一起读外刊语言·翻译

【经济学人精读】女人更疯狂

2018-01-03  本文已影响96人  七老师

Half the sky

Are men more irrationally exuberant than women?

Women are often more cautious than men in trading. But not in China

irrational: not based on, or not using, clear logical thought 不合逻辑的;没有道理的 = unreasonable
e.g. to behave irrationally 表现得没有理性
exuberant: full of energy, excitement and happiness 精力充沛的;热情洋溢的;兴高采烈的

解析:
half the sky就是我们常常说的“半边天”;
exuberant这里跟文中提到的manic, unhinged, bold, reckless都是近义的,用来形容对股市的“狂热”。
副标题这句话其实就概况了整篇文章的核心内容:女性经常在交易时更谨慎,而在中国不是这样的。这个句式是个很好的让步+转折句型,用来强调自己的观点。比如:I used to hold that learning by myself is most effective, but not any more. Now I find out learning in 7Sir's group is more efficient.

Aug 24th 2017 | Shanghai

  1. WOULD more women on the trading floor inject a dose of sanity into the world’s financial markets? This question gained prominence after the 2007-08 crisis. As Christine Lagarde, then France’s finance minister and now head of the IMF, quipped, had Lehman Brothers been Lehman Sisters, history would have been different. Many studies support this idea, showing that testosterone-laden men are prone to overconfidence in trading. Women are more cautious.

trading floor: an area in a stock exchange or bank where shares and other securities are bought and sold (证券交易所或银行的)交易大厅
dose: an amount of sth 一份;一次;一点:
e.g. A dose of flu kept me off work. 一场感冒使得我上不了班。
e.g. Workers at the nuclear plant were exposed to high doses of radiation. 核电站的工人受到大量辐射。
sanity: the state of having a normal healthy mind 精神健全;神志正常反义词:insanity(美剧里经常听到的insane的名词)
e.g. His behaviour was so strange that I began to doubt his sanity. 他行为怪异,我有点怀疑他是否神智正常。
e.g. to keep / preserve your sanity 保持头脑清醒
prominence: the state of being important, well known or noticeable 重要;突出;卓越;出名;动词搭配:achieve, come into, come to, gain, rise to, shoot to
e.g. a young actor who has recently risen to prominence 最近崭露头角的一名年轻演员
quip: to make a quick and clever remark 讲俏皮话;讥讽;嘲弄;打趣
-laden: used to form adjectives showing that sth is full of, or loaded with, the thing mentioned (用于构成形容词)充满…的,装载…的:
e.g. calorie-laden cream cakes 高热量的奶油蛋糕
cautious: being careful about what you say or do, especially to avoid danger or mistakes; not taking any risks 小心的;谨慎的

1)交易大厅里有更多的女性会给世界金融市场注入一点理智”吗?这个问题在2007-08经济危机后变得重要。正如当时的法国财政部长及现在的国际货币基金组织(IMF) 总裁克里斯汀·拉加德曾打趣地说道, 如果雷曼兄弟是雷曼姐妹的话, 历史将会有所不同。许多研究支持这一观点, 表明充满睾酮的男性容易在交易中过度自信。女人则更为谨慎

解析:文章用一个问句开头,引出本文讨论的核心问题:女性会让市场更加理智一点吗?随后指出这个问题因为经济危机而变得重要,接着引用IMF总裁的俏皮话和许多研究的结论来证明“女性确实比男性更谨慎”。从全文角度看这是先交代反方观点,为了引出下文。
As Christine Lagarde, then France’s finance minister and now head of the IMF, quipped, had Lehman Brothers been Lehman Sisters, history would have been different.这句中then France’s finance minister and now head of the IMF是补充说明CL这个人的身份,非常简洁,如果用从句表示则需要说who was then France’s finance minister and is now head of the IMF,就会显得比较啰嗦;整句结构简化后是 As CL quipped, ... 后面这句 had ...been..., history would have been ...是虚拟语气


  1. But things may not be so simple. Previous research has mostly used evidence from the West. To test if the conclusions apply universally, Wang Jianxin of China’s Central South University, Daniel Houser of George Mason University and Xu Hui of Beijing Normal University looked at both America and China. And they found that in China’s markets, women can be just as manic as men.
  1. 但事情可能没那么简单。以前的研究大多使用西方的证据。为了检验结论是否普遍适用, 中国中南大学的王建欣、乔治梅森大学的丹尼尔·豪斯和北京师范大学的许慧同时研究了美国和中国。他们发现, 在中国的市场上, 女性可能和男性一样狂热

  1. The economists arranged for 342 students to form experimental markets. They were allocated dividend-paying shares and tokens (in lieu of cash), and given 15 rounds to trade within gender-based groups. Participants could, in theory, calculate fair value of the shares in any given round but few did so.
  1. 经济学家安排342个学生组成实验性的市场。分配派息股票和代币给他们, 并在基于性别的群体里让他们进行15轮交易。从理论上说, 参与者可以计算出任何一轮中股票的公允价值, 但很少有人这样做。

  1. In America, the outcomes matched past experiments. Shares quickly inflated to a bubble in male-only trading groups, before crashing. Women-only groups traded the shares at a discount for much of the time. In China male-only markets were just as unhinged. But so were the female-only markets, going from bubble to bust just like the male-only ones.
  1. 在美国, 结果与过去的实验相吻合。在只有男性的交易组,股票迅速膨胀成泡沫 , 随后崩溃。在大部分时间里, 纯女性的组则以打折价格交易股票。在中国, 纯男性的市场同样狂热。但纯女性市场也同样如此, 就像纯男性组一样从泡沫到破灭

  1. Critics will object that this was just an experiment. However, there is a long history of using such devices to study investment behaviour. Anecdotally, women have played a part in China’s market manias. In trading halls full of elderly day-traders, white-haired ladies sit alongside wizened men. Over the past two years women have also been on the front lines of protests after a series of online investment schemes collapsed.
  1. 批评者会抗辩说这只是一个实验。然而, 使用这种方法来研究投资行为有着悠久的历史。据观察, 女性参与到中国市场的狂热中。在满是年长的当日买卖交易者的交易大厅里, 白发苍苍的女士们与干瘪的男人坐在一起。在过去的两年里, 在一系列的在线投资计划失败后, 女性也一直处于抗议的第一线。

  1. Why China’s women might be as bold—and reckless—as men is open to debate. Other research highlights Communist Party policies promoting equality. But in practice women in China are woefully underrepresented in the financial sector. Only when that changes will it be possible to judge if China truly has gender parity in irrational exuberance.
  1. 为什么中国的女性可能会像男人一样大胆 ——以及鲁莽——未有定论。其他研究强调了共产党促进平等的政策(带来了如此影响)。但实际上, 在中国, 女性在金融领域的代表人数严重不足。只有当这种情况改变了, 才有可能判断在非理性的狂热方面,中国是否真正有性别平等。

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