赏析版2012年2月经济学人文章(英汉双语对照)汇集

赏析版2012年2月经济学人文章（英汉双语对照）汇集

Contents

[2012.02.29]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之四－阿拉伯语.. 1 [2012.02.29]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之三—汉语 (2)

[2012.02.28]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之二－西班牙语.. 3 [2012.02.25]Playing with fire 玩火 (4)

[2012.02.28]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之一—法语 (11)

[2012.02.27]The Academy awards 84届奥斯卡金像奖 (15)

[2012.02.25]Attacking Iran: Up in the air 袭击伊朗，悬而未决 (17)

[2012.02.25]Tony Judt: History Boy 史学赤子 (26)

[2012.02.25]Quantum computing: An uncertain future 量子计算机前途不明 (29)

[2012.02.25]The impact of Chinese migration 中国人口迁徙带来的冲击 (33)

[2012.02.20]Stop the Linsanity? 停止―林来疯‖？ (35)

[2012.02.20]Where homies can heal 拯救弟兄何处去 (38)

[2012.02.18]The dark side of the universe 宇宙的黑暗面 (40)

[2012.02.18]Nuclear power: The 30-year itch 美国核电业三十年之痒 (51)

[2012.02.18]Difficult birth, slow recovery 出生困难，恢复缓慢 (54)

[2012.02.18]Greece & the euro: Flaming February 烽火连二月 (57)

[2012.02.18]Hundred-metre dash 村上隆百米―冲刺‖中 (60)

[2012.02.15]We welcome your rise (sort of) 习近平访美 (62)

[2012.02.13]The mighty pen, instrument of mojo 强大的笔，求爱的工具 (65)

[2012.02.11]The first sexual revolution 第一次性革命 (67)

[2012.02.11]The modern matchmakers 现代红娘 (71)

[2012.02.11]More for my people 为国人谋利 (74)

[2012.02.11]Wislawa Szymborska悼波兰诗人,诺贝尔文学奖得主 (76)

[2012.02.09]Hackers & the Kremlin: Nashi exposed 纳什遭披露 (80)

[2012.02.04]Biomimetics 仿生学- 毫发无损 (82)

[2012.02.04]Come rain or shine 阴晴无忧--- 天气衍生产品 (84)

[2012.02.04]Universities: Pile them high 设立大学，多多益善 (86)

[2012.02.02]How to write like Shakespeare 怎样像莎士比亚一样写作 (89)

[2012.02.29]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之

四－阿拉伯语

If you want to learn another language, Josie Delap recommends the struggles and pleasures of Arabic...

如果你想学门外语，乔茜·德拉普推荐你享受学习阿拉伯语的苦和乐……

To a native English-speaker, searching for a language to learn and probably inexpert in the dark arts of grammar, the simple Romance languages with their common-sense syntax might seem obvious choices, perhaps even those of Scandinavia with their familiar-sounding, if oddly spelt, vocabulary. But instead, breathe deep, and plunge into Arabic.

作为一名英语母语者，要想寻找一门外语来学，而且本身很可能对于语法这门黑暗学问并不在行，那么一个很明显的选择可能是学习一门句法直观的罗曼语族语言，甚或是那些发音很熟悉，但拼写很古怪的北欧语言。但是我建议你深吸一口气，跳进阿拉伯语的世界吧。

It is hard. The first years of Arabic are frustrating, like doing a jigsaw of a cloudy night sky. While those studying Spanish gallop ahead, chattering about beers they want and sisters they have, you must master a new script; one whose dots and dashes blur before your eyes, whose vowels fade into nothingness, whose letters change shape depending on where they appear in the word. Arabic‘s three-letter root system for creating words –adding suffixes, prefixes, midfixes, to trilateral building blocks – will seem utterly alien.

这是一门困难的语言。学阿拉伯语的头几年挫折感是很大的，就好像在玩图案是多云夜空的拼图一样。那些学西班牙语的人可以迅速地进步，很快就能聊他们想要点什么啤酒，或是自己的姐妹，而你则必须掌握一种新的书写方式，一种在你眼前模糊不堪的点划文字。它的元音会消逝省略，它的字母在一个词内不同地方出现会有不同的形状。阿拉伯语构词的三字母词根系统在三边单元词上加前缀，后缀，中缀，看上去会是极度陌生的。

But the struggle is a worthy one, and the rewards start with your ego. Knowledge of Arabic, however slight, will impress not only the monoglots and dullards who plumped for Italian, but native speakers too. Egyptians, Syrians and Palestinians, moved that you have troubled to do battle with their tongue, will shower you with praise.

但是这种苦难将会是值得的，首先你的自尊会得到回报。懂得哪怕是一点阿拉伯语不但会让那些只说一种语言和那些跑去学意大利语的笨蛋们瞠目结舌，就算阿拉伯母语者也会对你佩服。发现你居然花精力和他们的语言战斗，埃及人，叙利亚人和巴勒斯坦人都会感动不已，对你赞不绝口。

When you understand how beautifully Arabic fits together –why the root meaning ―west‖ leads to the words for ―sunset‖ and ―strange‖ – the sense of illumination is sublimely satisfying. No mere French subjunctive or Russian instrumental can do that. And the pleasure will never dim. Fluency may long elude you, but there will always be a fascination in picking your way through Arabic‘s intricacies.

当你开始理解阿拉伯语是多么优雅地契合起来的，为什么代表―西‖的词根会构造出―日落‖及―奇怪‖这些词，这种恍然大悟的感觉会给你一种巨大的满足感。仅仅掌握法语的虚拟语气，

或是俄语的工具格是达不到这种程度的。而且这种喜悦永远不会减少。也许你花很久的时间都不能流利使用阿拉伯语，但是在你穿越错综复杂的阿拉伯语时其魅力会一直常伴在你身边。

Josie Delap edits the Middle East and Africa pages for The Economist online

乔茜·德拉普是《经济学人》网站的中东及非洲版块编辑

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/thread-64116-1-1.html译者：nayilus

[2012.02.29]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之三——汉语

The best language to learn, argues Simon Long, is Chinese. Look at the numbers...

西蒙·郎认为学汉语是最好的。看看数字就知道了……

―In German oder English I know how to count down

Und I‘m learning Chinese,‖ says Wernher von Braun

沃纳·冯·布劳恩说：―我知道怎么用德语或英语来进行倒数，我现在在学怎么用汉语说‖。

Half a century ago, when Tom Lehrer wrote his satirical song, the idea of a German rocket scientist counting backwards to zero in Chinese must have sounded both exotic and rather sinister to his American audience. Now that China is ready to take over from America as the country that sends men to the moon, surely there can be no doubt that it talks the language the rest of us should be learning.

半个世纪前，汤姆·莱勒写下了这首讽刺歌曲。歌词讲述一位德国火箭科学家用汉语倒数发射，对于当时的美国人来说，听上去一定既奇异又可怖。现在中国已经准备接替美国，成为下一个将人送上月球的国家。世界上其他人应该学习它的语言当然是毋庸置疑的了。

This is not, in fact, rocket science, but economic and political common sense. China is the most populous nation on earth. Even when India assumes that status in the next decade or so, Chinese speakers will still far outnumber those who understand and speak India‘s biggest language, Hindi, even if Pakistani speakers of Urdu, which is very similar, are added in. If the point of a language is to be able to communicate with as many people as possible, there is no contest. Of course, there are many languages in China, too. But ―standard Chinese‖(putonghua, aka ―Mandarin‖), or something close to it, is understood almost everywhere, as it is taught in schools. So there is no need to agonise over which dialect to learn.

实际上，这没有发射火箭那么高深，这只是政治和经济上的常识。中国是地球上人口最多的国家。即使印度在接下来十来年内人口会超过中国，使用汉语的人口依然会远远多于印度最普及的语言－印度语的使用人数。就算我们把巴基斯坦使用和印度语非常相似的乌尔都语的人也算上，结果还是一样。如果说学语言的目的是为了能和尽可能多的人交流，那应该学哪门语言这个问题根本毫无悬念。当然，在中国也存在很多语言。但是普通话，或者口音接近普通话的方言在全国各地大多数地区都能被理解，因为这是学校授课使用的语言。所以你不用犯愁到底需要学哪种方言。

China‘s economy is going to be the biggest in the world –the only question is when. You can make your own educated guess by using the clever interactive infographic at https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/chinavusa. The default option is 2018. Already China‘s spectacular 30-year boom has transformed our lives. When I grew up in London, there were no Chinese tourists, and nothing we owned was made in China. And now? The Chinese economy is likely to continue to outpace the rich world‘s for decades to come, tilting the balance of economic power. Learn Chinese, not to impress your future boss, but to understand what she is saying.

中国将会变成世界第一大经济体，这只是迟早的事。你可以使用https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/chinavusa 网站上设计巧妙的互动信息图来自己推测那会在什么时候发生。默认选项指向2018年。中国30年的惊人变化已经改变了我们的生活。我小时候在伦敦长大，当时那儿根本没有中国游客，我们用的所有东西都不是中国制造的。现在呢？中国的经济很可能在接下来几十年里继续以比发达国家更快的速度增长，改变世界经济强国势力之间的平衡。学汉语不是为了让你未来的老板对你刮目相看，而是为了让你能听懂她说的话。

Simon Long is the Banyan columnist for The Economist

西蒙·郎是《经济学人》的Banyan专栏撰稿人

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/thread-64115-1-1.html译者：nayilus

[2012.02.28]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之

二－西班牙语

Daniel Franklin argues that if you want to learn another tongue, then Spanish, with nearly 500m speakers, is the best choice ...

丹尼尔·富兰克林认为如果你要再学一门语言，那么有将近5亿使用者的西班牙语是最佳选择……

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, March/April 2012

Imagine that the Spanish-speaking world was a single country, called Hispanidad. It covers a territory perhaps one-and-a-half times the size of China. Its population is nearly 500m, making it the world‘s third most populous country, behind China and India. Among these people, the number of native Spanish-speakers is rising towards 400m; as a mother tongue, only Mandarin Chinese is bigger. Hispanidad also has a rich literature, from Cervantes to Gabriel García Márquez, that is best enjoyed in the original. And you really should see an Almodóvar film without subtitles. Only English and Chinese are more widely used on the internet than Spanish.

想象世界上所有说西班牙语的地方都团结为一个国家，叫它西班牙语圈。其覆盖的地区面积大概会是中国的1.5倍。其人口将近5亿，意味着它会是世界人口第三大国，仅次于中国和印度。在这些人中，母语是西班牙语的人数一直在上升，接近4亿，母语者人数超过它的只有汉语。西班牙语圈也有丰富的文学，从塞万提斯到加夫列尔·加西亚·马尔克斯，他们的作品要看原版才够味。而且你真应该在不用字幕的情况下看看阿尔莫多瓦尔的电影。在互联网上除了英语和汉语，没有语言比西班牙语更普及。

So if you are in business, into the arts or just want to join la conversación, the sheer size of

Hispanidad is a powerful reason to learn Spanish. But Hispanidad is not a single country. The fact that it spreads across the Americas, Spain and even parts of Africa and Asia makes the case for Spanish stronger still. After English, it is the most used international language. For tourists it eases and enriches travel in the 20-plus countries where Spanish is a main language (though some may prefer to skip Equatorial Guinea). Students have an enviable choice of stimulating places to hone their Spanish skills, from Venezuela to Argentina to Spain itself.

所以如果你经商，对艺术感兴趣，或是只想对话，那么西班牙圈的规模是学习西班牙语的一个重要原因。而西班牙语圈并不是一个国家，其范围遍及美洲，西班牙，甚至非洲和亚洲的一些地区就更说明问题了。除了英语，西班牙语是使用最广泛的国际语言。对于游客来说西班牙语会为你在20多个主要是说西班牙语的国家（虽然有些人可能会选择跳过赤道几内亚）旅行提供方便，也会为旅程增色。对于学生来说，有一些令人羡慕的刺激环境可以锻炼他们的西班牙语，像是委内瑞拉，阿根廷和西班牙本身。

Not forgetting the United States, the country with the second-largest number of Spanish-speakers (about 50m and rising) after Mexico. Latinos are growing in influence culturally, commercially and politically. Nowadays, would-be presidents make sure to advertise in Spanish: Soy Mitt Romney y apruebo este mensaje.

不要忘了美国，这是墨西哥以外说西班牙语人数第二大的国家（大约5千万，还在增加）。拉丁裔在美国的文化，商务和政治上的影响力日渐增加。今时今日，要想当总统，你得会用西班牙语打广告，所以初选中会出现这样的话：―我是罗姆尼，我同意这份讯息。‖

Even for those with no political ambitions, there is another compelling reason to pick Spanish as your second language: it‘s easy (certainly compared with, say,Mandarin). And once you‘ve got Spanish, you‘re half-way to Italian, French and Portuguese too.

就算你没有政治野心，还是有很好的理由挑选西班牙语为第二语言：它简单（和汉语比当然要简单）。而且你一旦学会西班牙语，你学意大利语，法语和葡萄牙语就事半功倍了。

Learn Spanish? ?Cómo no!, as they say in Hispanidad.

正如他们在西班牙语圈内说的那样：学西班牙语？干嘛不呢！

Daniel Franklin is The Economist's executive and business editor, and edits The World in 2012 丹尼尔·富兰克林是《经济学人》的主编兼商业版编辑，并负责《展望2012》的编辑

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/thread-64091-1-1.html译者：nayilus

[2012.02.25]Playing with fire 玩火

Financial innovation can do a lot of good, says Andrew Palmer. It is its tendency to excess that must be curbed

安德鲁·帕尔默认为金融创新可以有很多好处。需要控制的是其容易过头的特性。

Feb 25th 2012 | from the print edition

FINANCIAL INNOV ATION HAS a dreadful image these days. Paul V olcker, a former chairman of America‘s Federal Reserve, who emerged from the 2007-08 financial crisis with his reputation intact, once said that none of the financial inventions of the past 25 years matches up to the ATM.

Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize-winning economist-cum-polemicist, has written that it is hard to think of any big recent financial breakthroughs that have aided society. Joseph Stiglitz, another Nobel laureate, argued in a 2010 online debate hosted by The Economist that most innovation in the run-up to the crisis ―was not directed at enhancing the ability of the financial sector to perform its social functions‖.

今时今日金融创新声名狼藉。前美联储主席保罗·沃尔克安然度过了2007－08年的金融危机，其名声没有受到损害。他曾说过过去25年所有的金融发明都比不上自动提款机的发明。曾获得过诺贝尔奖的经济学家兼辩论家保罗·克鲁格曼写过他无法想出任何近期的重要金融突破是对社会有益的。另一位诺贝尔奖获得者－约瑟夫·斯蒂格利茨曾在2010年《经济学人》主持的网上辩论里提出观点，认为金融危机前的大多数创新―并不是为了增加金融界执行其社会功能所设计的‖。

Most of these critics have market-based innovation in their sights. There is an enormous amount of innovation going on in other areas, such as retail payments, that has the potential to change the way people carry and spend money. But the debate—and hence this special report—focuses mainly on wholesale products and techniques, both because they are less obviously useful than retail innovations and because they were more heavily implicated in the financial crisis: think of those evil credit-default swaps (CDSs), collateralised-debt obligations (CDOs) and so on.

大多数批评者都以市场驱动的创新为对比。某些金融领域，例如零售支付，正在不停产生大量有潜力改变人们携带和花费金钱方式的创新。但是现在关于金融创新的辩论，以及本专题的焦点是着眼于批发型产品和技术的。这不仅是因为它们和零售创新相比表面的用处更小，也是因为金融危机的很大一部分责任被归咎在它们头上：想想万恶的信贷违约掉期（CDS），债务担保证券（CDO）等等产品吧。

This debate sometimes revolves around a simple question: is financial innovation good or bad? But quantifying the benefits of innovation is almost impossible. And like most things, it depends. Are credit cards bad? Or mortgages? Is finance as a whole? It is true that some instruments—for example, highly leveraged ones—are inherently more dangerous than others. But even innovations that are directed to unimpeachably ―good‖ ends often bear substantial resemblances to those that are now vilified.

这场辩论有时围绕着一个简单问题：金融创新到底是不是一件好事？但是要想量化创新的好处几乎是不可能的。和大多数事物一样，它可好可坏。信用卡好不好？按揭贷款呢？金融业整体呢？确实，有些金融产品，例如高杠杆产品本质上比其它产品要更危险。但是即使那些定位在毫无瑕疵的―良好‖目标上的创新也经常变得和那些现在被广泛诟病的创新有大量的相似之处。

For a demonstration, look a t Peterborough. The cathedral city in England‘s Cambridgeshire is known for its railway station and an underachieving football club nicknamed ―the Posh‖. But it is also the site of a financial experiment that its backers hope will have big ramifications for the way public services are funded.

作为例子，看看彼得伯勒。这座位于英格兰剑桥郡内的大教堂城市以火车站和一支表现不佳，被昵称为―the Posh‖的足球俱乐部闻名。但是这个城市也是金融实验的场所。其支持者希望这些实验可以对公共服务获取资金的方式有深远的影响。

Peterborough is where the proceeds of the world‘s first ―social-impact bond‖ are being spent. This instrument is not really a bond at all but behaves more like equity. In September 2010 an organisation called Social Finance raised ￡5m ($7.8m) from 17 investors, both individuals and charities. The money is being used to pay for a programme to help prevent ex-prisoners in Peterborough from reoffending. Reconviction rates among the prisoners recruited to the scheme will be measured against a national database of prisoners with a similar profile, and investors will get payouts from the Ministry of Justice if the Peterborough cohort does better than the rest. If all goes well, the first payouts will be made in 2013.

世界上第一份―社会影响债券‖筹集的资金就用在彼得伯勒。该工具实际上并不是一种债券，而更像是股票。2010年9月一个名为―社会融资‖的组织从17个包括了个人和慈善机构的投资方手里一共筹集到500万英镑（780万美元）。该资金用于支付一项社会项目，来帮助彼得伯勒有前科的人士，防止他们重犯。该项目涵盖的罪犯的再犯率会和国家数据库内情况相似的罪犯的再犯率加以比较衡量，如果彼得伯勒的再犯率比全国水平要好，那么投资者就能从司法部拿到收益。如果一切顺利，第一笔收益将会在2013年支付。

The scheme is getting lots of attention, and not just in Britain. A mixture of social and financial returns is central to a burgeoning asset class known as ―impact investing‖. Linking payouts to outcomes is attractive to governments keen to husband scarce resources. And if service providers like the people running the Peterborough prisoner-rehabilitation scheme can get a lump sum up front, they can plan ahead without bearing any financial risk. There is talk of introducing social-impact bonds in Australia, Canada and the United States.

该项目吸引了不少注意力，其中也有来自英国国外的。现在有一类名为―影响投资‖的资产类别正在日益扩大，将社会回报和金融回报混合在一起正是该资产类别的核心概念。对那些急于将稀少的资源经济地使用的政府来说，把收益和项目结果联系起来是很有吸引力的。而且如果一些社会服务供应方，例如彼得伯勒那些主持罪犯改造项目的人士可以在一开始就获得一整笔资金，他们就可以在不需要承担任何金融风险的情况下进行长远的规划。目前澳大利亚，加拿大和美国都在讨论引入社会影响债券。

Here, surely, is a financial innovation that even the industry‘s critics would agree is worth trying. Yet in fundamental ways an ostensibly ―good‖ instrument like a socia l-impact bond is not so different from its despised cousins. First, at its root the social-impact bond is about creating a set of cashflows to suit the needs of the sponsor, the provider and the investor. True, the investors in the Peterborough scheme may be more willing than the average individual or pension fund to sacrifice financial returns for social benefits. But as Franklin Allen of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Glenn Yago of the Milken Institute, a think-tank, argue in their useful book, ―Financing the Future‖, the thread that runs through much wholesale financial innovation is the creation of new capital structures that align the interests of lots of different parties.

显然，即使金融界的批评者也会承认这项金融创新值得一试。但是一些像是社会影响债券这样表面―良好‖的金融工具在本质上和其倍受鄙视的近亲产品没有不同。首先，社会影响债券的基础在于为满足支持者，提供者和投资者的需要创造一套现金流。是的，彼得伯勒的投资者也许比一般的个人投资者或养老基金更乐于牺牲金融回报来换取社会利益。但是有一本很有用的书，题为《为未来融资》（宾州大学沃顿商学院的富兰克林·艾伦和智囊机构米尔肯学院的格伦·雅各所著），其中谈到大多数批发金融创新中的主要成分都是创造新资本结构来使

多方的利益能够一致。

Second, the social-impact bond is based on the concept of risk transfer, in this case from the government to financial investors who will get paid only if the scheme is successful. Risk transfer is also one of the big ideas behind securitisation, the bundling of the cashflows from mortgages and other types of debt on lenders‘ books into a single security that can be sold to capital-markets investors. The credit-default swap is an even simpler risk-transfer instrument: you pay someone else an insurance premium to take on the risk that a borrower will default.

其次，社会影响债券是基于风险转移这一概念的。在以上例子中就包含了将风险从政府移到了那些只有项目成功才能获得收益的金融投资者身上。风险转移也是证券化背后的主要思想。证券化将按揭贷款和其它贷方账簿上的各种债务产生的现金流打包成一份证券，可以出售给资金市场上的投资者。信贷违约掉期是一种原理甚至更简单的风险转移工具：你付其他人保费，让他帮你承担借方违约的风险。

Third, even at this early stage the social-impact bond is grappling with the difficulties of measurement and standardisation. An obvious example is the need to create defined sets of measurements in order to work out what triggers a payout—in this case, the comparison between the Peterborough prisoners and a control group of other prisoners in a national database. Across finance, standardisation—around contracts, reporting, performance measures and the like—is what enables buyers and sellers to come together quickly and new markets to take off.

第三，即使现在还处于很早期，社会影响债券已经在和测量以及标准化这些困难搏斗了。很明显的一个例子就是需要制定一系列测量标准来决定什么情况会触发资金支付。在以上的例子里，彼得伯勒的罪犯和一个由国家数据库里的其他罪犯组成的对照组之间的比较就是这么一种测量。在金融界内任何地方，合同、报告、表现测量以及类似事物的标准化是让买方和卖方可以迅速集结，新市场可以成功的必要条件。

Neither angels nor demons

不是天使，也不是恶魔

For all the similarities, there are two big differences between the social-impact bond and other, less lauded financial instruments. The first is that the new tool has been designed explicitly for a social purpose. But ask a pensioner how much money he wants to put into prisoner rehabilitation, and it isn‘t likely to be all that much.

尽管有这些相似性，社会影响债券和其它那些没有那么多好评的金融工具之间还是有两大区别的。首先，这种新工具是专门为社会目的而设计的。但是如果你问一个退休人士他愿意把多少钱投资在罪犯改造上，结果不太可能很多。

Whether protecting a retirement pot or signalling problems with a government‘s debt burden, finance can be ―socially useful‖ (to use a phrase popu larised by Adair Turner, the outgoing chairman of Britain‘s Financial Services Authority) without being obviously social. Lord Turner himself acknowledged that in a speech he gave in London in 2009: ―It is in the nature of markets that there are some things which are indirectly socially useful but which in the short term will look to the external world like pure speculation.‖

不管是保护退休金额，还是对政府的债务负担问题作出警告，即使表面上不具有社会性的金

融产品还是可以―有社会用途‖的（该词出自英国金融服务管理局任期将满的主席阿代尔·特纳）。特纳男爵自己在2009年对伦敦市的一次讲话中承认：―市场的本质是这样的：有些对社会间接有益的事物短期内在外界看来和纯粹的投机无异。‖

Many people point to interest-rate swaps, which are used to bet on and hedge against future changes in interest rates, as an example of a huge, well-functioning and useful innovation of the modern financial era. But there are more contentious examples, too. Even the mention of sovereign credit-default swaps, which offer insurance against a government default, makes many Europeans choke. There are some specific problems with these instruments, particularly when banks sell protection on their own governments: that means a bank will be hit by losses on its holdings of domestic government bonds at the same time as it has to pay out on its CDS contracts. But in general a sovereign CDS has a useful signalling function in an area tilted heavily in favour of governments (which do not generally have to post collateral and can bully domestic buyers into investing).

许多人指出用于在未来利率改变的走向上押注或做对冲的利率掉期是当今金融时代的一项巨大有用且运作良好的创新。不过也有一些争议性更大的例子。主权信贷违约掉期可以为政府违约提供保险，即使这样很多欧洲人还是对其非常顾忌。这些金融工具有一些特定的问题，尤其在银行出售自己政府违约的保险时问题更甚：这意味着政府一旦违约，银行不但会因为持有自己国家政府债券而蒙受损失，同时也必须为自己的CDS合同掏钱。但是总体来说，主权CDS在政府占据非常有利地位（政府一般不需要交出抵押，还可以强迫本国投资者投资）的主权债券市场内还是提供了一种有用的警报功能。

The second difference is that social-impact bonds are still in their infancy, whereas other crisis-era innovations were directly involved in a gigantic financial crisis. There are questions to answer about their culpability. A few products from that period do look inherently flawed. Only the bravest are prepared to defend the more exotic mortgage products that sprouted at the height of America‘s housing bubble as lenders found ever more creative ways to bring unaffordable houses within reach. Finance professionals almost blush to recall an instrument called the constant-proportion debt obligation, a 2006 invention of ABN AMRO that added leverage when it took losses in order to make up the shortfall. The end of the structured investment vehicle (SIV), an off-balance-sheet instrument invented to game capital rules, is not much lamented. And the complexity of the ―CDO-squared‖ has bee n widely condemned.

第二个大区别在于社会影响债券还处于襁褓期，而其它危机时代的创新都曾经历过一次巨型金融危机。它们到底该付多大的责任还是有疑问的。那个时期的一些产品从本质上来看确实是有问题的。美国房市泡沫达到最顶点时，贷方寻找各种创意方法让人们买下他们负担不起的房子，由此萌生了一些更奇特的按揭产品。如今只有最勇敢的人才敢替这些产品辩护。金融专家们回忆起一种叫作常比债务证券的工具时都不禁会脸红－这是2006年荷兰银行在亏损时发明的一种增加杠杆来弥补资金不足的工具。而结构性投资工具（SIV）－一种专门为了钻资金规则漏洞所发明的帐外投资工具－的逝去恐怕没有几个人会为之惋惜。而―CDO平方‖的复杂性也被广泛地批评。

But even now it is hard to find fault with the concept, as opposed to the practical application, of many of the most demonised products. The much-criticised CDO, which pools and tranches income from various securities, is really just a capital structure in miniature. Risk-bearing equity

tranches take the first hit when things go wrong, and more risk-averse investors are more protected from losses. (Euro-zone leaders like the idea enough to have copied it with their plans for special-purpose investment vehicles for peripheral countries‘ sovereign debt.) The real problem with the CDOs that blew up was that they were stuffed full of subprime loans but treated by banks, ratings agencies and investors as though they were gold-plated.

但是还有很多被妖魔化最严重的金融工具即使现在也很难在其概念，而不是实际使用上找出错误。被广为批评的CDO将各种证券划分平摊，实际上它只是一个微型资本结构。如果发生问题承担风险的股票部份首先会蒙受损失，而较不愿承担风险的投资者则受到较大的保护。（欧元区领导人很喜欢这个概念，他们为了处理周边国家的主权债务问题所计划的特殊功能投资工具中就对其有所借鉴。）真正的问题在于那些塞满了次级贷款，却被银行、打分机构和投资者视为一级投资品的CDO。

As for securitisation and credit-default swaps, it would be blinkered to argue they have no problems. Securitisation risks giving banks an incentive to loosen their underwriting standards in the expectation that someone else will pick up the pieces. CDS protection may similarly blunt the incentives for lenders to be careful when they extend credit; and there is a specific problem with the way that the risk in these contracts can suddenly materialise in the event of a default.

至于证券化和信贷违约掉期，说它们没问题是不正确的。证券化的风险在于其诱使银行放松贷款标准－银行预期最后风险会转移到别人身上。CDS提供的保护同样可能诱使贷方借贷过度。而且这些合同里的风险会在违约发生时突然出现，这里面也有其特定的问题存在。

But the basic ideas behind both these two blockbuster innovations are sound. India, with a far more conservative financial system than America, allowed its first CDS deals to be done in December, recognising that the instrument will help attract creditors and build its domestic bond market. Similarly, securitisation—which worked well for decades—allows banks to free up capital, enabling them to extend more credit, and helps diversification of portfolios as banks shed concentrations of risks and investors buy exposures that suit them. ―Securitisation is a good thing. If everything was on banks‘ balance-sheets there wouldn‘t be enough credit,‖ says a senior American regulator.

但是这两种重磅创新背后的基本思路是合理的。金融系统远比美国保守得多的印度去年12月进行了其第一份CDS交易。印度认为该工具可以吸引到贷方，来建立自己的国内债券市场。类似的，证券化过去几十年都运作良好，它让银行可以腾出更多的资金，使它们可以进行更多的借贷，还让银行可以出售一些集中的风险，让愿意承担风险的投资者购买，提高了投资组合的多样性。一位资深美国监管者说到：―证券化是好事。如果什么都要记在资产负债表上，那银行就无法提供足够的信贷了。‖

Rather than asking whether innovations are born bad, the more useful question is whether there is something that makes them likely to sour over time.

与其问哪些金融创新一开始就是不好的，问是不是有什么因素可能会让它们逐渐变坏更为有用。

Greed is bad

贪婪为恶

There is an easy answer: people. When bubbles froth, greedy folk use innovations inappropriately—to take on exposures that they should not, to manufacture risk rather than transfer it, to add complexity in order to plump up margins rather than solve problems. But in those circumstances old-fashioned finance goes mad, too: for every securitisation stuffed with subprime loans in America, there was a stinking property loan sitting on the balance-sheet of an Irish bank or a Spanish caja. ―Duff credit analysis is always the cause of the problem,‖ says Simon Gleeson of Clifford Chance, a law firm.

这个问题本身有一个简单的答案：人。在泡沫形成的过程中，贪婪的人们以不当的方式使用各种金融创新，本不该承担的风险被承担，本该转移风险却在制造风险，本该解决问题却为了提高保证金而让问题变得更复杂。但是在这种情况下所有的老牌金融工具也都失灵了。爱尔兰或西班牙银行资产负债表上地产贷款的坏账不比美国塞满次级贷款的证券少。克利福德·强斯法律公司的西蒙·格里森指出：―虚假的信贷分析一直都是问题的源头。‖

This argument has a lot of power. When greed takes hold, finance in all its forms is undone. Yet blaming the worst outcomes of financial innovation on human frailty is hardly helpful. This special report will point to the features of financial innovations that can turn them into troublemakers over time and show how these can be managed better.

这种观点很有说服力。贪婪一旦开始控制全局时，所有形式的金融都会发生问题。但是把金融创新最坏的结果归咎于人性的弱点上对问题并没有帮助。本专题旨在指出金融创新的哪些特点会让它们逐渐引发问题，并说明怎样更好地管理这些特点。

In simple terms, finance lacks an ―off‖ button. First, the industry has a habit of experimenting ceaselessly as it seeks to build on existing techniques and products to create new ones (what Robert Merton, an economist, termed the ―innovation spiral‖). Innovations in finance—unlike, say, a drug that has gone through a rigorous approval process before coming to market—are continually mutating. Second, there is a strong desire to standardise products so that markets can deepen, which often accelerates the rate of adoption beyond the capacity of the back office and the regulators to keep up.

简单来说，金融不具备―关闭‖键。首先，金融业试图在现有技术和产品的基础上创造出新的产品，为此金融业界有不断进行各种实验的习惯（经济学家罗伯特·梅顿管这叫―创新螺旋‖）。金融业内的创新不像例如经过严格批准过程才能上市的新药一样，它是持续在变化的。其次，金融业内有很强的意愿要将产品标准化来深化市场，这经常造成产品被接受使用的速度越来越快，超过后台人员和监管人员的能力范围。

As innovations become more and more successful, they start to become systemically significant. In finance, that is automatically worrying, because the consequences of any failure can ripple so widely and unpredictably. In a 2011 paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School and Peter Tufano of Said Business School also argue that in a typical ―S-curve‖ pattern, in which the earliest adopters of an innovation are the most knowledgeable, a widely adopted product is more likely to have lots of users with an inadequate grasp of the product‘s risks. An d that can be a big problem when things turn out to be less safe than expected.

随着创新变得越来越成功，它们会开始变得更具有系统性。在金融界，任何系统性的事物都是令人担忧的，因为任何问题的后果都会广泛传播，不可预测。2011年国家经济研究局发

表了一份论文，其作者是哈佛商学院的乔西·勒纳和赛德商学院的彼得·图法诺。他们认为在典型的S形创新接受过程中（即最早采纳一项创新的人士对其了解最深），一项被广泛接受的创新很有可能还有大群用户对该产品的风险了解不足。一旦人们发现该产品不如他们预期的那么安全，大问题就爆发了。

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/thread-64195-1-1.html译者：nayilus

[2012.02.28]WHICH IS THE BEST LANGUAGE TO LEARN? 之

一-法语

Once a mark of the cultured, language-learning is in r etreat among English speakers. It‘s never too late, but where to start? Robert Lane Greene launches our latest Big Question ...学习外语曾被视为有识之士的标志，如今在英语母语群体中正逐渐式微。什么时候开始学习都不算晚，但是从哪里开始呢？罗伯特·雷恩·格林为我们最新的―大问题‖系列打头阵……

From INTELLIGENT LIFE magazine, March/April 2012

For language lovers, the facts are grim: Anglophones simply aren‘t learning them any more. In Britain, despite four decades in the European Union, the number of A-levels taken in French and German has fallen by half in the past 20 years, while what was a growing trend of Spanish-learning has stalled. In America, the numbers are equally sorry. One factor behind the 9/11 attacks was the fact that the CIA lacked the Arabic-speakers who might have translated available intelligence. But ten years on, ―English only‖ campaigns appeal more successfully to American patriotism than campaigns that try to promote language-learning, as if the most successful language in history were threatened.对语言爱好者来说，现实是残酷的：英语母语人士基本上都已不再学习外语了。尽管英国加入欧盟已经有40年，剑桥高级水准考试（注：英国高考）中选择法语和德语课程的人数在过去20年里跌了一半。而之前学习西班牙语的热潮也已停滞。在美国，这方面的数字同样堪忧。911事件背后的一个因素在于中情局缺少足够懂阿拉伯语的人来翻译一些获取的情报。但是10年之后，―只说英语‖的活动比其它试图推广学习外语的活动更受美国人的爱国主义青睐，就好像历史上最成功的语言现在正处于濒危一样。

Why learn a foreign language? After all, the one you already speak if you read this magazine is the w orld‘s most useful and important language. English is not only the first language of the obvious countries, it is now the rest of the world‘s second language: a Japanese tourist in Sweden or a Turk landing a plane in Spain will almost always speak English.

为什么要学习一门外语呢？说到底，如果你在读这份杂志，那么你已经掌握了世界上最有用，也是最重要的语言。英语不仅仅在几个显而易见的国家内是第一语言，它现在也是世界上所有其它地方的第二语言：一位在瑞典的日本游客或是一位驾驶飞机在西班牙降落的土耳其人几乎逢人就讲英语。

Nonetheless, compelling reasons remain for learning other languages. They range from the intellectual to the economical to the practical. First of all, learning any foreign language helps you understand all language better—many

Anglophones first encounter the words ―past participle‖ not in an English class, but in French.

Second, there is the cultural broadening. Literature is always best read in the original.

但是，还是有一些重要的原因督促着我们学习其它语言。这些因素包括求知欲，经济收益还有实用因素。首先，只要学习一门外语，你对所有语言的理解也会增强。很多英语母语者是在法语课，而不是英语课上最先遇到―过去分词‖一词。其次，这也会拓宽你的文化视野。文学作品永远是读原版最好。

Poetry and lyrics suffer particularly badly in translation. And learning another tongue helps the student grasp another way of thinking. Though the notion that speakers of different languages think differently has been vastly exaggerated and misunderstood, there is a great deal to be learned from discovering what the different cultures call this, that or das oder.

诗歌在翻译时受到的破坏尤为严重。学习多一门语言可以帮助学生掌握另一种思维方式。虽然不同语言使用者的思维方式不同这一点被广泛地夸大和误解了，但是发现学习不同的文化把不同的事物叫作什么还是可以让你学到很多东西。

The practical reasons are just as compelling. In business, if the team on the other side of the table knows your language but you don‘t know theirs, they almost certainly know more about you and your company than you do about them and theirs—a bad position to negotiate from. Many investors in China have made fatally stupid decisions about companies they could not understand. Diplomacy, war-waging and intelligence work are all weakened by a lack of capable linguists. Virtually any career, public or private, is given a boost with knowledge of a foreign language.

从实用方面讲，学习外语的好处也很大。在商场上，如果谈判桌对面的队伍理解你的语言，而你不理解他们的语言。那他们对你和你的公司了解几乎肯定会比你对他们的了解更多，在谈判时这可不是什么有利条件。很多中国的投资者在自己不能理解的公司上做出了一些致命的愚蠢决定。外交，战争和情报工作在缺少能干的语言工作者时都会处于劣势。几乎所有的职业，不管是在公共岗位还是私营岗位上，懂得一门外语总是会给你加分。

So which one should you, or your children, learn? If you take a glance at advertisements in New York or A-level options in Britain, an answer seems to leap out: Mandarin. China‘s economy continues to grow at a pace that will make it bigger than America‘s within two decades at most. China‘s political clout is growing accordingly. Its businessmen are buying up everything from American brands to African minerals to Russian oil rights. If China is the country of the future, is Chinese the language of the future?

那么你，或者你的孩子应该学什么语言呢？如果你看看纽约的广告或是英国的剑桥高级水准科目选择，答案似乎显而易见：汉语。中国的经济正在持续以高速增长，最多再花20年就会赶上美国。中国的政治影响力也随之增大。中国商人在世界各地采购，从美国商标，到非洲矿物，到俄罗斯石油开采权无所不包。如果中国是未来的大国，那汉语是不是也就成了未来的首选语言呢？

Probably not. Remember Japan‘s rise? Just as spectacular as China‘s, if on a smaller scale, Japan‘s economic growth led many to think it would take over the world. It was the world‘s second-largest economy for decade s (before falling to third, recently, behind China). So is Japanese the world‘s third-most useful language? Not even close. If you were to learn ten languages ranked by general usefulness, Japanese would probably not make the list. And the key reason for J apanese‘s limited spread will also put the brakes on Chinese.

应该不是的。还记得日本的崛起吗？和中国现在的崛起一样瞩目，可能规模较小一点。日本的经济增长当时让很多人觉得它将要征服世界了。它占据世界第二大经济体宝座长达几十年以（最近，落在中国之后位居第三了）。那么日语是不是世界第三大常用语言呢？差得远呢。如果你为了日常使用要学十种语言，日语可能都排不进名单。日语普及有限有一个关键性原因，它也同样会阻碍汉语的普及。

This factor is the Chinese writing system (which Japan borrowed and adapted centuries ago). The learner needs to know at least 3,000-4,000 characters to make sense of written Chinese, and thousands more to have a real feel for it. Chinese, with all its tones, is hard enough to speak. But the mammoth feat of memory required to be literate in Mandarin is harder still. It deters most foreigners from ever mastering the system—and increasingly trips up Chinese natives.

那就是汉语的文字系统（日本的文字就是在几世纪前借鉴并修改了汉语文字而形成的）。需要学习3000到4000个汉字才能算是懂得汉语文字了，要真正学好还得再学几千个。汉语音调让人很难掌握其口语，但是真正难处还是在于学习汉语要达到可以阅读的水平需要大量的记忆力。这一文字系统阻碍了大多数外国人真正掌握汉语，而且现在越来越多的汉语母语者也会被它难倒。

A recent survey reported in the People‘s Daily found 84% of respondents agreeing that skill in Chinese is declining. If such gripes are common to most languages, there is something more to it in Chinese. Fewer and fewer native speakers learn to produce characters in traditional calligraphy. Instead, they write their language the same way we do—with a computer. And not only that, but they use the Roman alphabet to produce Chinese characters: type in wo and Chinese language-support software will offer a menu of characters pronounced wo; the user selects the one desired. (Or if the user types in wo shi zhongguo ren, ―I am Chinese‖, the software dete cts the meaning and picks the right characters.) With less and less need to recall the characters cold, the Chinese are forgetting them. David Moser, a Sinologist, recalls asking three native Chinese graduate students at Peking University how to write ―sneeze‖:

最近《人民日报》发表的一篇调查发现有84%的受访者表示其汉语水平在退步。如果说大多数语言都面临这样的问题，汉语的问题是特别严重的。越来越少的汉语母语者学习以传统的方式书写汉字。他们写文章的方式和我们一样，用电脑。不仅这样，他们也使用罗马字母来打出汉字：键入wo，支持中文的软件会列出一系列发音为wo的汉字，用户可以选择想要的那个。（或者说当用户键入wo shi zhongguo ren，软件会自动探测到意思，选出合适的汉字，显示―我是中国人‖）随着越来越不需要记忆，很多中国人开始遗忘汉字的写法了。汉学家莫大伟曾回忆他问过三个北大的中国研究生怎么写―喷嚏‖：

To my surprise, all three of them simply shrugged in sheepish embarrassment. Not one of them could correctly produce the character. Now, Peking University is usually considered the ―Harvard of China‖. Can you imagine three p hd students in English at Harvard forgetting how to write the English word ―sneeze‖? Yet this state of affairs is by no means uncommon in China.

很让我惊讶，他们都面有难堪，写不出来。北大一般被认为是―中国的哈佛‖。你能想象哈佛的三个英语博士生拼不出―sneeze‖吗？而且这种情况在中国绝不罕见。

As long as China keeps the character-based system—which will probably be a long time, thanks to cultural attachment and practical concerns alike—Chinese is very unlikely to become a true world

language, an auxiliary language like English, the language a Brazilian chemist will publish papers in, hoping that they will be read in Finland and Canada. By all means, if China is your main interest, for business or pleasure, learn Chinese. It is fascinating, and learnable—though Moser‘s online essay, ―Why Chinese is so damn hard,‖ might discourage the faint of heart and the short of time.

只要中国还保留汉字系统（因为文化情结以及现实考量，未来很长一段时间内中国很有可能会继续使用汉字系统），汉语就不太可能成为真正的世界语言，成为像英语那样的工具语言，一种巴西化学家发表论文时使用，希望芬兰和加拿大的人会阅读的语言。当然，如果你对汉语感兴趣，不管这种兴趣是出于业务还是消遣，那就学汉语吧。汉语是一种很迷人的语言，而且是学得会的，虽然莫大伟在网上发表的一篇文章《汉语怎么他妈这么难！》可能会让那些勇气或是时间不够的人望而却步。

But if I was asked what foreign language is the most useful, and given no more parameters (where? for what purpose?), my answer would be French. Whatever you think of France, the language is much less limited than many people realise.

但是如果我被问到哪门外语最有用，在没有附加条件的情况下（身处何地？学来干吗？），我的答案会是法语。不管你觉得法国怎么样，这门语言没有很多人想得那么局限。

As their empire spun off and they became a medium-sized power after the second world war, the French, hoping to maintain some distance from America and to make the most of their former possessions, established La Francophonie. This club, bringing together all the countries with a French-speaking heritage, has 56 members, almost a third of the world‘s countries. Hardly any of them are places where French is everyone‘s native language. Instead, th ey include countries with Francophone minorities (Switzerland, Belgium); those where French is official and widespread among elites (much of western Africa); those where it is not official but still spoken by nearly all educated people (Morocco, Lebanon); and those where French ties remain despite the fading of the language (Vietnam, Cambodia). It even has members with few ties to French or France, like Egypt, that simply want to associate themselves with the prestige of the French-speaking world. Another 19 countries are observer members.

随着法国帝国的衰灭以及法国在二战后变成了一个中等势力国，法国人希望能和美国保持一定距离，最大程度利用自己之前的殖民地，于是建立了法语圈。这个俱乐部把所有有着说法语传统的国家集合起来，共有56个国家，占当时世界国家的将近三分之一。但是其中几乎没有法语是母语的国家。相反，这些国家包括有着说法语的少数群体的国家（瑞士，比利时）；法语是官方语言，在精英阶级中很是流行的国家（摩洛哥，黎巴嫩）；还有那些虽然法语影响力已经减弱，但是还是和法国有关联的国家（越南，柬埔寨）。法语圈甚至包括一些几乎和法国以及法语没什么联系的国家，像是埃及。这些国家只是想要和法语国家的优越地位联系起来。还有19个国家以观察国的身份加入该组织。

French ranks only 16th on the list of languages ranked by native speakers. But ranked above it are languages like Telegu and Javanese that no one would call world languages. Hindi does not even unite India. Also in the top 15 are Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese, major languages to be sure, but regionally concentrated. If your interest is the Middle East or Islam, by all means learn Arabic. If your interest is Latin America, Spanish or Portuguese is the way to go. Or both; learning one makes the second quite easy.

以母语人数来说，法语在所有语言内只能排到第16位。但是有一些语言，像是泰卢固语和爪洼语，虽然排名在它之上，却没有人会把它们称为世界语言。印度语连印度都团结不了。此外前15名内还有像是阿拉伯语，西班牙语和葡萄牙语，当然这些都是主要语言，但是在使用上很集中于特定区域。如果你对中东或伊斯兰教感兴趣，学阿拉伯语吧。如果你对拉丁美洲感兴趣，就该学西班牙语或葡萄牙语，或者两者都学——学会其中一种会让学另一种变得很容易。

If your interests span the globe, and you‘ve read this far, you already know the most useful global language. But if you want another truly global language, there are surprisingly few candidates, and for me French is unquestionably top of the list. It can enhance your enjoyment of art, history, literature and food, while giving you an important tool in business and a useful one in diplomacy. It has native speakers in every region on earth. And lest we forget its heartland itself, France attracts more tourists than any other country—76.8m in 2010, according to the World Tourism Organisation, leaving America a distant second with 59.7m. Any visit there is greatly enhanced by some grasp of the language. The French are nothing but welcoming when you show them and their country respect, and the occasional frost that can greet visitors melts when they come out with their first fully formed sentence. So although there are other great languages out there, don‘t forget an easy, common one, with far fewer words to learn than English, that is almost certainly taught in your town. With French, vous ne regretterez rien.

如果你的兴趣遍及全球，而且你已经读到这儿了，你已经会最有用的全球语言了。但是如果你想再学一门全球语言，让人很惊讶的是，可供选择的语言其实不多。对我来说在这些语言中法语毫无疑问是列在榜首的。法语可以增进你对艺术，历史，文学和烹饪的欣赏，同时也让你掌握一项在商界很重要，在外交界很有用的工具。法语母语者遍布地球上每个主要地区。而且我们不要忘了法语的中心地，法国每年吸引的游客超过任何其它国家。根据世界旅游组织2010年游客达7680万。排名第二的美国只有5970万，远远落后。对于法语有一定掌握会给你的法国之行增色不少。如果你表达了你对法国和法国人的尊重，法国人会对你无任欢迎。偶尔法国人会对游客非常冷漠，但是当你说出一句完整的法语句子时，所有的这种冷漠都会消融。所以说虽然有很多其他语言都很不错，不要忘记还有一门简单常用，单词比英语少得多的语言。不管你身在何方，在你住的城镇几乎肯定有地方学习法语。学习法语吧，你不会后悔的。

Robert Lane Greene is a business correspondent for The Economist in New York and the author of "You Are What you Speak"

罗伯特·雷恩·格林是《经济学人》商业版的驻纽约撰稿人，著有《人如其言》

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/thread-64086-1-1.html译者：nayilus

[2012.02.27]The Academy awards 84届奥斯卡金像奖

The Academy awards

奥斯卡金像奖

We should be glad "The Artist" won

《艺术家》得奖我们应该高兴

Feb 27th 2012, 10:56 by N.B

THERE was only ever going to be one of two responses to last night‘s Oscars. Either 1: "Of course they gave all the prizes to 'The Artist'", or 2: "Wow! They didn‘t give all the prizes to 'The Artist'!" Throughout the awards season, in ceremony after ceremony, no other film built up any kind of momentum. Come Oscar night, the only danger for ―The Artist‖ was that, as it had amassed such a mountain of trophies already, voters might just have felt that enough was enough and defected to their second choices. In the event, they made the sane decision. ―The Artist‖ won five Oscars—for Best Picture, Director, Actor, Score and Design. ―Hugo‖ was consoled with five Oscars in the technical categories, while the other major statuettes went to Meryl Streep for ―The Iron Lady‖, Octavia Spencer for ―The Help‖, Christopher Plummer for ―Beginners‖, and the screenplays of ―The Descendants‖ and ―Midnight In Paris‖.

昨晚的奥斯卡本来就只可能引起两种反应。反应1：―当然他们把所有奖项都颁给《艺术家》了‖，或者反应2：―哇，他们居然没把所有的奖项都颁给《艺术家》！‖过去整个电影奖季度中，有一个接着一个的典礼，却没有第二部电影在其间获得任何势头。在奥斯卡之夜，《艺术家》面对的唯一风险就是其已经累积了如山的奖项，评委们也许会觉得它已经得到足够的认可，转而投给各自心目中的第二名。现实是，评委们作出了合理的决定。《艺术家》一举拿下五座奖项－最佳影片，最佳导演，最佳男主角，最佳原创音乐和最佳服装。作为补偿，《雨果》获得了五座技术领域的奖项。其它一些重头奖项则被出演《铁娘子》的梅丽尔·斯特里普，出演《相助》的奥克塔维亚·斯宾瑟，出演《新手人生》的克里斯托弗·普卢默摘走。剧本奖项则归于《后裔》和《午夜巴黎》。

But let‘s not forget that while the coronation of ―The Artist‖ might have seemed i nevitable on Sunday evening, that wasn‘t always the case. Indeed, it was the only film on the Best Picture shortlist that didn‘t come laden with a sheaf of Oscar-baiting credentials. The others were made by revered, award-hoarding directors (Spielberg, Scorsese, Allen, Malick). Their stars were Hollywood royalty (Brad, George, Tom, Sandra, Brad again). They addressed big, serious topics (9/11, civil rights, the first world war) and yet, aside from ―Tree Of Life‖, they had an inviting balance of comedy and drama. Months before they were released, you could have put money on their being included on the Best Picture list.

不过别忘了虽然《艺术家》加冕在周日晚上看上去势在必得，早些时候这一点可没有那么确定。实际上，在最佳影片提名中，《艺术家》是唯一没有挂满金字招牌来吸引评委的。其它影片都是由倍受尊敬，兜中装满大奖的导演执导的（斯皮尔伯格，史高西斯，艾伦，马利克）。而且这些影片中的明星也都是好莱坞的贵族（乔治，汤姆，桑德拉，还有两部都是布莱德主演）。它们讨论的也是一些巨大严肃的主题（911，民权，一战）。尽管主题严肃，除了《生命之树》，其它影片都具备剧情和喜剧之间的诱人平衡。在它们还没有上映前几个月，你就可以打赌它们会被选入最佳影片的候选名单上了。

And then there was ―The Artist‖. Yes, it‘s as nostalgic and reassuring as any of the films which were in the running—and nostalgia was the over-arching theme of this year‘s nominees—but it‘s also a French, black-and-white, near-silent melodrama in 4:3 ratio, starring an actor and actress that very few people outside France had ever heard of. A year ago, you wouldn‘t have bet on it being released in America at all.

接下来就是《艺术家》了。是的，和其它提名影片一样，这同样是一部给人以怀旧及激励的影片。怀旧是今年提名的大主题。但是这同时也是一部法国片，一部黑白片，一部以4:3比

例拍摄，几乎无声的情节剧。饰演片中男女主角的演员在法国以外很少有人听过他们的名字。放在一年前，你都不一定敢和人赌这部影片会在美国上映。

That said, Michel Hazanavicius‘s passion project was bound to appeal to t he Academy in one or two respects, in that its subject was the movie business, and it was the only one of the contenders to be shot wholly in Los Angeles. (Those aspects in themselves were enough for it to be seen as some sort of Hollywood-worshipping sell-out in some commentators‘ eyes.) But it‘s still hard to think of any Oscar winner which started life as such a rank outsider and went on to be such an all-conquering sure thing.

虽然有这些不利，但迈克尔·哈扎纳维希乌斯这部热情之作本注定要在一两个方面吸引电影学院。首先其主题是关于电影制片业的，其次它是提名影片中唯一全片都在洛杉矶拍摄的。（在一些影评家眼里，这两点本身足以让它被看作是某种崇拜好莱坞的卖座影片了。）但是还是很难想出有另外一部影片曾经在一开始那么冷门的情况下最终横扫这么多奖项，成为奥斯卡的赢家。

And so, just as the film itself leaves audiences feeling better about life, its award-gobbling success should cheer us up, too. Dispiriting as it was that Oscar voters ran scared of several edgier films which deserved to be nominated—―Drive‖, ―Melancholia‖, ―We Need To Talk About Kevin‖, ―Martha Marcy May Marlene‖—just think of how depressing it would have been if ―The Artist‖ hadn‘t been nominated, either. Which film would have bagged all those Oscars in its place? Would we really have been stuck with ―The Help‖ or ―Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close‖ as the year‘s Best Picture? As it is, we can now revel in the notion of a French comedian being given an Oscar solely on the strength of his body language and facial expressions. It‘s enough to make you tap-dance for joy.

所以，就像影片本身让观众对生活感觉变好一样，这部影片夺奖的成功经历也应该让我们高兴。虽然奥斯卡的评委不敢提名几部更另类，但却很值得提名的电影（像是《亡命驾驶》，《忧郁症》，《凯文怎么了》，《双面玛莎》）这一点很让人沮丧，想想如果《艺术家》也没有被提名那该是多伤心的一件事啊？哪部影片会取代它来囊获这些奖项呢？我们是否会不得不接受《相助》或是《心灵钥匙》作为今年的最佳影片呢？现实是，奥斯卡纯粹因为肢体语言和面部表情而被颁予一位法国喜剧演员，这让我们为之陶醉。光是这一点就足以让你欢跃了。

https://www.wendangku.net/doc/5f15686361.html,/thread-64009-1-1.html译者：nayilus

[2012.02.25]Attacking Iran: Up in the air 袭击伊朗，悬而未决

Attacking Iran

袭击伊朗

Up in the air

悬而未决

The probability of an attack on Iran’s nuclear programme has been increasing. But the chances of it ending the country’s nuclear ambitions are low

袭击伊朗核项目的可能性正在上升，但是成功结束该国核野心的机会很低

Feb 25th 2012 | from the print edition

THE crisis has been a long time coming. Iran started exploring paths to nuclear weaponry before the fall of the shah in 1979. Ten years ago the outside world learned of the plants it was building to provide ―heavy‖ water (used in reactors that produce plut onium) and enriched uranium, which is necessary for some types of nuclear reactor, but also for nuclear weapons. The enrichment facilities have grown in capability, capacity and number; there has been work on detonators, triggers and missile technology, too.

这场危机从很久以前就开始酝酿了。伊朗在1979年巴列维王朝覆灭之前就已开始研究开发核武器。十年前外界发现了伊朗正在建造工厂来生产重水（用在生产钚的反应堆内）及浓缩铀。对于某些类型的核反应堆来说，浓缩铀是必需的，但它同样也在核武器中扮演重要角色。从那以后，伊朗的铀浓缩设施在性能、规模和数量上都一直呈上升之势，同时伊朗也开始致力于电雷管、中子引爆器和导弹技术的开发。

Iran wants, at the very least, to put itself in a position where it has the expertise and materials with which to build deliverable nuclear weapons quickly. It may well want, at some point, to develop the bombs themselves. This is deeply worrying to Israel, which is threatened by Iran‘s proxies in Lebanon and Gaza and disgusted by the anti-Semitic rants of Iran‘s leaders. It also alarms Arab states, which fear Iranian power (and their own Shiite minorities). That alarm could lead some of them—Saudi Arabia, Egypt, perhaps Turkey—to seek nuclear weapons of their own. Many fear that this would make the region even less stable than it is. Even if it did not, it would make the possible consequences of instability much more terrible.

最保守的估计是，伊朗希望能让自己拥有足够的技术和材料，能在需要时迅速制造可发射使用的核武器。也有可能伊朗会在一定的时机开发自己的核弹。以色列周边的黎巴嫩和加沙地带都有伊朗的代理势力，它们对以色列的威胁，加上伊朗领导人那些让以色列深感厌恶的反犹太叫嚣，使以色列对伊朗可能持有核武器这一前景深表忧虑。同样的，这一前景也让那些惧怕伊朗（和自己国内的什叶少数派）的阿拉伯国家感到警惕。这种警惕也许会促使这些国家中的一些成员（沙特阿拉伯，埃及，或许还有土耳其）开始为自己寻觅核武器。很多人担心那会使这一区域变得比现在还更不稳定。即使局势并没有恶化，这么多国家寻求核武器也还是个大问题，多国持有核武的情况下，万一局势失衡可能造成的后果将比当下局势失衡的可能后果恐怖的多。

Outside powers, especially America, would give a great deal to avoid the prospect of an emboldened, nuclear-armed Iran. Hence ever-stronger sanctions designed to get Iran to cease enrichment and content itself with reactor fuel made elsewhere. Hence, also, a willingness by America and others to keep open the option of military strikes.

外界势力，尤其是美国会不惜很大代价来防止一个持有核武，底气十足的伊朗出现。正因为如此，为了让伊朗停止铀浓缩并满足于外界提供的反应堆燃料所设计的经济制裁现在越来越严厉了。也正因为如此，美国和其它国家始终不排除军事袭击的可能性。

In Israel that willingness has hardened close to the point of commitment. Israel has nuclear weapons itself, including submarine-based weapons that could posthumously annihilate any aggressor who destroyed the country. But this deterrent is not enough to stop Israelis from seeing a nuclear Iran as the precursor to a second holocaust. The problem is that military action will not

necessarily bring about what Israel wants—and could, in the medium to long term, make matters worse.

在以色列，这种不排除军事行动的态度受到局势的影响已经转变到很接近实际行动了。以色列自己是有核武的，这包括了装载在潜艇上的核武器。即使以色列本身被摧毁，这些潜艇仍然能够进行反击消灭任何攻击者。但是这种核威慑不足以让以色列人感到安全，他们依然视持有核武的伊朗为第二次犹太人大屠杀的前奏。问题在于，军事行动并不一定能达到以色列希望的结果，而且在中长期内可能会让事态恶化。

Short fuses

导火索很短

The possibility of an Iranian bomb comes closer with every revolution of the centrifuges in its underground enrichment plants (see article). Israel‘s director of military intelligence, Major-General Aviv Kochavi, says that Iran has obtained 4 tonnes of uranium enriched to 3.5% and another 100kg enriched to 20%, which the Iranians say is for a research reactor in Tehran. If further enriched to 90% (which is not that hard once you have got to 20%) the more enriched uranium would be enough for up to four nuclear weapons. General Kochavi says that from the moment Iran‘s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, gave the orde r, it would take the Iranians a year to make a crude device and another year or two to put together a nuclear warhead that would fit on a ballistic missile. American analysts, who imagine a broader-based approach to developing a nuclear capability, rather than a crash programme, think it would take a bit longer.

伊朗的地下铀浓缩工厂（见另文）内的离心机每转一圈，其获得核弹的可能性也就增加一分。以色列军事情报局局长阿维夫·柯查威少将说伊朗已经拥有4吨浓度为3.5%的铀，外加100千克浓度达20%的铀。伊朗方面声称这是德黑兰的研究用反应堆的燃料。如果浓度被进一步提高到90%（一旦达到20%，再升高到90%并不那么困难），那100千克浓度较高的铀足以制造四枚核武器。柯查威少将认为一旦伊朗最高领袖阿亚图拉·阿里·哈梅内伊下达指令，伊朗只需要一年就可以制造出一枚简陋的核武器，再花一到两年就可以组装出一枚能安置在弹道导弹上的核弹头。美国方面的分析家则认为花的时间要更长一点。这是因为他们假设伊朗是想要开发长远核武能力，采用的是更为稳健的方法，而不是只为速成一枚核弹。

Israel‘s defence minister, Ehud Barak, talks of the Iranian programme entering a ―zone of immunity‖ well before any bombs are built. This year some of Iran‘s centrifuges have been moved to a previously secret facility near the holy city of Qom. This site, Fordow, is buried deep within the bowels of a mountain; hence Mr Barak‘s talk of Iran reaching a stage ―which may render any physical strike as impractical‖.

以色列的国防部长埃胡德·巴拉克认为伊朗在远未建成核弹之前就会把其核武项目转入一个―免疫区‖。今年伊朗的一些离心器被移到了圣城库姆附近的一个秘密设施。该设施名为福尔多，位于群山包围中的地下深处，在这之前一直不为外界所知。因此，巴拉克认为伊朗核项目的进程已经接近一个关键点，一旦其达到该点，―任何物理攻击可能都将不再有效。‖

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says Fordow has room for 3,000 centrifuges, compared with the 9,000 Iran claims at its first enrichment plant, Natanz. Mr Barak fears that once Fordow is fully equipped Iran will leave the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That would bring the IAEA‘s inspections to an end, as well as its safeguard procedures aimed at tracking