经济学人--腾讯--解读

China’s internet titan has had a bruising*2018

titan“巨人”，源自希腊神话中的提坦诸神（Titans），后来被宙斯打败。

bruise是“淤⻘青”，这⾥是形容词，引申为“艰⾟的”，很形象。

标题中一个bruising，把腾讯2018年的状况生动得呈现在大家面前。

Its boss, Pony Ma, has shaken things up in time for its 20th anniversary

shake up，彻底调整，重组改革(组织/机构/行业等)

图片很有意思，蛋糕侧边画着微信和QQ的图标，吹蜡烛的同时，蛋糕都要掉下去了，指腾讯的anniversary不好过。

“WHO IS KILLING Tencent?” was the headline of an article on a Chinese business news site this autumn. Those sharing the link on WeChat, a social-media and payments service that is the crown jewel of the Chinese technology giant, see something else: “This title contains exaggerated and misleading information”. The swap is ostensibly the result of a move by Tencent in April to sanitise content, after a crackdown on popular online platforms by government regulators, but is also self-serving. Scoffing WeChat users circulated the article just to highlight the switch.

第一段：通过一篇“谁在杀死腾讯？”的文章，引出腾讯本身也急需转型，并不像表面上那样，只是因为政府的政策所迫。

这一段可以学习一下，怎么向别人介绍“微信”：“a social-media and payments service that is the crown jewel of the Chinese technology giant” ，“crown jewel”皇冠上的宝石，点出腾讯在中国的科技巨头中也是佼佼者，也可以是“the jewel in the/XX’s crown”。

微信朋友圈里面转发的东西，常常有"夸张、误导人"特点，“exaggerated and misleading”。

circulate这个词我们平时见到的意思比较多的是“循环”，比如cooled air circulated throughout the building.但是在这段里，用到的是“传布、散布”这层含义

“If a story, an idea, information etc. circulates or if you circulate it, it spreads or it is passed from one person to another.” 

比如:

“Rumours began to circulate about his financial problems.” 

"There’s a story circulating around the office that you are about to leave the company. "

It would be no surprise if Tencent were feeling touchy as it approaches its 20th anniversary on November 11th. Its shares, traded in Hong Kong since 2004, have fallen by 28% in 2018 (see chart). This time last year it was the first Asian company to be worth half-a-trillion dollars, hitting a record valuation in January of $573bn. It has since shed $218bn, roughly equivalent in value to losing Boeing or Intel. Other Chinese internet stocks have fared worse than Tencent, among them NetEase, a gaming rival, and JD.com, an e-commerce firm. But even so, the drop stands out.

第二段：腾讯，去年还是第亚洲第一个市值达到5000亿的公司，今年却股价大跌。虽然其他中国的互联网公司的股价还不如腾讯，但是腾讯的下滑仍然吸引大家的眼球。

approach，这个词并不陌生，但是这句话如果让我来说的话，肯定会说...as its 20th anniversary on November 11th is approaching... (不知道这二者在表达上有什么差异？？？)

这段里，有好多表达“下滑”的词，fall，shed，这两个是用的动词，drop，这里是用的名词。下段里面还有deline，用的是名词，可以放在一起记。

fare= get on, 后⾯面加well/badly这种词，表示在某种境况下很好或不不好。

例如：The party fared very badly in the last election. 该党上次竞选情况很糟。

The company posted its first quarterly profit decline for nearly 13 years in the three-month period ending in June. A regulatory hold-up that was blocking it from charging for new video games was the chief culprit, it explained. Although it has sprawled into all sorts of areas, from online lending (WeBank) and insurance (WeSure) to offline medical clinics (Tencent Doctorwork), the company still derives over two-fifths of its revenue from gaming. Its latest big bet in mobile games, “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds”, has accrued a huge audience of some 50m Chinese gamers who play daily, but because of the monetisation freeze, Tencent cannot cash in.

第三段：今年3月-6月，腾讯迎来近13年来首次季度收益下滑。腾讯解释说，这主要是因为政策不允许向游戏用户收费，而腾讯40%以上的收益都来自游戏。腾讯最新的手机游戏“绝地求生”虽然每天都有5000万左右用户玩儿，却不能从中获利。

culprit 本意是“罪犯，犯错的人”，这里引申为“引起问题的事物”= a person or thing responsible for causing a problem. 如果是我写的话，肯定会写成was the main reason了，reason就比较中性了，而culprit明显是导致problem发生的原因，用在这里更加贴切。

sprawl本意是“伸开四肢做（或）躺”，这里非常形象得说明了腾讯发展向不同的方向都发展。

accrue是个生词，可以用accumulate替换。

The government suspension, which began in March without explanation, had been expected to ease in the autumn. Analysts now assume that Tencent will need to tough it out until the second half of 2019. Even once game approvals start up again, the government has said that their number will be limited. To allay Communist Party concerns about the mental and physical health of young gamers, Tencent is also having to curb gaming time and set up a system of user-identity checks.

第四段：政府三月开始对游戏管制，据说在秋天将放宽政策，一些分析人员说腾讯只要挺到2019年后半年就可以了。但是为了减轻政府对玩游戏的青少年身心健康的担忧，腾讯也得限制游戏时间，并建立验证游戏玩家身份的系统。

allay= to make sth, especially a feeling, less strong 减轻...情绪

如：to allay fears/concern/suspicion

字典上写的这个词是正式用法，可以用前文的ease替代，也是减轻的意思。

tough sth out 硬着头皮撑

curb= to control or limit sth, especial sth bad 控制或者限制，一般限制是不好的东西

Capricious regulators may not be wholly to blame for the slowdown in online games, says Steve Chow of Agricultural Bank of China International (ABCI), a Chinese investment bank. Users may simply be spending less time on Tencent’s online entertainment, as other players eat into its market share. For its flagship game, “Honour of Kings”, for example, the average number of daily active users has dropped by a fifth in the past year or so, to 54m in September.

第五段：ABC的Steve说，腾讯的线上游戏走下坡路不能完全怪政府，而是因为有其他对手也进入市场分一杯羹。

eat into 基本意思是“腐蚀”，比如说Rust had eaten into the metal. 这里形象得说明了其他对手侵占腾讯的市场份额。

For skittish investors, all this has concentrated minds on whether the giant can maintain its momentum as it enters its third decade. Most agree that gaming will remain an important part of the company, but not its chief driver of revenue growth.

第六段：以上的情况，都让投资者很关心，不知腾讯在进入第三个十年之际，能否保持原来的势头。

skittish，跟上一段的capricious，都是变化莫测的意思，但是capricious后面有括号写着是正式用法。

momentum 势头，保持势头maintain，获得势头gather，增加gain，减少lose，注意这几个搭配。

Two concerns are particularly acute. Because its games have done so well, Tencent has been lackadaisical in monetising other parts of its business. It has rightly been nervous about expanding advertising within WeChat, though the service sees unrivalled Chinese mobile traffic of over 1bn monthly active users. Last year Tencent took about one-tenth of total third-party spending on digital ads in China. But Baidu, China’s leading search engine, took 19% and Alibaba, a giant in e-commerce, drew in almost a third.

第七段：投资者的担忧之一：腾通在游戏方面太出色了，在其他方面都显得萎靡不振。虽然微信用户群体庞大，但是去年的第三方支付，腾讯占10%，百度占19%，阿里巴巴占差不多三分之。

see 之前每日一词学过的用法，“为...发生的地点”。

unrivalled。rival名词是对手的意思，我们很熟悉，动词是“比得上...”的意思，所以unrivalled是，“没有什么能比上，无双的”

A second worry is that crimped profits will make it harder for the firm to keep investing heavily in areas outside its core business. Tencent has been backing promising startups in a race with Alibaba to find new users and sources of growth, battling indirectly in areas as varied as food delivery and online education. In some, such as cloud computing, the pair compete directly. Although Tencent’s investors are supportive of this approach, Jerry Liu of UBS, a bank, says the wider tech sell-off stems from a recognition that China’s maturing internet sector is becoming “a zero-sum game”: dominant platforms are having to invest more to stay ahead and so their margins are shrinking.

第八段：投资者担忧之二：腾讯的收益减少，让腾讯更难在除了其核心产业的其他方向进行大量投资。

a zero-sum game “零和游戏”，指参与博弈的各方，在严格竞争下，一方的收益必然意味着另一方的损失，博弈各方的收益和损失相加总和永远为“零”，双方不存在合作的可能。

Tencent’s first internal-restructuring plan since 2012, announced in September, offers a clue to the company’s thinking. In it Tencent set out a long-term shift away from the consumer internet towards business services, marking “a new beginning for the company’s next 20 years”. It has set up a new unit for cloud and “smart” industries, combining all its on-demand software and online services for firms that seek to go digital. Pony Ma, Tencent’s boss, said the “main battlefield” for mobile internet is moving from consumers to companies.

第九段：腾讯2012年第一次计划进行内部改革，让我们得以一窥腾讯的想法。腾讯是想要从To C转成To B。

shift每日一词又出现啦！这里是名词。腾讯希望从To C转型成To B，就是用的shift这个词。段尾moving一词，跟shift同义。

on-demand= available when needed or wanted 只能用在名词前

 eg：My cable company offers on-demand service/movies.

Alibaba, born to bring businesses online through its virtual emporia, has a strong lead in this arena. Last year it took 45% of China’s fledgling cloud-computing market, worth 69bn yuan ($10bn), compared with 10% for Tencent, according to IDC, a research firm. Still, Tencent doubled revenue in cloud services in the second quarter compared with the same period last year. Earnings from “other businesses” (ie, payments and cloud) overtook those from its social networks for the first time.

第十段：跟去年同一时期相比，今年第二季度，腾讯在第三方支付和微云的收益，第一次超过了它的社交网络。当然，跟巨头阿里巴巴还是不能比的--腾讯10%，阿里巴巴45%。

born to do sth 生来就是做...的

If you were born to do it and truly dedicate yourself to the end result, anything, including walking on water, is entirely possible!  如果你是为此而生的，并且为了最终的结果真正地奉献自己，任何事情，包括水上行走，都是完全可能的。

virtual emporia 线上大百货 用来描述阿里巴巴真是再合适不过了！

fledgling，刚会飞的幼鸟。这里用来形容新兴的云计算市场。

lead 这里是名词，领先地位

可以用的搭配：have a strong lead，take the lead， in the lead，hold/lose the lead

arena 舞台，是个比较正式的用法，比如 the political arena 政治舞台

overtake= to become greater in number, amount or importance than sth else 大于，超过

这让我想到了之前每日一词学的outXX，可以替换成outrun

例：We mustn't let ourselves be overtaken by our competitors.

Mr Chow reckons that Alibaba and Tencent can both create large businesses in cloud computing since the market has lots of room to grow. And Tencent boasts powerful assets. WeChat is on over four in every five Chinese smartphones, so offers a massive market for firms. Last year it introduced a cloud-based platform that allows companies to offer services to users in WeChat via “mini programs” (ie, tiny apps). There are more than 1m mini programs, used by over 200m people every day.

第十一段：阿里巴巴和腾讯在云计算市场都有很大增长空间。而腾讯，拥有广泛的“群众基础”。去年开发了小程序，每天有超过2亿人使用。

boast 又是每日一词里的！拥有值得自豪的东西~

WeChat is on over four in every five Chinese smartphones.

我可能会这样写，80%Chinese smartphone users have downloaded Wechat。这样一对比，说五个人里面有四个人手机上都有“微信”，感觉更具体，更能感受人数之多。

For now, however, its revenue from such mini programs and other built-in services is still “close to zero”, notes David Dai of Sanford C. Bernstein, a research firm. Meanwhile rivals have introduced their own offerings of mini programs. Among them is Bytedance, a newish giant that has young Chinese hooked on its flawlessly addictive video and news offerings, curated with artificial-intelligence technology. It is a thorn in Tencent’s side.

第十二段：就目前而言，这些小程序的收益甚微，与此同时还有对手的新产品层出不穷，比如“抖音”，“今日头条”。

rival 对手，前文有unrivalled，可以一起记。

newish= slightly new

hook 本意是 “钩子”。这里是动词，描述了中国年轻人对“抖音”和“今日头条”这样的app的痴迷，上瘾。

例：A lot of people seem to be hooked on sugary foods. 很多人似乎着迷于甜食。

 a newish giant that has young Chinese hooked on its flawlessly addictive video

第一段学了怎么介绍微信，这一段，又学到了怎么介绍抖音！这个介绍让我这样手机里面没有抖音的人，也想下载一个看看哈哈！

thorn 刺

a thorn in sb’s flesh/side 眼中钉肉中刺，让我想到了a pain in the ass（美），英国人喜欢说a pain in the neck，不过这俩就不太正式啦。