[2011.9.10] 雷•安德森：小方地毯哲学家

引用 Sophia2011 2011-9-13 10:37

本帖最后由 Sophia2011 于 2011-9-13 10:40 编辑

词汇整理如下1：

1.take sb.’s breath (away) (或take away sb.’s breath) 使某人激动（或惊羡）得透不过气来：The beauty of the sight nearly took my breath away. 景色之美几乎使我目瞪口呆。

2. modular adjective
1 (of a course of study, especially at a British university or college) consisting of separate units from which students may choose several
a modular course

2 (of machines, buildings, etc.) consisting of separate parts or units that can be joined together

3. round the bend/twist
(informal, especially British English) crazy
She's gone completely round the bend.
The kids have been driving me round the bend today (= annoying me very much).

4. look in (on somebody)
to make a short visit to a place, especially somebody's house when they are ill/sick or need help
She looks in on her elderly neighbour every evening.
Why don't you look in on me next time you're in town?

5. languid adjective  
moving slowly in an elegant manner, not needing energy or effort
a languid wave of the handa languid afternoon in the sun

languidly  adverb
He moved languidly across the room.

6. lilt noun  [singular]
1 the pleasant way in which a person's voice rises and falls
Her voice had a soft Welsh lilt to it.

2 a regular rising and falling pattern in music, with a strong rhythm
Many of his patriotic songs have a stirring lilt.

lilting adjective

7. (just) for the hell of it
(informal) just for fun; for no real reason
They stole the car just for the hell of it.

8. to my mind
in my opinion
It was a ridiculous thing to do, to my mind.

to one’s mind 1.根据某人的意见，如某人所想：It is, to my mind, the greatest picture Johnson ever painted. 我认为这是约翰逊所画的作品当中最伟大的一幅。2.合某人的心意：The arrangements I made were very much to his mind. 我所作的安排很合他的心意。

9. broadloom a. 用阔幅织机织成的 n.阔幅织物；（尤指宽度超过54英寸的）阔幅地毯

10. smokestack
noun  (especially North American English)

1 a tall chimney that takes away smoke from factories

2 (British English also funnel) a metal chimney, for example on a ship or an engine, through which smoke comes out

smokestack n.大烟囱；（机车、船舶的）烟囱

引用 Sophia2011 2011-9-13 10:38

本帖最后由 Sophia2011 于 2011-9-13 10:47 编辑

词汇整理如下2：

11. blacken verb
1 [transitive, intransitive] blacken (something) to make something black; to become black
Their faces were blackened with soot.
Smoke had blackened the walls.
rows of blackened teeth

2 [transitive] blacken somebody's name/reputation/character to say unpleasant things that give people a bad opinion of somebody
He accused the newspaper of trying to blacken his name.

12. boardroom noun
a room in which the meetings of the board of a company (= the group of people who control it) are held
a boardroom row

boardroom n.1.（董事会等的）会议室 2.（证券经纪行中）置放黑板记载股票最新价格的房间

13.chase the little white ball 打高尔夫球？

14. task force 1.【军】特遣部队；特混舰队 2.（为某项任务而暂时成立的）特别工作组；专门调查委员会

13. wipe somebody/something  out
[often passive] to destroy or remove somebody/something completely
Whole villages were wiped out by the earthquake.
Last year's profits were virtually wiped out.
a campaign to wipe out malaria
related noun wipeout

14. order of magnitude 1.【物】数量级 2.大小；数量

15. replenish verb
replenish something (with something) (formal) to make something full again by replacing what has been used
Synonym top up
to replenish food and water supplies
Allow me to replenish your glass.

replenishment  noun [uncountable]
Computerization has enabled the automatic replenishment of stock.

16. sludge noun  [uncountable]
1 thick, soft, wet mud or a substance that looks like it
Synonym slime
There was some sludge at the bottom of the tank.

2 industrial or human waste that has been treated
industrial sludge
the use of sewage sludge as a fertilizer on farm land

17. pellet noun

1 a small hard ball of any substance, often of soft material that has become hard
food pellets for chickens
owl pellets (= the dried waste material from owls )
slug pellets (= to kill slugs )

2 a very small metal ball that is fired from a gun

18. conversion noun

1 [uncountable, countable] conversion (from something) (into/to something)
the act or process of changing something from one form, use or system to another
the conversion of farm buildings into family homes
Conversion to gas central heating will save you a lot of money.
No conversion from analogue to digital data is needed.
a metric conversion table (= showing how to change metric amounts into or out of another system)
a firm which specializes in house conversions (= turning large houses into several smaller flats/apartments)

19. pep talk noun  (informal)

a short speech intended to encourage somebody to work harder, try to win, have more confidence, etc
She gave us all a pep talk before the game.

20. snipe verb

1 [intransitive] snipe (at somebody/something) to shoot at somebody from a hiding place, usually from a distance
Gunmen continued to snipe at people leaving their homes to find food.

2 [intransitive] snipe (at somebody/something) to criticize somebody in an unpleasant way
sniping noun [uncountable]
Aid workers remain in the area despite continuous sniping.

21. hank n.1.(一)圈；a hank of hair 一绺？发 2.【纺】(一)绞，(一)亨克(英制长度单位，棉纱为840码；毛纱为560码) 3. 【船】帆眼圈 4.<方>优势，控制：get a hank over sb. 控制某人 vt. 用帆眼圈将（帆）系牢 || hank for hank 1.【海】（两船）并列逆风地 2.平等地 /in a hank 在困难中

引用 contrary 2011-9-13 12:41

快速扫到一个问题：greenest businessman,最环保主义的生意人
最环保的生意人

剩下的晚上再看~~回见~~

引用 migmig 2011-9-13 12:52

WHEN Ray Anderson first encountered the concept at an international conference, it took his breath away
当雷•安德森在一次国际会议上首次意外碰到概念困难时，这使他激动不已
困难从何而来？

引用 renjie 2011-9-13 14:24

Ray Anderson
雷•安德森
The carpet-tile philosopher
小方地毯哲学家
Ray Anderson, America’s greenest businessman, died on August 8th, aged 77
雷•安德森，美国最环保主义的生意人，于8月8日逝世，享年77岁
(最具环保意识的...新牛津英汉双解词典)

WHEN Ray Anderson first encountered the concept at an international conference, it took his breath away. It was so smart, so right. It was flexible, practical, beautiful, and made perfect sense. He knew right then that modular soft-surfaced floor coverings (carpet tiles, in other words), could change the world.

当雷•安德森在一次国际会议上首次意外碰到概念困难时，这使他激动不已（去掉“这使”）。因为这个概念是如此的高明，如此的准确，而且灵活，实用，美观，并且非常合情合理。那时他就知道这些组合式的软表面的地毯（换句话说，小方地毯）能够改变世界。

Others thought he was round the bend. When he decided to give up his job at Milliken Carpet in LaGrange, Georgia to set up a 15-person carpet company, and was clearing out his desk that February of 1973, two colleagues looked in. “We don’t think you can do this,” they told him. He replied, in his languid, ever-courteous southern lilt, “The hell you say.” Fifteen years later his company, renamed Interface, was the biggest carpet-tile maker on the planet.

另外的人则认为他发疯了。当他决定辞去佐治亚州拉格兰奇市的米利肯地毯公司的工作，然后建立了一个15个人的地毯公司时，正是1973年2月的一天，当时他正在清理办公桌，两位同事进来帮了忙。“我们以为你不会这么做的，”他们告诉他。他用一种悠闲自在地，总是礼貌地抑扬顿挫的南方口音回答道，“你在开玩笑吧。” 15年后，他的公司改名为界面股份有限公司（Interface Inc.），并成了这个星球上最大的小方地毯制造商。

This also made Mr Anderson a considerable plunderer of the earth. He never thought about that at first. To his mind he was no more a thief of Nature than when, a country boy during the Depression, he had hooked 20-pound channel catfish, now long gone, out of the Chattahoochee River. His business complied with government regulations. His product, too, was much less wasteful than broadloom carpet, since you could easily cut the tiles to run cables underneath, and replace them one by one as they wore out. They were, it was true, almost entirely made of petroleum in some form or another. Some pretty bad stuff was used in the dye and the glue. More than 200 smokestacks blackened the sky to produce them. But boardrooms laid with Interface carpet tiles looked and felt a million dollars.

这也使得安德森先生成为了地球上一位重要的劫掠者。开始的时候，他从来没有考虑过这点。根据他的意见(在他看来)，他已不再是一个自然界的小偷了。而当大萧条期间，还是乡村男孩的他从查特胡奇河（或意译为多彩的岩石河）（Chattahoochee River）钓上了现在早已没有了的20磅重的水渠鲶鱼，那时他自认为自己是个自然界的小偷。他的生意遵循着政府的规章制度，公司的产品也比阔幅地毯的浪费要低地（得）多，因为人们很容易割断这些小方地毯而在下面铺上电缆，而且，当它们用坏了时，人们可以逐一替换它们。事实上，这些小方地毯几乎完全以石油的一种或另一种形式（中文很少这么表达，换成“各种”可以吧？）制造而成。一些质量非常糟糕的东西可用于染料和胶水。200多个大烟囱冒着浓浓的黑烟在生产这些小地毯。但是，铺上了界面股份有限公司（Interface Inc.）小方地毯董事会的会议室看上去让人认为很昂贵。（这里应该是强调它的产品性价比高吧？可考虑换一换“昂贵”）
（关于助词“的地得”的用法，黄伯荣版的《现代汉语》下册，第四十页讲得很明白）

The turning point, his “mid-course correction”, came in 1994. He was 60, but not yet ready to retire to the mountains or chase a little white ball. Under pressure from customers to produce some sort of environmental strategy for his company, he got a small task-force together. Someone gave him a book, Paul Hawken’s “The Ecology of Commerce” to help him prepare his first speech on the subject. Thumbing vaguely through it, he chanced on a chapter called “The Death of Birth”, about the extinction of species. Reading on, he came to a passage about reindeer being wiped out on St Matthew Island in the Bering Sea. Suddenly, the tears were running down his face. A spear-point had jammed into his heart. It was the very same feeling, he said later, as when he had first seen carpet tiles, but orders of magnitude larger. He was to blame for making the world worse. Now he had to make it better.

1994年，他的“中期修正”方案成了公司的转折点。那时他已60岁，但还没有准备退休去高山（有没有点归隐山林或者退出江湖的意思呢？）或打高尔夫球。在客户的压力下，为了让公司能够生产出某种环境策略的地毯，他组成了一个小的特别工作组。有人给了他一本保罗•霍肯的《商业生态》来帮助他准备关于这个主题的首次演讲。由于大致地翻看着这本书，他偶然发现了关于物种灭亡而称之为“出生的致死原因” 那一章。他就读了下来，看到一段讲述白令海圣马修岛上的驯鹿被完全消灭（杀戮殆尽）了。突然间，泪水顺着他的脸颊流了下来，此时，一个矛头已经塞进了他的心。（一般是不是让人容易联想起“矛头指向谁谁谁”？后边改成“直插内心”）他后来说道，这就是那种正如当他第一次看到小方地毯时同样的感觉，但是这次的强度要大的多。他因使世界变得更糟糕而受到指责，但现在，他不得不让世界变得好一点。

Interface, he decided, would leave no print on the green-and-blue carpet of the world. By 2020 it would take nothing from the earth that could not be rapidly replenished. It would produce no greenhouse-gas emissions and no waste. That meant using renewables rather than fossil fuel; endeavouring to make carpet tiles out of carbohydrate polymers rather than petroleum; and recycling old-carpet sludge into pellets that could be used as backing.

他决定，界面股份有限公司（Interface Inc.）将在这个世界的绿色和蓝色地毯上不留下任何痕迹。截至2020年，公司将不再使用地球上不能快速替代的物品。到那时，公司（的生产过程）将不再产生温室气体排放，也不会有浪费。这意味着公司将利用可再生能源，而不是化石燃料；公司将努力从碳水聚合物而不是石油制造小方地毯；而且公司将重新利用旧地毯的沉淀物生产能够用于支持作用的小硬球。（每个分号的主语都是“公司”，合并一下吧）

Some of the technologies Mr Anderson hoped for (and half-envisaged, as a graduate in systems engineering from his much-loved Georgia Tech) had not been invented when he started. Several colleagues thought he had gone round the bend again. He had to bring them along slowly, in his quiet way, until they “got it” by themselves. But by 2007 the company was, he reckoned, about halfway up “Mount Sustainability”. Greenhouse-gas emissions by absolute tonnage were down 92% since 1995, water usage down 75%, and 74,000 tonnes of used carpet had been recovered from landfills. The $400m he was saving each year by making no scrap and no off-quality tiles more than paid for the R&D and the process changes. As much as 25% of the company’s new material came from “post-consumer recycling”. And he was loaded with honours and awards as the greenest businessman in America.

当安德森先生刚起步的时候，他所希望的一些技术（作为他深深喜欢的佐治亚理工学院的一位系统工程研究生，他只是半想像这些技术）还没有发明出来。几位同事还以为他再次发疯了。他不得不以他安谧悠闲的方式慢慢地发展这些技术，直到他们自己理解了。但是，到2007年为止，他估计公司会走在进行可持续性发展的半道上。自1995年以来，公司以绝对吨位计算的温室气体排放量下降了92%，水量下降了75%，而且从垃圾填埋场重新回收了7万4千吨旧地毯。以不生产废物和质量差的小方地毯为由，他每年比支付给研发和工艺变革多节省4亿多美元。公司新材料高达25％来自“客户用过的地毯重新回收”。因而作为美国最环保的商人，他被授予了很多的荣誉和奖励。

Most satisfying of all, sales had increased by two-thirds since his conversion, and profits had doubled. For Mr Anderson always kept his eye on the bottom line. He could be sentimental, ending his many public speeches with an apologetic poem to “Tomorrow’s Child” written by an employee after one of his pep talks, but he was only half a dreamer. His company was his child, too. Profits mattered. This made some greens snipe at him, but it also made Walmart send two of its senior people round to his factory in LaGrange to see what he was doing right. As a success, he could powerfully influence others.

最令人满意的是，自他转变以来，公司销售额增加了三分之二，而且利润增加了一倍，因为安德森先生始终密切关注着帐本底线。他可以是感性的，，经常以一首对一位雇员所写的《明天的孩子》的道歉诗而结束了他许多的演讲。（常常在演讲时以自己的一位员工的道歉诗《明天的孩子》来做结尾）这位雇员是在他的一次激励性讲话后写下了《明天的孩子》。但是他只是一位半梦想家。他的公司也是他的孩子，不过，利润很重要。这使得一些环保主义者们对他恶意中伤，但这也让沃尔玛派遣了几位高层人员到拉格兰奇的工厂，看看他到底做的是否合适。作为一位成功人士，他能够强烈地影响别人。

The forest floor
森林地面

He never dreamed of giving up carpet tiles. Their beauty and variety delighted him, just as Nature’s did. In his office in LaGrange they were laid out like abstract art on tables, while hanks of yarn hung on the walls. His company introduced Cool Carpet®, which had made no contribution to global warming all along the supply chain, and multicoloured FLOR for the home, “practical and pretty, too”. He was proudest, though, of Entropy®, a carpet-tile design inspired directly by the forest floor. No two tiles were alike: no two sticks, no two leaves. They could be laid and replaced quite randomly, even used in bits, eliminating waste. And when you lay down on them you might almost be in Mr Anderson’s 86-acre piece of forest near Atlanta, listening to the sparrows in the long-leaf pines, rejoicing in being a non-harming part of the web of life, like him.

他从来没有想到要放弃小方地毯。它们的美丽和多样性让他开心不已，就像自然界的美丽和多样性让他开心一样。在他拉格兰奇的办公室里，这些小方地毯就像抽象艺术一样摊开在桌子上，而多绞纱线则挂在墙上。他的公司推出了注册酷地毯（Cool Carpet®）为商标的地毯和为家庭推出了“实用而且漂亮”的多色彩的弗洛尔（FLOR）地毯。生产这种酷地毯（Cool Carpet®）的一系列的供应链上对全球气候变暖都不会起作用。但是，他最值得骄傲的是注册了熵（Entropy）为商标的小方地毯。这种小方地毯的设计直接受到森林地面的启发。没有两片小方地毯是相似的，因为没有两根枯枝或两片叶子是相似的。这些小方地毯可以相当随机的（地）铺设和替换，即使用的很少，也杜绝浪费。当你躺在这些小方地毯上时，你或许就像在亚特兰大附近安德森先生的86-英亩森林的一部分，就像他一样倾听着长叶松上的麻雀叽叽喳喳，为成为生物织物（意译成生物圈也许更便于理解）的无害部分而尽情高兴。

from the print edition | Obituary

引用 echo.chan 2011-9-13 15:32

a considerable plunderer of the earth
地球上一位重要的劫掠者

the earth 前用的是of 而不是in，或者on，所以我认为文中想说他劫掠了地球（资源）

channel catfish 叉尾鮰鱼
这些动植物的专用名词很是头痛....前不久想看看植物类的，没看到半页就趴下了

now long gone 漏译

他已不再是一个自然界的小偷了.....那时他自认为自己是个自然界的小偷
窃以为，这个自然界的小偷，译一次即可。

200多个大烟囱冒着浓浓的黑烟在生产这些小地毯
这句有点怪咧，好像大烟囱可以生产小地毯似的

引用 echo.chan 2011-9-13 15:57

Thumbing vaguely through it
由于大致地翻看着这本书

thumb 迅速翻阅
还有，“由于”的意思多余

He was to blame
他因...而受到指责
意思是：该受谴责，应负责人
侧重“应”，实际上他并不一定正受到世人指责

he had to make it better
他不得不---这里他没有受到任何客观条件的制约，是主观上认为自己“应该，必须”如何

green-and-blue carpet of the world 世界上蓝色和绿色的地毯上
可以把指代的译出来：绿色指陆地，蓝色指海洋，综合起来就是地球表面。

bring them along slowly 安谧悠闲
发挥得有点过了，太文艺了（虽然这是文艺&人物版）

引用 echo.chan 2011-9-13 16:16

He had to bring them along slowly, in his quiet way, until they “got it” by themselves.
他不得不以他安谧悠闲的方式慢慢地发展这些技术，直到他们自己理解了

第一个them，是上句他的colleague，they,也是。it是指那些技术
bring along 培养，帮助某人发展

The $400m he was saving each year by making no scrap and no off-quality tiles more than paid for the R&D and the process changes.
原译：以不生产废物和质量差的小方地毯为由，他每年比支付给研发和工艺变革多节省4亿多美元。
他每年不出产小方毯的废品和不合格品，可节约4亿美金，超过研发和工艺改革费用。

引用 echo.chan 2011-9-13 16:26

post-consumer recycling
客户用过的地毯重新回收

可简洁的说成“消费后回收”

written by an employee
原译：经常以一首对一位雇员所写的《明天的孩子》的道歉诗而结束了他许多的演讲
这样翻译有歧义，似乎诗是他为雇员写的

他只是一位半梦想家
他只是半个梦想家

what he was doing right 看他到底是否做得合适

what 不是whether

引用 林木木 2011-9-13 16:50

当雷•安德森在一次国际会议上首次意外碰到概念困难时，这使他激动不已。
困难？

Others thought he was round the bend.
-------------------------
另外的人则认为他发疯了。
别人则认为他疯了。

When he decided to give up his job at Milliken Carpet in LaGrange, Georgia to set up a 15-person carpet company, and was clearing out his desk that February of 1973, two colleagues looked in.
-------------------------------------
当他决定辞去佐治亚州拉格兰奇市的米利肯地毯公司的工作，然后建立了一个15个人的地毯公司时，正是1973年2月的一天，当时他正在清理办公桌，两位同事进来帮了忙。
当他决定辞去佐治亚州拉格兰奇市的米利肯地毯公司的工作去建立一个15个人的地毯公司时，正是1973年2月的一天，当时他正在清理办公桌，两位同事进来帮了忙。
分析：建立15人的公司只是决定，还没有付诸实践

并成了这个星球上最大的小方地毯制造商。
虽然是planet，但是这么翻译感觉有点……
楼主要不要考虑：世界上？

引用 林木木 2011-9-13 17:04

The Death of Birth
---------------------
出生的致死原因？
楼主要不要考虑：生命的灭亡？物种灭亡？……

看到一段讲述白令海圣马修岛上的驯鹿被完全消灭了。
删掉“被”字就可吧？

几位同事还以为他再次发疯了。
几位同事还以为他又疯了。
PS：骨头而已，楼主可以无视~

引用 kool 2011-9-14 02:21

The hell you say!
Nonsense!; I don't believe it!

A: I won the lottery! B: The hell you say!

引用 kool 2011-9-14 02:23

本帖最后由 kool 于 2011-9-14 02:24 编辑

channel catfish 是北美最常见的鱼之一。中国超市一般叫 鲢鱼，那个channel 不译也罢，更通顺

引用 kool 2011-9-14 02:35

the death of birth
是 E.O Wilson 首先使用的一个短语，指的是地球生态系统产生新物种（birth)的速度在下降
新生不再 ？不好翻译， ：）

Even the mass extinctions 65 million years ago that killed off the dinosaurs and countless other species did not significantly affect flowering plants, according to Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson. But these plant species are disappearing now, and people, not comets or volcanoes, are the angels of destruction. Moreover, the earth is suffering the decline of entire ecosystems -- the nurseries of new life-forms. For that reason, Wilson deems this crisis the "death of birth." British ecologist Norman Myers has called it the "greatest single setback to life's abundance and diversity since the first flickerings of life almost 4 billion years ago."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,956626,00.html#ixzz1XrONcVzj

引用 kool 2011-9-14 02:37

Some pretty bad stuff was used in the dye and the glue.

这里不是从质量角度讲，而是从环保角度说的

引用 aubreychen 2011-9-14 13:49

When he decided to give up his job at Milliken Carpet in LaGrange, Georgia to set up a 15-person carpet company, and was clearing out his desk that February of 1973, two colleagues looked in. “We don’t think you can do this,” they told him. He replied, in his languid, ever-courteous southern lilt, “The hell you say.”
这一段描绘的场景是：
猪脚辞职后会自己办公室收拾办公桌（按我们的话说叫卷铺盖去了），这个是后两个同事过来帮忙（应该是关系好的，出于好心），说社么呢：We don’t think you can do this，在这里的意思应该是，我们觉得你办不到、我们觉得你不会成功的，这类意思，然后猪脚很客气的说：真出人意料（但这里的意思是，你们当然这么说，我不意外，早料到你们会这么说，但是我自己是明白这个可行的 languid就能表示出他当时的感觉，就是和你们解释你们也不明白， ever-courteous就是表示，我明白你们其实是好意，所以没必要和你们争吵。）

引用 aubreychen 2011-9-14 14:12

但是，铺上了界面股份有限公司（Interface Inc.）小方地毯董事会的会议室看上去让人认为很昂贵。
-----
没有错，少了个逗号而已。
但是，铺上了界面股份有限公司（Interface Inc.）小方地毯，董事会的会议室看上去让人认为很昂贵。
另：当第二次出现专有名词的时候，因为上文标记过了，可以不必再用括号注释，这句话用个代词我觉得读者也可以理解。

引用 aubreychen 2011-9-14 15:53

刚去拜读完狗哥的大作，回来觉得有个经历和你分享一下，关于：
and recycling old-carpet sludge into pellets that could be used as backing这句话里面的pellet，你翻译成小硬球，肯定是没错的，不过我的经历告诉我，这个小到底可以小到什么程度。
大学时读文献，涉及到一种glass pellet的东西，后来在实验的时候师姐要我去拿这个，我到处也找不到我脑子里的小玻璃球。后来发现竟然是一瓶白面状，原来小到肉眼看不见形状。
所以这种pellet可能是小球，也可能是我们所说的微粒。

引用 lastin90 2011-9-14 23:58

居然在你的词汇楼里学到有关我的英文名Hank的一系列涵义！

感觉词汇楼很适合提高我这样的中级水平学生。赞一个！

查看全部评论(26)