TEXT 62
China's pied piper
马首是瞻（陈继龙编译）
（译注：pied piper原意为“吹笛手”，源自一则古老的故事，说的是一个人通过吹笛子将老鼠引入河中淹死，从而清除了德国一座小镇上的所有老鼠。可后来他由于没有得到任何报酬，就再次吹起笛子把镇上所有的小孩都带走了。后来人们用“pied piper”比喻“有很多追随者、受到人们喜爱或崇拜的人”。）
Sep 21st 2006
From The Economist print edition
ON A rainy weekend this month 10,000 businessmen, hobby traders and “netheads” gathered in Hangzhou, a pretty Chinese city near Shanghai, to talk about e-commerce. Most went to meet and swap 交换tips with other online traders. All came to the “Alifest” to sit at the feet of Jack Ma, a pixie[1]-sized, boyish 42-year-old who is the founder of Alibaba, an e-commerce firm, and is regarded as the godfather of the internet in China. In a country where businessmen are viewed with suspicion, his popularity is unusual. （1）When he was invited recently to speak in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Mr Ma needed six bodyguards to escape a mob[2] of online traders waiting outside to give him a hug.
9月的一个周末，天下着雨，一万名商人、业余生意人和“网络老手”聚集在上海附近的美丽的中国城市——杭州，谈起了电子商务。过去他们大多数人都是在网上与其他商人互相交流经验，而这次他们都来参加“阿里巴巴盛宴”，拜会马云。马云身材瘦小，42岁，看上去像一个男孩，他是阿里巴巴电子商务公司的创始人，被认为是中国互联网的“教父”。在一个人们都对商人心存疑虑的国度，他能受到广泛欢迎，非同寻常。最近他应邀赴北京人民大会堂演讲时，为了避开在外等候与他拥抱的众多网络生意人，他不得不找来了6个贴身护卫。
Mr Ma's rock-star status reflects how he has enabled thousands of his countrymen to become their own bosses, build businesses and make money. Alibaba has become the world's largest online business-to-business (B2B) marketplace, Asia's most popular online auction site and, as a result of it’s acquisition 获得；买进of Yahoo! China, the 12th most popular website in the world. That combination makes Alibaba one of the few credible challengers to the global online elite of Google, eBay, Yahoo! and Amazon.
从马云的巨星地位可以看出，他是如何使得数以千计的中国人成为老板，从而能够经营自己的生意并挣到钱的。阿里巴巴已经成为世界最大的B2B交易场所、亚洲访问人次最多的在线拍卖站点，而且在并购雅虎中国之后成为访问人次位居世界第十二位的网站。这一并购也使得阿里巴巴成为Google、eBay以及Amazon等全球网络精锐公司为数不多的几个值得信任的对手之一。
Alibaba is far from being just a Chinese knock-off[3] of these American giants. Indeed, they have borrowed ideas from him. “Jack is not just a Chinese visionary 有远见的人, but a global one. Western companies are taking pages from the Alibaba book,” says Bob Peck, an analyst at Bear Stearns. At Alibaba's heart sit two B2B websites (alibaba.com and china.alibaba.com), one a marketplace for firms from across the world to trade in English, the other a domestic Chinese service. Rival e-commerce outfits, such as America's Ariba and Commerce One, sought to cut multinationals' procurement[4] costs. （2）In contrast, Alibaba's intention was to build markets for China's vast number of small and medium-sized enterprises, which make everything from cufflinks[5] to motorcycles, by allowing them to trade with each other and linking them to global supply chains. Today, traders in America buy from Alibaba and resell on eBay.
阿里巴巴绝非仅仅是这些美国顶尖公司在中国的一个“仿制品”。实际上，这些公司还曾借鉴过马云的经营理念。Bear Sterns的分析家鲍勃·佩克说：“马云不仅在中国是一个有着远见卓识的人，在全球同样也是。西方公司正在向阿里巴巴学习。”阿里巴巴的核心部分是两个B2B网站（alibaba.com和china.alibaba.com），一个是供全世界的公司用英语进行交易的场所，另一个则服务于中国国内。诸如美国Ariba和Commerce One公司这样的电子商务竞争者已经试图削减跨国采购成本，而阿里巴巴的目标却是通过让包括生产衬衫链扣、摩托车在内的绝大多数中国中小型企业进行贸易往来，并把它们与全球连锁供应商连到一起，从而为其打造市场。今天，美国的商人开始从阿里巴巴那里采购，然后拿到eBay上转售。
Mr Ma has also led the charge into online communities and social networking, both now booming areas. In 2003 he added a consumer auction site, Taobao, that allowed instant-messaging—a feature later added to his business sites. In contrast with eBay's relative anonymity, Taobao lets buyers and sellers get chummy[6] through messaging and voicemail, and by posting photographs and personal details on the site. Turning e-commerce into a community of “friends” has been critical in a country beset by a lack of trust. And with 70% of China's web users aged under 30, Taobao's informal, blog-like format struck a chord[7]—attracting more than 20m users. Many have now gone professional, buying goods wholesale 批发，趸售on Alibaba and reselling them on Taobao. （3）The story goes that, shortly after visiting Alibaba's offices and seeing Taobao, Meg Whitman, eBay's boss, bought Skype, an internet-telephony start-up, for its instant-messaging.
马云还是第一个把收费服务引入网络社区和社交网络的人，如今这两个领域发展速度都非常快。2003年，他增建了一个消费者拍卖站点即淘宝网，实现了即时通讯功能。这一功能后来也被他加入了他的贸易网站。同eBay匿名交易不同的是，淘宝网通过即时通讯和语音邮件，以及在站点上张贴照片和个人详细资料，使得买卖双方建立了亲密的关系。在一个深受诚信不足困扰的国家，将电子商务变成一个遍布“朋友”的社区已然成为关键之举。而且，对于70％30岁以下的中国网络用户而言，淘宝网不拘一格的博客式风格让他们都怦然心动——已经吸引了超过2千万的用户。许多人现在都已经逐渐走向职业化，他们从阿里巴巴批发商品，然后再到淘宝网上转售。据报道，eBay老总梅格·惠特曼在访问阿里巴巴办公室并了解淘宝网后不久，就收购了新兴网络电话公司Skype，原因就在于它具有即时通讯功能。
Alibaba has also outflanked[8] the opposition in online payments. Aware that most Chinese do not have credit cards, Mr Ma introduced AliPay, a system that keeps cash in escrow[9] until goods arrive. That trick for getting round settlement risk was later adopted in China by eBay. （3）China's powerful banking regulator has a hawkish eye on AliPay, which is, in effect, an online bank with thousands of credit histories (something mainland banks crave). Taobao's success has been startling. Its market share jumped from 8% to 59% between 2003 and 2005, while eBay China's slid from 79% to 36%. Mr Ma trumpets that it is “game over” for eBay China. Many industry watchers expect eBay to retreat and sell out to a local outfit such as Tencent (a rising star in auctions) or Alibaba itself—as Yahoo! China did.
在在线付款方面，阿里巴巴也有过人之处。马云认识到大多数中国人都没有信用卡，于是就引入了Alipay（支付宝），它可以在到货之前将所付金额一直交由第三方保管。这一降低货款交付风险的技术后来也被eBay在中国采用。强大的中国银行业调控部门对Alipay的态度则比较强硬，因为Alipay实际上是一个拥有数千条存款记录（而这又是中国大陆银行所渴望的）的网络银行。淘宝网的成功令人咋舌。2003年至2005年间，它的市场占有率已从8％跃升到59％，而eBay在中国的市场占有率则从79％跌至36%。马云不无自豪地宣称，eBay中国的“游戏结束”了。产业界众多观察人士预计，eBay将退出中国，并全部转售给一家中国公司，比如腾讯（拍卖业后起之秀）或者就是阿里巴巴，一如雅虎中国的选择。
Mr Ma is also at the forefront of the trend to integrate paid search with e-commerce. Alibaba's takeover of Yahoo! China last October gave the firm a search engine just as Google was demonstrating the huge potential of paid search, and the deal anticipated 比……抢先一步eBay's link-ups with portals (Yahoo! in America, and Google elsewhere). Baidu, China's main search engine, is a strong rival. But online advertising is surging in China and small firms are the biggest users of paid search, giving Alibaba an edge.
马云同样也走在了搜索付费与电子商务整合潮流的前沿。去年十月收购雅虎中国后，正当Google展示付费搜索的巨大发展潜力之时，阿里巴巴也拥有了自己的搜索引擎，比与许多门户网站如美国雅虎和中国以外的Google等建立链接的eBay抢先一步。中国最大的搜索引擎——百度是阿里巴巴的一个强劲对手。不过由于在线广告正在中国兴起，并且小型公司使用付费搜索都比较多，因此阿里巴巴也获得了一定的优势。
Mr Ma seldom mentions technology. Whereas most internet entrepreneurs 企业家，创业者are geeks[10] (think of Yahoo!'s or Google's founders), Mr Ma first touched a computer in 1995 on a trip to Seattle. “Someone as dumb as me should be able to use technology,” he says. He insists on simplicity. A new feature is rejected unless he can understand and use it. Mr Ma's approach to running the company is similarly independent. （4）He reads neither business books nor case studies, and ascribes Alibaba's survival and success to the fact that he “knew nothing about technology, we didn't have a plan and we didn't have any money.” In truth, Mr Ma had powerful backers early on, including Goldman Sachs and Softbank. Yahoo!'s Jerry Yang—who joined Mr Ma at the Alifest—is also a longtime friend. In any case, he has money aplenty today: as part of its takeover by Alibaba, Yahoo! paid $1 billion for a 40% stake in the company.
马云很少谈及技术问题。大多数互联网创业人士都是行家里手（比如雅虎和Google的创始人），可马云却是在1995年前往西雅图的旅途中才第一次接触电脑。他说：“跟我一样傻乎乎的人应该能够利用技术。”他力求简单。一个新的特色必须要让他能懂会用，否则就得被放弃。马云管理公司的方式也同样不拘一格。他既不读商务书籍，也不看商业案例分析。在他看来，阿里巴巴能够站住脚并获得成功，归根结底是因为他“对科技一无所知，没有任何计划，也没有一分资金。”事实上，马云很早就有了强有力的支持后盾，包括高盛公司和日本软件销售商Softbank。参加马云“阿里巴巴盛宴”聚会的雅虎总裁杨致远也是马云的多年好友。不管怎么说，如今马云已经有了丰裕的资金——作为阿里巴巴接收雅虎中国的一部分，雅虎支付了10亿美金以获得该公司40％的股份。
（5）Only one thing is missing: profits. As the boss of a private company in no rush to join the stockmarket, Mr Ma is relaxed. Revenues should double to more than $200m this year. But Alibaba has so far pursued market share rather than revenue. The global business site charges its users, but Taobao does not; an attempt to do so this year failed. Mr Ma says it is too early: only 30m of China's 120m online users have bought anything online. He wants to help the market grow—creating 1m jobs in China in the next three years—not stifle it with charges. He will have to tackle 处理，解决profitability if he is really to call the tune[11].
惟一不简单的就是利润。作为不紧不慢迈入股市的一家私有公司的老板，马云可谓优哉悠哉。今年总收入应该会增加一倍，达到2亿美金以上。不过，阿里巴巴迄今一直追求的并不是收入，而是市场份额。全球的商务网站都要对用户收费，而淘宝网却不；今年本来曾经有过收费的尝试，但最终还是取消了。马云说现在收费还为时尚早——中国1.2亿网络用户中仅有3千万人曾在网上购物。他希望促进这个市场进一步壮大——今后三年内在中国创造100万个就业岗位，而不是用收费来扼杀之。假如他当真想成为市场的主宰，那他就将不得不努力解决好盈利的问题。
[QUIZ]
1. 根据上下文和英文释义，补全单词：
①swap 交换___（v. to give something to someone and get something in return [= exchange]）
②acquisition 获得；买进（n. the act of getting land, power, money etc）
③visionary 有远见的人_（n. someone who has clear ideas and strong feelings about the way something should be in the future）
④wholesale 批发，趸售（n. the business of selling goods in large quantities at low prices to other businesses, rather than to the general public）
⑤anticipated 比……抢先一步___（v. to do something before someone else）
⑥entrepreneurs 企业家，创业者____（n. someone who starts a new business or arranges business deals in order to make money, often in a way that involves financial risks）
⑦tackle 处理，解决_（v. to try to deal with a difficult problem）
2. 英译汉（将划线部分英文翻译成中文）：
[NOTES](LONGMAN)
1. pixie n. 小精灵，小仙子
2. mob n. 群，帮
3. knock-off n. 仿制品，冒牌货
4. procurement n.获得，取得 v. procure
5. cufflink n. 男子衬衫袖的链扣
6. chummy adj.友好的，关系亲密的（＝friendly）
7. struck a chord 亦作touch a chord （with somebody） 指to do or say something that people feel is familiar or true，即触动心弦，使人回想起某事，引起共鸣，摸透别人的心意
8. outflank v. 包抄；胜过（对手，尤指策略上）
9. escrow n. 契约，合同（由第三者代为保管）（如：a property to be held in escrow由第三者代为保管的财产）
10. geek n. techie（计算机领域的行家）一词的非正式用法，有贬低的意思。Longman的解释为：someone who is not popular because they wear unfashionable clothes, do not know how to behave in social situations, or do strange things [= nerd]，古板的人，古怪的人，不合群的人
11. call the tune 指“to be in a position of authority so that you can give orders and make decisions”，即“颐指气使，发号施令”
[KEY TO QUIZ]
2.（见译文，仅供参考，欢迎指正）