翻译 QL Electronics

宁波立立电子股份有限公司作为我国半导体硅材料行业的龙头企业，产品已进入包括ST、ON-SEMI等著名半导体企业在内的国际主流市场。公司是国家863计划成果产业化基地、国家级高新技术企业，国家高技术产业化示范工程实施单位，建有企业博士后流动站。

QL Electronics Co. Ltd, a leading company in Chinese semi-conductor material industry, has brought out various types of products that have already hitted into the popular international markets with such sounding customers like ST and On-Semi . Further more, QL is the industrialized fruit base of Chinese 863 Program, state class high-tech company as well as model of national high-tech industrialization, also embeded with a post-doctor mobile station..

宁波立立电子股份有限公司的主导产品为硅抛光片、外延片。外延片是在高温下通过化学气象反映，在硅单晶抛光片上生长一层或多层硅单晶薄膜，通过控制生长条件，可以获得不同电阻率，不同厚度及不同型号的外延层，主要用于制造各种硅集成电路和分立器件，是集成电路和分立器件中重要的基础材料。大直径的硅集成电路芯片生产线均选用硅外延片作为起始材料。
Polished wafer and Epi wafer are the primary products of QL. And Epi wafer, on which growed one or more monocrystal thin film through a chain of processes of chemical vapor reactions under high temperature, can acquires defferent resistivity, thickness and type by the means of mastering the constraints. The Epi wafer is the crucial fundemental material mainly for producing either various silicon based integrated circuit(IC) or descrete device. Almost all large-diameter IC chip plants, nowdays, are bread totally with Epi wafer.

公司有意大利LPE、美国应用材料产外延炉七台，生产规模达到70万片/年。
With 7 epi wafer reactoes either brand in Italian LPE and US Applied Materials, it makes QL reached a new high output of 700,000 epi pieces per year.

半导体材料工业是一个投资密集，技术密集，人才密集的产业，在国民经济信息产业中的占有重要的战略地位，各发达国家均投以巨资进行发展。硅材料是最重要也是最主要的半导体材料，当今国际上使用硅材料数量占半导体材料的95%以上。但在国内，硅单晶片都局限于生产φ4″-φ6″的水平，尚无一家规模化生产φ8″以上的硅单晶片、外延片，远远满足不了国内需求及“十一五”期间我国集成电路产业飞速发展的需求。近几年将有十多条φ8″-12″集成电路生产线建成投产，而我国目前尚无一家企业能规模生产φ8″以上硅单晶片、外延片。我公司进行φ8″-12″硅抛光片、外延片产业化工程，必将大大促进和带动我国信息产业，特别是长三角在半导体支撑材料的发展。
Semi-conductor industry is that of large investment required, technologies aggregated and intelligence intensified, and it weigh heavily in the whole state economy information industry, which every rich contry, with no exception, budgets a lot. Silicon made materials are important and primary, as they now are in use with a share of 95% of semi-conductor materials worldwide. The silicon wafer manufacturing in China, however, is a pathetic wide spread low class of the type 4-6 inches, no one has the scaled-manufacture capability beyond 8 inches’s either in crystal or epi wafer, far to meet the need of the Chinese soaring IC in the period of the 11st five-years plan. Therefore, it is already in our company’s pipe line that tens of the lines, focused on type 8-12 inches, will be constructed in the near coming years. The scaled-manufacture project of 8-12 inches, both polished and epi wafer, which has been printed on the calendar in our company will definitely give the country a jump on its information industry, especially on the development of semi-conductor fundamental material in Yangzi Delta area.

翻译 [2006.08.17]Letters

On support for Israel, Georgia, Britain and the Suez crisis, Canada, English
以色列，格鲁吉亚，英国和苏伊士危机，加拿大，英语
Aug 17th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The Economist, 25 St James's Street, London SW1A 1HG
FAX: 020 7839 2968 E-MAIL: letters@economist.com

Israel and its neighbours
以色列和它的邻居们
SIR - It seems odd that Jewish migration following the Holocaust was not cited by you as one of the more “obvious” reasons for America's “unconditional support” for Israel (“To Israel with love”, August 5th). Most of the Jewish survivors and displaced settled in America and Israel after the war as they either could not or did not want to live in Europe. Consequently, many Americans have grown up with Jewish friends who lost relatives in the Holocaust; non-Jewish children attend bar mitzvahs and Jewish identity in popular culture is prevalent. For many people here sympathy towards Israel comes not from a lobbying effort or a yearning for the apocalypse, but from a familiarity and a commitment to the belief that Israel should exist, something that Europeans seem to be increasingly ambivalent about.
先生 - 很奇怪，在大屠杀之后的犹太移民并没有被你们引用，当作美国“无条件援助”以色列的一个更为“明显的”理由。(“To Israel with love”, August 5th)。战后，许多幸存下来的和被转移的犹太人定居到了美国和以色列，因为他们过去没能，也不想生活在欧洲。因此，许多美国人和大屠杀中失去亲人的犹太朋友一起长大；非犹太孩子们也参加成人仪式并且犹太习俗在主流文化中普遍存在。许多人，对于以色列的同情不是因为政治游说，也不是怀念启示录，而是源自对以色列应该存在的理解和认同的信念，这也似乎是欧洲人充满矛盾之处。
Vanessa Johnson
El Paso, Texas

SIR - Much as one condemns the bellicose behaviour of Hizbullah in Lebanon and the hostile actions of Hamas in Palestine, it is hard to understand how Israel could justify its retaliation as self defence. By blasting infrastructure across Lebanon and targeting residential areas and blocking food and fuel supplies, Israel used its military supremacy like a rogue state. Of course Israel has a right to defend itself, but that does not mean it is free to inflict a collective punishment on a whole population. It was pathetic that the world watched the devastation and the killing of civilians and took no immediate action to stop it.
先生 - 正如一个人谴责黎巴嫩真主党的好战行为和巴勒斯坦哈马斯的敌对举动一样，很难理解为什么以色列能把它的复仇行径说成是自卫。通过炸毁黎巴嫩的基础设施，定点打击生活区，切断食品和能源供应，以色列就像一个流氓国家一样滥用自己的军事霸权。当然，以色列有权进行自我防卫，但是这并不意味着要随意对一个民族进行集体惩罚。可悲的是，世界在目睹这样的毁坏和对平民的杀戮，而却没有采取任何即时的措施来进行制止。
Samih Sherif
Montreux, Switzerland

SIR - You repeated the old fiction that American support for Israel is unconditional and unquestioning. If Israel expressed an intent to destroy Arab nations or if the Israeli military were to hide its fighters among civilians then I expect that the American view would be different. The real issue is why does so much of the world offer unquestioning support for Hizbullah and unconditionally condemn Israel?
先生 - 你又旧话重提，认为美国人没有条件，不问是非的支持以色列。如果以色列表露出要摧毁阿拉伯国家的意图，或者如果以色列军队滥杀无辜，那么我认为美国人的立场就会不同了。问题是为什么世界上有那么多对真主党不问是非的支持和对以色无条件的列谴责？
Mark Paskowitz
London

SIR - In analysing why it is that Americans support Israel you omitted to mention intimidation. Many of us who feel that such unconditional support is not in America's national interest discuss it only among ourselves, fearful of being tarred with the label of “anti-Semite” that is invariably thrown at Israel's critics. Such a tactic is calculated, methodical, invidious?and remarkably effective.
先生 - 仔细分析一下，为什么美国人支持以色列，你忘记提到犹太胁迫了。我们许多人认为这种无条件援助不是美国的国家利益，但是只是局限在我们自己的圈子中讨论，因为害怕被涂上可怕的“反犹太”标签，一下子就被推到了以色列的对立面。这样的手段是有计划的，有系统的，是诽谤----不过十分奏效。
Byron Miller
Raleigh, North Carolina

SIR - As an American born here in 1982 to Lebanese parents it was disheartening to watch the destruction of Lebanon. The country I knew was one of revival and hope and “paradise lost” was a sentiment once reserved for the generation of my mother and father. If Israel's purpose was to enrage and embitter a generation of us who seek a just and lasting peace, then its assault was a wild success.
先生 - 作为一个生在美国有黎巴嫩双亲的美国人，目睹着黎巴嫩被毁十分痛心。我眼中的那个国家曾经是一个复苏的，充满希望的，“失乐园”似的，感情上它曾经哺育过我母亲和父亲那一代人。如果以色列是想激怒并让我们这一代追求公正和持久和平的一代受苦，那么它的袭击是不会得逞的。
Khaled Hal Saad
Oakland, California

SIR - It is a mistake to think that Israel won a “lopsided” victory in the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict (“The war beyond the war”, August 5th). During the war Jewish Jerusalem was shelled indiscriminately and besieged for months by Arab forces and saw its population almost reduced to starvation. Before Israeli forces were able to break through to relieve the siege Jordanian forces destroyed the Jewish quarter. Egyptian troops advanced almost to Tel Aviv before being halted by Israeli counter-attacks. All in all the Arab assault included numerous sorties that targeted civilians, who accounted for one-third of the 6,000 Jews killed in the conflict. It was an Israeli victory, but hardly lopsided.
先生 - 若认为以色列在1984年阿以冲突中赢得了“一边倒”的胜利，那么就错了。(“The war beyond the war”, August 5th)。战争期间，犹太人生活的耶路撒冷城区无故的缩小了，并且被阿拉伯军队围困了几个月，眼睁睁的看着饥饿让人口数量下降。在以色列军队能够解围时，约旦军队摧毁了犹太人的那四分之一城区。埃及军队挺进到了Tel Aviv才遇到以色列的反击。总之，阿拉伯的攻击中有很多是针对平民的突击，有人计算冲突期间在6000犹太死者中，有三分之一是这样死的。胜利是以色列的，但是没有那么一边倒。
Raphael Lerner
Glencoe, Illinois

Emerging nations?
正在崛起的国家？
SIR - There is another factor that explains the escalating conflict in Georgia (“Fighting talk casts a summer shadow”, August 5th). The truth is, Abkhazians and South Ossetians want to be part of Georgia about as much as Albanian Kosovars want to be part of Serbia. Ethnic cleansing in the early 1990s in Abkhazia was as severe as in the Balkans. And just as Kosovars found their saviours in American planes, Abkhazians sided with Russia to oppose Georgia. Not much “winning back” can happen in this land, which is probably for the better. You seem to be supportive of Kosovo's efforts to gain independence, so why shy away from the same principle for Abkhazia and South Ossetia?
先生 - 还有一个因素可以解释在格鲁吉亚不断升级的冲突。(“Fighting talk casts a summer shadow”, August 5th)。事实上，阿布哈西亚人和南奥赛梯人曾想加入格鲁吉亚，而同样多的阿尔巴尼亚科索沃人想成为塞尔维亚的一部分。格鲁吉亚阿柏克兹亚地区90年代初的种族清洗就和巴尔干半岛的情况一样严重。当科索沃人在美国飞机中找到了自己的救星时，阿布哈西亚人和俄国站在了一起对抗格鲁吉亚。这片土地上很少有“赢回来”的例子，有一些的话可能会好一点。你可能会倾向于支持科索沃人争取独立的不懈努力，那么为什么要避开对于阿布哈西和南奥赛梯同样的宿求呢？
Oleg Bibergan
New York

Britain's way in the world
英国的世界路线
SIR - You are correct to consider the Suez crisis as Britain's 20th-century Crimea (“An affair to remember”, July 29th). But you understated how significant the experience was for Britain's learning curve in post-war international relations. After the bruising encounter with Gamal Abdul Nasser's Arab nationalism, Britain actually went on to achieve quite a successful record in its Asian affairs. It was one of the first to exercise diplomacy with communist China, acquired good relations with the Bandung nations, and, during the Malay guerrilla war, it became the first power to use a campaign of “hearts and minds” to fight an insurrection. Harold Macmillan's “winds of change” demonstrated that a lot was learned from the lesson of Suez.
先生 - 把苏伊士危机看作20世纪英国的克里米亚(“An affair to remember”, July 29th)是正确的。然而你却轻视了，从战后国际关系中英国的学习过程是多么有意义的经验。吃了Gamal Abdul Nasser的阿拉伯民族主义的亏后，英国事实上很成功的处理好了它的亚洲事务。它是第一批和共产主义中国建立外交关系的西方国家，与参加万隆会议的与会各国也建立了良好的关系，并且，在马来西亚游击战期间，英国还是第一个利用“心和思想”活动打败起义的国家。Harold Macmillan的“转变的旋风”阐述了英国从苏伊士学到了很多东西。

Tze Shiung Ng
Kuala Lumpur

SIR - Research suggests that the Russian vote at the UN in favour of the ceasefire resolution proposed by the United States on November 2nd 1956 was in no way related to supporting the initiative. Instead, it was part of a Soviet strategy to engage the UN and distract opinion from the Hungarian uprising, which was brutally crushed just two days later.
先生 - 研究指出，1956年，十一月2日，俄国人在联合国投票赞成美国提出的停火方案，和它要主动提供援助没有丝毫的联系。这样做，是苏联吸引联合国注意力的一个策略，并转移它们在匈牙利起义上的注意力，两天后这场起义被残酷的镇压了。
Eugene Siklos
Toronto

SIR - The UN took up a Canadian “suggestion” to send an international emergency force to the canal to monitor a ceasefire? The Canadian who made that suggestion, Lester Pearson, won the 1957 Nobel peace prize for his efforts and went on to become a brilliant prime minister.
先生 - 联合国采纳加拿大的“提议”，要派出一支多国紧急维和部队到运河那里监督停火情况吗？提出这项建议的加拿大人，莱斯特 批尔森，用自己的努力赢得了1957年诺贝尔和平奖并且成为了一位出色的总理。
R.M. Burns
Surrey, Canada

An overstated fact
一个被夸大的事实
SIR - Your article on citizenship in Canada stated that all Canadians “either came from somewhere else or are descendants of someone who did” (“I'm a lumberjack, and you're not”, August 5th). Good lord, I am in my 70s and my four grandparents were born here. How many years does it take to be recognised as a native of one's country of birth?
先生 - 你那篇关于加拿大居民身份的文章说，所有加拿大人“要么是从别的什么地方移居过来的，要么就是这些移居过来的人的后代” (“I'm a lumberjack, and you're not”, August 5th)。天呐，我现在都70多岁了，我的四个祖父母都是在这里出生的。要用多少年才能认定你是出生在这个国家的本地人？
George Parslow
Victoria, Canada

Like, duh
SIR - David Legard used sarcasm to criticise The Economist for employing a popular phrase (“it's sooo yesterday”) that flummoxed his language students (Letters, August 5th). But if he really does “appreciate excellent written English”, how can he not appreciate your use of humour? English constantly evolves and to anyone who thinks the language should be preserved in a state of petrified perfection I say: it ain't gonna happen, dude.
先生 - David Legard运用讽刺挖苦的手法，批评了经济学人杂志引进的一个短语（“太昨天式了”）。因为这种说法让英语学生惶恐不安(Letters, August 5th)。可是，如果那学生的确“欣赏出色的英语写作”，他怎么可能不去喜欢你的幽默呢？英语不停的发展着，如果一个人认为这门语言该保留在一个古板的完美状态，我说：这种事不会发生的，聪明人。
Colin Webb
Perth, Australia

翻译

New fiction
新小说
Window on the world
世界之窗
Aug 17th 2006
From The Economist print edition
Claire Messud's new novel will make her name
克莱儿 梅苏德的新小说会让她出名

CLAIRE MESSUD has always been one for surprises. Whereas many novelists start out writing semi-veiled autobiographies dressed up as coming-of-age stories, Ms Messud, at the age of 28, brought out a novel called “When the World was Steady”, about two middle-aged British sisters who discover that they are not at all the people they thought they were. When she did finally get around to writing her coming-of-age story, “The Last Life”, it was not her own but that of a French teenager trying to come to terms with her fatherland after her family are forced to flee Algeria during the troubles that preceded its independence.
克莱尔 马修总是一个能带来惊喜的人。正当许多小说家开始创作半自传体式的成年故事时，马修女士，在她28岁时，推出了一本名为“When the World was Steady”的小说，这本小说讲述了两位英国中年妇女如何发现她们根本不是自己想像中的人。等到她终于有时间创作自己的成年故事“The Last Life”时，这也不是讲她自己的，而是讲一个法国青少年，在法国的前殖民地阿尔及利亚独立后，一家人逃离了那里，之后如何忍受陌生的祖国的故事。

Ms Messud's new novel is yet again a surprise---a comedy of manners set in the months immediately before and after the September 11th 2001 attacks and involving three bright young things who work in the media in New York. As the judges of the Man Booker prize recognised this week when they placed “The Emperor's Children” on the long list for the 2006 award, the surprise here is that such an obvious and overworked cliché can be transformed into so intelligent and unsparing a piece of fiction.
马修女士的新小说仍然是一个惊喜---这部生活喜剧发生在911前后几个月里，故事中有三个工作在纽约媒体界的年轻人。本周当布克奖的评委把“国王的孩子”列入了2006年长长的获奖名单时，让人惊奇的是，这么明显的老掉牙的故事居然能被写成一部如此聪明与犀利的小说。

Marina Thwaite, Danielle Minkoff and Julius Clarke met at Brown University, and left believing they were destined to do important things. But as they approach 30, they are struggling: Danielle to make television documentaries and Julius to bolster his meagre earnings as a freelance critic by temping in secret in his only good suit. “This is New York, guys. And people without money aren't noble, they're beggars.” Marina, the beautiful only daughter of a celebrated social pundit, has gone back to living with her parents on the Upper West Side, unable to finish “The Emperor's Children Have No Clothes”, her book on how children's apparel mirrors changes in society, which a publisher commissioned mostly because of her father's fame.
马莲娜 斯维特， 丹尼尔 明柯夫和朱利叶斯 克拉克 同在布朗大学上学，毕业时都认为各自会干一番大事。可到了他们快30岁的时候，他们还在和命运苦斗：丹尼尔要制作电视记录片，自由评论家朱利叶斯穿着唯一的西服打工，苦苦维系着自己绵薄的收入。“这就是纽约，哥儿们。没钱的人就是卑贱的，是乞丐。”漂亮的马莲娜是一位著名的社会评论家的独生女，没能完成“国王的孩子没有衣裳”，她也不得不回到西海岸上流社会的父母家中生活，书里讲的是关于童装试衣镜如何随社会变化，不过出版商答应出版这本书主要还是因为她父亲的名望。

Straddling this trio is the celebrated journalist himself, Marina's father, Murray Thwaite, the emperor. Tall, with leonine hair and smelling vaguely of gin-and-tonic---his favourite cologne is Christian Dior's Eau Sauvage---Thwaite is a popular commentator on television and on campus. “He loved to talk...he loved to teach”. Thwaite made his name young, studying France's wartime resistance movement while on a Fulbright scholarship to Paris, and is devoted to his wife of many years, a saintly lawyer who represents the “battered housewife or burly, knuckleheaded truant”. To many people he is a hero.
横跨在这三重唱之上的还是那位记者本人，马莲娜的父亲，莫里 斯维特，书中的国王。高高的个子，留着狮型发，身上有股淡淡的杜松子酒和香味饮料的味道---他最喜欢的古龙香水是Christian Dior's Eau Sauvage---斯维特是一个颇受欢迎的电视和校园评论员。“他健谈…他爱教育”。斯维特的公众形象生气勃勃，他曾享受着富布莱特奖学金在巴黎研究法国战时抵抗运动，他多年来深爱着自己的妻子，这位律师妻子一直为“受家庭暴力迫害的妇女，或者是四肢发达的愚蠢落魄逃避者”提供法律辩护。

Into this scene come two agents of change. One is Ludovic Seeley, a reptilian Australian journalist with a passion for the maxims of Napoleon, who is sent to New York to launch a new magazine of “questioning essays” which he hopes will distract the city's inhabitants from their perennial navel-gazing and revolutionise the place. The second is Thwaite's plump, proud nephew Frederick “Bootie” Tubb, who wears old-fashioned brown flannel pyjamas and holds the world to such impossible standards he turned down a place at Harvard in favour of becoming an autodidact.
在这样的故事背景下，来了两个改变现状的人。一个叫鲁道夫 斯利，澳大利亚的狗仔记者，信奉着拿破仑的格言，他被派到纽约来负责创办一个名为“质问小品文”的杂志，寄希望于这本杂志来扭转公众四季不变的阅读习惯并且完全改变当地的现状。第二个人是斯维特自傲的胖侄子弗雷德里克“毛线鞋”塔布。穿着老式棕色德法兰绒睡衣的他把世界定格的太过严格，为了成为一个自学成才的人，他拒绝了去就读哈佛。

Seeley sucks up to Thwaite, but secretly believes he is a fraud, a “Wizard of Oz, a tiny, pointless man roaring behind a curtain”, and he plots his ruin as he seduces his daughter. Bootie is one of the many who revere Murray Thwaite until he begins to uncover, after he becomes his uncle's amanuensis, that his hero may be no more than an “imposing fa?ade...a hollow monument”. Among other things, Thwaite rehashes old stories he has written before, sits in his study in the morning sipping from a bottle of whisky in the drawer of his desk and calmly blows away a commitment to speak at a fund-raising dinner for a Harlem youth programme in favour of a publisher's invitation to a dinner in honour of two well-known Palestinian activists. He may, Bootie suspects, even be having an affair.
斯利虽然拍着斯维特的马屁，但却认为他是一个骗子，一个“绿野仙踪里，矮小的，无足轻重的，在幕边叫喊的小角色”，并且要通过诱导斯维特的女儿来毁掉斯维特。布提也曾是一个敬仰莫里 斯维特的人，不过在他作为他叔叔的抄写员并揭露了他叔叔后就再也不是了，因为他的英雄可能只不过是“仪表堂堂的榜样…一座空洞的纪念碑”。除了别的事情，斯维特重新创作了一个自己曾经写过的老故事，清晨，他坐在自己的书房里一边喝着从抽屉里取出的威士忌，一边平静的吹走了一份关于在黑人青年计划的募款晚宴上发言的承诺书，为的是出席一个出版商举办的纪念两位巴勒斯坦激进分子的晚宴。布提怀疑，他甚至可能要惹事。

In the months between March and November 2001, the lives of these six characters?like those of so many in the city?are turned inside out. In fine, fluid brush strokes Ms Messud exposes their fears and their secrets. Two set pieces stand out: the death of the Thwaites' aged cat and the disintegration of Julius's gay love affair. Neither is essential to the plot, and yet each of these pieces of writing, the first no more than a page long, illuminates Ms Messud's particular gifts. She excels at depicting the neurotic uncertainties of people who know they are privileged but feel sorry for themselves anyway. But it is the finesse with which she satirises these people but still leaves you caring what happens to them that is the book's great achievement. “The Emperor's Children” is likely to be one of the most talked-about novels of the autumn, and not just by New York thirty-somethings in the media. Buy two copies; give one to a friend.
从2001年三月到十一月，这六个人物的生活??就像那座城市中的许多人一样??被彻底改变了。最后，梅苏德女士用接二连三的打击揭露了这些人的恐惧和秘密。有两件事显得十分突出：斯维特的老猫死了，还有朱利叶斯的同性恋爱吹了。这两件事都不是小说情节所必须的，也不是段落中不可或缺的，前一个故事还没有一页长，这显示出了梅苏德女士特殊的才华。她出色的描写了人们精神上的变化无常，这些人都以为自己很特殊，不过最后都还是对生活无可奈何。她讽刺这些人，然而依旧把他们命运的想象的空间留给你，这种灵巧的写作手腕是这本书最成功的地方。“国王的孩子”可能是这个秋天最值得探讨的小说之一，不仅仅局限于三十多岁的纽约媒体人。买两本：送一本给你的朋友。

最近

一个半月过去了。
过着没有考试压力、没有假期可以期待、没有给你提问题的老师、没有积极进取的同学，这种日子真不好受。
给自己压力。加油！
不活在别人的眼里。

<< Economist >>[2006.08.17]Click to download

Amazon.com
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Aug 17th 2006From The Economist print edition

Having taught the world how to shop online, Amazon.com now finds the world shopping elsewhere on the internet. It is time to become a pioneer again
教会了徒弟，饿死了师父。是时候再次成为开创者了。

IN HIS most recent annual report, Jeff Bezos, the founder and chief executive of Amazon.com, reprints his letter to shareholders of 1997. “It's all about the long term,” he wrote then. The point he is making today is that nothing has changed: the pioneer of online retailing is still having to place big bets on the future, cutting into profit margins and unnerving some investors. Having established the internet as somewhere to buy things, Amazon is again spending heavily on development in anticipation of consumers wanting to download music, video and books instead of having them delivered in the post.
最新的亚马逊年报中再版了其创始人兼首席执行官，杰夫贝佐斯， 1997年给股东们的信。信中曾写道“这是为了公司的长期发展”。今日旧话重提意未改：这个网上零售先驱仍然需要对其未来发展赌一把，削减利润率，吓跑一部分投资者。将因特网变成一处购物的地方后，如今，不同于邮递，亚马逊在线又开始斥巨资培育消费者们对音乐、视频和书籍的下载市场。

Amazon is highly secretive about its plans, but the online industry expects it soon to launch a service for downloading films and television shows. Amazon's investment in new technology and services helped slash net profit by 58% to $22m in its second quarter, compared with the same period a year earlier. This is despite a 22% increase in sales, which are expected to reach $10.6 billion for 2006 as a whole.
亚马逊在线对自己的计划缄默碛口，但是这个行业预期它很快会推出电影和电视节目的下载服务。在新技术和新服务上的投资，让亚马逊在线第二季度的净利润与去年同比减少58%，降到了220万美元。这其中还包括了22%的销售收入增长因素，市场还曾预期其2006年全年的销售收入会达到106亿美元。

Boosting sales has been costly for Amazon, which appeared on the internet in July 1995 selling books. It has pumped money into discounted shipping and diversifying its merchandise away from books, to create what Mr Bezos likes to describe as “Earth's biggest selection”. Not just music and video discs have been added, but also consumer electronics, jewellery, clothing and, most recently, groceries (largely non-perishable packs of items).
与1995年7月在网上卖书时一样，现在再提高销售量对亚马逊在线来说成本太高。很多钱被花在送货折扣和商品多元化上，造就了贝佐斯描绘的“巨无霸选择”。囊括其中的不仅有音乐和视频影碟，还有消费电器，珠宝，服装，最近还加入了杂货（众多种类的耐用品）。

Amazon's product range is expanding in much the same way as online sales are. As people become more accustomed to shopping on the internet, they are ordering a greater variety of goods and services from a wider range of websites. In America online sales were up by 25% in 2005 over the previous year, reckons Forrester, a research company. Travel is now by far the biggest category, worth some $63 billion last year, followed by computer equipment and software ($14 billion), cars ($13 billion), clothing ($11 billion) and home furnishings ($8 billion).
亚马逊的经营范围同网络销售的发展一样逐渐扩大。人们渐渐习惯于网上购物，从不同的网站上面定购各种各样的货物。reckons Forrester研究称，在美国，网上销售收入在去年上升了25%。旅游是其中最大的一项，去年达到约630亿美元，接着是电脑设备和软件业（140亿美元），汽车业（130亿美元），服装业（110亿美元）和家具业（80亿美元）。

Amazon's challengers come from two directions. First, other online retailers are growing rapidly and appear in various forms. Many of the dotcoms are invading each others' turf. From auctioning people's old stuff, eBay now also hosts fixed-priced virtual shops offering new goods for sale. And Google is adding more shopping-type services, such as Froogle, a shopping-comparison service, and more recently its new Checkout payments system, which rivals eBay's PayPal.
亚马逊的挑战者分为两类。其一，别的网上零售商在以不同方式快速成长。许多网络公司正在进军对手的领域。不光拍卖人们的旧货了，eBay现在也寄存有虚拟商店，它们出售明码标价的新商品。此外Google也在增加更多的购物类的服务，像提供购物比较服务的Froogle，还有最近与eBay支付宝抗衡的支付系统。

Second, traditional retailers are rapidly getting their online acts together. This pits Amazon against giant retailers with huge purchasing power, like America's Wal-Mart and Britain's Tesco. These “multichannel” retailers make a virtue of their ability to offer both “bricks and clicks”. Many provide online customers with the option of picking up goods from the shop down the road. This is proving popular with web buyers who want things immediately or are keen to avoid shipping costs and staying in to accept a delivery. Circuit City, a big American electricals chain, expects in-store pick-ups to account for more than half its online sales this year.
其二，传统零售商也在加紧整合他们自己的网络业务。这就使得亚马逊与零售巨头们一同争抢庞大的消费群体，像美国的沃尔马和英国的德斯高。这些“多层次的”零售者们尽其所能的提供“水泥加鼠标”式的服务。其中的很多给网上用户提供送货服务。这项服务对买家来说十分受欢迎，买家们想尽快的得到货物或者是想避免运费，所以在家中等着货物被送上门。美国电器连锁店，电路城，希望今年人们的储备性购买可以占其一多半的网上销售量。

Mr Bezos saw these threats coming and prepared for them. The internet provides consumers with near perfect product and price visibility. It does not take many clicks of a mouse to compare Amazon's prices. Mr Bezos decided there was no point trying to duck this and in 2000 invited other retailers to sell their goods on his website.
贝佐斯先生看出了这些威胁，他做好了准备。互联网给消费者提供众多可见的产品和价格。而且不需要点太多下来比较。贝佐斯先生决定让这一想法付诸实践，并且在2000年邀请其他零售商在自己的网站上卖他们的东西。

Many people, even some within the company, thought this would cannibalise Amazon's own sales. Yet as with many consumer innovations, Mr Bezos has said there was no way to know if the strategy would work other than to experiment.
许多人，甚至是公司里的人，都认为这是在侵蚀自己。然而和他的许多消费创新认识一样，贝佐斯先生说，不去试一试的话就没有办法知道它行不行的通。

It did help to lift overall sales. Amazon says sales of third-party items, from which it takes a commission, have increased from 6% of all items sold in 2000 to 28% in 2005. Over that time, the company says its own retail revenues were up three-fold.
他的做法的确促进了整体销售。亚马逊称第三方产品的销售增长率从2000年的6％攀升到了2005年的28％。公司也是从第三方产品的销售中获取佣金的。

Amazon also runs the websites of other retailers, such as Target and Borders. Not all these arrangements are successful. Amazon used to have a joint webstore with Toys “R” Us, but earlier this year a court ruled that Toys “R” Us could end the deal because Amazon had breached an exclusivity agreement by allowing other merchants to sell their toys on the site.
亚马逊也运营着其他零售商的网站，就像靶心和靶边。这种安排也不总是成功。亚马逊过去和Toys “R” Us就拥有一个合资的网络商店，但是不久前法院裁定Toys “R” Us可以终止合作，因为亚马逊让其他商人在那个网站上卖玩具，违反了合同中的一项排他性协议。

Having other retailers competing with you so openly puts Amazon under pressure to make sure that it has the lowest prices. This can cut into margins, but the company hopes the payback will come from customers who want to buy something from a third party also acquiring goods that Amazon itself is selling.
你这么开诚布公的与其他零售商竞争，就让人们难以相信你的价格是最低的。这样会削减利润，但是这家公司寄希望于消费者，那些既想从第三方买东西的也想买亚马逊商品的人。

To encourage this, Amazon provides the same checkout for both third-party sales and its own purchases. It also puts plenty of temptation in customers' way by recommending purchases. These are based on what other customers who have chosen the same product have bought and the buyer's own previous purchases. On August 10th Amazon expanded this with the launch of “Search Suggestions”, in which customers, sellers, authors and other users can make recommendations that are linked to search keywords.
为了鼓励这种消费，亚马逊对第三方的销售过程应用和自己同样的支付模式。同时也用购买推荐来刺激用户的购买欲望。这样的推荐，依靠购买了同样产品的消费者还购买了什么其他物品，和购买者自己的往期购买记录。8月10日亚马逊启用了一个“搜索建议”功能来增强这种激励手段，这种功能可以让顾客、商家、作者和其他用户在商品关键字搜索结果上显示一些购买建议。

Getting things quickly and cheaply to customers can be expensive. Amazon often subsidises shipping costs through special deals. The main one is Amazon Prime. In return for a fee of $79 a year, the company provides members of the programme with unlimited express shipping on most goods.
让客户快捷廉价的得到商品，其成本是昂贵的。亚马逊经常免去特别交易的运费。这块主要就是亚马逊优惠。交79美元年费，公司就会给会员提供大多数商品一年无限制的快递服务。

Movies to go
涉足电影
By building its brand and expanding its offerings, Amazon has done all the right things, says Safa Rashtchy, an analyst with Piper Jaffray, an investment bank. “Free shipping should not be taken lightly,” he adds. “It is a major marketing tactic for them.” But in the decade ahead, he wonders if Amazon will still be doing so well unless it can also offer delivery by download too. Mr Rashtchy thinks Amazon may have missed the boat with digital music, but could still have a chance to become a big online destination for digital video.
投资银行Piper Jaffray的一位分析师Safa Rashtchy说，通过建立品牌形象和扩大赠送范围，亚马逊把正确的事都做了。他补充到“免费配送可不是一件轻松的事”。“对他们来说这是一个主要的市场营销策略”。可未来的10年，如果不提供下载配送，这位分析师想知道亚马逊是否还能保持这样的佳绩。Rashtchy先生认为亚马逊没有赶上数码音乐的船，但仍然有机会成为一个得到数码视频的好去处。

The battle for downloads is becoming more intense. The market for digital music is dominated by Apple's iTunes, which is also likely to expand into video. Microsoft is entering the music-download business with a digital player, called Zune. On August 8th Nokia bought an American digital-music distributor, Loudeye, to develop its own service for its music-enabled handsets. The Finnish telecoms-equipment company says these are now selling roughly twice as fast as Apple's iPods.
下载服务的战火越烧越旺。数码音乐的市场已经被苹果的iTunes占领了，它也希望进军到视频领域。微软也在用一个名为Zune的数码播放器拓展音乐下载业务。为了给自己能听音乐的手机提供自己的服务，8月8日诺基亚收购了美国数字音乐发行商Loudeye。这家芬兰电信设备公司称，这种手机现在大概比苹果的iPods好卖两倍。

Video downloads are available online from some sites, such as Movielink.com, which is owned by five big film studios. News Corp's websites, including MySpace.com, are planning to sell films and shows from the group's Fox network.
有些网站提供视频下载，像被5大电影工作室拥有的Movielink.com。新闻企业网站MySpace.com正计划出售福克斯网络集团的电影和电视节目。

Amazon does provide some digital downloads of music and video, although it is mainly promotional material. At heart the company remains primarily a purveyor of old-world media: some two-thirds of its sales are from books, CDs and DVDs. Whatever share of media ends up being downloaded, Amazon will miss out unless it introduces its own service. The one it is said to have in the pipeline has evolved in the past year from offering mostly music to concentrating more on films and television shows, according to Advertising Age. The trade publication says this is because Amazon's executives felt Apple's grip on the music market would be too difficult to break.
亚马逊的确提供一些音乐和视频下载服务，虽然那只是一些促销材料。骨子里它还是一个旧时代的媒体承销商：其三分之二的销售收入来自图书、CD和DVD。不管这些传媒的物理载体会不会因为下载而消失，要是不推出自己的下载服务，亚马逊都会错过成功的机会。据说这一要纳入规划的建议去年就制定好了，在广告时代，要汇集更多的电影和电视节目而非单纯的提供音乐。商业出版商说，这是因为亚马逊的主管们感到难以打破苹果公司对音乐市场的控制。

A video service could resemble a downloadable version of Netflix, a Californian company that pioneered online video rentals. Netflix's customers compile online lists of videos they want to see and receive them in the post. When the DVDs are returned in their pre-paid envelopes, the next titles are sent. With no late fees, Netflix has pummelled Blockbuster's store-based video-rental model.
视频服务可以类似于一个可下载版的Netflix，这是一个加州的网上视频租赁公司。Netflix的客户编制好他们需要的视频列表，然后就可以在邮件中收到它们。当用户把DVD放在预付邮封中寄回公司时，物品名称列表也寄了出来。因为没有滞纳金，Netflix撼动了Blockbuster基于商店的视频租赁模式。

Netflix is also exploring how to deliver movies online. Amazon has already copied the Netflix postal model in Britain and Germany and it has dropped hints that it may launch a postal service in America: Mr Bezos told Wired magazine last year that Amazon was well placed to do so “...and we wouldn't have to pay heavy marketing fees.” The same could be said about video downloads. Although Mr Bezos has discussed his strategy in the past with The Economist, the company did not respond to requests for an interview.
Netflix也在探索如何在线交付电影。亚马逊已经将Netflix的邮寄模式搬到了英国和德国，并且已经暗示要在美国提供这样的服务：贝佐斯先生去年告诉《在线》杂志，亚马逊已经准备好这样做了“并且我们不用负担沉重的营销费用”。对于视频下载也应如此。尽管贝佐斯先生去年已经和《经济学人》讨论过他的策略，但是公司还是没有为此而召开过新闻发布会。

How much media will move to online delivery is the subject of huge debate. Plenty of music is already delivered this way. Yet for three-quarters of internet users, CDs remain the most popular format for music, according to a big survey of the British music market by Nielsen//NetRatings. Internet users are more likely to buy music online, on average spending ?59 ($107) a year downloading it. But the study found they also spend another ?99 on CDs.
有多少媒体产品的交易会转移到在线交付是一个极具争议的问题。大量的音乐已经通过这样的方式交付了。根据Nielsen//NetRatings对英国音乐市场的调查，对于四分之三的网络用户来说，CD仍然比音乐受欢迎的多。网络用户更愿意通过在线的方式购买音乐，平均每年花费59英镑（107美元）下载。但是研究还发现他们也会花99英镑在CD上。


“The need to own music in a physical form, whether it's to play in other music systems, to minimise the chances of losing it or just because they like to have a physical collection, remains very strong amongst internet users,” says Alex Burmaster, the research company's European internet analyst. The same will be true for video, which in digital form is cumbersome and takes longer to download. Broadband-equipped televisions and personal video recorders will make the process easier. Reluctance to read books on digital devices could be even stronger.
这个研究公司的欧洲网络分析师Alex Burmaster 说“希望拥有独立的音乐实体，而不管是不是要在别的音响系统中播放，保存也好收藏也罢，这样的需求在网络用户中非常强。”对于视频也是这样，虽然它的数据形式比较麻烦，需要更长的时间去下载。装配了宽带的电视和个人视频刻录机会让这种过程简单的多。还有，不愿对着数码设备读书的需求也很高。

The great disintermediator
了不起的中介人
Yet digital downloads of all types of media will be demanded by some customers?perhaps too many to ignore. Amazon is already well placed to offer these, not least because of its high level of customer service. The company has been building up the capacity to store huge amounts of digital data: a subsidiary called Amazon S3 rents out temporary storage by the terabyte to other websites.
然而有些客户需要下载所有形式的媒体??也许他们多得不能被忽视。亚马逊已经准备好提供这些服务了，服务决不会差，因为它的客户服务水平一贯很高。公司现在也有能力储存这般海量的数码数据：一个亚马逊的子公司S3还给其它公司提供临时的千兆字节数据存储租赁服务。

Some of this online equivalent to Amazon's physical warehouses is already being filled by digital copies of books. Another Amazon subsidiary, BookSurge, is busy courting publishers to have their works scanned into digital files. Modern printing techniques allow books to be printed relatively cheaply on demand, “whether it's one copy or one thousand”, Greg Greeley, head of media products at Amazon, said when BookSurge was acquired last April.
一些和亚马逊实物仓库等价的存储空间，已经储存了图书的数码副本。另一个亚马逊的子公司，BookSurge，正在忙着说服出版商们将他们自己的出版物扫描成数码文件。在线购物时，现代打印科技能相对便宜的印刷书籍。四月份，BookSurge 说服成功后，亚马逊媒体产品主管Greg Greeley 说道“不管存货只有一份还是有一千份。”

On-demand printing is particularly suited to lower-volume books and those that would ordinarily be “out of print”. Amazon already sells print-on-demand books, although that is “invisible” to consumers, Mr Bezos has said, because they look exactly like any other books.
按需求印刷特别适用于发行量较小的书籍，而且通常都是“绝版”了的。亚马逊其实已经卖过按需求印刷的书籍，客户对此并不知情，贝佐斯先生说，因为这些书和其它的书看起来一样。

Just as music and videos could be offered with the option of buying a downloadable version, so too could books. Many people are sceptical, yet devices for reading digital books and documents are rapidly improving. A new “e-reader” device from Sony has a special screen that mimics the way light falls on a printed page. The size of a paperback, it can store several hundred novels.
音乐和视频能作为可下载版本出售，书籍也可以。许多人怀疑这一点，然而用来阅读电子图书和文件的设备却在飞速的改进中。一个索尼的“e-reader”装置有一个模仿灯光照在印刷纸张上的特殊屏幕。这种软皮本的容量能存储几百本小说。

In a statement, Mr Bezos says he is “looking forward” to a slowdown in the company's rate of growth in technology spending later this year. That will cheer Amazon's patient investors. In the past year its share price has underperformed the NASDAQ. Unless the pioneer of online retailing can provide downloadable media it risks being “disintermediated”?rather as only a decade ago high-street bookshops, music and video stores were disintermediated by Amazon itself.
声明中，贝佐斯先生说他“希望看到”，下半年公司技术研发支出的增长能够减速。那样会让亚马逊的理性投资者高兴。过去一年，这家公司的纳斯达克股价表现糟糕。除非这位网上零售业的先驱可以提供可下载媒体，否则它会冒被“去中介化”的风险??就像10年前，高速公路边的书店、音乐和视频商店被亚马逊去了中介化一样。