本帖最后由 I'm_zhcn 于 2009-5-12 17:17 编辑
【原文标题】China: Where Patience Meets Speed
【中文标题】中国：快速并耐心着
【登载媒体】Whashingtonpost
【来源地址】http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051002292.html
【译者】aha
【声明】本翻译供Anti-CNN使用，未经AC或译者许可，不得转载。
【原文库链接】http://bbs.m4.cn/thread-164146-1-1.html
【译文】
As readers know, I’m working on a new book about global entrepreneurship that is taking me around the world at the pace of roughly one country per month for the next year and a half. The plan is to focus on several contrasting hot spots for entrepreneurship and revisit them throughout the next year or so to see how the entrepreneurs and economies evolve over that time.
我在准备一本关于全球企业家的新书，未来的一年半我将以大约每月一个国家的速度访问世界各地。计划聚焦几个差异强烈的热点地区的企业家们，并在一年后回访，观察这段时间内企业家及地方经济的进展情况。
But since it’s early in the process, I’m still hitting many places for the first time, and it’s a challenge. I’m continually throwing myself into a culture and trying to absorb as much as I can from being on the ground, meeting with hundreds of entrepreneurs, and trying to ferret out some TechCrunch-worthy and book-worthy stories. Two-to-three weeks can go past in the blink of an eye, and frequently I leave with more questions than answers. More maddening: That’s usually a sign I’ve done my job. No place should be decipherable in two weeks. Especially not China.
不过现在还处于开始阶段，我仍在持续的首次到访一些地方，这确实是个挑战。我不停的将自己暴露在一个新的文化当中，并尽可能的切身吸收当地的文化，和数百名企业家会面，并努力搜寻能告诉读者的或写进书里的故事。两三个星期一眨眼就过去了，每当离开的时候心中的问题往往比答案更多。我会变得更加疯狂：这也通常标志着我完成了工作，没有什么地方可以在两个星期内盖棺定论，对中国来说尤其不可能。
China has just exploded with entrepreneurship, funding and economic opportunity over the last five years or so, and unlike most of the world there doesn’t seem to be a slow down yet. In 2002, U.S. investors pumped $437 million into China. By 2007 that had grown to $2.8 billion. And last year, it swelled again to $4.2 billion. All numbers courtesy of Dow Jones/VentureSource which should be releasing its first quarter China figures this week. Imagine Silicon Valley in 1999 times a huge sprawling country and population, and that’s what I’m wading into for the next two weeks.
过去五年左右，中国正经历着企业家、资金以及经济机会的快速膨胀。和世界大部分地区不同的是，这种膨胀似乎还没有结束的迹象。2002年，美国投资者注入中国的资金为4.37亿美元，到了2007年，这以数据成长为28亿。去年，这一数据再次膨胀到42亿美元。所有数据均来自Dow Jones/VentureSource，本周他们将发布其第一季的中国数据。想象1999年时期的硅谷，发生在一整个迅速膨胀的国家和人口之中，那就是我在未来两周将投入的一个世界。
On one hand, it’s exhilarating. In the US, we’ve all heard so much about the amazing Chinese economic engine, looking on with a mix of terror, greed and awe. It’s stunning actually to be on the ground here. But sifting through hundreds- even thousands- of Mandarin-speaking entrepreneurs is also a bit like trying to do an estate sale for Howard Hughes. There are priceless old films, keepsakes from starlets and antique aviator equipment, but also stacks of milk bottles, newspapers and nail clippings—where do you start?
一方面，非常令人激动。在美国，我们听说了太多事情，关于中国让人惊讶的经济引擎。我们怀着复杂的心情——恐惧、贪婪和敬畏——看待这些。从我们这里看来这些情况确实令人惊叹。不过要从数百位、甚至数千位中国企业家中筛选出合适人选，也有点像是在试图帮Howard Hughes（1905-1976美国飞行家，实业家，导演及制片人等，译者注）拍卖财产。那里边有价值连城的老电影胶片，明星赠送的纪念品以及古董飞行设备等，但同时也有一些空牛奶瓶，报纸和指甲剪——这要何从下手呢？
This mild panic I’m finding myself in has me thinking a great deal about two characteristics of China that people have been referencing in the last few weeks as I’ve been planning this trip and doing pre-interviews: Patience and speed. They’re seemingly contradictory, and perhaps part of that is the collision of tradition and modernity in China right now.
我发现自己处于一种轻微的恐慌境地，这让我思考很多，在过去的几个星期中，当我在计划自己的行程以及做行前采访时，人们一直提醒我中国有两种特性：耐心和速度。两者似乎彼此矛盾，或许部分原因在于中国传统与现代的碰撞。
It’s important to realize that patience isn’t the same thing as being slow. It’s a mindset thing, not a factor of how fast you are moving. The Chinese people have always known they’d be one of the world’s major superpowers, known it with such conviction; they just had to let it unfold. And unfold it has. Even Internet entrepreneurs share this view, as Jack Ma of Alibaba said in this 2000 Forbes interview, “One must run as fast as a rabbit, but be as patient as a turtle.” Interestingly, Ma picks the good attributes of each animal: The speed of the rabbit but not the impatience and cockiness. And the patience of the tortoise but not the slow speed. (One could argue those are traits of large, fat and happy American multi-nationals that both Chinese and Silicon Valley startups seek to out-do.) Ma has also said that employees and customers come first, shareholders second. Why? They’re incapable of holding a long term view and he refuses to run his business quarter-to-quarter. For Ma, ten years is a short time. For U.S. investors—even VCs—ten years is a long-term investment horizon.
必须要认识到耐心并不等于缓慢。耐心是关于情绪的，和移动快慢无关。中国人民一直知道并非常确信，自己的国家是世界上一个主要强国。他们只是需要将其展开，恢复它从前的模样。即使网络企业家也持这种观点，正如阿里巴巴的马云在两千年的福布斯访谈中所说：“你必须像兔子一样敏捷，但要如乌龟一样有耐心。”马云有趣的挑选出了每种动物各自的优秀品质：要有兔子的速度，但不要兔子的急躁和自大；要有乌龟的耐心但又不能太慢。（你可能会争论说，那些负面的品质正是美国肥胖、庞大、愉快的跨国公司的特质，不过中国人和硅谷的创业家们正努力克服这些。）马云也说过，员工和顾客至上，股东次之。为什么呢？股东没有长远的眼界，而马云拒绝以季度为单位为公司制定规划。对马云来说，十年是一个很短的时间。而对美国投资者来说——甚至对风险投资公司来说——十年都是个长期的投资年限。
What many U.S. investors find baffling is how that patient mindset co-exists in a world that moves so quickly. Last night I had dinner with several ex-patriot entrepreneurs who said it’d be hard to leave Shanghai now because the speed with which the city runs has become addictive. Every few weeks there are new buildings. The restaurants open and close so quickly, one of the ex-pats says he calls a restaurant before he leaves the house, not to make reservations but to make sure its still there. Another laughed at the idea that he used to think Manhattan was fast-paced. He goes back to visit now, and it all seems the same.
令许多美国投资者不解的是在一个变化如此快的世界里，耐心如何生存。昨晚，我和几位侨民（ex-patriot 疑为expatriate笔误，译者注）企业家一起吃晚餐，他们说，如今要离开上海是件不容易的事，这城市的速度已经开始让人上瘾。每隔几周就有一幢新的建筑拔地而起。餐馆飞快的开了又关。一位侨民说，他出门前总要打电话给餐馆，不是为了定位子，只是确定那家餐馆还照常营业。另一位取笑自己过去的观点，他曾经认为曼哈顿的节奏更快，结果他回去一看，完全一样。
I’m not even 24-hours into my adventure in China, but I’m interested to learn more about how these two traits manifest themselves in the startup world here. Already, I’m hearing about a distaste for raising U.S. money because of an insistence on predictable and unnatural growth metrics. My guess is the successful investors will be the ones that yield to the Chinese way of thinking on this, not the reverse. Indeed, a short-term nature of investing is a big part of why our capital markets are broken, and over the last few decades as Wall Street funds and endowments have become the main backers of VCs, that short-term-thinking disease has spread into what used to be a risky but patient asset-class.
我在中国的探索还不满一日，不过我非常感兴趣，这里的创业家们是如何在他们身上表现出这两种性格的。我已经听到一些不愿接触美国资金的声音，因为美国的投资者总是要求可预期的甚至违反自然的增长神话。我猜测，成功的投资者，应该会是那些服从中国行事方式的人，而不是相反去违背中国的方式。的确，投资中的短期特质正是导致我们的资本市场崩溃的一大原因，而在过去的几十年里，华尔街的资金和捐赠已经成为风险投资公司的主要支持，这样的短期思考病毒已经蔓延至——过去我们认为——爱冒险同时也有耐心的资产阶级那里。
翻译交流见 地板
标题太拗口了，为何不直译为“当耐心遇上速度”呢？毕竟“当Ｘ遇上Ｙ”在汉语里也已经是一个常用表述了。
墨羽 发表于 2009-5-11 23:57  |
狗仔卡
发表于 2009-5-11 21:15
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抢沙发
千斤顶
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楼主
改成“中国：速度与耐心同行”或别的什么也会好点吧