中英新闻翻译练习
American marriages
美国婚姻
Demand, meet supply
需求走高，供给不足
Most Americans would get married, if only they could find someone suitable 大多数美国人愿意结婚，如果他们能遇到合适人选的话。
1. AS A high-powered media executive in New York city, Leah had been wary of marriage. After seein g other women get “mommy-tracked” at work, she was ambivalent about letting children compromise her career. But love has a way of making a hash of plans, and these days she and her husband manage two full-time jobs and the care of their 18-month-old daughter. Leah still works nearly 50 hours a week and earns a bit more than her husband, but she also handles most of the routine caregiving, cooking and cleaning at home. Juggling everything often leaves her feeling “inadequate,” she admits, but she chalks it up to the struggle of trying to have it all. “Rich world problems, right?” she says with a chuckle.
作为纽约市一位工作忙碌的媒体主管，Leah对婚姻一直十分小心。见到其他女同事在工作时还要为孩子操心，她对是否要孩子感到矛盾。但爱总能想方设法做出一堆糟乱的计划，如今她与丈夫各有一份全职工作，同时还养育他们18个月大的女儿。Leah每周工作50个小时，收入比丈夫略高，但家里照顾女儿，做饭和家务的责任也主要由她承担。她承认，同时做这一切时常让自己觉得“不称职”，但她把这看成是为了同时拥有家庭和事业的努力。“富人的问题，不是吗？”她轻笑着说道。
2. While fewer women are marching to the altar—the proportion of those married before the age of 30 has fallen from 50% in 1960 to around 20% today—the ones that do increasingly look like Leah. Highly educated, financially independent women were once among the least likely to get hitched. Now they are getting married at a faster rate than their lesser-educated peers, and often to highly educated men. These unions are not only the most common, but also the most harmonious. New data show that America’s divorce rate has continued its plunge from its 1981 peak—from 5.3 to
3.2 divorces per 1,000 people in 2014—but this decline is largely concentrated among the better-educated. Among college graduates who married in the early 2000s, only around 11% divorced within seven years, according to data from Justin Wolfers of the University of Michigan.
迈入婚姻的女人越来越少——30岁前结婚的女性由1960年的50%下降至如今的20%——像leah这样的已婚女性越来越多。受过高等教育，经济独立的女人曾经是最无人问津的对象。如今她们比受教育更少的女性更早结婚，对象常是同样
受高等教育的男性。这类组合不仅最常见，也常是最和谐的。新的数据表明美国的离婚率持续降低－自1981年离婚高峰的0.53%。下降至2014年0.32%。——但这一降幅主要集中在文化水平更高的群体中。据密西根大学的贾斯汀沃尔佛表示，21世纪初结婚的大学毕业生中，只有11%左右的人在7年内离婚。
3. This has created a fairly uneven marriage market. Although the returns to a college education h ave risen sharply in recent decades, America’s college-graduation rate has been inching up slowly, and now hovers at around 40%. Women make up a growing share: those born in 1975, for example, were around 20% more likely to complete a four-year degree than their male counterparts. Meanwhile, women with less education are stuck with a stock of less-appealing men. Women of nearly all levels of education have seen their earning power climb since the 1970s, while the earnings of men without a college degree have fallen between 5% and 25%, according to David Autor and Melanie Wasserman, both economists at MIT. Less-educated men also tend to have more anachronistic views about who should do what at home: they are not only less comfortable with partnerships in which women earn more, they also tend to be less-attentive parents and less helpful around the house than their better-educated peers.
这导致婚姻市场变得相当地不公平。虽然近几十年来大学教育的回报率大幅增高，美国的本科毕业率仍上升缓慢，目前浮动在40%左右。女性所占的比例越来越多：例如1975年出生的女性，完成四年学习的可能性比他们的男同学高出20%。与此同时，受更少教育的女性无法摆脱大量缺乏吸引力的男性。据两位MIT 的经济学家, 大卫奥图和美琳沃森曼表示，自1970年来，不同受教育水平的女性都感受到了收入的上升，但学历低于本科的男性收入下降了5%到25%。文化程度低的男性对男女在家庭中的分工也更容易有过时的观念：他们中更多人会在女性收入高的关系中感到不舒服，相较受教育更多的男性而言，他们更少参与子女教育，做家务活也更少。
4. This asymmetry is especially profound for African-American women, whose store of available men has been whittled down further by higher rates of incarceration and mortality. Inter-racial marriage is becoming more common but remains relatively rare. Black women are half as likely as black men to marry someone of another hue, according to the Pew Research Centre. Mismatched desires among lesser-educated men and women have shrunk the share of households headed by a married couple from two-thirds in 1960 to less than half today. The proportion of children being raised by a single parent has more than doubled in the past four decades. More than seven in ten births to African-American women are outside marriage.
这种不对称性对非洲裔美国女性的影响尤其深刻。高犯罪率和高死亡率使得适龄非洲裔美国男性数量缩减。跨种族婚姻虽更常见但相对而言仍属少数。pew研究中心表示，黑人女性进入跨种族婚姻的可能性是黑人男性的一半。文化程度低的不相配男女组合使已婚家庭比例由1960年的2/3降低至如今不到1/2. 在过
去40年间，与单亲父母一同生活的儿童数量增长超过了一半。非洲裔美国女性的孩子超过70%属于非婚生。
Here’s your whisky, darling 亲爱的，来杯威士忌吧
Concentrating gains from marriage at the top has exacerbated existing trends in inequality.
上层社会婚姻的集中受益使现有的不平等现象日益恶化。
5. On most measures, the children of married couples are already more likely to fare better than those with single parents. But well-educated parents often have more money for schools, safer neighbourhoods and nutritious food, and fewer children to invest in (owing to the higher opportunity cost of child-rearing for career-oriented women). Well-educated parents spend more time with their children than their less-educated peers. For mothers the gap is only a few extra hours a week, but among fathers the difference is considerable: those with a job and a college degree spend more than double the time of less-educated men, according to Jonathan Guryan of Northwestern University and his co-authors.
从大多数方面来看，婚生子女比与单亲父母生活的孩子更有可能获得成功。但除此之外，文化程度高的父母在教育，安全的居住环境和食品营养上通常也有更充足的财力支持，他们对孩子的投资也会更集中（由于这些受高等教育的女人孕育孩子所需的高机会成本）。与文化水平低的父母相比较，受教育多的父母会花更多时间与孩子相处。西北大学的乔纳森格瑞安和他的同事表示，在母亲间这种差别只是一周几个小时，但父亲中就相当大了：大学毕业的在职父亲比受更少教育的男性多花超过一倍的时间与孩子相处。
6.Having fewer sprogs makes it easier to continue this support through early adulthood, which more parents seem to be doing. Nearly 43% of all young men (ages 18 to 34) and more than a third of all young women have yet to flee the nest, according to a new Pew analysis of census data. This boom in late-bloomers may be another sign of privilege. A recent paper from the New York Fed found that this trend can largely be attributed to the surge in student debt over the past decade or so, and it is better-off children who tend to enroll in college in the first place. Children from homes with an annual income of over $108,650, for example, are nearly twice as likely to enroll than those from homes that make less than $34,160,
according to a report from the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education.
越来越多的父母在孩子成年早期仍提供支持，拥有更少的孩子使这种支持变的相对容易。根据pew的一项新的人口普查数据分析显示，将近43%的年轻男性（18岁至34岁之间）和三分之一的年轻女性仍未脱离父母的支持。这批大器晚成的年轻一代也许是另一个特权的迹象。纽约联邦储备银行近期的一份报告显示，这一现象很大程度是由于过去十年间学生贷款的激增，而通常那些表现良好的学生往往才会申请贷款入读大学。PELL学院一项关于受更高教育机会的报告显示，父母年收入高于108，650美金的孩子与那些收入低于34，160美金的相比，前者入读大学的可能性几乎是后者的两倍。
7.Y et while marriage has been transformed, the roles played by each partner in the home have been slower to change. A recent Pew study found that in households where both parents work full time, more of the day-to-day parenting responsibilities fall to women. Mothers are twice as likely as fathers to say that being a working parent has hurt their careers, in no small part because many employers still function according to a single breadwinner model. This is slowly changing, particularly as more women start out-earning men. In couples with two full-time working parents, 26% of women earn around the same amount as their partners, and 22% earn more, according to Pew.
婚姻虽然有所变化，但男女双方在家庭中扮演的角色似乎变的更慢。PEW研究中心的一项近期报告显示，在男女双方都有全职工作的家庭中，女性仍承担着大多数日常的子女养育责任。由于许多雇用者仍认为每个家庭只有一个人养家糊口，并以这种模式安排工作，在职母亲们感受到孩子对职业的伤害是父亲的两倍。但由于越来越多的女性收入超过男性，这一现象在慢慢改变。Pew研究中心表示，夫妻双方都有全职工作的组合中，26%的女性收入与男性的大致相同，22%的女性收入高于男性。
8.Conservative policymakers often argue that getting poorer women to marry will improve the lot of their children. But programmes to encourage more people to wed never seem to work. This is largely because most Americans are already quite convinced of the value of marriage, and even poorer people hold the institution in high regard, according to a new survey of public views of the American family from Deseret News and Brigham Young University. Most agree that marriage is the best arrangement for raising children, and many still hope to trade vows one day. Unlike Europeans, who are moving away from marriage, even younger Americans generally expect to put a ring on it, and view cohabitation as a practical step along the way.
保守的决策者常常主张让更贫困的女性结婚，这样就能改变她们孩子的命运。但催人结婚的方案似乎从未成功过。据一项由犹他新闻和布里格母青年大学展开的关于公众眼中的美国家庭的调查显示，这是因为大多数美国人已经十分相信婚姻的价值，即使贫穷的人仍将这项社会习俗看的很重。大多数人认为婚姻是抚养
儿童的最佳安排，许多人仍渴望有朝一日能够交换结婚誓言。和与婚姻渐行渐远的欧洲人不同，即使是美国的年轻一代仍希望能一定终身，并将同居视为走向婚姻的实践环节。
9.T he distance between the number of people with favourable views of marriage and the number actually getting married is best explained by this: many of the marriages available do not offer a good deal for women. Yet those who assume the breakdown of the nuclear family reflects a growing crisis of morals might otherwise take heart: the decline in marriage in America has coincided with a similarly precipitous decline in juvenile crime, teenage pregnancy and adolescent drug-use, and fewer children are dropping out of high-school. Those who still hope to woo more people to the altar might keep in mind that the marriage market is ultimately like any market: people buy in if the price is right.
可以这样解释渴望结婚的人和已经结婚的人之间的数量差别：许多可行婚姻对女性而言并不划算。然而那些认为小家庭的衰退意味着道德危机蔓延的人倒是可以鼓起勇气：美国结婚率的降低与青少年犯罪，未成年人怀孕和青少年吸毒的骤减不谋而合，高中生辍学也越来越少。希望娶得如意新娘的人或许可以记住，婚姻市场根本上与其他任何市场一样：价格合理，买家便会入手。
Luxury goods 奢侈品
Million dollar mastiffs
价值百万的藏獒
Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption is hitting Chinese luxury-peddlers harder than foreign ones
习近平的反贪行动对中国奢侈品商的影响远比对外国厂商大
1 CHEN BINQI grows and sells abalone, adelicious kind of mollusc, in Dongshan, a seaside resort in the southern province of Fujian. He says that from 2010 to 201
2 the price never dropped below 50 yuan ($7.7) for 500 grams on tomb-sweeping day, a public holiday and one of the busiest days for tourists. In 201
3 it fell to 40 yuan, which meant most breeders were selling below cost. “Now it’s down to 30-something, which isunbearable.”
鲍鱼是一种美味的软体动物。陈斌奇（音译）是南部省份福建海边胜地东山一家养殖厂的老板，负责鲍鱼的养殖和出售。他说，2010年到2012年间鲍鱼在清明节的价格每斤从未低过50元（7.7美元），而清明节作为公众假期是旅游业最繁忙的时节之一。但到了2013年，鲍鱼的价格下降到了40元每斤，很多养殖户都以低于成本的价格销售。“现在价格只有三十多块，这个价格低得不能忍。”
2In the neighbouring province of Guangdong, Lin Gongxi has been carving jade for 50 years i n Jieyang, China’s jade capital.When business was good, he told Southern Metropolis Daily, he used to go to bed at 2am and get up at 6am. Now he often has no work for eight days out of ten. Half the shops at Jieyang’s jade-trading centre are empty. Rents have fallen by three-quarters.
在邻省广东素有“中国翡翠之都”之称的揭阳市，林恭喜（音译）已经从事翡翠雕刻工作长达50年。他告诉南方都市报记者，当行业景气时，他每天深夜两点睡觉，早上六点就要起床。而现在，十天中的八天他都没有工作可做。揭阳翡翠交易中心近半数的商铺都已经人去楼空，而店铺的租金已经下降了四分之三。
3 In Beijing’s Panjiayuan market, Wang Lin sells copies of Ming and Qing dynasty carved furniture. Same story. Businesspeople used to order
ten-piece suites of office furniture; he sold them as fast as his carpenters could make them, sometimes faster (there was a waiting list). Now, prices have halved and he “can shift maybe a couple of chairs out of ten”.
北京的王林（音译）在潘家园市场销售仿明清家具，而他的命运也和上面几位差不多。商人曾经对十件套办公家具情有独钟。供货商出厂一套，王林就能销售一套，甚至有的时候会出现供不应求的现象（还有等待发货的买家名单）。虽然现在这些家具的价格下降了一半，但他在十把椅子中只能卖出两三把。
4 China is the world’s biggest market forluxury goods, accounting (by some measures) for half of all luxury spending.The slowdown in the growth of China’s economy and household incomes is usually seen as bad for rich-country purveyors of luxuries such as perfumes, golfclubs, art and the like. Which it is: LVMH, a producer of champagne and handbags, recently closed three shops in China, while Christie’s annual auctionof Asian 20th-century and contemporary art in Hong Kong earned only HK$508m($66m) in November, down from HK$935m in 2013.
中国作为全球最大奢侈品的市场，据某些数据报道显示，占了全球奢侈品销售总额的一半。中国经济增长的放缓和家庭收入增长的停滞对于富裕国家的奢侈品厂商来说通常都不是一件好事，其中就包括香水制造商、高尔夫俱乐部、艺术等等类似的产业。举几个例子：路易威登是生产香槟和手提包的奢侈品厂商，而最近路易威登关了三家中国境内的门店。克里斯蒂拍卖行11月在香港拍卖20
世纪亚洲以及当代艺术品的收入仅为5.08亿港元（6600万美元），而在2013
年该数字为 9.35万元。
5 But the woes of Western vanitymongers aretrifling compared with those of their Chinese counterparts. Prices of jade and Tibetan mastiffs, for example, have dropped by half or more. Hundreds of businesses have gone bust. This owes as much to politics as economics.
但这些外国虚荣贩子的遭遇相比他们的中国同行来说就太轻微了。举个例子，翡翠和藏獒的价格已经下降了一半或者更多。过百数相关企业倒闭。但在此之中，除了经济因素，政治因素也发挥着一样重要的作用。
That doggy in the window 橱窗里的狗狗
6 Take Tibetan mastiffs, a breed of enormous sheep-guarding dog (one is pictured above, on sale). These were the must-have status symbol for China’s new billionaires in the late 2000s. Three years ago ordinary Tibetan mastiffs could fetch around $20,000. Now they sell for a tenth of that. Earlier this year an animal-welfare group rescued 20 abandoned mastiffs from the back of a lorry, which was taking them to a slaughter house to be sold for leather and meat—for a mere $5 each.
藏獒是一种体型庞大的牧羊犬（如上图所示，该藏獒被低价出售）。在新世纪前十年的后半段，藏獒对于中国新晋的亿万富豪们来说是必须拥有的身份象征。3年前，一只普通的藏獒价格能够高达20000美元。而现在价格仅为当时的十分之一。今年早些时候，一个动物关爱组织在通往屠宰场的路上从货车车厢中救下了20只被遗弃的藏獒，原本等待他们的是被宰杀后分解为毛皮和狗肉出售，而售价仅为每只5美元。
7 Tibetan mastiffs were a fad for plutocrats,usually bought as
status-enhancing guard dogs. But demand for most other Chinese luxuries depends on a culture of gift-giving. Every transaction must bemarked by a present: jade, tea, a meal. One billionaire, Hong Weihua, even paid for a delegation of officials from his hometown to visit America (quitelegally).藏獒通常作为提升身份地位的看门犬，是富豪兴起时的玩物。但对于其他大多数中国人来说，对于奢侈品的需求源于中国特有的送礼文化。每项交易都以送礼为特征，包括翡翠、茶叶或者饭局。亿万富翁洪维华甚至出资资助家乡的官员代表团到美国考察（但这是合法行为）。
8 Since 2013 the anti-corruption campaign ofXi Jinping, China’s president, has made conspicuous consumption politicallysuspect and reined in the practice of lavishing gifts on officials. Tea used tobe a favourite present, especially Pu’er, a fermented and aged variety from thesouth-western province of Yunnan. The price of top-of-the-line Golden tea fromthe Tae tea company, the world’s largest Pu’er maker, fell from 917 yuan per357 grams in March 2014 to 512 yuan, before rallying a bit (see chart). Thepresident of the Yunnan Tea Association told the Kunming Daily that, after a boom and b ust, the teabusiness was entering “a new normal” (a term popularised by Mr Xi, who uses itto describe slower growth of the economy as a whole). This means lower pricesand more modest sales.自 2013年，国家主席习近平的反腐运动让大手脚的消费成为政治上的黑点，也禁止了官员之间送大礼的行为。茶叶曾经是最受人喜爱的礼物，特别是西南省份云南产出醇厚的普洱。全球最大的普洱厂商塔尔茶叶公司生产的顶级金叶价格从2014年3月的每克917元下降到512元(后来略有上升，如图)。云南茶业协
会主席告诉昆明日报记者，在经历快速发展和逐渐衰落后，茶业正在进入“一个行业新常态”（这个术语因习近平而广为人知，他用词来形容经济增长总体放慢）。这意味行业更低的价格和更少的销售量。
9 The abalone business shows that it is Mr Xi’s rule against “extravagant eating and drinking”, rather than a lack ofcash, that lies behind the luxury squeeze. Mr Chen, the seafood-dealer inFujian, says abalone is not especially pricey, but because it is seen as aluxury “sales took a big hit”. Of the breeders he knows, 40% quit during 2013and 2014.
鲍鱼养殖的遭遇很好地说明了奢侈品产业的衰落背后不是现金的缺少，而是习近平反贪行动中对于“挥霍吃喝”的管制。福建海鲜商贩陈先生表示，鲍鱼的价格其实不是特别地昂贵，但因为人们都认为鲍鱼是奢侈品，因此鲍鱼的销售额遭受冲击。陈先生表示他知道的同行中有40%在2013年和2014年推出了鲍鱼养殖。
10 At the top end of the mastiff business, itis not so bleak. In 2011 a coal baron is said to have paid 10m yuan ($1.5m) forBig Splash, a Tibetan mastiff puppy. In 2014 a property developer paid 12m yuanfor a dog, making it the world’s most expensive canine. Han Lianming, a mastiffbreeder near Beijing, says the market for such finest-quality dogs still looksgood. “Someone offered me 20m yuan for that one. It was crazy,” he sayscontentedly, pointing to a vast ball of russet fur and teeth that is lumberingaround the courtyard (the deal did not come off). A select few millionairesappear immune to the anti-corruption campaign and unfazed by dog-breeders’efforts during the boom years to boost supply by
crossbreeding. This diminishedthe rarity-value of mastiffs, but it also produced some highly sought-afterspecimens.
但高端的藏獒买卖则没有像其他产业那么惨淡。2011年，一个煤矿大亨据说用1000万购买了一只藏獒亚种大飞溅。2014年，一个地产商以1200万的价格购买了一只宠物狗，创造了全球最贵宠物狗记录。韩连明（音译）是北京附近的藏獒养殖户，他表示优质的藏獒的是市场前景依然很好。他开心地指着一只身形巨大、毛发蓬松、牙齿锋利、在院子里疯跑的藏獒说“有人出2000万来买那只藏獒，简直是疯了。”（这项交易最后没有发生）有少数富翁对于激烈的反贪行动无动于衷，也对藏獒养殖户在全民养獒时交叉配种以提高产量的做法没有表示。这样的做法让藏獒的珍稀性不再，但同时也导致一些广受欢迎品种的出现。
11The jade market, however, has little goodnews to report. Yu Ming, the director of the jade committee of the ChinaTraditional Culture Promotion Council, a state-run body, says that though salesat big auction houses are holding up, the retail business is plummeting. In bigcities such as Beijing they have fallen by 10-20%. In second- and third-tiercities (such as provincial capitals), he says, sales are down by 40-50%. In2013 there was a spike in the price of raw jade from neighbouring Myanmar, whenpolitical violence briefly disrupted supplies. Mr Yu says many thought theconflict would lead to higher prices in China. But to everyone’s surprise theretail price actually fell. “There just isn’t that big a market any more,” helaments.
然而翡翠市场却很少会传出好消息。政府出资建立的中国传统文化促进会翡翠委员会的主席于明（音译）表示尽管大型拍卖会中翡翠的价格持续上升，但翡翠零售业却不断地走向低谷。在北京一类的大城市中，翡翠的销售量下降了
10%-20%。他说，在例如一些省会的二、三线城市中，销售量甚至下降了40%-50%。2013年，因为邻国缅甸政治动乱干扰翡翠的供应，从缅甸进口的翡翠原料有过一段时间的增长。于先生说，有很多人认为这次的动乱会导致中国翡翠价格的上升。但出乎所有人的意料的是，翡翠价格在实际是下跌的。他哀怨道：“这个市场只是不再像从前一样大了而已。”
Winston Churchill’s other lives
丘吉尔的多面人生
Mr high-roller
赌场大亨
The gambler who saved the West
拯救了西方的赌徒
Natty dresser
盛装绅士
No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money. By David Lough. Picador; 544 pages; $32. Head of Zeus; 532 pages; ￡25.
《莫饮香槟：丘吉尔与金钱》（No More Champagne: Churchill and His Money），作者：戴维?洛，皮卡多出版社，544页，32美元；Head of Zeus，532页，25英镑。
Winston Churchill Reporting: Adventures of a Young War Correspondent. By Simon Read. Da Capo Press; 309 pages; $26.99.
《温斯顿?丘吉尔报告：年轻战地记者历险记》，作者：西蒙?里德，达卡波出版社，309页，26.99美元。
HISTORIANS and many members of the public already know that Winston Churchill often took high-stakes gambles in his political life. Some, like the disastrous Dardanelles campaign—an audacious attempt he masterminded at the Admiralty to seize the straits of Gallipoli and knock Turkey out of the first world war—he got wrong. Others, notably his
decision as prime minister in 1940 to hold out against Nazi Germany until America came to rescue Britain, he got spectacularly right. But the extent to which Churchill was a gambler in other spheres of his life has tended not to catch his biographers’ attention.
历史学家和许多公众早已知道，温斯顿?丘吉尔在他的政治生涯中经常冒险豪赌。有些赌局，比如悲剧色彩的达达尼尔海峡战役，丘吉尔在海军部策划了这次大胆的军事行动，目的是占领加利波利海峡，迫使土耳其退出第一次世界大战，结果他押错了赌注。其他赌局，尤其是他决定在1940年担任英国首相、坚持抵抗纳粹德国到美国前来解救英国的举动，让他赢得了可观的回报。但是，丘吉尔生活中的其他方面有多少赌博色彩，却没有得到传记作家的关注。
Two new books attempt to fill this gap. The first is “No More Champagne” by David Lough, a private-banker-turned-historian who looks at Churchill’s personal finances during the ups and downs of his career. It is the first biography to focus on this aspect of his life. Mr Lough has trawled through Churchill’s personal accounts and found that he was as much a risk-taker when it came to his money as he was when he was making decisions at the Admiralty or in Downing Street.
有两本新书打算填补这个空白。第一本就是戴维?洛的《莫饮香槟》，这位私人银行家转行的历史学家分析了丘吉尔在跌宕起伏的职业生涯中的个人财务状况。这是第一本专注丘吉尔财务方面的传记。戴维?洛查阅了丘吉尔的个人账户，发现他在财务方面敢于承担风险，正如他在海军部或唐宁街做决定时一样大胆。
Although Churchill was descended from the Dukes of Marlborough, his parents had “very little money on either side”—though that never stopped them living the high life. Neither did it hamper the young Churchill; he spent wildly on everything from polo ponies to Havana cigars, a habit he picked up as a war correspondent in Cuba. Indeed, between 1908 and 1914 the Churchill household spent an average of ￡1,160 on wine alone each year—￡104,400 ($145,000) in today’s money.
尽管丘吉尔是马尔博罗公爵的后裔，他的父母却“没有多少钱”，不过这从来不妨碍他们享受上流社会的生活。这对年轻的丘吉尔也没有什么约束；他花起钱来挥霍无度，无论是打马球的小马，还是哈瓦那雪茄，这是他在古巴当战地记者时养成的习惯。事实上，从1908年到1914年，丘吉尔家仅在葡萄酒一项上每年平均花费1160英镑，相当于今天的104400英镑（约合14.5万美元）。
It is no wonder, then, that Churchill spent most of his life leaping from one cashflow crisis to another, being perennially behind with his s uppliers’ bills. Another new book, “Winston Churchill Reporting”, by Simon Read, an American journalist, looks at one of the ways Churchill eventually paid some of them: writing. Mr Read investigates how Churchill
went from a young army officer cadet to be ing Britain’s highest-earning war correspondent by the age of 25, getting the journalism bug for the rest of his life.
不过这也难怪，丘吉尔毕生的大部分时间都是刚摆脱现金危机，又陷入财务困境，常年无法偿付他供应商的账单。另一本新书是美国记者西蒙?里德（Simon Read）写的《温斯顿?丘吉尔报告》（Winston Churchill Reporting），他找到了丘吉尔最终偿还部分债务的方法：写作。里德的调查表明，丘吉尔如何在年仅25岁的时候，就从年轻的军官军校学生变成英国收入最高的战地记者，在他的余生里都紧握新闻这个筹码。
The Churchill name certainly helped open newspaper editors’ doors across London. But it was the extent to which the young reporter was willing to take risks on battlefields across the world that marked out his columns from those of his contemporaries.
当然，丘吉尔这个名字帮助他打开整个伦敦的报社编辑室大门。但是，这位年轻记者甘愿冒险奔赴世界各地战场的举动，让他的专栏在同行中脱颖而出。
Visiting Cuba in 1895, during its war of independence from Spain, he travelled unperturbed through some of the island’s most dangerous territory while writing for the Daily Graphic. The next year his regiment was transferred to India, where he fought Pushtun tribesmen on the border with Afghanistan, penning articles for the Daily Telegraph from a blood-splattered foxhole on the battlefield. He was then sent to Sudan, where he took part in the British army’s last great cavalry charge, at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898.
1895年，丘吉尔到了正在为脱离西班牙统治而战斗的古巴，他镇定地穿过岛上最危险的地区，同时为《每日画报》（Daily Graphic）撰写稿件。次年，他所在的军团调往印度驻防，在印度与阿富汗接壤的地区与普什图部落作战，在战场上血迹斑斑的掩体里，他为《每日电讯报》（Daily Telegraph）写通讯。他随后被派往苏丹，在那里参加了1898年的恩图曼战役，这是英国陆军历史上最后一次骑兵冲锋。
After narrowly losing a by-election in Oldham, he returned to the journalistic fray as a war correspondent in South Africa for the Morning Post during the second Boer war of 1899-1902. There he hit the front pages in his own right; he was captured by the Boers while accompanying a scouting expedition on an armoured train. Even that could not stop Churchill, who soon escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp, travelling almost 300 miles to safety in Portuguese East Africa.
丘吉尔在奥尔德姆选区的补选中以微弱差距落败，此后回归新闻记者的行列，在
1899年至1902年的第二次布尔战争中，他担任《晨报》（Morning Post）驻南非的战地记者。他凭借自己的能力登上了报纸头版；他跟随侦察探险队乘坐装甲列车前进，被布尔人所俘获。即使被俘也无法阻止丘吉尔的脚步，他很快从战俘营中逃脱，跋涉了近300英里的路程，安全抵达葡萄牙统治下的南非。
As Mr Read notes, by the time of his return from Africa, Churchill had saved more than ￡4,000 from his writing, equivalent to ￡400,000 today. “With judicious economy,” he told his brother, “I shall hope to make that carry me through the lean years.” But he returned to o ld habits in the years to come. Notable extravagances involved losing badly gambling in Monte Carlo and betting that share prices would continue to rise when the Wall Street crash hit. Churchill did not continue to write simply for adventure or fun; he did so to make ends meet. But even that was not enough. He required bail-outs from wealthy friends in 1938, 1940 and 1946 to save him from bankruptcy.
正如里德指出的那样，从非洲返回英国的时候，丘吉尔通过写作攒下了超过4000英镑，相当于今天的40万英镑。“凭借着精打细算，”他告诉自己的兄弟，“我指望这笔钱能让我度过艰苦的岁月。”但是他在此后的几年里故态复萌。值得一提的是，他的生活穷奢极欲，在蒙特卡洛赌博输掉大笔钱财，在华尔街大崩盘的时候押注股价会继续上涨。丘吉尔继续写作不是为了冒险或乐趣，他这样做只是为了糊口。但是即便如此也不够。在1938年、1940年和1946年，他需要富裕的朋友伸出援手，才能使他免于破产。
Both books manage to tell their tales of Churchill the adventurer and gambler elegantly. And for a financial biography, Mr L ough’s is a surprising page-turner. But the two authors only briefly link their assessments of Churchill’s personality to the important decisions he made in office—and even then only in vague terms. For instance, both fail to mention how his frequent bouts of depression may have contributed to his impulsiveness and risk-taking. Although their stories are worth telling, they have left bigger questions about Churchill to other historians.
两本书都精心讲述了丘吉尔身为冒险家和绅士赌徒的故事。就金融传记而言，戴维?洛的这本书引人入胜、令人惊叹。但是两位作者只是草率地把他们对丘吉尔个性的判断与他在政坛所做的重要决定联系起来，甚至只是含糊其辞地谈及此事。比如说，两本书都没有提到，他经常发作的抑郁症可能是冲动和冒险行为的罪魁祸首。虽然他们讲述的故事颇为精彩，却把关于丘吉尔的更多疑问留给其他历史学家去解决。
Sex education
性教育
Dream of the bed chamber
床楼梦
1 “SEX, sex, sexual intercourse, penis, penis, vagina.” More than 150 undergraduates are sitting in a lecture hall at China Agricultural University in Beijing, shouting loudly. Many are sexually active, or soon will be. Yet for most it is the first sex education class they have attended.中国农业大学北京校区的讲堂里坐了超过150位本科生，他们齐声说着类似于“性、性爱、性交、阴茎、阴道”等词语。他们中有多人正处于性欲旺盛时期，有的人也即将迎来这一时期。但是对他们大多数人来说，这是他们上的第一堂性教育课。
2 Their instructor hopes that shouting such words will help youngsters talk more openly about sex. Lu Zhongbao, a 24-year-old forestry student, says he was told as a child that he “emerged from a rock”. When he started having sex with his university girlfriend he had little idea about contraception. This evening he arrived an hour early armed with another question: will masturbating damage his health?
教授这节课的人希望能通过将这类词语大声说出口，能够让这些年轻人更自如讨论两性话题。24岁林业学在读卢忠宝（音译）说他小时候问自己从哪里来的时候，得到的回复是“从石头里蹦出来的”。当他开始和他的大学女友性交时，他对于避孕毫无概念。今晚他提前一个小时来到讲堂，还带着另一个问题：“手淫会损害健康吗？”
3 It is not just China’s economy that has loosened up since 1979. The country is in the midst of a sexual revolution. A 2012 study found that more than 70% of Chinese people have sex before marriage. Other polls put that figure lower but consistently indicate that over the past 30 years, more young Chinese are doing it, with more partners, at a younger age. But a lack of sex education means that many are not protecting themselves, resulting in soaring abortion rates and a rise in sexually transmitted diseases.
中国在1979年后开放的不仅是经济层面。现在，中国更是正在经历一场性文化改革。2012年的一个研究表明，超过70%的中国民众曾有过婚前性行为。其他研究的数字可能相对较低，但是依然表明在过去30年中，中国有过婚前性行为的人数量越来越多，性伴侣数量在上升，而年龄却在下降。但是因为缺乏性教育，许多人都没有在性交过程中保护自己，导致堕胎率的飙升以及性传染病的传播。
4The Communist Party has stuck its nose into people’s bedrooms for 30 years through its harsh family-planning policies. Yet taboos on sex before marriage prevailed, the result of paternalistic—not religious—values about female chastity, with a dose of Communist asceticism thrown in. Pre-marital sex fell foul of a range of laws, including the catch-all charge of “hooliganism”, only scrapped in 1997.
共产党30年来通过严厉的计划生育政策将权力延伸到人们的卧室里。女性贞洁的传统家庭观念（但这并非宗教原因所致）和共产党禁欲主义相结合，使得婚前性行为依然是禁忌。而婚前性行为与某些法律有所冲突，其中包括定义模糊的“流氓罪”，这项罪名在1997年才被废除。
5 The social climate remains chilly. Most news items about sex involve scandals or crimes. Schools ban pupils from dating and many deploy “morality patrols” to root out flirting or frolicking couples. S ex outside wedlock is not illegal but children born to unmarried mothers face obstacles obtaining a hukou, or household residency, that entitles them to subsidised education and welfare. Yet with greater freedom from their parents, more money and increasing exposure to permissive influences from abroad, China’s youth are clearly separating sex from procreation.
社会对此态度依然非常淡漠。许多与性有关的新闻都涉及丑闻或犯罪行为。学校禁止学生约会，同时其中许多会有安排“道德巡逻队”来根除情侣调情嬉戏的现象。婚前性行为虽然不违法，但是未婚妈妈的孩子在获得户口（所在地户籍）时会面临障碍，而户籍是人们获得国家教育和福利的前提。现在的中国年轻人比起上一辈更加自由、更为富有，同时不断受到国外文化的消极影响，他们会将性爱与生殖行为分得很清楚。
6 Education on the subject is compulsory in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan—societies that have some cultural similarities with China. But most Chinese schools teach only basic anatomy.
在日本、韩国和台湾等这些社会文化与中国相仿的地区，性教育都是必修课。但大多数中国学校仅仅只会教授基本人体结构知识。
7 This is not entirely for lack of trying. Pilot campaigns in Shanghai and Beijing schools in the 1980s were incorporated into a nationwide programme in 1988 but it was never implemented. In 2008 the Ministry of Education included sex education in the national health and hygiene curriculum. The barriers are not just prudery. Like football, fashion and other teenage pastimes, sex (and learning about it) is seen as a distraction from studies. “Sex is not an exam subject,” says S heng
Yingyi, a 21-year-old student.
但是性教育的缺乏并不意味着没有尝试。20世纪80年代，北京和上海的学校曾经就此开展过试点项目。1988年，试点项目合并到一个全国性的项目中，但该项目从未实施。2008年，教育部将性教育写进健康卫生教育课程中。但是实行的障碍不止在于过分的拘谨。和踢足球、追求时尚以及其他青少年消遣一样，性和性教育常常是干扰正常学习的因素。21岁学生盛莹益（音译）说：“性教育不是考试科目。”
8 Where classes happen, most students are merely given a textbook. “Happy Middle School Students”, written for 12- to 15-year-olds in 2006 and still widely used, refers to sperm meeting egg without describing the mechanics of intercourse. A more explicit volume for primary-school pupils published in 2011, which did explain how sperm were delivered, was criticised for being pornographic.
基本所有学校开展性教育课的方式就是给学生一本书，名叫《快乐中学生》。这本2006年出版的教科书专为12到15岁的学生设计，到现在为止依然被许多学校用作性教育教材。但书中只讲述了精子与卵子的融合，但没有讲述性交的机制。另一本为小学生设计的教材于2011年出版，书中直接了当地揭示了精子是如何进入女性体内，但是也因为这样这本教材被批包含色情内容。
9 The dominant message is to abstain. A 2013 review by UNESCO and Beijing Forestry University noted the prevalence of “terror-based” sex education, with content largely focused on the horrors of pregnancy, abortion and HIV. Earlier this month a university in Xi’an in central China ran a course entitled “No Regrets Youth” where students received a “commitment card”, essentially a pledge to remain a virgin until marriage.
对此，社会的主流声音是远离性。由联合国教科文组织和北京林业大学于2013年联合发布的研究显示，现在的性教育大多建立在对性的恐惧之上，性教育的内容大概是意外怀孕、流产和艾滋病的可怕之处。这个月早些时候，西安（中国中部）的一所大学开启了一个名为“青春无悔”的课程，要求学生签署“承诺卡”，要求学生结婚前禁止性行为。
We need to talk 我们要谈谈
10 There is almost no discussion in Chinese schools about love, communication or trust, how to say no or to deal with harassment or abuse. Homosexuality is not discussed, and Chinese parents rarely talk with their children about sex. Peng Xiaohui of Central China Normal University, who runs sex-education classes (including the one at China Agricultural University), had excrement thrown at him last year because of the work he does. Several Chinese and foreign NGOs have tried to fill the gap, but
many are now wary after the month-long detention this year of five feminists who had launched a campaign against sexual harassment. Most Chinese youths find out about sex from the internet and online pornography. 在中国的学校中，没有人会讨论有关爱情、沟通或信任以及怎么样反抗和处理面临的性骚扰和性侵犯行为。同性恋问题没有人会提及，而且父母也很少会和子女谈论性的话题。华中师范大学的彭晓辉教授性教育课程（其中就包括在中国农业大学教课），他去年就因所从事的工作被泼粪。有几个中外非政府组织一直尝试弥补这一方面的空缺，但是由于今年五位女权主义者因发起反对性侵犯行为的运动后遭到政府长达一个月的拘留，这些组织现在对此有所担忧。大多数中国的年轻人通过网络和色情网站了解性知识。
11 That does not work well. Because of the mismatch between lust and learning, around a quarter of all sexually active women under 24 get pregnant by mistake. Half of them do not use prophylactics, some because they know little about them, others because of insufficient access.
但是这不是件好事。因为欲望和学习的目的不匹配，在24岁以下性欲旺盛的女性中，有四分之一意外怀孕。他们中有一半人不使用避孕药，因为有的人对此并不了解，还有的人无法正常购买。
12 The pill is not widely used in China, even by married women. The government encourages the use of intra-uterine devices which provide less chance of human error. Until last year advertising condoms on television was banned (abortion, by contrast, is widely promoted). Convenience stores sell condoms, but they are not always available near college campuses.
避孕药很少为中国女性所服用，即使是已婚女性也是如此。政府鼓励夫妻使用宫内装置来减少人为失误。长期以来避孕套的电视广告禁止播出，直到去年才解禁（但是堕胎手术的广告却大规模存在）。便利店有避孕套出售，但不是每个校园附近都有便利店。
13 Those who do use prophylactics often use them wrongly: a 2014 study found that a quarter of under-17s who got pregnant had used some form of birth control. There is also a flourishing trade in “counterfeit condoms”, shoddily made sheaths being passed off as popular name brands. As a result sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise; 91% of new HIV cases are from sexual contact.
而那些服用避孕药的人使用方法却不得当。一个2004年的研究显示，17岁以下怀孕妇女中四分之一的人曾经采取过某些避孕措施。现在市面上还存有大量“假避孕套”，一些粗制滥造的避孕套经过包装变成了大众品牌。也因为如此，性传染病感染率不断上升，且91%的新艾滋病病患通过性接触感染病毒。
Dirty secrets 肮脏的秘密
14 It is hardly surprising that the abortion rate is so high. The one-child policy has made termination a normal phenomenon. Most clinics, private or state, put a premium on speed and offer no advice on how to avoid getting pregnant again. So repeat abortions are common: a study of nearly 80,000 Chinese women who terminated pregnancies in 2013, published in October by the Lancet, a British journal, found that 37% were doing so for the second time, and 29% for a third time or more. Unmarried women account for a rising share of these—and are a significant reason why, after an extended period of decline, terminations have been increasing in number since 2003.
因此，即便是如此高的堕胎率也不足为奇。计划生育政策使得终止妊娠变成一种常态。大多数诊所，不管是私立还是公营的，进行人流手术时都很看重速度，且不会向顾客给出防止再次怀孕的建议。因此多次人流成为正常现象。2013年10月，英国杂志《柳叶刀》发布一项研究表明，在将近8万名曾终止妊娠的中国妇女中，有37%的人是第二次进行人流手术，有29%是第三次或以上。这些人中未婚女性的比例越来越高，这也是为什么堕胎率下降了一段时间后，终止妊娠手术的数量自2003年以来不断上升。
15 Although China has no national system for counting abortions (official statistics include only state facilities), a researcher from the National Health and Family Planning Commission reckons there could be 13m terminations or more a year, a figure widely quoted in state media. But Marie Stopes, an international reproductive-health agency, reckons that figure could be as high as 40m, given domestic sales for pharmaceutical companies selling drugs used in terminations. If that number is correct, around half of all abortions worldwide are in China. The high number of terminations is in marked contrast to the low birth rate. If Marie Stopes is correct, 2.5 babies are aborted in China for every one born, compared with about two live births per termination in Russia and five births to one abortion in America. Even using the widely cited 13m figure, there are nearly as many abortions as births in China each year. That, and not frank talk about sex, is China’s shame.
尽管中国没有专门的系统统计堕胎的次数（官方数据只包含了国有机构的数据），但国家卫生计生委员会的一个研究院认为，每年堕胎数量至少有1300万次，这个数字也常常在官方媒体的报道中出现。但国际生殖健康机构玛丽·斯特普组织认为，从制药公司每年用于终止妊娠药物的国内销售情况看，这个数字应该高达4000万。如果这个数字无误，那么全球范围内一般的堕胎手术都发生在中国。而这么高的堕胎数与如此低的生育率形成了对比。如果玛丽·斯特普组织是对的，那么每个新生儿的出生就伴随着2.5个胎儿被打掉。即使是每年堕胎数是被广泛引用的1300万次，那么每年中国出生的婴儿数和被打掉的胎儿数基本相当。相较于对性的闪烁其词，这才是中国的羞耻所在。
Obituary: Helmut Schmidt
Smoke and fire
烟与火
Helmut Schmidt, Social Democrat chancellor of West Germany, died on November 10th, aged 96
赫尔穆特·施密特，西德的社会民主党总理，逝于11月10日，终年96岁
Nov 14th 2015 | From the print edition
HE WAS so clever, and so rude with it, that his listeners sometimes realised too late that they had been outwitted and insulted. Helmut Schmidt did not just find fools tiresome. He obliterated them. The facts were clear and the logic impeccable. So disagreement was a sign of idiocy.
他的聪明和粗暴时常会让听众意识到自己上当受骗和受到羞辱的时候已经太晚了。赫尔穆特·施密特不仅发现了傻瓜令人讨厌，他还消灭了他们。既然事实清楚，逻辑不可辩驳，那么，再有不同的意见就是白痴的表现。
He was impatient, too, with his own party, which failed to realise the constraints and dilemmas of power. It wanted him to spend money West Germany did not have, and to compromise with terrorists who belonged in jail. He was impatient with the anti-nuclear left, who failed to realise
that nuclear-power stations were safe, and that the Soviet empire thrived on allies' weakness. And he was impatient with post-Watergate America, which seemed to have lost its will to lead.
他还对没能意识到权力的约束和困境的他的政党感到不耐烦。这个政党曾经想让他花西德没有的钱，同应当被关在监狱里的恐怖分子妥协。他对没能认识到核电站是安全的、苏联帝国是靠着盟友的软弱才繁荣起来的反核左派感到不耐烦。最后，他对似乎已经失去了领导意愿的后水门时代的美国感到不耐烦。
In good causes and in bad he was imperious. His addiction to nicotine trumped convention and courtesy.He smoked whenever and wherever he felt like it, even in non-smoking compartments of railway carriages. “Can you ask Mr Schmidt to put his cigarette out?” a passenger asked the conductor. “Would you mind telling him yourself?” came the timid reply.
不管在不在理，他都希望别人听命于他。他的烟瘾胜过了公德和礼貌。只要想抽，他就会不分时间场合地来上一根，哪怕是在火车的非吸烟车厢中。“你能让施密特先生把烟灭了吗？”一位乘客问乘务员。“对不起，麻烦你自己给他说好吗？”得到却是一个怯生生回答。
Yet his brains, eloquence and willpower were unmatched in German politics. They brought him through the Nazi period, thrown out of the Hitler Youth for disloyalty but with an Iron Cross for bravery. He was one-quarter Jewish, which he concealed when he married his wife Loki and needed to prove his Aryan background. Only late in his career did an army document emerge which described him as ideologically sound.
然而，在德国政坛，他的头脑、口才和毅力却是独一无二的。它们让他走过了纳粹时代，因为不忠诚而被开除出希特勒青年团，却因为勇敢而得到了铁十字勋章。他是四分之一的犹太人，他在与妻子 Loki 结婚并需要证明他的的雅利安人背景时隐瞒了这一点。直到一份描述他意识形态可靠的军方文件出现为止。
In post-war West Germany he flourished, making a successful career in Hamburg's city government. By commandeering army units to deal with the floods of 1962 he broke a taboo, and the law, but gaining a deserved reputation as a doer.
在战后的西德，他名声大震，在汉堡市政府走上了一条成功之路。他以征调军队应对1962年的洪水的行为打破了当时的一项禁忌，违反了法律，却赢得了实干家的美誉。
He replaced Willy Brandt (the victim of an East German espionage operation) in 1974, at a time when the West was reeling from the oil-price shock, terrorism and America's humiliation in Vietnam. With his friend Valéry