2015考研英语阅读英文原刊《经济学人》：重塑创意产业的TED

　　2015考研英语复习正是强化复习阶段，考研英语阅读在考研英语中占了40分，所以考研英语阅读是英语科目中重要的一项。新东方名师范猛老师曾建议过考研生需要坚持每天泛读10-15分钟的英文原刊。强烈推荐了杂志《经济学人》.杂志中的文章也是考研英语的主要材料来源.希望考研考生认真阅读，快速提高考研英语阅读水平。

　　重塑创意产业的TED

　　TED has revolutionised the ideas industry, in partby putting old wine in new bottles

　　旧瓶装新酒，TED颠覆创意产业

　　THE first TED conference in 1984 was such a damp squib that the organisers did not hold asecond one for six years.

　　1984年的第一次TED大会办得非常失败，以至于其组织者6年后才举办第二场。

　　Today TED is the Goliath of the ideas industry.

　　而如今的TED是创业行业的龙头企业。

　　The heart of the enterprise is TED's twice-yearly conference at which big ideas arepresented in short, punchy talks.

　　TED的核心产品就是两年一届的TED大会，大会由一些呈现优秀思想的短小精悍的演讲组成。

　　On March 17th-21st，

　　今年3月17-21日，

　　around 1,200 TEDsters will gather in Vancouver to listen to the likes of Bill Gates andNicholas Negroponte celebrating TED's 30th birthday and thinking great thoughts.

　　将会约有1200TED爱好者聚集到温哥华庆祝TED成立30周年，届时会有像比尔·盖茨或尼古拉斯·尼葛洛庞帝这样的人物来分享一些伟大的思想。

　　The conference has also spawned an array of businesses, albeit not-for-profit ones.

　　TED大会也催生出了一系列的企业，其中也不乏一些非盈利性的企业。

　　The organisation has built an electronic warehouse of more than 1,700 previous talks, atTED.com.

　　TED在其网站TED.com上建立了一个电子仓库，储存了1700多长以往的演讲视频。

　　These are free to view and, so far, they have been watched nearly 2 billion times.

　　迄今为止，这些免费的视频已经被观看了将近200万次。

　　It has generated a mass movement:

　　TED还催生了一个大规模活动：

　　volunteers have put on more than 9,000 TED-like events called TEDx in 150 or so countriessince 2009.

　　自2009年以来，来自150多个国家的志愿者举行了超过9000场类似TED，他们自己称之为TEDx的活动。

　　It has established a TED prize, a TED fellowship programme and a line of TED e-books.

　　TED还设立了一个TED奖，TED奖学金计划和一个电子书计划。它同时也成为了世界上重要的造星工场：

　　And it has become a central part of the world's star-making machinery:

　　一旦被受邀至TED演讲，一个名不见经传的学者可以变身学界明星，

　　an invitation to speak at TED can turn an obscure academic into a superstar guru and astruggling journalist into a celebrated writer.

　　一个艰难谋生的小记者也可能成为知名作家。

　　Such success has inevitably produced a backlash.

　　如此巨大的成功自然会招来强烈的抵制。

　　Critics dismiss TED as the Starbucks of intellectual life.

　　批评者对TED嗤之以鼻，把它称作知识生活中的星巴克。

　　Evgeny Morozov, a technology pundit, says it has become something ludicrous, and a littlesinister.

　　尤金·摩洛所夫，一位科技界的公共权威，说TED已经变成了一个荒唐荒唐可笑，有点邪乎的东西。

　　Benjamin Bratton, a sociologist, goes further and suggests that TED is a recipe forcivilisational disaster.

　　社会学家本杰明·布莱顿则说TED会造成文明世界的灾难，

　　In his view TED really stands for middlebrow, megachurch infotainment.

　　在他看来，TED实际上代表的是通俗，大教派，资讯娱乐。

　　The Onion, a satirical website, has produced a series of Onion talks including A future whereall robots have penises.

　　讽刺网站《洋葱报》制作了一系列洋葱脱口秀，其中一期名为在未来，每个机器人都会有‘铅笔'。

　　There is certainly some truth in these criticisms:

　　这些批评也不是全无道理：

　　any organisation that invites Sting to its 30th birthday party is in danger of jumping theshark.

　　任何一个邀请斯汀参加其三十周年庆典的组织都可能会有走下坡路的危险。

　　But criticism must be tempered by admiration for what TED has achieved.

　　但是，那些对于TED所取得成就的赞誉中和了这些批评。

　　It does indeed have a weakness for celebrities.

　　的确，TED很钟爱名人，

　　But it has also discovered hundreds of lights hidden under bushels:

　　但它也发掘了大量被埋没的人才 ：

　　the most viewed TED video, with 25m downloads, features Ken Robinson, a once-obscureBritish educationalist.

　　被观看次数最多的，下载量高达2500万次的TED视频的主角，便是一个一度默默无闻的教育家肯·罗宾逊。

　　It is true that TED shrinks big ideas into bite-like chunks.

　　虽然TED把一些的宏大思想都极度压缩了，

　　But it has also demonstrated that there is a huge market for big ideas.

　　但它也证明了这些思想具有巨大的市场。

　　TED is the perfect example of the power of disruptive innovation.

　　TED可以说是破坏式创新的典范：

　　The ideas business was already overcrowded when it began to flex its muscles.

　　当TED崭露头角的时候，创意行业的市场已然饱和。

　　The BBC rejected an early TED talk on the ground that it was too intellectual.

　　BBC曾拒绝转播早期TED的现场演讲，理由是其太过深奥。

　　But TED has rewritten the rules.

　　但是，TED现在已经更改了规则。

　　Conference regulars compare the corporate pabulum that they are served at Davos with theintellectual sustenance they receive at TED.

　　TED大会的常客们拿达沃斯论坛和TED做对比，他们说前者提供的企业方面的内容简单乏味，而TED提供的才是有用的精神食粮。

　　Businesses now hire it to run their in-house conferences.

　　现在，企业会雇TED帮助其举办内部会议，

　　Publishers compete to sign up its speakers.

　　出版商也竞相与TED的演讲者签约。

　　TED has done more to advance the art of lecturing in a decade than Oxford University hasdone in a thousand years.

　　在革新演讲艺术方面，TED在十年内做出的贡献，比牛津大学一千以年来做出的更大。

　　The man at the heart of this disruption is Chris Anderson, a journalist turned entrepreneurwho calls himself TED's curator.

　　曾经是一名新闻工作者的克里斯·安德森便是这场创新运动的核心人物，他称自己是TED的守护人。

　　Mr Anderson made his money publishing computer and business magazines.

　　安德森通过出版计算机和商业杂志积累了财富。

　　He bought TED in 2001 and set about turning a cult conference into a multimediaphenomenon,

　　他在2001年买下了TED并在那时就开始将这个小众的集会转变为一种媒体现象。

　　by bringing together the two worlds that he knew best:

　　在此过程中他把他最熟悉的两个领域的知识。

　　the journalistic one of storytelling and the high-tech world of disruptive change.

　　新闻界的的讲故事的技巧和科技界的破坏式创新的理念结合了起来。

　　And he provided TED with both a powerful business model and a pipeline of polishedoutput.

　　他还在为TED创造一个强大商业模式的同时，也建立了一个输出高质内容的渠道。

　　TED uses a shrewd combination of paid-for and free products, the purpose of the latterbeing to generate buzz.

　　TED巧妙地将付费和免费结合在了一起，这也造成了近来的轰动效应。

　　Tickets to its five-day conferences cost at least $6,000.

　　如果要买下一场为期五天的TED大会的所有门票，你至少得花6000美元。

　　It sells an ever-growing array of TED-branded products.

　　TED的产品线还在日益增长。

　　But it has also been generous with its intellectual capital，

　　但是TED对待其知识资产却是毫不吝啬，

　　not only giving away videos on the internet but also granting licences to enthusiasts to stageTEDx events.

　　它不仅在网上免费发布它的视频，还为TED的狂热爱好者举行的TEDx颁发许可。

　　To ensure quality it sends all speakers a stone tablet engraved with the TEDCommandments, starting with:

　　为保证演讲的质量，TED给其演讲者都定下了TED戒律，第一条便是

　　Thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual schtick.

　　勿施黔驴之技。

　　Talks must last for just 18 minutes—Long enough to be serious and short enough to holdpeople's attention, as Mr Anderson puts it.

　　安德森规定演讲的长度不能超过18分钟既足够用来讲严肃的问题，也至于太长使人厌烦。