学人笔记 | 你还在从事“扯淡的工作”Bullshit Jobs

上周，经济学人推了一篇书评，标题是Not Working Properly徒劳的工作，书评文字并不复杂，六级水平应该也能轻松读懂。今天这篇推送选取此书评上半部分抠语言点，请君笑纳~

现在开始沉浸在知识的海洋里……

何为扯淡的工作？开篇介绍了一个典故，这也是经济学人的惯用开篇套路：

SISYPHUS（西西弗斯(sisyphus)是希腊神话中的人物）, king of Corinth（科林斯（希腊海港城市））, was condemned for all eternity to push a boulder（大石头） up a hill, only to watch it roll down again. David Graeber, an anthropologist, thinks that many modern workers face the same fate today, forced to perform pointless tasks, or “bullshit jobs”, as his new book calls them.

关注eternity这个词，不可数，永恒，永生。但也可以用作可数名词，意为“似乎很漫长的一段时间”，比如我们常常会有这样的心理活动，感觉那一个小时的孤独无穷无尽: That hour was an eternity of solitude.

Be condemned for all eternity to push... 此处的的all eternity翻译的时候处理成了四字格，周而复始，永无休止。刚才那个例句里亦是如此：无穷无尽。

这段话用典故类比眼下“扯淡的毫无意义的工作”，很形象。

Mr Graeber defines a bullshit job as one “that is so completely pointless, unnecessary or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence”, though they may have to pretend that they believe in it. This definition, and indeed much of the book, combines two categories of roles. In the first are jobs that Mr Graeber tends to think are socially worthless, such as corporate lawyers or investment bankers. (Some of those workers may take an equally dim view of the utility of anthropologists.) In the second group are jobs where employees find themselves with little or nothing to do and, worse, must still look as if they are frantically busy.

究竟什么才是扯淡的工作bullshit jobs呢？第一句给出了解释，completely pointless, unnecessary, pernicious。注意pernicious，有害的，但相比于harmful，pernicious更多是是不容易察觉出的有害，比如令很多人沉迷的社交网络的危害，the social media’s pernicious influence。

定语从句中，that even the employee cannot justify its existence. Justify这个词超级无敌好用的，证明……是合理的。同样可以表达这个意思的词还有：proved reasonable, hold water。

再关注一个词组：take an equally dim view, take a dim view不赞同某事，对某事持否定态度，也就是对……不齿，嗤之以鼻，再加上一个表示程度的副词equally，同样不齿。

这一段中，作者给扯淡的工作下定义，分类别。

What is his evidence? The author places a lot of faith in anecdotes（奇闻轶事） and a couple of opinion surveys which found that only 37-40% of workers in Britain and the Netherlands felt they “made a meaningful contribution to the world.” He doesn’t seem to allow for the possibility that modesty might govern their answers.

这样做有何依据呢？

首先，作者place a lot of faith in奇闻异事和民意调查，place也可以用put替换，意为相信，相信奇闻异事和民意调查，也就是采信于这些内容，认为这些内容可信，从中取材。

最后一句，allow for，考虑到，把……考虑在内，比如：to allow for the difference in their ages考虑到他们年龄的差异；to allow for breakage 把损耗量算在内。

Modesty might govern their answers，单纯从字面看，谦虚可能支配着他们的回答，润色一下，即他们给出的答案只是自谦的结果。

In any case, the contention that many of us are wasting much of our time at work is hardly a new one. C. Northcote Parkinson coined the idea that “work expands to fill the time available” in an essay in The Economist in 1955, adding that “there need be little or no relationship between the work to be done and the size of the staff to which it may be assigned.” The futility（无意义，无谓） of many middle-class jobs is also an old theme, being the plot driver of the 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life”.

我们在说“提出某个观点”到时候，通常会用put forward, present等动词，此处可以积累一个替换表达coin the idea, coin创造、杜撰，从这个词义可知，宾语应该是某个新词项表达新想法新观点。

这段话里需要费点脑子去理解的应该是最后一句：being the plot driver of the 1970s British sitcom “The Good Life”. plot情节，sitcom情景喜剧，通常每周播出一集，重点落在driver一词上。

本身这个词可以表示驱动程序，drive驱动推动，其变体也常常与“推动因素”的含义有关，比如be a driving force behind sth.是推动某事物发展的原因。

类似这样的表达还有be the culprit of sth.，比如，压力可能是不孕不育的罪魁祸首：Stress can be the culprit of infertility.  还有一个名词也很好用，催化剂catalyst，be a catalyst for sth.，比如，这一全新的商业模式会是旅游业发展的催化剂：The new business model will act as a catalyst for growth in tourism.

用这种名词来表达动态的动作含义，会显得句子更简洁轻盈。再回到这篇文章中的driver一词上，可以动词化处理，the plot driver，推动着情节的发展，也就是这部情景喜剧的剧情就以此展开。

Nevertheless, some workers will feel that Mr Graeber’s analysis is timely. Both meaningless job titles and mindless tasks seem to have proliferated. A study by Gary Hamel and Michele Zanini, two management theorists, estimated that there are nearly 24m corporate “bureaucrats” in America, or about one for every 4.7 workers. Reassigning them to more productive tasks could give the American economy a $3trn boost, they reckon.

表示“激增，迅速增多”，可能会用jump, surge，这一段第二句出现了一个可供替换的词：proliferate，比如眼下的产品层出不穷，Products continue to proliferate. 头脑风暴，层出不穷的想法，proliferated ideas。

还有一个动词也可以表达失控一样的上升，spiral，不过这个词的主语一般和钱有关，比如债务或费用，比如现在中国已经丧失了低成本劳动红利，各项生产成本都在急剧上升，production costs began to spiral.

这段最后关注一个小词：give，这里倒是直接能处理成，给美国经济带来三万亿美元的增长。但除此之外，很多时候，give这种常见的小词不能直接对应“给”，而是要根据上下文和搭配的宾语去选择适合汉语表达的词。

比如之前看过一个句子，很多人会误解：They gave the boy the lie.很多人会以为是“他们对那个男孩说谎”，应该就是把gave活生生地给对应到了“给予”。其实这句话的意思是“他们指责那个男孩说谎”。

以下几个关于give的灵活选词，选自陈德彰《翻译辨误》，也建议记忆一下：

the word is not given in the dictionary. 词典里没有收录这个词。

the book has been given to his pen. 这本书是他写的。

the surface easily gives under pressure. 这个表面一压就陷下去。

总结一下，今天这篇笔记的重点内容主要有：

eternity

pernicious与harmful的区别

justify及其替换表达

put/place faith in sth.

allow for

coin the idea

driver及driving force，及其替换表达，用此类名词表达动作含义的思路

proliferate及其替换表达

give的灵活选词

未完待续……