give it all your attention，又多学了个漂亮的词
caricatures：something absurd
archive：档案
In the 1930s Chiang soon realised that his flirtation with Italian-style fascism and a corps of Chinese “blue shirts” was a mistake, asking “how would I differ from the Communists?”  啊啦拉，这个flirtation啊，又是overwhelming的词啊，作者那是什么脑子啊，怎么能写出这种惊天地泣鬼神的词哦，看牛津的解释 to think about or be interested in sth for a short time but not very seriously，我对这个作者的敬佩之情犹如滔滔江水绵延不绝了。
pivotal：Being of vital or central importance; crucial
这里作者犯了一个错，1936年的西安事变不是内战的一部分
fickle：Characterized by erratic changeableness or instability, especially with regard to affections or attachments; capricious.
subversion：secret activities that are intended to damage or destroy the power or influence of a government or established system
hell-for-leather：If you go, run, ride, etc. hell for leather, you go as fast as you can.

irini

http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=19180
1.   Haven：指避难所，译者这里看成了heaven，结合近期新闻，大致也可以猜到这篇报道讲的是（美国）纳税人难以逃税的问题了
2.   crackdown:~ (on sb/sth) severe action taken to restrict the activities of criminals or of people opposed to the government or authorities说“重压”不好，这里有点像是“严厉的措施”
3.   fusillade：A rapid outburst or barrage异曲同工之妙的还有storm,bombardment,barrage,volley,deluge,这些词语一个共同那个的特点就是其原意为“猛烈的(炮火、洪水、风暴……)”，所以本身具有比喻义；另外salvo一半指雷鸣般的掌声/赞扬等
4.   iniquity:extremely immoral or unfair actions or situations
5.   “broken” tax system： broken漏译
6.   down payment：首付款，很形象漂亮的比喻
7.   simpler and fairer and more efficient：中间两个and的连用，形成反复，加强语气。不过在国内的考试中不建议使用这种修辞，总有一些老师会以为是考生写错
8.   stiffen：to make an attitude or idea stronger or more powerful; to become stronger
9.   scofflaws：One who habitually violates the law or fails to answer court summonses，以后不用再写for those violating the law了
10.  grab-bag：a mixture of things that have not been put together carefully: RAGBAG原文译者写的是“抓阄似的”，抓阄是本词第一个意思，但是感觉放在这里不合适，我个人比较倾向于“胡子眉毛一把抓”
11.  Byzantine:If you describe a system or process as byzantine, you are criticizing it because it seems complicated or secretive.这里用典，原来这个词是说建筑风格非常复杂，后来引申到各个领域
12.  No one doubts that America’s corporate-tax system is a Byzantine mess of high statutory rates and oodles of exemptions.“毫无质疑的是美国的公司税制是一个拜占庭式的包含高法定利率却同时给与众多豁免的混乱体。”整句话整理下，“美国企业税系统既有高法定税率，又含众多免税规则，而变成一团冗繁的乱麻，这点毋庸置疑”这样翻还是有些不足，比如翻译中出现的顺承结构，这个是原文没有的，但为了避免定语过长只能这样。Byzantine翻成“冗繁”，因为“复杂”中性，难以体现这个词的贬义色彩。混乱体改成了“乱麻”更符合中文语言习惯，把no one doubts放到后面翻译，构成“这点毋庸置疑/无容置疑”，放在前面亦可，放后面强调而已，顺便说下，原文译者“毫无置疑”不顺。
13.  worldwide income：宜翻成“境外收入"
14:  bargaining chip: Something, especially an inducement or concession, used as leverage in negotiations

irini

困了  先这些
singular:If you describe someone or something as singular, you mean that they are strange or unusual. (OLD-FASHIONED)  这个词还有vevery great and remarkable的意思，根据上下文可以看出应该选第一个意思
Diogenes：文化背景Greek philosopher and founder of the Cynic school who advocated self-control and the pursuit of virtue through simple living. He is said to have once wandered through the streets of Athens with a lantern in daylight, searching for an honest man.
People who are frugal or who live frugal lives do not eat much or spend much money on themselves.
which he eats to the core：这个分句漂亮，中文可以说吃个精光（不过这个人吃这么点东西不饿啊……）
If you have tenure in your job, you have the right to keep it until you retire.终生的，一般我们会用life-time job，这个词倒是省事了
If someone yearns for something that they are unlikely to get, they want it very much.注意unlikely to get，幻想？梦想？
hamlet： a very small village（原来哈姆雷特还有这层意思）
dilapidate:v. bring to a ruinous condition through misuse or neglect, squander; fall into ruin or decay
pep up phr v informal to make something or someone more active or interesting
A ferocious war, argument, or other form of conflict involves a great deal of anger, bitterness, and determination.
To scupper a plan or attempt means to spoil it completely. (mainly BRIT JOURNALISM)
If you describe someone's behaviour as maniacal, you mean that it is extreme, violent, or very determined, as if the person were insane.
If you call someone a windbag, you are saying in a fairly rude way that you think they talk a great deal in a boring way. (INFORMAL)长舌妇哈

evayangping

TO: IRINI,

我看了你有ECO上的点评, 关于小衷那篇邮件风波还有好些别的译文.
我觉得你们好强的说.
我翻译一直都找不到感觉,可能文字功底差的缘故,亦或英文理解差...
又或者两者都有.
只能再鞭策自己努力加油了....
向你们这些前辈学习....

irini

Mr Bush figured that Senate Democrats would be unable to attack his record because there was no record to attack. 这句话写得太漂亮了
If a plan or project backfires, it has the opposite result to the one that was intended.  我突然想到国产007里面袁咏仪开枪结果子弹从后面发的场景，backfire, backfire
A staunch supporter or believer is very loyal to a person, organization, or set of beliefs, and supports them strongly.If you scrap something, you get rid of it or cancel it. (JOURNALISM or INFORMAL)
If someone is evicted from the place where they are living, they are forced to leave it, usually because they have broken a law or contract.
If people bulldoze something such as a building, they knock it down using a bulldozer.
Planned Parenthood  计划生育和我们平时说的family plan似有些不同，这个有待查证
Empathy is the ability to share another person's feelings and emotions as if they were your own. 也就是put yourself in other's shoes，换位思考
Justice is supposed to be blind, not empathetic.    Justice is blind这个句子有身后的文化背景，在西方，司法女神的形象就是蒙着眼睛的(正义的蒙眼布)，就是说，审判中不能让任何情感阻碍的自己。顺便说下，林语堂翻译的《浮生六记》中，苍天无眼也是这么用的。参见冯象《政法笔记》《正义的蒙眼布》篇
You use scant to indicate that there is very little of something or not as much of something as there should be.
If you swirl something liquid or flowing, or if it swirls, it moves round and round quickly.
Speculation swirls around Sonia Sotomayor这句话中swirl的意思扩展，可以说“集中”但集中就失去了比喻义
intellect  译者翻成“智商”，个人认为不妥，“才智”似乎更好

irini

原帖由 evayangping 于 2009-5-14 23:53 发表
TO: IRINI,

我看了你有ECO上的点评, 关于小衷那篇邮件风波还有好些别的译文.
我觉得你们好强的说.
我翻译一直都找不到感觉,可能文字功底差的缘故,亦或英文理解差...
又或者两者都有.
只能再鞭策自己努力加油 ...

我想，就翻译而言，最重要的是实践，绝大多数人的起点都一样，除非家里本来就有那种文学环境的，所以刚开始也不用太沮丧，练多了感觉慢慢就出来了
另外，其实我也是翻译的外行，笔译对我来说，只是一种兴趣，我愿意很用心地去完成的兴趣而已，算不上什么前辈啦

irini

默默的译文点评
http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthr ... &extra=page%3D1
“人们称他为”  指代错误，应当为Margaret Spellings对他的评论
fellow作形容词时有You use fellow to describe people who are in the same situation as you, or people you feel you have something in common with.因此“同行”这个理解有问题，这里也可直接说“也是”
confirmation hearings宜译成“确认听证”
preacher和gospel与其直译倒不如避免文化差异，说成“孜孜不倦的推行改革。”顺便说下，gospel写成Gospel时表示福音书，但小写则是“绝对真理”
但也使他带有更多不解的想法的演说不够明了。   看不懂，建议改成“但其演讲中也夹杂着许多人们不甚熟悉的观点。”litter:If a number of things litter a place, they are scattered untidily around it or over it.
话说美国原来也有支教的做法哦。。。。
vigorously：说“精力旺盛”不好建议直接用“激烈地”
arguably：You can use arguably when you are stating your opinion or belief, as a way of giving more authority to it. 没有“有证据显示”的意思哦，“据传”即可
教育成就  成果是否好些？
average worker  指普通工人，average:An average person or thing is typical or normal.例如平民就可以说average folks
the spawn of the devil.私以为没有必要译出，说他罪恶滔天即可。另外spawn没有必要翻译出来的，这个词组本身就是“魔鬼”的意思Someone who is pure evil; does evil things without reason.
a stay of execution指“死缓”，这里没有理解到位
despite its popularity with poor Washingtonians.尽管该计划在华盛顿贫民间颇受欢迎，但……
blob:You can use blob to refer to something that you cannot see very clearly, for example because it is in the distance. (INFORMAL)“叫人摸不着头脑”当然我这么翻词性就改了
they never will.那么，改革就永远改不出来了,they 指代前文these reforms

irini

The way banks manage risk—including how they reward managers for taking it—will change greatly
银行风险管理及经理由此所得薪酬，均将剧变。

THE changes to the environment in which banks operate—tougher regulation, higher capital requirements and scarcer funding—will have a dramatic impact on the way that banks are managed. But banks are also reflecting hard on some fundamental internal questions, such as how to manage risk, compensation and growth itself. Too many bosses and shareholders accepted years of double-digit returns without probing the sources and sustainability of those profits. “No one was asking the ‘Columbo’ questions,” says Toos Daruvala of McKinsey, a consultancy.
监管力度加大，资本要求提高，筹资渠道减少，银行运作环境的变化将给其管理带来剧变。但就一些基本的内部问题，银行却没有太多反映。这几年来，不计其数的老板、持股人的利润一直保持两位数，但他们却从没有想过这些利润的来源，也没想过这样的利润他们能享受多久。正如顾问公司麦肯锡的托什•达鲁瓦拉(Toos Daruvala)所言，“没有人像可伦坡（Columbo）1一样提出问题。”

The most basic of these questions, particularly for banks with large wholesale operations, is what kind of businesses they want to be. The bubble was characterised by a game of copycat, in which banks strove to match the returns of their most profitable rivals by piling headlong into asset classes where they were lagging, irrespective of the risks. “The securities industry was based on revenue, not on risk-adjusted returns,” says a bank boss.
而其中最基本的一个问题在于，这些银行究竟希望做哪种生意，这个问题对于批量经营的银行来说尤为重要。这场泡沫的一大特点就是跟风，银行纷纷在其落后他人的资产级别上注入资金，却无视其中的风险，以此，和其获益最丰的劲敌一比高低。某银行家甚至说，“证券市场的基础是收入，而非风险调整收益（risk-adjusted returns）。”

Consultants armed with league tables and presentations full of “gap analysis” increased the pressure on sluggards to catch up. Mr Winters of JPMorgan Chase recalls how executives at the bank worried about its underperformance in fixed-income markets. “We used to beat ourselves to death about it and wonder ‘what aren’t we getting right?’ Now we know.” For the foreseeable future, managers will think harder about where they have a competitive advantage over rivals, not where they don’t.
而就很多懒散的人来说，那些手持绩效评估表，报告中充斥着“缺口分析”(gap analysis) 2的顾问无疑给他们增加了压力。摩根大通的温特斯（Winters）回忆起银行主管对其在固定收入市场上绩效不良忧心忡忡的情景时说，“那时候，我们真想为此杀了自己，我也会想，‘到底哪里出问题了呢？’现在我们总算是知道了。”就可见的未来而言，经理们将会开始思索其竞争优势在哪，而非自己在哪方面没有竞争优势。

Besides working out what they are good at, banks must decide how much risk they want to take. Helped along by the ratcheting-up of capital charges in trading books and other planned regulatory changes, a sweeping shift in risk appetite is already under way. There are obviously distinctions between firms: Goldman Sachs has maintained a stronger bias towards risk exposure than Morgan Stanley, for example. But in general proprietary risk-taking is being scaled back drastically. Risk capital will reside outside the banking system, in hedge funds and private-equity firms, much more than before.
除了发掘自己的优势，银行还必须决定自己愿意承担多大的风险。另外由于交易账户（trading book）3资本支出不断增加以及其他既定规则改变，这几个因素共同导致了风险偏好（risk appetite）4的剧变。诚然，不同公司有显著的差别，比如说，高盛比起摩根士丹利，对风险敞口（risk exposure）5就更有微词。但普遍而言，所有物冒险已大幅度下降。比起过去，银行业、对冲基金、私人直接投资公司（private-equity firms）上风险资金（risk capital）已经减少。

irini

The likes of Deutsche Bank, UBS and Credit Suisse have all unveiled strategies to cut their proprietary activities in illiquid markets and focus on high-volume “flow” businesses: for example, helping clients to manage exchange-rate and interest-rate risk. That means leaving some moneymaking opportunities on the table, a most unbubble-like thing to do. “We could have held on to certain assets and made money now but we cannot have this kind of risk irrespective of future potential,” says Josef Ackermann, the boss of Deutsche Bank.
而德意志银行、瑞士联合银行、瑞士信贷银行之属，业已采取若干策略，减少其在非流动市场的私产交易活动，关注大额“流动”交易，例如，替顾客管理汇率、利率风险。那也就意味着，要把放弃赚钱的机会，这样产生泡沫的几率最小。德意志银行行长约瑟夫•阿克曼（Josef Ackermann）表示“我们现在当然可以继续经营某些资产，以此获利，但我们也不能无视未来发展，走这步险棋。

leave sth. on the table: phr. to refrain from taking the utmost advantage of something; to not address every aspect of a situation; in the form leave money on the table,to negotiate a deal that is less financially beneficial than is expected or possible.