第四单元 课文A
In Search of Davos Man Peter Gumbel
Globalization is sweeping aside national borders and changing relations between nations. What impact does this have on national identities and loyalties? Are they strengthened or weakened? The author investigates.
全球化正在扫除国界、改变国与国之间的关系。这对国家的认同和对国家的忠诚会带来什么影响呢?它们会得到加强还是削弱?作者对这些问题进行了探讨。
In Search of Davos Man
Peter Gumbel
1. William Browder was born in Princeton, New Jersey, grew up in Chicago, and studied at Stanford University in California. But don't call him an American. For the past 16 of his 40 years he has lived outside the U.S., first in London and then, from 1996, in Moscow, where he runs his owninvestment firm. Browder now manages $1.6 billion in assets. In 1998 he gave up his Americanpassport to become a British citizen, since his life is now centered in Europe. \makes no difference for me,\
completely international. If you have four good friends and you like what you are doing, it doesn't matter where you are. That's globalization.\
寻找达沃斯人
彼得·甘贝尔
威廉·布劳德出生于新泽西州的普林斯顿,在芝加哥长大,就读于加利福尼亚州的斯坦福大学。但别叫他美国人。他今年40岁,过去16年来一直生活在美国以外的地方,先是在伦敦,1996年后在莫斯科经营他自己的投资公司。布劳德如今掌管着价值16亿美元的资产。1998年,他放弃美国护照,成为英国公民,因为他现在的生活中心在欧洲。“国家认同对我来说不重要,”他说,“我觉得自己完全是个国际人。如果你有四个朋友,又喜欢你所做的事情,那么你在哪儿无关紧要。这就是全球化。”
2. Alex Mandl is also a fervent believer in globalization, but he views himself very
differently. A former president of AT&T, Mandl, 61, was born in Austria and now runs a French technology company, which is doing more and more business in China. He reckons he spends about 90% of his time traveling on business. But despite all that globetrotting,
Mandl who has been a U.S. citizen for 45 years still identifies himself as an American. \myself as American without anyhesitation. The fact that I spend a lot of time in other places doesn't change that,\
亚历克斯·曼德尔也是全球化的狂热信徒,但他对自己的看法与布劳德不同。61岁的曼德尔曾任美国电报电话公司总裁。他出生于奥地利,现在经营着一家法国技术公司,该公司在中国的业务与日俱增。他估计自己几乎90%的时间都花在出差上。然而,尽管曼德尔全球到处跑,已经做了45年美国公民的他还是认为自己是个美国人。“我毫不迟疑地把自己当作美国人。我在其他地方度过很多时间,但是这一事实不能改变我是美国人,”他说。 3. Although Browder and Mandl define their nationality differently, both see their identity as a matter of personal choice, not an accident of birth. And not incidentally, both are Davos Men, members of the international business élite who trek each year to the Swiss Alpine town for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, founded in 1971. This week, Browder and Mandl will join more than 2,200 executives, politicians, academics, journalists, writers and a handful ofHollywood stars for five days of networking, parties and endless earnest discussions about everything from post-election Iraq and HIV in Africa to the global supply of oil and the implications of nanotechnology. Yet this year, perhaps more than ever, a hot topic at Davos is Davos itself. Whatever their considerable
differences, most Davos Men and Women share at least one belief: that globalization, the unimpeded flows of capital, labor and technology across national borders, is both welcome and unstoppable. They see the world increasingly as one vast,interconnected marketplace in which corporations search for the most advantageous locations to buy, produce and sell their goods and services.
虽然布劳德和曼德尔对各自的国籍界定不同,他们都将国籍视为个人选择,而不是由出生地决定的。而且,他俩都是达沃斯人,这可不是巧合。达沃斯人指的是那些每年长途跋涉去瑞士阿尔卑斯山区小城达沃斯参加年度世界经济论坛——该论坛始于1971年——的国际商业精英们。本周,布劳德和曼德尔将同其他2200余名企业高管、政界人士、学者、记者、作家和少数几位好莱坞明星一起,参加为时五天的交际活动、宴会和没完没了的认真的讨论。讨论话题林林总总,从大选后的伊拉克和非洲的艾滋病病毒到全球的石油供应和纳米技术的重大意义。然而今年,或许比以往更甚的是,达沃斯论坛的一个热门话题就是达沃斯本身。尽管与会男女各不相同,但他们大多数有一个共同信念:全球化,亦即资本、劳动力和技术不受阻碍地跨国界流动,是值得欢迎和不可阻挡的。在他们看来,世界越来越像一个巨大的互相联系的市场。在这个市场里,企业寻求采购、生产及销售产品和服务的最佳地点。 4. As borders and national identities become less important, some find that threatening and even dangerous. In an essay entitled \Denationalization of the
American Elite,\Samuel Huntington describes Davos Man (a phrase that first got widespread attention in the 1990s) as an emerging global superspecies and a threat. The members of this class, he writes, are people who \loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see
national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the élite's global operations.\is starkly at odds with the values of most Americans, who remain deeplycommitted to their
nation. This disconnect, he says, creates \a variety of ways, the American establishment, governmental and private, has become increasinglydivorced from the American people.\
随着边界和对国家的认同变得越来越不重要,有些人将此视作威胁,甚至危险。哈佛大学教授塞缪尔·亨廷顿在一篇题为《死魂灵:美国精英的去国家化》的论文中将达沃斯人(该说法最早在20世纪90年代引起广泛注意)描写成为一个新兴的全球超级物种和威胁。他写道,该阶层的成员“不要什么对国家的忠诚,视国界为障碍,而万幸的是这种障碍正在消失,他们还把国家的政府看作是历史遗留下来的东西,它们唯一的用处就是为精英们的全球运营提供方便。”亨廷顿提出,达沃斯人以全球公民自居的自我形象,与大多数美国人的价值观完全相悖。后者依然坚定地忠于他们自己的国家。他说,这种脱节造成了“一个重大的文化断层。在种种意义上,美国政府和私营企业的当权派们与美国大众渐行渐远。” R T 5. Naturally, many Davos Men don't accept Huntington's terms. Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum, argues that endorsing a global outlook does not mean erasing national identity. \with cultural identity, which needs to be local and national in nature.\
许多达沃斯人自然不同意亨廷顿的说法。世界经济论坛的创始人兼执行主席克劳斯·施瓦布争辩说,支持全球观并不意味着抹去对国家的认同。“全球化决无可能给予我们文化认同,因为后者在本质上必须是本土的、民族的。”
6. Global trade has been around for centuries; the corporations and countries that
benefited from it were largely content to treat vast parts of the world as places to mine natural resources or sell finished products. Even as the globalization of capital accelerated in the 1980s, most foreign investment was between relatively wealthy countries, not from wealthy countries into poorer ones. U.S. technology, companies and money were often at the forefront of this movement.
全球贸易已经持续了几个世纪;过去从中获益的企业和国家在很大程度上满足于将世界上的广大地区视为自然资源的开采地或成品的销售地。即便到了20世纪80年代,资本全球化已经加速,大多数外国投资仍在相对富裕的国家之间进行,而不是从富裕国家流向较贫穷国家。美国的技术、企业和资金通常处于这一流动的前沿。
7. However the past two decades have witnessed the rise of other significant players. The developed world is beating a path to China's and India's door — and Chinese and Indian companies, in turn, have started to look overseas for some of their future growth. Beijing has even started what it calls a \assets overseas. Asian nations are creating \says John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco Systems. \currently more than five times the number of engineers that we are here in the U.S.\means that U.S. and European companies are now facing high-quality, low-cost
competition from overseas. No wonder so many Western workers worry about losing their jobs. \Orit Gadiesh, chairman of consultants Bain & Co. \you're in the Western world you could question that.\
然而,在过去二十年间,另外一些重大参与者出现了。发达国家正在开辟一条通向中
全新版大学英语第四单元课文翻译 In Search of Davos寻找达沃斯人
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