翻译作业5

Passage one : The Success of Mc Donald’s

1 McDonald’s, with its humble start as a small restaurant in 1954, has now grown into one of the world’s leading food service retailers, with more than 33,000 restaurants serving more than 64 million people in more than 119 countries every day. But how is McDonald’s what it is today?

2 Let our memory roll back to 1954, when Raymond Kroc, a milk-shake machine salesman, came across the Macdonald brothers’ (Richard and Maurice) small hamburger shop in Southern Cal ifornia. So impressed was Ray Kroc with the brothers’ approach that he became their national franchise agent, relying on the shop’s proven operating system—the Speed Service System, to maintain quality.

3 Kroc opened his first McDonald’s in 1955 in Des P laines, Illinois. Convinced the chain would be more successful if it were independent, he bought out the brothers for a sum of $2.7 million. Just three years later, the famous mascot Ronald McDonald made his debut—the 500th McDonald’s restaurant had been o pened, and more than 1 billion hamburgers had been sold.

4 What was the key to Kroc’s unbelievable success? Probably the most important reason was that his timing was right. In 1950s, most married women stayed home to keep house and take care of their children. In the 1960s, many women returned to the workplace. This meant that they had less time and energy to do housework and to prepare for meals. The option left for such a hurried lifestyle is having an outing at a fast food chain. It was then that M cDonald’s came into the picture.

5 Besides, Kroc never changed the fundamental rule devised by the brothers—low prices, simple menu, prompt service and consistent products. But he added cleanliness—the parking lot, the kitchen floor, the uniforms, everything had to be spotless.

6 Kroc also believed much in advertising, and from then until now, MacDonald’s restaurant has been known for its numerous marketing campaigns and powerful advertising techniques. From the first symbol, “Speedee”—a man with a c hef’s hat on top of a hamburger shaped head, which has been changed to the world-renowned “Golden Arches” symbol, to the creation of Ronald McDonald as mascot and major TV commercials, the company certainly makes sure to invest a lot in advertising. As a matter of fact, within the first six years of airing his initial TV ad, over 90% of American children were more familiar with Ronald McDonald than with the name of the president of the United States.

7 With proper timing, consistency and cleanliness, and carefully-chosen marketing campaigns, McDonald’s turned out to be a successful venture.

Passage two: Lipton’s Orphans

1 Thomas J. Lipton Company is the largest manufacturer of tea in the world. It bears the name of its founder, Thomas Lipton. But Lip ton didn’t turn his attention to tea until he achieved what he had originally set out to do in the general trade field.

2 It was with unique advertising that Lipton was to make his mark.

3 In 1871, the 21-year-old Lipton invested his small savings in his own store at 101 Stobcross Street in Glasgow. In the opening weeks of his trading, he had noticed that a smile and a joke were well received by his customers and he also noted this human characteristic—that people in a good humor will always spend more freely than those with a frown on their face. Therefore, he kept telling himself, the best ideas behind successful advertising must be those with a smile in them. But it was just difficult to hit upon the right notion to begin with.

4 Suddenly one morning the bright idea struck him that it might be a good thing to have a large wooden ham, painted as realistically as possible, hung from a pole outside the shop door. Nobody passing up or down the street could miss the sign of the shop’s main contents. The ham a ttracted quite a lot of attention immediately.

5 From a single ham to an entire pig was, obviously, an easy step. In fact, two pigs—the largest, fattest, finest ones he could buy at the Glasgow live-stock market! These he had removed to a private yard and cleaned and polished until they looked the most respectable pair of pigs one had ever seen. He put blue and pink ribbons around their necks and their tails, and had them driven through the streets under a banner which declared them to be“Lipton’s Orphans”. Long before they had