经济学人： 技术进步会让我们失业吗？|双语精读

Technology and Jobs

Coming to an Office Near You

The effect of today’s technology on tomorrow’s jobs will be immense – and no country is ready for it

• the effect of A on B A 对 B 的效应 / 影响 很多同学在表达 A 对 B 产生了巨大的影响时只会说 A has a huge influence on sth. 但我们今天在《经济学人》中学到了一个新的句型： The effect of A on B is immense. 可以套用在自己的作文里，比如“ 气候变暖对人类生活产生了巨大的影响”： The effect of global warming on our lives is immense. [写作推荐]

• 从这句话我们也可以学到，表达现在和未来，不一定要用 current 和 future ，也可以用 today’s 和 tomorrow’s ， tomorrow 倾向于“不久的将来”，文中用 today 和 tomorrow 也体现出，技术马上就要冲击人们的工作了。

• 再带大家复习一下在基因编辑那篇文章讲过的表示“未来的 XX ”的表达方式： XX+to come , XX+of the future , XX+of tomorrow 。 [ 写作推荐 ]

• immense 指“巨大的”，相当于 extremely large ，程度比较深。类似表示“大”的词汇还有 enormous , vast , massive , enormous , gigantic , colossal 等等。

Innovation, the elixir of progress, has always cost people their jobs. In the Industrial Revolution artisan weavers were swept aside by the mechanical loom . Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has displaced many of the mid-skill jobs that underpinned 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been dispensed with , just as the weavers were.

• elixir [ɪˈlɪksɪər] 本指中世纪炼金术士所幻想的炼金药，比如长生不老药 the elixir of life ，后引申为解决问题的“灵丹妙药”。

• 类似的表达还有 panacea ， be a panacea for sth 解决 … 的灵丹妙药，这也是外刊中的常客，比如 20181117 期《经济学人》一篇谈教育技术的文章末尾提到： Technology is no panacea. Good traditional teachers are not obsolete, and are never likely to be. 技术当然不是万能的。优秀的传统教师没有被淘汰，也永远不可能被淘汰。

• cost sb sth 指“使某人损失某物”，比如“那场车祸差点要了我的命”： That accident nearly cost my life.

• loom 在文中作名词指“织布机”，补充一下， loom 作动词出现的频率更高：

  1. loom 本义是某物隐约出现，赫然耸现 (to appear as a large unclear shape, especially in a threatening way) ，比如 ◇ The iceberg loomed out of the fog. 冰山从雾中隐约地出现。

  2. loom 也可以指问题或困难逼近，临近，比如 ◇ 经济危机正在逼近： An economic crisis is looming. 开一下脑洞，最近媒体报道中常说的“凛冬将至”，就可以译为 A bitter winter looms.

  3. 词组 loom large 指令人忧虑，令人惊恐 (to be worrying or frightening and seem hard to avoid) ，并且难以避免，比如 ◇Financial problems loomed large in both the North and the South. 南方和北方都遭遇了财务困难。

• artisan weavers 指手工织布的工人。

• sweep aside If a person or thing sweeps something away or aside, they remove it quickly and completely. 彻底删掉；迅速除去；

• displace sth 相当于 replace sth, take the place of sth 指“取代，替代” (to take the place or position of something or someone)

• underpin [ˌʌn.dəˈpɪn] v. to give strength or support to something and to help it succeed 巩固，支持

• 我们在 Optimising romance 也学过这个词： To find true love, it helps to understand the economic principles underpinning the search 若要找到真爱，懂得这种探寻背后的经济学原理将能帮助你。

• bank teller 银行出纳

• production-line jobs 指生产线上的工作。

• dispense with sth 相当于 get rid of sth , do away with sth , throw away sth ，指“摒弃某物，不再需要某物”，比如“我找到工作后就不再需要父母的经济支持了”： Since I have found a job, I dispensed with the financial support of my parents.

• [ 经济学人 ] As in previous volumes in the series, the editors have decided to dispense with footnotes and sources (though there is a useful bibliography). 正如这套丛书中的前几卷那样，编辑们已经决定放弃注释和来源（尽管有一个有用的参考文献）。

For those, including this newspaper, who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such churn is a natural part of rising prosperity. Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more productive society becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants demand more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was employed on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not co nsigned to joblessness , but found better-paid work as the economy grew more sophisticated . Today the pool of secretaries has shrunk, but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers.

• this newspaper 指本报，这篇文章来自《经济学人》，因此 this newspaper 指的就是《经济学人》。

• made the world a better place 让世界变得很美好

  这是一个 make + 宾语 + 宾补语结构 ，宾补可以是名词，可以是形容词， make sth sth 或 make sth adj. 意思是使 得宾语成为或变成宾语补足语的那样。 make the world a better place 结构比较简单，大家应该都读得懂，但有宾语或宾补有时候会很长，包含复杂的句法结构，理解起来就比较困难，比如：
  ◇Since then, I have worked on making my dream that computers can understand us better and work more simply a reality. 从那时候起，我就致力于实现我的梦想，要看到电脑能更好地理解我们、工作得更简单方便。（make与a reality遥相呼应，宾语my dream后面有一个同位语从句，给理解造成了困难）

  ◇Aquarium officials did not make the report from the American Zoo and Aquariums Association public . 水族馆的人员并没有把美国动物园与水族馆联合会的报告公之于众。

  ◇再比如 2017 年经济学人精读社中我们讲过的一个长难句： Actually, that incompleteness applies even to models of single proteins, meaning that science is not yet good at predicting whether a particular modification will make a molecule intended to interact with a given protein a better drug or not. 实际上，即使是单一的蛋白质模型也还不 完整，这意味着科学尚不能预测某种药物分子 修饰是否会让一个将与特定蛋白质相互作用的 分子成为更好的药物。

• such churn 指上一段提到的众多工作均被淘汰的剧烈变动。 churn 本来是指搅拌器，喻指剧烈的变动，体现技术的发展给人类工作带来的猛烈冲击。

• churn 作动词有一个高频出现的表达 churn out sth ，指大量生产，快速生产，往往强调重量不重质，粗制滥造，比如二十年来，琼瑶写了很多言情小说： Yao Chiung 's been churning out romantic novels for twenty years.

• churn out sth 还经常用于教育领域，指“培养出 … ”，比如中国的教育强调死记硬背，培养出了一些世界上最善于应试的人： China’s educational emphasis on rote memorization churns out some of the world’s best test-takers. 再比如经济学人精读社选 India’s Economy 中一句话： The workforce is woefully unproductive—no surprise given the abysmal state of India’s education system, which churns out millions of adults equipped only for menial work. 印度劳动力的生产率极其低下，考虑到该国糟糕透顶的教育体系，也就不意外了。这一 教育体系培养出的数百万成年人只能胜任低技术的枯燥工作。

• sth is natural part of sth. … 是 … 自然的一部分，比如“压力是日常生活的一部分”： Stress is a natural part of everyday life. [ 写作推荐 ]

• free sb from sth 指“解放某人；使某人摆脱某物” ( to move sb / sth that is caught or fixed on sth) ， free 在这里是动词。 The millions freed from the land 这里是过去分词 freed from the land 作后 The millions 置定语，可改写为定语从句： The million who are freed from the land ，指数百万从土地解放出来的人。

• consign sb to sth 指“把 … 置于”，后面一般跟不好的境地， be consigned to sth 即“被置于 … 境地，陷入 … 境地”， be consigned to joblessness 指陷入失业的境地，再比如金融危机后，数百万人的生活陷入了贫困： After the financial disaster, millions of people were consigned to a life of poverty.

• sophisticated 指“精细化，先进的，复杂的”，类似于 advanced, highly developed 。

• pool 是一个很地道的小词，有点类似于中文中的“库、池”，比如 a talent pool / a pool of talents 人才库 a labour pool 备用劳动力 a candidate pool 候选池 [ 写作推荐 ]

Optimism remains the right starting-point , but for workers the dislocating effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its benefits. Even if new jobs and wonderful products emerge, in the short-term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics. Technology’s impact will feel like a tornado, hitting the rich world first, but eventually sweeping through poorer countries too. No government is prepared for it.

• starting-point n.[C] an idea or situation from which a discussion, process etc can develop （讨论、过程等的）起点，基础

• dislocating 来自于动词 dislocate ， dislocate 本义是“脱臼，脱位”，比如我的手指脱臼了： I dislocated my finger. dislocate 也可以指抽象意义上的脱位，意为“扰乱；使混乱；使运转不正常”，相当于我们熟悉的 disrupt 。文中 the dislocating effects of technology 可理解为技术的颠覆作用。

• sweep through sth 指“迅速传播，蔓延” (to spread quickly) ，其形容词形式 sweeping 指“影响广泛的；大范围的”，比如 ◇全面改革： sweeping reforms ◇彻底变化： sweeping changes

• be prepared for sth 指“做好准备” be prepared for it 与副标题中的 be ready for it 互为同义替换。

• 我们可以在 prepared 前面加上否定前缀 -ill, be ill-prepared for sth/to do st h 表示“准备不充分，没有准备好”，比如我没有准备好明天的面试： I was ill-prepared for the interview tomorrow.

Why be worried? It is partly just a matter of history repeating itself. In the early part of the Industrial Revolution the rewards of increasing productivity went disproportionately to capital; later on, labour reaped most of the benefits. The pattern today is similar. The prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution has gone overwhelmingly to the owners of capital and the highest-skilled workers. Over the past three decades, labour’s share of output has shrunk globally from 64% to 59%. Meanwhile, the share of income going to the top 1% in America has risen from around 9% in the 1970s to 22% today. Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world, and not just for cyclical reasons. In 2000, 65% of working-age Americans were in work ; since then the proportion has fallen, during good years as well as bad, to the current level of 59%.

• history repeats itself 指“历史重复自己，历史总会再度重演”。

• it's only / just a matter of sth 表示“这只是 … 的问题”，最常见的是 It’s just a matter of time. 这只是时间早晚的问题。

• disproportionately 来自于形容词 disproportionate ，指“不均衡地，不相称地，不成比例地” (out of proportion)

• [ 经济学人 ] In this image-saturated environment, comments on girls' photos tend to focus disproportionately on looks, bullying is common and anxieties about female rivals are rife. 在这个图片饱和的时代，对女孩照片的评论过多地集中在长相上，欺凌最常见不过了，女性之间的竞争焦虑盛行。

• the rewards of sth go to sb sth goes to sb 是一个非常形象地道的表达，某物走向某人，也就是某人获得了某物，比如 ◇ All the money raised will go to local charities. 募集的所有钱款都将交给当地的慈善机构。

• reap benefits 指“取得成果；得到回报”，类似的表达还有 reap the rewards/profits 。

• the rewards of sth go to sb 与 sb reaps benefits 互为同义替换。

• the prosperity unleashed by the digital revolution 指“数字革命带来的繁荣”。 unleash 来自于 名词 leash ， leash 指牵狗子的皮带，狗链， unleash 字面上是指解开皮带，指“突然释放，发泄” (to suddenly let a strong force, feeling etc have its full effect) ，比如发脾气： unleash one’s temper 。

• overwhelmingly 指“压倒性的”，比如 ◇ Although things are changing the medical establishment is still overwhelmingly male. 虽然世易时移，但医学界依然是男性的天下。文中 overwhelmingly 与前面的 disproportionately 互为同义替换。

• be at alarming levels 处于令人担忧的水平 alarming 是外刊很喜欢用的形容词，指“令人担忧的 ; 令人恐惧的”，一般用于负面情况，比如环境类话题的作文中，谈到污染，我们可以说 Contamination of land, air and water has reached alarming levels. 谈到热带雨林，我们可以说 The rainforests are disappearing at an alarming rate. 其副词形式是 alarmingly ，原句 Unemployment is at alarming levels in much of the rich world 也可以改写为 The unemployment rate is alarmingly high in much of the rich world. [ 写作推荐 ]

• cyclical [ˈsaɪklɪkəl] 指“循环的，周期的” (happening in cycles) 。

• be in work 指有工作，相当于 have a job ，相反，没有工作，失业，我们说 be out of work 。

Worse , it seems likely that this wave of technological disruption to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household gadgets , innovations that already exist could destroy swathes of jobs that have hitherto been untouched . The public sector is one obvious target: it has proved singularly resistant to tech-driven reinvention. But the step change in what computers can do will have a powerful effect on middle-class jobs in the private sector too.

• worse 指“更糟糕的是”，表示递进，常用于段间或句间过渡。类似的表达还有 worse still , to make matters worse [ 写作推荐 ]

• technological disruption disruption 在这里不是指字面上的“扰乱”，而是指“颠覆”，其形容词形式 disruptive 也是如此，在科技文章中 disruptive 往往指“颠覆性的，突破性的”，常用来形容新技术，比如 disruptive technology/innovation 颠覆性的技术、创新。

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