PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
JUNE 2006 GSIT Prep Course
Table of Contents
1. Introduction to the GSIT Prep Course APRIL 2006 ---------------------------------------- 2
2. Listening Comprehension: transcripts to be handed out in class
3. Sight Translation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 6
4. Korean-English Reading --------------------------------------------------------------------102
5. Assignments for Korean-English Translation (for Prep) -------------------------------- 146
Tel: 735-3322
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
플랜티 어학원 통대입시반 기초반
I. 강의 시간
: 오전반 – 화, 목, 토 10:00 ~ 12:30 / 저녁반 – 화, 목 (18:30 ~ 21:00), 토 (14:00 ~ 16:30) 총 10 회 강의
월, 수, 금 10:00 ~ 12:30
입시반: 월, 수, 금 15:00 ~ 18:30
총 12 회 강의
월수금반 (오전)
일
월
화
수
목
금
토
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
월
화
수
목
금
토
1
2
3
화목토반 (오후)
일
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
* LC Tape 은 수업시간에 배포 (한 달에 60 분용 테잎 한 개 사용 6-1)
II. 강의 진행
1.
Listening Comprehension
ABC World News Tonight, PBS Newshour, NPR news, ABC Nightline 등 사용.
원칙적으로 왕기초반에서는 Listening Comprehension 의 예습을 적극 권장함.
강사의 설명이 주가 되나, 무작위로 지목할 수 있음.
2. Korean-English Reading
영자 신문 사설을 보면서 한영번역/통역을 위한 표현/번역 연습에 활용
3. 영작에 활용할 수 있는 다양한 수업자료 준비
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
4. Reading Comprehension
The Economist, Time, Newsweek, US News & World Report, Foreign Affairs, 신문사설 등
강사의 설명이 주가 되나, 무작위로 지목할 수 있음.
* 발표를 원치 않는 수강생은 미리 강사에게 알려주시기 바람.
III. 과제물에 관하여
기초반은 과제물 해당 사항 없음 (교재에 나간 Reading 자료 예습은 물론 필수)
IV. 과제물 제출 및 커뮤니티 운영
1. http://www.freechal.com/gsitprep 플랜티어학원 통대준비반 커뮤니티
‘반드시’ 가입하시기 바람. 과제물 및 예습자료가 수업일 밤에 올라가고 기타 학습 관련 자료들이 올라감. 이
전 수업에 빠진 수강생들은 여기 올라오는 예습자료/과제물을 받아 다음 수업에 차질이 없도록 함.
2. paulfan@freechal.com paulfan@plantest.co.kr 강사 이메일주소
3. 강사는 almost always on-line 임. 적극 활용하시면 좋을것이라 생각.
V. 수업준비와 학습방법
1. 모든 영문을 볼 때는, Listening Comprehension 이건 Reading Comprehension 이건 Korean-English Translation 이
건 영어  한국어, 한국어  영어로 바꿔 생각해볼 것. 매 시간 Quiz 도 여기에 초점을 맞춤.
2. 정리 공책을 반드시 마련하여 수업시간에 등장한 어휘/표현을 반드시 정리/복습할 것. 자세한 정리/복습에
관하여는 커뮤니티 ( http://www.freechal.com/gsitprep ) 자료실 란에 정리해놓았음.
3. LC 수업 내용은 Tape 에 미리 들어가 있으므로 필요에 따라 미리 예습을 해오거나 받아쓰기를 해오도록
권장. 복습 시에는 최소한 다섯 번 이상 들으면서 한쪽 귀를 열어놓고 (이어폰, 헤드폰 한쪽을 뺀 상태에서)
한박자 늦게 따라 말함. (shadowing). 의식적으로 외우기를 권하지는 않으나 거의 외워질 때까지 반복해서 듣
고 따라 말하기는 반드시 하시기 바람.
4. 예습/복습 없이 한달간의 수업에서 많은걸 기대하긴 어려움. 수업에만 참석하는 것으로 50 을 얻을 수 있
다면, 철저한 예습과 복습이 뒤따를 때 200 을 얻을 수 있음.
Tel: 735-3322
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e-mail: paulfan@freechal.com
PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
플랜티 어학원 통대입시반 입시반
I. 강의 시간
월, 수, 금 15:00 ~ 18:30 총 12 회 강의
일
월
화
수
목
금
토
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
* LC Tape 은 수업 시작일에 배포하고, 중순경에 두번째 테잎이 나감. (6-1 과 6-2)
II. 강의 진행
1. Listening Comprehension
ABC World News Tonight, NBC Nightly News, ABC Nightline, PBS News, NPR News 등 사용.
전체를 한 번 듣고 의미단위로 처음부터 끊어가면서 수강생들이 한국어로 통역 발표. 끝낸 후에 전체 다시
한 번 청취. 원칙적으로 실전/도약반에선 LC 내용을 미리 듣지 않고 수업에 참석하는 것으로 함.
2. Interpretation (Speech 자료는 매시간 배포. 한영/영한 통역 – 도약반은 한 달에 4 회 or more)
3. Korean-English Reading
영자신문 사설을 읽으면서 한영번역/통역에 사용할 만 한 표현 숙지, 번역 연습
4. 영영 요약 (영어로 몇 개의 단락이 주어지고 영어로 요약하는 연습)
5.
Sight Translation (Reading Comprehention)
① 수강생이 전체 본문을 두어 마디로 요약. ② 단락별로 수강생들이 문장구역하고 그 단락의 main idea
한 마디로 요약. (따라서 예습 역시 이 방식에 맞출 것) ③ 강사가 수정/보충설명
④ 각 Reading 예습자료에는 bold 체로 된 부분이 있음. 특히 눈여겨 보실 것.
6. Korean-English Translation
과제물로 제출. 강사가 critique 하고 강사의 번역을 주축으로 강의 진행 (한 달 4 회)
7. 발표를 원치 않는 수강생은 미리 강사에게 알려주면 됨 (실전반 제외)
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
III. 과제물에 관하여
1. Listening Comprehension 은 별도로 미리 자료가 나가지 않고 수업 당일에 직접 함.
2. Reading Comprehension 은 예습자료가 전 시간에 미리 나감. (교재에 포함)
3. Korean-English Translation 은 과제물이 전 시간에 미리 나감. (교재에 포함)
IV. 과제물 제출 및 커뮤니티 운영
1. http://www.freechal.com/gsitprep 플랜티어학원 통대준비반 커뮤니티
‘반드시’ 가입하시기 바람. 과제물 및 예습자료가 수업일 밤에 올라가고 기타 학습 관련 자료들이 올라감.
이전 수업에 빠진 수강생들은 여기 올라오는 예습자료/과제물을 받아 다음 수업에 차질이 없도록 함.
2. paulfan@freechal.com paulfan@plantest.co.kr 강사 이메일주소
제출할 과제물은 Korean-English Translation 만. Reading Comprehension 은 스스로 발표준비 해오면 됨. 한영번
역 과제물은 강사 이메일로 제출. 과제물은 매주 월요일분만 과제물 제출. 따라서 한 달에 4 회 (매주 월요
일) 한영번역 과제물 제출. ****제출 기한****은 다음 수업 전날 저녁 6 시까지. 예) 10 월 10 일에 쓸 한영번
역 과제물은 10 월 9 일 저녁 6 시까지 제출. 시한을 반드시 지키시되 모두 번역하지 못해도 제출 바람. 제출
한 과제물은 강사가 첨삭하여 다음 수업시간에 다시 돌려드림. * 제출시 파일명: 다음과 같이. 예) 10 월 10
일에 쓸 실전반 홍길동씨의 한영번역 과제물 1010ke 홍길동. 도약반의 이유준씨일 경우에는 1010ke_intro 이
유준 반드시 지켜주시기 바람.
3. 강사는 almost always on-line 임. 적극 활용하시면 좋을것이라 생각.
V. 수업준비와 학습방법
1. 모든 영문을 볼 때는, Listening Comprehension 이건 Reading Comprehension 이건 Korean-English Translation 이
건 영어  한국어, 한국어  영어로 바꿔 생각해볼 것. 매 시간 Quiz 도 여기에 초점을 맞춤. 가령, LC 내
용은 영어이지만 Quiz 에는 그 내용을 한국어로 바꾸어 놓고 다시 영어로 바꾸어보라는 형태도 있음.
2. 정리 공책을 반드시 마련하여 수업시간에 등장한 어휘/표현을 반드시 정리/복습할 것. 자세한 정리/복습에
관하여는 커뮤니티 ( http://www.freechal.com/gsitprep ) 자료실 란에 정리해놓았음.
3. LC 수업 내용은 Tape 에 미리 들어가 있으나, 복습용으로만 사용할 것. 예습 차원에서 미리 듣고 오게 되
면 큰 도움이 되지 않음. 복습 시에는 최소한 다섯 번 이상 들으면서 한쪽 귀를 열어놓고 (이어폰, 헤드폰
한쪽을 뺀 상태에서) 한박자 늦게 따라 말함. (shadowing). 의식적으로 외우기를 권하지는 않으나 거의 외워
질 때까지 반복해서 듣고 따라 말하기는 반드시 하시기 바람.
4. 예습/복습 없이 한달간의 수업에서 많은걸 기대하긴 어려움. 수업에만 참석하는 것으로 50 을 얻을 수 있
다면, 철저한 예습과 복습이 뒤따를 때 200 을 얻을 수 있다.
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
Sight Translation Lesson 1
Taking on George Bush
From The Economist print edition
The Democrats still have a lot to prove
SNIFF the air in Washington, DC, this
spring and you notice the smell of decay.
The Republicans have been America's
dominant party, winning seven of the
past
ten
presidential
elections
and
controlling both houses of Congress since
1994 (except for a brief interlude 1 in
2001-02 when one of their senators
defected). And their institutional power
has been as nothing compared with their ideological clout2. Wherever you look—
from welfare reform to foreign policy—the conservative half of America has made
all the running.
Yet this machine is stalling3. The White House is doing its best to engage in some
emergency repairs. The past few weeks have seen the appointment of a powerful
new chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and a new director of the Office of Management
and Budget, Rob Portman. Karl Rove, George Bush's chief political adviser, is also
giving up his policymaking role to concentrate on preparing for this November's
elections. But the party's problems go too deep for personnel changes to solve.
Mr Bush is the most unpopular Republican president since Richard Nixon: a recent
Washington Post-ABC poll showed that 47% of voters “strongly” disapprove of his
performance. Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who did more than
anybody else to build the conservative machine in Congress, is retiring in disgrace,
the better to focus on his numerous legal problems. More Republicans may well be
implicated in the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal in the coming months.
The ideological shine has gone, too. The party of streamlined government has
been gorging4 on legislative pork. A party that once prided itself on businesslike
pragmatism has become synonymous with ideologically skewed5 ineptitude of the
1
interlude a short period of time when an activity or situation stops and something else happens.
clout A person or institution that has clout has influence and power.
3
stalling If a process stalls, or if someone or something stalls it, the process stops but may continue at a
later time.
4
gorge on If you gorge on something or gorge yourself on it, you eat lots of it in a very greedy way.
5
skew If something is skewed, it is changed or affected to some extent by a new or unusual factor, and
so is not correct or normal.
6
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
sort epitomised 6 by Donald Rumsfeld (see article). “What is the difference
between the Titanic and the Republican Party?” goes one joke in conservative
circles. “At least the Titanic wasn't trying to hit the iceberg.”
This presents an opportunity for America's other big party. The Democrats hope to
win this year's congressional elections in November and, on the back of those, to
capture the White House in 2008. They need a net gain of 15 seats to take over
the House and six seats to take over the Senate.
With two-thirds of Americans convinced that their country is heading in the wrong
direction, this might appear to be easy. It isn't. First, various technical factors—
from the power of incumbency to gerrymandering7—will help the Republicans in
November. More important, if the Republicans reek of decay, the Democrats ooze
dysfunctionality: divided, beholden to interest-groups and without a coherent
policy on anything that matters to America and the world (see article).
It is never easy for America's out-of-government party. There is no leader of the
opposition, and the cleverer presidential candidates may want to keep their
powder dry till 2008. But it is not impossible to produce coherent ideas. In 1990
“New Democrats” began to gather round Al Gore and Bill Clinton; in 1994 Newt
Gingrich rallied Republicans around his “Contract with America”. Nowadays “the
alternative to Bush” is a muddle8 of vacuous9 populism and meaningless slogans
(who is not for “real security”, whatever that is?). Worst of all, the Democrats are
marching backwards.
Take the party's economic policies. Mr Clinton stood for free trade and (after some
retraining) a balanced budget. In 1993, 102 House Democrats, less than half the
total, voted for the North American Free-Trade Agreement. Last year, only 15
Democrats defied the unions to vote for a smaller trade bill, the Central American
Free-Trade Agreement. In the usually wiser Senate, only 11 out of 44 Democrats
supported the bill, and John Kerry and Hillary Clinton were not among them. As for
the budget, the Democrats' main criticism of Mr Bush's splurge10 is that he has
not spent enough.
6
epitomize If you say that something or someone epitomizes a particular thing, you mean that they are
a perfect example of it.
7
gerrymandering Gerrymandering is the act of altering political boundaries in order to give an unfair
advantage to one political party or group of people.
8
muddle If people or things are in a muddle, they are in a state of confusion or disorder.
9
vacuous If you describe a person or their comments as vacuous, you are critical of them because they
lack intelligent thought or ideas.
10
splurge If you splurge on something, you spend a lot of money, usually on things that you do not
need.
7
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
This, sadly, is symptomatic. Some Democrats are trying to unpick Mr Clinton's
welfare reforms. Despite the party's rhetoric about protecting the poor, it has
blocked most serious attempts to improve the schools poor children are
condemned to attend. As for national security, the party seems to be veering11
ever further to the Michael Mooreish left. Two years ago, Mr Kerry savaged12 Mr
Bush over Iraq, but talked relatively responsibly about a gradual withdrawal. Now
the call from many of the party's leaders is to bring the troops home now—and
hang the consequences for the region.
Familiar vested interests are sometimes at work. The Democrats' relationship with
the teachers' unions is just as crony13-ridden as (and even more damaging to
America's long-term interests than) the White House's ties to Big Oil. But there is
also something new eating away at the Democratic brain: fury at Mr Bush. And
though
Bush-bashing
may
be
understandable,
it
also
looks
increasingly
counterproductive. The risk for the Democrats is that, although Mr Bush will retire
to Crawford in 2009, he will have defined them as an anti-Bush party—isolationist
because he was interventionist, anti-business because he was pro-business. Mr
Rove would love that.
Incompetence v incoherence: the battle intensifies
Mention this to party activists and you will get the same complaint that Mr Clinton
mercifully14 ignored in the early 1990s: you are just trying to turn their party
into “Republican lite”. In fact, there are plenty of areas where liberal America
needs to stand up bravely for its beliefs: against the death penalty, in defence of
civil liberties, sounding a warning on global warming. American voters respect
principles and convictions; what they do not like is pandering 15 to special
interests and waffle.
The real danger facing the Democrats is that they become a permanent minority
party—a coalition that enjoys support from the super-rich, a few minorities and
the working poor, but is out of touch with the suburban middle class, not to
mention America's broader interests. Such a party might sneak a victory this year,
thanks to Mr Rumsfeld et al, but then get hammered by, say, John McCain in 2008.
11
veer If someone or something veers in a certain direction, they change their position or direction in a
particular situation.
12
savage If someone or something that they have done is savaged by another person, that person
criticizes them severely.
13
crony You can refer to friends that someone spends a lot of time with as their cronies, especially
when you disapprove of them.
14
mercifully You can use mercifully to show that you are glad that something good has happened, or
that something bad has not happened or has stopped.
15
pander If you pander to someone or to their wishes, you do everything that they want, often to get
some advantage for yourself.
8
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
Two years ago, this newspaper narrowly favoured Mr Kerry's incoherence over Mr
Bush's incompetence (see article). Since then, Republican incompetence has
exceeded even our worst fears. How depressing to report that Democratic
incoherence has soared too. America deserves better.
The should-list to discuss with Mr Hu
From The Economist print edition
America should not hesitate to press China over human rights
IT'S easy to be mesmerised by China: the double-digit growth, the ambitious
space programme, the shining new cities along its teeming16 shore, the prospect
of selling to the largest and one day perhaps the richest market on earth. And it is
equally natural, too, to try everything from flattery to threats in the hope of
enlisting its leaders as partners in the struggles with terrorism, nuclear
proliferation,
people-smuggling,
carbon
emissions
and
spiralling
17
macroeconomic imbalances. Both these temptations will have been much in the
minds of America's policymakers this week, as they welcomed China's president,
Hu Jintao, to Washington, DC. But there is a danger here. The wish-list of things
America wants China to do for America's sake has become so long that the
“should-list” of things America should ask China to do for the sake of the Chinese
people no longer gets serious attention at all.
The should-list has only one big item: China should abide by the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, much of which is echoed in its own constitution. At
present it doesn't. It is true that in many ways, life in China has become freer: the
state interferes far less in people's personal and economic lives than it used to.
Speech and the press are less controlled than they once were. Yet China remains a
deeply authoritarian state, brooking18 no possibility of organised opposition to the
Communist Party. Media control, having relaxed over many years, is now
tightening under Mr Hu. Experiments with allowing a free vote (for individuals, not
for opposition parties) in local elections have remained just that. The judicial
system is a travesty19 , with alleged wrongdoers sometimes held for months or
years without charge. Less than half of one per cent of convictions are overturned
on appeal. Beatings in custody
20
with sticks and electric batons remain
widespread, according to the UN. Human-rights groups say at least 50 people are
16
teeming If you say that a place is teeming with people or animals, you mean that it is crowded and
the people and animals are moving around a lot.
17
spiraling If an amount or level spirals, it rises quickly and at an increasing rate.
18
brooking If someone in a position of authority will brook no interference or opposition, they will not
accept any interference or opposition from others.
19
travesty If you describe something as a travesty of another thing, you mean that it is a very bad
representation of that other thing.
20
custody If someone is being held in a particular type of custody, they are being kept in a place that is
similar to a prison.
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
still
in
prison
because
of
their
involvement
in
the
peaceful
June 2006
Tiananmen
demonstrations of 17 years ago. In 2004 an official said some 10,000 people are
executed in China each year. And, of course, in China's recent acquisitions, Tibet
and Xinjiang, repression is far worse than in the Han areas. All this is as much part
of China today as are the nightclubs of Shanghai's Bund.
It is sometimes argued that there is little America can nowadays do to promote
human rights in China. After all, in 2000 it surrendered the single most effective
lever it had when it ended the requirement for an annual review of China's mostfavoured-nation trading status, a regular occasion for scrutiny and pressure. A
year later, another lever was lost when Beijing's bid to host the 2008 Olympic
Games succeeded. On top of this, many would add, its own abuses at Guantánamo
and Abu Ghraib have robbed America of whatever moral authority it once had to
lecture others on human rights.
Both arguments are misplaced. America still has a hold of sorts over China. Mr Hu
craves respectability: he wants very much for a rising China to be treated as an
equal, respected member of the world community. The West can make it clear
that, for all its friendly intentions towards China, full acceptance will not come until
China takes human rights seriously. As for Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, these
were indeed dreadful unAmerican aberrations21 for which America should make
amends22. But they are mistakes that would hurt human rights twice over if they
deterred the United States from continuing to speak up for freedom and dignity23
in every country—however potentially powerful or lucrative24 it might be.
Universal service?
From The Economist print edition
Proponents of “software as a service” say it will wipe out traditional software
SOMETHING momentous is happening in the software business. Bill Gates of
Microsoft calls it “the next sea change”. Analysts call it a “tectonic25 shift” in the
industry. Trade publications hail it as “the next big thing”. It is software-as-aservice (SaaS)—the delivery of software as an internet-based service via a web
browser, rather than as a product that must be purchased, installed and
maintained. The appeal is obvious: SaaS is quicker, easier and cheaper to deploy
than traditional software, which means technology budgets can be focused on
21
aberration An aberration is an incident or way of behaving that is not typical.[ FORMAL ]
amend If you make amends when you have harmed someone, you show that you are sorry by doing
something to please them.
23
dignity If you talk about the dignity of people or their lives or activities, you mean that they are
valuable and worthy of respect.
24
lucrative A lucrative activity, job, or business deal is very profitable.
25
tectonic Tectonic means relating to the structure of the earth's surface or crust.[ TECHNICAL ]
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
providing competitive advantage, rather than maintenance.
This has prompted an outbreak of iconoclasm. “Traditional software is dead,” says
Jason Maynard, an analyst at Credit Suisse. Just as most firms do not own
generators, but buy electricity from the grid26, so in future they will buy software
on the hoof27, he says. “It's the end of software as we know it. All software is
becoming a service,” declares Marc Benioff of salesforce.com, the best-known
proponent of the idea. But while SaaS is growing fast, it still represents only a tiny
fraction of the overall software industry—a mere $3.35 billion last year, estimates
Mr Maynard. Most observers expect it to be worth around $12 billion by 2010—but
even that is equal only to Microsoft's quarterly sales today. There is no denying
that SaaS is coming. But there is much debate, even among its advocates, about
how quickly it will grow, and how widely it will be adopted.
At the moment, small and medium-sized businesses are the most enthusiastic
adopters of SaaS, since it is cheaper and
simpler than maintaining rooms of server
computers and employing staff to keep them
running.
Unlike
the
market
for
desktop
software, which is dominated by Microsoft, or
for high-end enterprise software, which is
dominated by SAP and Oracle, the middle
ground is still highly fragmented 28 , which
presents an opportunity. “This is the last great
software market left—the last unconsolidated
29
market,” says Zach Nelson of NetSuite, which provides a suite of software
services including accounting, sales-force automation and customer service. His
firm is targeting small and medium-sized businesses by providing “verticalised”
services—that is, versions of its software adapted to particular types of company,
such as professional-service firms, wholesale distributors and software firms.
Large companies, says Mr Nelson, have already made big investments in
traditional software. “They've already been through the pain,” he says. So they will
not be in a hurry to ditch
30
their existing investments in traditional software from
the likes of SAP and Oracle. “I have no fantasy of replacing those guys,” says Mr
Nelson. But Mr Benioff of salesforce.com disagrees. His firm provides customer26
grid A grid is a network of wires and cables by which sources of power, such as electricity, are
distributed throughout a country or area.
27
hoof The hooves of an animal such as a horse are the hard lower parts of its feet.
28
fragment If something fragments or is fragmented, it breaks or separates into small pieces or parts.
29
unconsolidated loosely arranged
30
ditch If you ditch something that you have or are responsible for, you abandon it or get rid of it,
because you no longer want it.
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relationship management (CRM) software as a service, which is already used by
many big firms including Cisco, Sprint and Merrill Lynch. “The world's largest
companies
are
now
using
salesforce.com
for
the
world's
largest
CRM
implementations ,” he says. “It's the future of our industry that everything will
31
be a service.”
Even so, Mr Maynard reckons it will be some time before large companies fully
embrace the service model. However, lingering
32
concerns over security,
reliability, archiving and regulatory compliance will eventually go away, he
believes, and basic functions—such as accounting, expense-management and
human resources—will be switched over within five years. “How you handle
accounts-payable doesn't determine your competitiveness,” he says. Eventually,
only the bespoke33 software that provides competitive advantage to a firm will be
left; everything else will be a service.
SaaS is fast becoming sophisticated and flexible enough to meet the needs of
large companies, says Sheryl Kingstone of the Yankee Group, a consultancy, but
“for the next five to ten years we will continue to have a mixture.” In a survey,
she found that 81% of respondents leaned towards a “hybrid” model, combining
traditional software with SaaS. Microsoft, Oracle and SAP are all belatedly 34
moving into SaaS, but they understandably prefer to characterise it as a new
model that will exist alongside the traditional way of doing things, and will appeal
to some, but not all, customers.
So it is too soon to write the obituary
35
for traditional software, even if its eclipse
by SaaS seems to be only a matter of time. The SaaS market is growing by about
50% a year, compared with single-digit growth for traditional software, notes Mr
Maynard. “It doesn't mean the big guys are going to die overnight,” he says, “but
this is where the market is heading.”
31
implementation If you implement something such as a plan, you ensure that what has been planned
is done.
32
lingering When something such as an idea, feeling, or illness lingers, it continues to exist for a long
time, often much longer than expected.
33
bespoke Bespoke things such as clothes have been specially made for the customer who ordered
them.[ BRIT, FORMAL ]
34
belatedly A belated action happens later than it should have done.
35
obituary Someone's obituary is an account of their life and character which is printed in a newspaper
or broadcast soon after they die.
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Sight Translation Lesson 2
Among the audience
From The Economist print edition
The era of mass media is giving way to one of personal and participatory media,
says Andreas Kluth. That will profoundly change both the media industry and
society as a whole
THE next big thing in 1448 was a technology called “movable type”, invented for
commercial use by Johannes Gutenberg, a goldsmith from Mainz (although the
Chinese had thought of it first). The clever idea was to cast individual letters
(type) and then compose (move) these to make up printable pages. This promised
to disrupt the mainstream media of the day—the work of monks who were
manually transcribing texts or carving entire pages into wood blocks for printing.
By 1455 Mr Gutenberg, having lined up venture capital from a rich compatriot36,
Johannes Fust, was churning out bibles and soon also papal 37 indulgences38
(slips of paper that rich people bought to reduce their time in purgatory). The
start-up had momentum, but its costs ran out of control and Mr Gutenberg
defaulted. Mr Fust foreclosed, and a little bubble popped.
Even so, within decades movable type spread across Europe, turbo-charging an
information age called the Renaissance. Martin Luther, irked
39
by those
indulgences, used printing presses to produce bibles and other texts in German.
Others followed suit, and vernaculars rose as Latin declined, preparing Europe for
nation-states. Religious and aristocratic elites first tried to stop, then control, then
co-opt the new medium. In the centuries that followed, social and legal systems
adjusted (with copyright laws, for instance) and books, newspapers and
magazines began to circulate widely. The age of mass media had arrived. Two
more technological breakthroughs—radio and television—brought it to its zenith40,
which
it
probably
reached
around
1958,
when
most
adult
Americans
simultaneously turned on their television sets to watch “I Love Lucy”.
Second incarnation41
In 2001, five-and-a-half centuries after Mr Gutenberg's first bible, “Movable Type”
was invented again. Ben and Mena Trott, high-school sweethearts who became
husband and wife, had been laid off during the dotcom bust and found themselves
36
compatriot Your compatriots are people from your own country.
papal Papal is used to describe things relating to the Pope.
38
indulgence Indulgence means treating someone with special kindness, often when it is not a good
thing.
39
irked If something irks you, it irritates or annoys you.[ FORMAL ]
40
zenith The zenith of something is the time when it is most successful or powerful.
41
incarnation If you say that someone is the incarnation of a particular quality, you mean that they
represent that quality or are typical of it in an extreme form.
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
in San Francisco with ample spare time. Ms Trott started blogging—ie, posting to
her online journal, Dollarshort—about “stupid little anecdotes from my childhood”.
For reasons that elude her, Dollarshort became very popular, and the Trotts
decided to build a better “blogging tool”, which they called Movable Type.
“Likening it to the printing press seemed like a natural thing because it was clearly
revolutionary; it was not meant to be arrogant or grandiose42,” says Ms Trott to
the approving nod of Mr Trott, who is extremely shy and rarely talks. Movable
Type is now the software of choice for celebrity bloggers.
These two incarnations of movable type make convenient (and very approximate)
historical book-ends. They bracket the era of mass media that is familiar to
everybody today. The second Movable Type, however, also marks the beginning of
a very gradual transition to a new era, which might be called the age of personal
or participatory media. This culture is already familiar to teenagers and twentysomethings, especially in rich countries. Most older people, if they are aware of the
transition at all, find it puzzling.
Calling it the “internet era” is not helpful.
By
way
of
infrastructure,
full-scale
participatory media presume not so much
the
availability
of
the
(decades-old)
internet as of widespread, “always-on”,
broadband access to it. So far, this exists
only in South Korea, Hong Kong and Japan,
whereas America and other large media
markets are several years behind. Indeed,
even today's broadband
43
infrastructure
was built for the previous era, not the coming one. Almost everywhere, download
speeds (from the internet to the user) are many times faster than upload speeds
(from user to network). This is because the corporate giants that built these pipes
assumed that the internet would simply be another distribution pipe for
themselves or their partners in the media industry. Even today, they can barely
conceive44 of a scenario in which users might put as much into the network as
they take out.
The age of participation
Exactly this, however, is starting to happen. Last November, the Pew Internet &
42
grandiose If you describe something as grandiose, you mean it is bigger or more elaborate than
necessary.
43
Broadband a method of sending many electronic messages at the same time, using a wide range of
frequencies.
44
conceive If you cannot conceive of something, you cannot imagine it or believe it.
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June 2006
American Life Project found that 57% of American teenagers create content for the
internet—from text to pictures, music and video. In this new-media culture, says
Paul Saffo, a director at the Institute for the Future in California, people no longer
passively
45
“consume” media (and thus advertising, its main revenue source) but
actively participate in them, which usually means creating content, in whatever
form and on whatever scale. This does not have to mean that “people write their
own newspaper”, says Jeremy Zawodny, a prominent blogger and software
engineer at Yahoo!, an internet portal. “It could be as simple as rating the
restaurants they went to or the movie they saw,” or as sophisticated as shooting a
home video.
This has profound implications for traditional business models in the media
industry, which are based on aggregating46 large passive audiences and holding
them captive during advertising interruptions. In the new-media era, audiences
will occasionally be large, but often small, and usually tiny. Instead of a few large
capital-rich media giants competing with one another for these audiences, it will
be small firms and individuals competing or, more often, collaborating. Some will
be making money from the content they create; others will not and will not mind,
because they have other motives. “People creating stuff to build their own
reputations” are at one end of this spectrum, says Philip Evans at Boston
Consulting Group, and one-man superbrands such as Steven Spielberg at the
other.
As with the media revolution of 1448, the wider
implications
gradually
for
over
participatory
society
a
will
period
media,
the
become
of
visible
decades.
boundaries
With
between
audiences and creators become blurred
47
and
often invisible. In the words of David Sifry, the
founder of Technorati, a search engine for blogs,
one-to-many “lectures” (ie, from media companies
to
their
audiences)
are
transformed
into
“conversations” among “the people formerly known
as the audience”. This changes the tone of public
discussions. The mainstream media, says David
Weinberger, a blogger, author and fellow at Harvard University's Berkman Centre,
45
passively A passive activity involves watching, looking at, or listening to things rather than doing
things.
46
aggregating An aggregate amount or score is made up of several smaller amounts or scores added
together.
47
blur When a thing blurs or when something blurs it, you cannot see it clearly because its edges are no
longer distinct
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“don't get how subversive 48 it is to take institutions and turn them into
conversations”. That is because institutions are closed, assume a hierarchy and
have trouble admitting fallibility 49 , he says, whereas conversations are openended, assume equality and eagerly concede fallibility.
Today's media revolution, like others before it, is announcing itself with a new and
strange vocabulary. In the early 20th century, Charles Prestwich Scott, the editor,
publisher and owner of the Manchester Guardian (and thus part of his era's
mainstream media), was aghast at the word “television”, which to him was “half
Greek, half Latin: no good can come of it.” Mr Scott's equivalents today confront
even stranger neologisms. Merriam-Webster, a publisher of dictionaries, had
“blog” as its word of the year in 2004, and the New Oxford American Dictionary
picked “podcast
50
” in 2005. “Wikis
51
”, “vlogs
52
”, “metaverses
53
” and
“folksonomies ” (all to be explained later in this survey) may be next.
54
Word count
“These words! The inability of the English language to express these new things is
distressing,” says Barry Diller, 64, who fits the description “media mogul55”. Over
the decades, Mr Diller has run two big Hollywood film studios and launched
America's fourth broadcast-television network, FOX Broadcasting. More recently,
he has made a valiant56 effort to get his mind around the internet, with mixed
results, and is now the boss of IAC/InterActiveCorp, a conglomerate with about 60
online brands. Mr Diller concedes that “all of the distribution methods get thrown
up in the air, and how they land is, well, still up in the air.” Yet Mr Diller is
confident that participation can never be a proper basis for the media industry.
“Self-publishing by someone of average talent is not very interesting,” he says.
“Talent is the new limited resource.”
48
subversive Something that is subversive is intended to weaken or destroy a political system or
government.
49
fallibility If you say that someone or something is fallible, you mean that they are not perfect and are
likely to make mistakes or to fail in what they are doing.[ FORMAL ]
50
podcast Podcasting, a portmanteau of Apple's "iPod" and "broadcasting", is a method of publishing
files to the Internet, allowing users to subscribe to a feed and receive new files automatically by
subscription, usually at no cost. It first became popular in late 2004, used largely for audio files.
51
wiki a web application that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum, but also allows
anyone to edit the content.
52
vlog a weblog which uses video as its primary presentation format. It is primarily a medium for
distributing video content
53
metaverse From the book "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, this term describes a virtual online
representation of reality.
54
folksonomy Folksonomy is a neologism for a practice of collaborative categorization using freely
chosen keywords. More colloquially, this refers to a group of people cooperating spontaneously to
organize information into categories.
55
mogul A mogul is an important, rich, and powerful businessman, especially one in the news, film, or
television industry.
56
valiant A valiant action is very brave and determined, though it may lead to failure or defeat.
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June 2006
“ What an ignoramus!” says Jerry Michalski, with some exasperation. He advises
companies on the uses of new media tools. “Look around and there's tons of great
stuff from rank amateurs,” he says. “Diller is assuming that there's a finite
57
amount of talent and that he can corner 58 it. He's completely wrong.” Not
everything in the “blogosphere” is poetry, not every audio “podcast” is a
symphony, not every video “vlog” would do well at Sundance, and not every entry
on Wikipedia, the free and collaborative online encyclopedia, is 100% correct,
concedes Mr Michalski. But exactly the same could be said about newspapers,
radio, television and the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
What is new is that young people today, and most people in future, will be happy
to decide for themselves what is credible or worthwhile and what is not. They will
have plenty of help. Sometimes they will rely on human editors of their choosing;
at other times they will rely on collective intelligence in the form of new filtering
and collaboration technologies that are now being developed. “The old media
model was: there is one source of truth. The new media model is: there are
multiple sources of truth, and we will sort it out,” says Joe Kraus, the founder of
JotSpot, which makes software for wikis.
The obvious benefit of this media revolution will be what Mr Saffo of the Institute
for the Future calls a “Cambrian explosion” of creativity: a flowering of expressive
diversity on the scale of the eponymous
59
proliferation of biological species 530m
years ago. “We are entering an age of cultural richness and abundant choice that
we've never seen before in history. Peer production is the most powerful industrial
force of our time,” says Chris Anderson, editor of Wired magazine and author of a
forthcoming book called “The Long Tail”, about which more later. (Mr Anderson
used to work for The Economist.)
At the same time, adds Mr Saffo, “revolutions tend to suck for ordinary people.”
Indeed, many people in the traditional media are pessimistic about the rise of a
participatory culture, either because they believe it threatens the business model
that they have grown used to, or because they feel it threatens public discourse60,
civility and even democracy.
This survey will examine the main kinds of new media and their likely long-term
57
finite Something that is finite has a definite fixed size or extent.[ FORMAL ]
corner If you corner a person or animal, you force them into a place they cannot escape from
59
eponymous An eponymous hero or heroine is the character in a play or book whose name is the title
of that play or book.[ FORMAL ]
60
discourse Discourse is spoken or written communication between people, especially serious
discussion of a particular subject.
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
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effects both on media companies and on society at large. In so doing, it will be
careful to heed a warning from Harvard's Mr Weinberger: “The mainstream media
are in a good position to get things wrong.” The observer, after all, is part of the
observation—a product of institutional media values even if he tries to apply the
new rules of conversation. This points to the very heart of the coming era of
participatory media. It must be understood, says Mr Weinberger, “not as a
publishing phenomenon but a social phenomenon”. This is illustrated perfectly by
blogging, the subject of the next article.
It's the links, stupid
From The Economist print edition
Blogging is just another word for having conversations
“IF YOU want to have a fun debate, ask
bloggers what a blog is,” says Jeremy Zawodny
at Yahoo! Only a few years ago, that debate
would have been short. So few people blogged
that most of them knew one another and could
probably agree on a definition. Today a new
blog is created every second of every day,
according to Technorati, a search engine for
blogs, and the “blogosphere” is doubling in size
every
five
months
(see
chart
1).
From
teenagers to corporate executives, the new bloggers all have reasons of their own
for engaging in this new pursuit.
What, then, is a blog? A “personal online journal” is the definition that most
newspapers, including The Economist, offer when they need to be brief. That
analogy is not wrong, but nor is it entirely right (conventional journals usually
come in chronological
61
order, whereas blogs are displayed in reverse
chronological order, with the most recent entry on top). More importantly, this
definition misses the main point about blogs. Traditionally, journals were private or
even secret affairs, and were never linked to other journals. Peeking62 into the
diary of one's big sister typically led to a skirmish63. Blogs, by contrast, are social
by nature, whether they are open to the public as a whole or only to a small select
group.
The word “blog” appears to date back to 1997, when one of the few practitioners
61
chronological If things are described or shown in chronological order, they are described or shown in
the order in which they happened.
62
Peeking If you peek at something or someone, you have a quick look at them, often secretly.
63
skirmish a minor battle.
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at the time, Jorn Barger, called his site a “weblog”. In 1999, another user, Peter
Merholz, playfully
64
broke the word into “we blog”, and somehow the new term—
blog—stuck as both a verb and a noun. Technically, it means a web page to which
its owner regularly adds new entries, or “posts”, which tend to be (but need not
be) short and often contain hyperlinks to other blogs or websites. Besides text and
hypertext, posts can also contain pictures (“photoblogs”) and video (“vlogs”). Each
post is stored on its own distinct archive
65
page, the so-called “permalink”, where
it can always be found. On average, Technorati tracks some 50,000 new posts an
hour.
Among the other technical features of blogs,
two highlight the quintessentially
66
social
nature of blogging. The first is a “blogroll”,
along the side of the blog page, which is a list
of
links
to
other
blogs
that
the
author
recommends (not to be confused with the
hyperlinks inside the posts). In practice, the
blogroll is an attempt by the author to place
his blog in a specific genre or group, and a
reciprocal
67
effort by a posse of bloggers to
raise each other's visibility on the internet (because the number of incoming links
pushes a blog higher in search-engine results). The other feature is “trackback”,
which notifies (“pings”) a blog about each new incoming link from the outside—a
sort of gossip-meter, in short.
Blogging is also about style. Dave Winer, a software engineer who pioneered
several blogging technologies, and who keeps what by his own estimate is the
longest-running blog of all (dating back to 1997), has argued that the essence of
blogginess is “the unedited voice of a single person”, preferably an amateur. Blogs,
in other words, usually have a raw, unpolished authenticity
68
and individuality.
This definition would exclude quite a few of the blogs that firms, public-relations
people or newspapers set up nowadays. If an editor vets69, softens or otherwise
messes about with the writing, Mr Winer would argue, it is no longer a blog.
64
playfully A playful gesture or person is friendly or humorous.
archive The archive or archives are a collection of documents and records that contain historical
information.
66
quintessential representing a perfect or typical example of something.
67
reciprocal a reciprocal action or agreement involves two people or groups who do the same thing to
each other or agree to help each another in a similar way.
68
authenticity An authentic piece of information or account of something is reliable and accurate
69
vet If something is vetted, it is checked carefully to make sure that it is acceptable to people in
authority.[ mainly BRIT ]
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June 2006
This explains the initial appeal of blogging as an outlet for pure self-expression. As
Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, a well-known blog on American politics, put it when
asked why he blogs: “It beats yelling at the television.” But venting
70
an opinion
is usually only the start. “At first, I saw it as about publishing; now I see it more
as a revolutionary way to communicate,” says Mena Trott. The company she runs
with her husband Ben, Six Apart, illustrates this with its three main products. Their
flagship, Movable Type, with its obvious publishing connotations71, is a popular
software service for heavy-duty or celebrity bloggers, including Mr Reynolds. So is
TypePad, a similar service with web-hosting thrown in. Blogs powered by these
two products have an average of 600 readers, says Ms Trott, although a few are
read by more people than are some newspapers.
But Six Apart's third product, LiveJournal, is a very different kind of blogging tool.
Some 60% of LiveJournal users are under 21 and female, says Ms Trott. Many of
the posts are about who snogged
72
whom last night and what happened next,
why I'm sad, how adults don't get it, and so forth. Other posts ask things like,
“Anybody want to catch King Kong at 8:00?” and have the replies in the comment
pane below within minutes. That is because many adolescents consider e-mail
passé73, and instead are using either instant messaging (IM) or blogging for their
communications, says Ms Trott. Like blogging, e-mail was supposed to be
“asynchronous”, meaning that the people taking part do not have to be online
simultaneously. But today's adolescents have never known e-mail without spam
and see no point in long trails of “reply” and “cc” messages piling up in their inboxes. As for synchronous communication, why adults would send e-mails back
and forth instead of “IM-ing” is beyond them.
The Dunbar number
For these LiveJournal blogs, the average number of readers is seven, says Ms Trott.
Such small audiences are common in participatory media. Indeed, they may
conform to the biological norm, whereas mass-media audiences may have been an
aberration. Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist
74
at the University of Liverpool, has
studied primates and discovered a surprisingly stable ratio between the relative
size of the neocortex (thought to be responsible for the evolution of intelligence)
and the size of groups formed by particular species. For humans, Mr Dunbar
calculated, the upper limit is about 150. Many clans, tribes, fan clubs, start-ups
and other groupings remain well below this limit, as do most blog networks.
70
venting If you vent your feelings, you express them forcefully.
connotation The connotations of a particular word or name are the ideas or qualities which it makes
you think of.
72
snogged If one person snogs another, they kiss and hold that person for a period of time.
73
passé If someone describes something as passé, they think that it is no longer fashionable or that it is
no longer effective.
74
anthropologist Anthropology is the scientific study of people, society, and culture.
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The LiveJournal groups of readers are typical of the new-media era in another way.
The bloggers (ie, creators) are one another's audience, so that distinctions
between the two disappear. Creators and audiences congregate
75
ad hoc in
meandering conversations, a common space of shared imagination and interests.
MySpace.com, a social-networking and blogging service that last year was bought
by News Corporation, Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, reflects this quality
in its name.
Conversations have a life of their own. They tend to move in unexpected directions
and fluctuate unpredictably in volume. It is these unplanned conversational surges
that tend to bring the blogosphere to the attention of the older and wider (nonblogging) public and the mainstream media. Germany, for instance, has been a
relatively late adopter of blogging—only 1% of blogs are in German, according to
Technorati, compared with 41% in Japanese, 28% in English and 14% in Chinese.
But in January this year “the conversation” arrived in Germany with a vengeance.
Jung von Matt, a German advertising firm, had come up with a campaign in the
(old)
media
called
“Du
bist
Deutschland”
(“you
advertisements were intended “to fight grumpiness
are
76
Germany”).
The
” about the country's
sluggish economy, said Jean-Remy von Matt, the firm's Belgian boss.
But German bloggers found the idea kitschy 77 , and subsequently dug up an
obscure photograph from a Nazi convention in 1935 that showed Hitler's face next
to the awkwardly similar slogan “Denn Du bist Deutschland” (“because you are
Germany”). In the ensuing online conversation, Mr von Matt's campaign was
ignominiously
78
deflated. Outraged, he sent an internal e-mail to his colleagues
in which he called blogs “the toilet walls of the internet” and wanted to know:
“What on earth gives every computer-owner the right to express his opinion,
unasked for?” When bloggers got hold of this e-mail, they answered his question
with such clarity that Mr von Matt quickly and publicly apologised and retreated.
Inadvertently, Mr von Matt had put his finger on something big: that, at least in
democratic societies, everybody does have the right to hold opinions, and that the
urge to connect and converse with others is so basic that it might as well be added
to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “It's about democratisation, where
75
congregate When people congregate, they gather together and form a group.
grumpiness If you say that someone is grumpy, you mean that they are bad-tempered and miserable.
77
kitschy You can refer to a work of art or an object as kitsch if it is showy and thought by some
people to be in bad taste.
78
ignominiously If you describe an experience or action as ignominious, you mean it is embarrassing
because it shows a great lack of success.[ FORMAL ]
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people can participate by writing back,” says Sabeer Bhatia, who in March
launched a company called BlogEverywhere.com that lets people attach blogs to
any web page with a single click. “Just as everybody has an e-mail account today,
everybody will have a blog in five years,” says Mr Bhatia, who helped to make email ubiquitous by starting Hotmail, a web-based e-mail service now owned by
Microsoft. This means, Mr Bhatia adds, that “journalism won't be a sermon any
more, it will be a conversation.”
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Sight Translation Lesson 3
Steady as she goes
From The Economist print edition
Why the world is not about to run out of oil
IN 1894 Le Petit Journal of Paris organised the world's first endurance race for
“vehicles without horses”. The race was held on the 78-mile (125km) route from
Paris to Rouen, and the purse was a juicy
79
5,000 francs. The rivals used all
manner of fuels, ranging from steam to electricity to compressed
80
air. The
winner was a car powered by a strange new fuel that had previously been used
chiefly in illumination, as a substitute for whale blubber81: petrol derived from oil.
Despite the victory, petrol's future seemed uncertain back then. Internalcombustion vehicles were seen as noisy, smelly and dangerous. By 1900 the
market was still split equally among steam, electricity and petrol—and even Henry
Ford's Model T ran on both grain-alcohol and petrol. In the decades after that
great race petrol came to dominate the world's transportation system. Oil left its
rivals in the dust not only because internal-combustion engines proved more
robust and powerful than their rivals, but also because oil reserves proved to be
abundant.
Now comes what appears to be the most
powerful
threat
to
oil's
supremacy
in
a
century: growing fears that the black gold is
running dry. For years a small group of
geologists has been claiming that the world
has
started
to
grow
short
of
oil,
that
alternatives cannot possibly replace it and that
an imminent
82
peak in production will lead to
economic disaster. In recent months this view
has gained wider acceptance on Wall Street
and in the media. Recent books on oil have
bewailed
83
the threat. Every few weeks, it seems, “Out of Gas”, “The Empty
Tank” and “The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs
$200 a Barrel”, are joined by yet more gloomy titles. Oil companies, which once
79
juicy Juicy gossip or stories contain details about people's lives, especially details which are normally
kept private.
80
compress Compressed air or gas is squeezed into a small space or container and is therefore at a
higher pressure than normal.
81
blubber the fat of whales, seals, and similar sea animals.
82
imminent If you say that something is imminent, especially something unpleasant, you mean it is
almost certain to happen very soon.
83
bewailed If you bewail something, you express great sorrow about it.
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dismissed the depletion argument out of hand, are now part of the debate.
Chevron's splashy advertisements strike an ominous tone: “It took us 125 years to
use the first trillion barrels of oil. We'll use the next trillion in 30.” Jeroen van der
Veer, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell, believes “the debate has changed in the
last two years from 'Can we afford oil?' to 'Is the oil there?'”
But is the world really starting to run out of oil? And would hitting a global peak of
production necessarily spell economic ruin? Both questions are arguable. Despite
today's obsession with the idea of “peak oil”, what really matters to the world
economy is not when conventional oil production peaks, but whether we have
enough affordable and convenient fuel from any source to power our current fleet
of cars, buses and aeroplanes. With that in mind, the global oil industry is on the
verge of a dramatic transformation from a risky exploration business into a
technology-intensive manufacturing business. And the product that big oil
companies will soon be manufacturing, argues Shell's Mr Van der Veer, is “greener
fossil fuels”.
The race is on to manufacture such fuels for blending into petrol and diesel today,
thus extending the useful life of the world's remaining oil reserves. This shift in
emphasis from discovery to manufacturing opens the door to firms outside the oil
industry (such as America's General Electric, Britain's Virgin Fuels and South
Africa's Sasol) that are keen on alternative energy. It may even result in a
breakthrough that replaces oil altogether.
To see how that might happen, consider the first question: is the world really
running out of oil? Colin Campbell, an Irish geologist, has been saying since the
1990s that the peak of global oil production is imminent. Kenneth Deffeyes, a
respected geologist at Princeton, thought that the peak would arrive late last year.
It did not. In fact, oil production capacity
might actually grow sharply over the next
few years (see chart 1). Cambridge Energy
Research
Associates
(CERA),
consultancy, has scrutinised
84
an
energy
all of the oil
projects now under way around the world.
Though
noting
rising
costs,
the
firm
concludes that the world's oil-production
capacity could increase by as much as 15m
barrels per day (bpd) between 2005 and
84
scrutinized If you scrutinize something, you examine it very carefully, often to find out some
information from it or about it.
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2010—equivalent to almost 18% of today's output and the biggest surge in history.
Since most of these projects are already budgeted and in development, there is no
geological reason why this wave of supply will not become available (though
politics or civil strife can always disrupt output).
Peak-oil advocates remain unconvinced. A sign of depletion, they argue, is that big
Western oil firms are finding it increasingly difficult to replace the oil they produce,
let alone build their reserves. Art Smith of Herold, a consultancy, points to rising
“finding and development” costs at the big firms, and argues that the world is
consuming two to three barrels of oil for every barrel of new oil found. Michael
Rodgers of PFC Energy, another consultancy 85 , says that the peak of new
discoveries was long ago. “We're living off a lottery we won 30 years ago,” he
argues.
It is true that the big firms are struggling to replace reserves. But that does not
mean the world is running out of oil, just that they do not have access to the vast
deposits of cheap and easy oil that are left in Russia and members of the
Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). And as the great fields of
the North Sea and Alaska mature, non-OPEC oil production will probably peak by
2010 or 2015. That is soon—but it says nothing of what really matters, which is
the global picture.
When the United States Geological Survey (USGS) studied the matter closely, it
concluded that the world had around 3 trillion barrels of recoverable conventional
86
oil in the ground. Of that, only one-third has been produced. That, argued the
USGS, puts the global peak beyond 2025. And if “unconventional” hydrocarbons
87
such as tar sands and shale oil (which can be converted with greater effort to
petrol) are included, the resource base grows dramatically—and the peak recedes
much further into the future.
After Ghawar
It is also true that oilmen will probably discover no more “super-giant” fields like
Saudi Arabia's Ghawar (which alone produces 5m bpd). But there are even bigger
resources available right under their noses. Technological breakthroughs such as
multi-lateral drilling
88
helped defy predictions of decline in Britain's North Sea
that have been made since the 1980s: the region is only now peaking.
85
consultancy A consultancy is a company that gives expert advice on a particular subject.
conventional A conventional method or product is one that is usually used or that has been in use for
a long time.
87
hydrocarbons A hydrocarbon is a chemical compound that is a mixture of hydrogen and carbon.
88
drilling When people drill for oil or water, they search for it by drilling deep holes in the ground or in
the bottom of the sea.
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Globally, the oil industry recovers only about one-third of the oil that is known to
exist in any given reservoir89. New technologies like 4-D seismic
90
analysis and
electromagnetic “direct detection” of hydrocarbons are lifting that “recovery rate”,
and even a rise of a few percentage points would provide more oil to the market
than another discovery on the scale of those in the Caspian or North Sea.
Further, just because there are no more Ghawars does not mean an end to
discovery altogether. Using ever fancier technologies, the oil business is drilling in
deeper waters, more difficult terrain and even in the Arctic (which, as global
warming melts the polar ice cap, will perversely become the next great prize in oil).
Large parts of Siberia, Iraq and Saudi Arabia have not even been explored with
modern kit.
The petro-pessimists' most forceful argument is that the Persian Gulf, officially
home to most of the world's oil reserves, is overrated. Matthew Simmons, an
American energy investment banker, argues in his book, “Twilight in the Desert”,
that Saudi Arabia's oil fields are in trouble. In recent weeks a scandal has engulfed
Kuwait, too. Petroleum Intelligence Weekly (PIW), a respected industry newsletter,
got hold of government documents suggesting that Kuwait might have only half of
the nearly 100 billion barrels in oil reserves that it claims (Saudi Arabia claims 260
billion barrels).
Tom Wallin, publisher of PIW, warns that “the lesson from Kuwait is that the
reserves figures of national governments must be viewed with caution.” But that
still need not mean that a global peak is imminent. So vast are the remaining
reserves, and so well distributed are today's producing areas, that a radical
revision downwards—even in an OPEC country—does not mean a global peak is
here.
For one thing, Kuwait's official numbers always looked dodgy91. IHS Energy, an
industry research outfit that constructs its reserve estimates from the bottom up
rather than relying on official proclamations, had long been using a figure of 50
billion barrels for Kuwait. Ron Mobed, boss of IHS, sees no crisis today: “Even
using our smaller number, Kuwait still has 50 years of production left at current
rates.” As for Saudi Arabia, most independent contractors and oil majors that have
first-hand knowledge of its fields are convinced that the Saudis have all the oil
they claim—and that more remains to be found.
89
reservoir A reservoir of something is a large quantity of it that is available for use when needed.
seismic Seismic means caused by or relating to an earthquake.
91
dodgy If you describe someone or something as dodgy, you disapprove of them because they seem
rather dishonest and unreliable.[ BRIT, INFORMAL ]
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Pessimists worry that Saudi Arabia's giant fields could decline rapidly before any
new supply is brought online. In Jeremy Leggett's thoughtful, but gloomy, book,
“The Empty Tank”, Mr Simmons laments that “the only alternative right now is to
shrink our economies.” That poses a second big question: whenever the
production peak comes, will it inevitably prompt a global economic crisis?
The baleful thesis arises from concerns both that a cliff lies beyond any peak in
production and that alternatives to oil will not be available. If the world oil supply
peaked one day and then fell away sharply, prices would indeed rocket, shortages
and panic buying would wreak havoc
92
and a global recession would ensue93 .
But there are good reasons to think that a global peak, whenever it comes, need
not lead to a collapse in output.
For one thing, the nightmare scenario of Ghawar suddenly peaking is not as grim
as it first seems. When it peaks, the whole “super-giant” will not drop from 5m
bpd to zero, because it is actually a network of inter-linked fields, some old and
some newer. Experts say a decline would probably be gentler and prolonged. That
would allow, indeed encourage, the Saudis to develop new fields to replace lost
output. Saudi Arabia's oil minister, Ali Naimi, points to an unexplored area on the
Iraqi-Saudi border the size of California, and argues that such untapped
94
resources could add 200 billion barrels to his country's tally. This contains
worries of its own—Saudi Arabia's market share will grow dramatically as nonOPEC oil peaks, and with it the potential for mischief. But it helps to debunk
95
claims of a sudden change.
The notion of a sharp global peak in production does not withstand scrutiny, either.
CERA's Peter Jackson points out that the price signals that would surely
foreshadow
96
any
“peak”
would
encourage
efficiency,
promote
new
oil
discoveries and speed investments in alternatives to oil. That, he reckons, means
the metaphor of a peak is misleading: “The right picture is of an undulating
97
92
plateau98.”
wreak havoc Something or someone that wreaks havoc or destruction causes a great amount of
disorder or damage.
93
ensue If something ensues, it happens immediately after another event, usually as a result of it.
94
untapped An untapped supply or source of something has not yet been used.
95
debunk If you debunk a widely held belief, you show that it is false. If you debunk something that is
widely admired, you show that it is not as good as people think it is.
96
foreshadow If something foreshadows an event or situation, it suggests that it will happen.
97
undulating Something that undulates has gentle curves or slopes, or moves gently and slowly up and
down or from side to side in an attractive manner.
98
plateau If you say that an activity or process has reached a plateau, you mean that it has reached a
stage where there is no further change or development.
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What of the notion that oil scarcity will lead to economic disaster? Jerry Taylor and
Peter Van Doren of the Cato Institute, an American think-tank, insist the key is to
avoid the price controls and monetary-policy blunders of the sort that turned the
1970s oil shocks into economic disasters. Kenneth Rogoff, a Harvard professor and
the former chief economist of the IMF, thinks concerns about peak oil are greatly
overblown: “The oil market is highly developed, with worldwide trading and longdated futures going out five to seven years. As oil production slows, prices will rise
up and down the futures curve, stimulating new technology and conservation. We
might be running low on $20 oil, but for $60 we have adequate oil supplies for
decades to come.”
The other worry of pessimists is that alternatives to oil simply cannot be brought
online fast enough to compensate for oil's imminent decline. If the peak were a
cliff or if it arrived soon, this would certainly be true, since alternative fuels have
only a tiny global market share today (though they are quite big in markets, such
as ethanol-mad Brazil, that have favourable policies). But if the peak were to come
after 2020 or 2030, as the International Energy Agency and other mainstream
forecasters predict, then the rising tide of alternative fuels will help transform it
into a plateau and ease the transition to life after oil.
The best reason to think so comes from the radical transformation now taking
place among big oil firms. The global oil industry, argues Chevron, is changing
from “an exploration business to a manufacturing business”. To see what that
means, consider the surprising outcome of another great motorcar race. In March,
at the Sebring test track in Florida, a sleek
Audi prototype
100
R-10 became the
first diesel-powered car to win an endurance race, pipping
101
a field of petrol-
99
powered rivals to the post. What makes this tale extraordinary is that the diesel
used by the Audi was not made in the normal way, exclusively from petroleum.
Instead, Shell blended conventional diesel with a super-clean and super-powerful
new form of diesel made from natural gas (with the clunky
102
name of gas-to-
liquids, or GTL).
Several big GTL projects are under way in Qatar, where the North gas field is
perhaps twice the size of even Ghawar when measured in terms of the energy it
contains. Nigeria and others are also pursuing GTL. Since the world has far more
natural gas left than oil—much of it outside the Middle East—making fuel in this
99
sleek Sleek vehicles, furniture, or other objects look smooth, shiny, and expensive.
prototype A prototype is a new type of machine or device which is not yet ready to be made in large
numbers and sold.
101
pipping If someone is pipped at the post or pipped to the post they are just beaten in a competition or
in a race to achieve something.[ BRIT, INFORMAL ]
102
clunky If you describe something as clunky, you mean that it is solid, heavy, and rather awkward.
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way would greatly increase the world's remaining supplies of oil.
So, too, would blending petrol or diesel with ethanol and biodiesel made from
agricultural crops, or with fuel made from Canada's “tar
103
sands” or America's
shale oil. Using technology invented in Nazi Germany and perfected by South
Africa's Sasol when those countries were under oil embargoes, companies are now
also investing furiously to convert not only natural gas but also coal into a liquid
fuel. Daniel Yergin of CERA says “the very definition of oil is changing, since nonconventional oil becomes conventional over time.”
Alternative fuels will not become common overnight, as one veteran oilman
acknowledges: “Given the capital-intensity of manufacturing alternatives, it's now
a race between hydrocarbon depletion and making fuel.” But the recent rise in oil
prices has given investors confidence. As Peter Robertson, vice-chairman of
Chevron, puts it, “Price is our friend here, because it has encouraged investment
in new hydrocarbons and also the alternatives.” Unless the world sees another
OPEC-engineered104 price collapse as it did in 1985 and 1998, GTL, tar sands,
ethanol and other alternatives will become more economic by the day (see chart
2).
This is not to suggest that the big firms are retreating from their core business.
They are pushing ahead with these investments mainly because they cannot get
access to new oil in the Middle East: “We need all the molecules we can get our
hands on,” says one oilman. It cannot have escaped the attention of oilmen that
blending alternative fuels into petrol and diesel will conveniently reinforce oil's grip
on transport. But their work contains the risk that one of the upstart
105
fuels
could yet provide a radical breakthrough that sidelines oil altogether.
If you doubt the power of technology or the potential of unconventional fuels, visit
the Kern River oil field near Bakersfield, California. This super-giant field is part of
a cluster
106
that has been pumping out oil for more than 100 years. It has already
produced 2 billion barrels of oil, but has perhaps as much again left. The trouble is
that it contains extremely heavy oil, which is very difficult and costly to extract.
After other companies despaired of the field, Chevron brought Kern back from the
brink. Applying a sophisticated steam-injection process, the firm has increased its
output beyond the anticipated peak. Using a great deal of automation (each
engineer looks after 1,000 small wells drilled into the reservoir), the firm has
103
Tar a thick black sticky substance that is used especially for making roads.
engineered If you engineer an event or situation, you arrange for it to happen, in a clever or indirect
way.
105
upstart You can refer to someone as an upstart when they behave as if they are important, but you
think that they are too new in a place or job to be treated as important.
106
cluster A cluster of people or things is a small group of them close together.
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transformed a process of “flying blind” into one where wells “practically monitor
themselves and call when they need help”.
The good news is that this is not unique. China also has deposits of heavy oil that
would benefit from such an advanced approach. America, Canada and Venezuela
have deposits of heavy hydrocarbons that surpass even the Saudi oil reserves in
size. The Saudis have invited Chevron to apply its steam-injection techniques to
recover heavy oil in the neutral zone that the country shares with Kuwait. Mr
Naimi, the oil minister, recently estimated that this new technology would lift the
share of the reserve that could be recovered as useful oil from a pitiful
107
6% to
above 40%.
All this explains why, in the words of Exxon Mobil, the oil production peak is
unlikely “for decades to come”. Governments may decide to shift away from
petroleum because of its nasty
108
geopolitics or its contribution to global warming.
But it is wrong to imagine the world's addiction to oil will end soon, as a result of
genuine scarcity. As Western oil companies seek to cope with being locked out of
the Middle East, the new era of manufactured fuel will further delay the onset of
peak production. The irony would be if manufactured fuel also did something far
more dramatic—if it served as a bridge to whatever comes beyond the nexus
petrol and the internal combustion
110
109
of
engine that for a century has held the
world in its grip.
Copyright © 2006 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights
107
pitiful Someone or something that is pitiful is so sad, weak, or small that you feel pity for them.
nasty A nasty problem or situation is very worrying and difficult to deal with.
109
nexus A nexus is a connection or series of connections within a particular situation or
system.[ FORMAL ]
110
combustion Combustion is the act of burning something or the process of burning.
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Sight Translation Lesson 4
Eat less, live more
From The Economist print edition
How to live longer—maybe
DIETING, according to an old
joke, may not actually make you
live longer, but it sure feels that
way. Nevertheless, evidence has
been
accumulating
since
the
1930s that calorie restriction—
reducing
intake
an
111
animal's
below
expenditure—extends
its
energy
energy
lifespan
and delays the onset of age-related diseases in rats, dogs, fish and monkeys. Such
results have inspired thousands of people to put up with constant hunger in the
hope of living longer, healthier lives. They have also led to a search for drugs that
mimic
112
the effects of calorie restriction without the pain of going on an actual
diet.
Amid the hype, it is easy to forget that no one has until now shown that calorie
restriction works in humans. That omission 113 , however, changed this month,
with the publication of the initial results of the first systematic investigation into
the matter. This study, known as CALERIE (Comprehensive Assessment of Longterm Effects of Reducing Intake of Energy), was sponsored by America's National
Institutes of Health. It took 48 men and women aged between 25 and 50 and
assigned them randomly to either a control group or a calorie-restriction regime.
Those in the second group were required to cut their calorie intake for six months
to 75% of that needed to maintain their weight.
The CALERIE study is a landmark in the history of the field, because its subjects
were either of normal weight or only slightly overweight. Previous projects have
used individuals who were clinically obese, thus confusing the unquestionable
benefits to health of reducing obesity with the possible advantages of calorie
restriction to the otherwise healthy.
111
intake Your intake of a particular kind of food, drink, or air is the amount that you eat, drink, or
breathe in.
112
mimic If you mimic the actions or voice of a person or animal, you imitate them, usually in a way
that is meant to be amusing or entertaining.
113
omission An omission is something that has not been included or has not been done, either
deliberately or accidentally.
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At a molecular level, CALERIE suggests these advantages are real. For example,
those on restricted diets had lower insulin resistance (high resistance is a risk
factor for type 2 diabetes) and lower
114
levels of low-density lipoprotein
cholesterol (high levels are a risk factor for heart disease). They showed drops
in body temperature and blood-insulin levels—both phenomena that have been
seen in long-lived, calorie-restricted animals. They also suffered less oxidative
115
damage to their DNA.
Eric Ravussin, of Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, who is one of the
study's authors, says that such results provide support for the theory that calorie
restriction produces a metabolic adaptation over and above that which would be
expected from weight loss alone. (He also points out that it will be a long time
before such work reveals whether calorie restriction actually extends life.)
Nevertheless, such metabolic adaptation could be the reason why calorie
restriction is associated with longer lifespans in other animals—and that is
certainly the hope of those who, for the past 15 years, have been searching for
ways of triggering that metabolic adaptation by means other than semi-starvation.
The search for a drug that will stave off old age is itself as old as the hills—as is
the wishful thinking of the suckers who finance such efforts. Those who hope to
find it by mimicking the effect of calorie restriction are not, however, complete
snake-oil salesmen, for there is known to be a family of enzymes called sirtuins,
which act both as sensors of nutrient availability and as regulators of metabolic
rate. These might provide the necessary biochemical link between starving and
living longer.
An elixir of life?
Boosting the activity of sirtuins in yeast, nematode
117
(three rapidly reproducing stalwarts
118
116
worms and fruitflies
of biological laboratories) does indeed
result in longer lifespans. In 2003 a team led by David Sinclair of Harvard Medical
School described 19 plant-derived molecules that activate sirtuins in yeast. One of
these molecules, resveratrol, is found in red wine—which created excitement
among those who think that a wine-rich diet is part of the explanation for the
healthy old age apparently enjoyed by many who live in southern Europe.
In February, a group led by Dario Valenzano of the Scuola Normale Superiore in
114
lipoprotein A combination of fat and protein that transports lipids (fats) in the blood.
oxidative Oxidation is a process in which a chemical substance changes because of the addition of
oxygen.[ TECHNICAL ]
116
nematode A microscopic free living worm. Many species live by predating bacteria.
117
Fruitflies small flies which eat fruit and rotting plants.
118
stalwart a loyal worker or supporter of an organization, especially a political party.
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
Pisa, Italy, showed that the effect applies in vertebrates119, too. Dr Valenzano's
experiments with resveratrol
120
increased the maximum lifespan of a small fish,
called Nothobranchius furzeri, by 60%. (Nothobranchius furzeri was chosen
because it is the shortest-lived vertebrate known, with a normal maximum lifespan
of 12 weeks.)
Resveratrol, however, is only a starting point. Sirtris Pharmaceuticals, a firm based
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of which Dr Sinclair is a co-founder, has identified a
number of synthetic
121
molecules whose effect on yeast is many times more
potent than resveratrol's. Although there is, as yet, no published evidence that
sirtuins extend life in mammals, or that resveratrol activates sirtuins in human
cells, some of these molecules are already in clinical trials for safety.
Moreover, Dr Sinclair thinks he knows why plant molecules such as resveratrol
might affect longevity in animals. Resveratrol is produced when a vine
stress—for example, due to dehydration
123
122
is under
or over-exposure to sunshine.
According to Dr Sinclair's theory, which he calls xenohormesis, animals rely on
such botanical
124
stress signals to give them extra information about their own
environments, in the same way that the alarm calls of one species warn others of
danger. If bad things are happening to plants, he surmises125, that is a reason for
pre-emptive animal action. Animal bodies thus react to molecules such as
resveratrol by activating their own defence mechanisms. These, in turn, protect
their cells from stress-related damage.
Xenohormesis is a variation of a more general theory, hormesis, which interests
Suresh Rattan of Aarhus University in Denmark. A good example of hormesis is
exercise. In theory, this should damage cells because it increases oxygen uptake,
and oxidative stress is bad for things like DNA. Of course, exercise is not actually
bad for cells—and the reason is that the body activates defence mechanisms which
overcompensate for the stress the exercise creates, producing beneficial effects.
So, while chronic stress is always bad for you, a short period of mild stress
followed by a period of recovery can be good.
119
vertebrate a creature which has a spine. Mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish are vertebrates.
Resveratrol a substance found in the skins of certain red grapes, in peanuts, blueberries, some pines
(Scots pine, eastern white pine) and the roots and stalks of Japanese knotweed (hu zhang in China) and
giant knotweed. It is now being sold as a mass-produced nutritional supplement.
121
synthetic Synthetic products are made from chemicals or artificial substances rather than from
natural ones.
122
vine A vine is a plant that grows up or over things, especially one which produces grapes.
123
dehydration When something such as food is dehydrated, all the water is removed from it, often in
order to preserve it.
124
botanical Botanical books, research, and activities relate to the scientific study of plants.
125
surmise If you surmise that something is true, you guess it from the available evidence, although
you do not know for certain.[ FORMAL ]
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June 2006
Many of the health benefits of exercise are thought to be due to the synthesis of
damage-controlling molecules called heat-shock proteins, and Dr Rattan's group
has been experimenting with other ways of triggering these proteins. He has found,
for example, that taken in combination with exercise, a spice
126
called curcumin
boosts the production of heat-shock proteins several-fold.
According to Dr Rattan, such interventions improve the function of a cell over time,
and in doing so, may produce clinical benefits such as protection against
neurodegenerative diseases. Resveratrol may also produce benefits, he says, but
how it does so is not yet clear. He disagrees with Dr Sinclair over the existence of
a regulatory pathway
127
for longevity in which sirtuins play a key role. In his view,
ageing is about the accumulation of damage, and is not under tight genetic control.
Sirtuins will, he says, probably be but a small part of a more complicated picture.
Dr Rattan also doubts whether calorie restriction will extend maximum human life
expectancy. He argues that the concepts of ageing and longevity
128
must be
separated. It may, indeed, be possible to reduce or eliminate particular agerelated diseases, and that would increase average lifespans in the way that
eliminating other diseases has done in the past. But this is not the same as
slowing down ageing itself, and thus increasing maximum lifespans. Longevity is a
more complex trait than any individual disease, and, in his opinion, it will not be
altered so easily.
Cynthia Kenyon, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and a
co-founder of Elixir Pharmaceuticals, another company looking into anti-ageing
drugs, believes that molecules such as resveratrol are likely to be approved in the
next five to ten years, for use as prophylactics
129
against age-related diseases.
People then will start taking them, and a huge natural experiment will get under
way. If Dr Rattan is wrong, maximum lifespan as well as average lifespan will
increase. If he is right, at least people will enjoy a healthier old age.
Struggling to keep the lid on
From The Economist print edition
The economy just grows and grows
JUST when many were predicting a gentle easing of China's economic growth this
year, figures for the first quarter suggest the opposite. Driven by a surge of
investment and easy credit, the economy grew by 10.2% year-on-year, even
126
spice A spice is a part of a plant, or a powder made from that part, which you put in food to give it
flavour.
127
pathway A pathway is a particular course of action or a way of achieving something.
128
longevity Longevity is long life.[ FORMAL ]
129
prophylactic A prophylactic is a substance or device used for preventing disease.[ MEDICAL ]
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June 2006
faster than last year's annual rate of 9.9%. Now officials fret that it is close to
overheating. On April 27th, the central bank raised interest rates for the first time
in 18 months, by 0.27%, and announced “guidelines” to control lending to a dozen
industries. As The Economist went to press the details of these were not clear, but
there was speculation that further
measures
130
would
be
forthcoming
in the near future.
There was much for the authorities
to be anxious about. GDP growth in
the first three months compared with
the same period a year ago was the
highest quarterly rate since at least
2004 (data revisions make earlier
comparisons difficult). That was the year in which China began trying, with limited
success, to put on the brakes. Investment in fixed assets, such as roads, factories
and machinery, surged by 27.7%. In urban areas it grew by 32.7%, year-on-year,
in March alone. The government had been hoping to keep growth in such
investment to 18% this year, down from 27.2% last year. And in that same first
quarter, China's state-owned banks lent nearly as much money—1.26 trillion yuan
($157 billion)—as the government had targeted for half of the year (see article).
The broad money supply grew by 18.8%, up by 4.7 points over the same period
last year and higher than the central bank's target for 2006 of 16%.
China's trade surplus
131
continued to grow briskly too, rising to $23.3 billion in
the first quarter, with exports up by 26.6% and imports by 24.8%. This was 41%
bigger than the surplus of January to March last year. This will hardly help to ease
concerns, particularly in America, that China is profiting unfairly from an
undervalued currency. On the strength of the latest figures, this year's trade
surplus may not be far off last year's record of $101.9 billion.
China's leaders relish
132
high growth and flourishing export-oriented industries.
They help generate employment in a country where the urban jobless rate is
estimated at more than 8% (far higher in some cities), and where at least 150m
people in the countryside have little or nothing to do. Much slower growth could
pose a threat to social stability. But they worry that the current high rate is being
sustained by irrational and resource-wasting investment. This could further
weaken the bad-debt burden of state-owned banks and eventually result in an
130
131
132
forthcoming A forthcoming event is planned to happen soon.
surplus If a country has a trade surplus, it exports more than it imports
relish If you relish something, you get a lot of enjoyment from it.
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abrupt
133
June 2006
and painful slowdown as credit dries up.
So why is it proving so difficult to engineer the “soft landing” that the government
has been trying for? This year's GDP growth target is 8%. Even before the latest
figures were announced, this appeared conservative. Many economists have now
revised
134
their estimates upwards. The Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, in
its latest report, predicted growth this year would be only fractionally slower than
last year's, at 9.6%. Its last quarterly report said it would be around 9%.
China's exchange-rate policy is part of the problem. In recent months the country
has been awash
135
with cash. The trade surplus leads to large inflows of foreign
currency, which is bought up by the central bank in order to hold down the
exchange rate. But this boosts the supply of yuan deposited in banks.
The central bank usually curbs
136
this money-supply growth by borrowing back
much of the excess yuan. But Stephen Green of Standard Chartered Bank says
that, for a few months in the middle of last year, it relaxed these efforts to offset
the potential impact of an upward revaluation of the yuan in July. The result was a
surge of cheap credit. This will inevitably mean bad news for the banks when some
of these loans eventually turn bad. In the first quarter, industrial profits rose by
21.3%, but losses by 32.3%. With huge oversupply in some industries, and big
rises in raw-materials costs, many manufacturers are having to endure waferthin
133
137
margins.
abruptly An abrupt change or action is very sudden, often in a way which is unpleasant.
revised If you revise a price, amount, or estimate, you change it to make it more fair, realistic, or
accurate.
135
awash If a place is awash with something, it contains a large amount of it
136
curb If you curb something, you control it and keep it within limits.
137
Wafer-thin extremely thin and flat.
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June 2006
Although efforts to rein in the money supply resumed in October, investment grew
rapidly as local governments, heedless
138
of central efforts to tame the economy,
raced to boost local growth rates. This was encouraged by the launch this year of
their new five-year economic plans, traditionally a time for starting big new
projects. Many local five-year plans project double-digit annual growth rates, even
though the central government is aiming for a modest average of 7.5% until 2010.
To help reduce net foreign-currency inflows139, the government announced plans
earlier this month that would make it possible for the first time—though still
subject to quotas—for firms and ordinary Chinese to invest in foreign securities
markets. And it is widely predicted that the central bank will soon announce
measures to curb credit growth by increasing the ratio of bank deposits that must
be kept with it in reserve.
Still, with big events approaching—a five-yearly Communist Party Congress late
next year and the Beijing Olympic Games in 2008—China's leaders are anxious
that the economy keep growing fast enough to ensure stability. This may make
them reluctant to take the really tough measures necessary to ensure more
rational growth: lifting controls on energy prices, for example, and removing
restrictions on bank interest rates. Chang Qing, of China Agricultural University,
says he believes that central-government efforts are unlikely to have much impact,
and that China will find it difficult to avoid a hard landing in a couple of years' time.
Government officials, however, still insist that the economy is not overheating—
yet.
138
heedless If you are heedless of someone or something, you do not take any notice of them.
inflows If there is an inflow of money or people into a place, a large amount of money or people
move into a place.
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PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
Sight Translation Lesson 5
Inside the Autistic Mind
A wealth of new brain research--and poignant
140
testimony from people who have
autism141--is lifting the veil on this mysterious condition
By CLAUDIA WALLIS (Time Magazine)
May 15, 2006
The road to Hannah's mind opened a few
days before her 13th birthday.
Her parents, therapists, nutritionists and
teachers had spent years preparing the way.
They had moved mountains to improve her
sense of balance, her sensory
and
her
overall
health.
142
They
perception
sent
in
truckloads of occupational and physical
therapy 143 and emotional support. But it
wasn't until the fall of 2005 that traffic finally
began to flow in the other direction. Hannah,
whose speech was limited to snatches
144
of
songs, echoed dialogue and unintelligible
utterances,
is
profoundly
autistic,
and
doctors thought she was most likely retarded.
But on that October day, after she was introduced to the use of a specialized
computer keyboard, Hannah proved them wrong. "Is there anything you'd like to
say, Hannah?" asked Marilyn Chadwick, director of training at the Facilitated
Communication Institute at Syracuse University.
With Chadwick helping to stabilize her right wrist and her mother watching, a girl
thought to be incapable of learning to read or write slowly typed, "I love Mom."
A year and a half later, Hannah sits with her tutor at a small computer desk in her
suburban home outside New York City. Facilitated communication is controversial
(critics complain that it's often the facilitator who is really communicating), but it
has clearly turned Hannah's life around. Since her breakthrough, she no longer
spends much of her day watching Sesame Street and Blue's Clues. Instead, she is
140
poignant Something that is poignant affects you deeply and makes you feel sadness or regret.
autism Autism is a mental disorder that affects children, particularly their ability to relate to other
people.
142
sensory Sensory means relating to the physical senses.
143
Occupational therapy a method of helping people who have been ill or injured to develop skills or
get skills back by giving them certain activities to do.
144
snatch A snatch of a conversation or a song is a very small piece of it.
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June 2006
working her way through high school biology, algebra and ancient history. "It
became obvious fairly quickly that she already knew a lot besides how to read,"
says her tutor, Tonette Jacob.
During the silent years, it seems, Hannah was soaking up
145
vast storehouses of
information. The girl without language had an extensive vocabulary, a sense of
humor and some unusual gifts. One day, when Jacob presented her with a page of
30 or so math problems, Hannah took one look, then typed all 30 answers.
Stunned, Jacob asked, "Do you have a photographic memory?" Hannah typed
"Yes."
Like many people with autism, Hannah is so acutely sensitive to sound that she'll
catch every word of a conversation occurring elsewhere in the house, which may
account for much of her knowledge. She is also hypersensitive to visual input.
Gazing directly at things is difficult, so she often relies on her almost
preternatural
146
peripheral
147
vision.
Hannah's
newfound
ability
to
communicate has enabled her intellect to flower, but it also has a dark side: she
has become painfully aware of her own autism. Of this, she writes, "Reality hurts."
MORE THAN 60 YEARS AFTER AUTISM WAS first described by American
psychiatrist Leo Kanner, there are still more questions than answers about this
complex disorder. Its causes are still uncertain, as are the reasons for the rapidly
rising incidence of autism in the U.S., Japan, England, Denmark and France. But
slowly, steadily, many myths about autism are falling away, as scientists get a
better picture of what's going on in the bodies and brains of people with autism
and as more of those who are profoundly affected, like Hannah, are able to give
voice to their experience. Among the surprises:
•
Autism is almost certainly, like cancer, many diseases with many distinct
causes. It's well known that there's a wide range in the severity of symptoms-from profound disability to milder forms like Asperger syndrome, in which
intellectual ability is generally high but social awareness is low. Indeed, doctors
now prefer the term Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD). But scientists suspect
there are also distinct subtypes, including an early-onset type and a regressive
type that can strike as late as age 2.
145
soak up If something soaks up something such as money or other resources, it uses a great deal of
money or other resources.
146
preternatural Preternatural abilities, qualities, or events are very unusual in a way that might make
you think that unknown forces are involved.[ FORMAL ]
147
peripheral A peripheral activity or issue is one which is not very important compared with other
activities or issues.
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•
June 2006
Once thought to be mainly a disease of the cerebellum--a region in the back of
the brain that integrates sensory and motor activity, autism is increasingly seen as
a pervasive problem with the way the brain is wired. The distribution of white
matter, the nerve fibers that link diverse parts of the brain, is abnormal, but it's
not clear how much is the cause and how much the result of autism.
•
The immune system may play a critical role in the development of at least
some types of autism. This suggests some new avenues of prevention and
treatment.
•
Many classic symptoms of autism--spinning, head banging, endlessly repeating
phrases--appear to be coping mechanisms rather than hard-wired behaviors.
Other classic symptoms--a lack of emotion, an inability to love--can now be largely
dismissed as artifacts of impaired communication. The same may be true of the
supposedly high incidence of mental retardation148.
•
The world of autism therapy continues to be bombarded by cure-of-the-day
fads149. But therapists are beginning to sort out the best ways to intervene. And
while autism is generally a lifelong struggle, there are some reported cases in
which kids who were identified as autistic and treated at an early age no longer
exhibit symptoms.
THE CURIOUS INCIDENCE
DR. THOMAS INSEL, DIRECTOR OF THE National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH),
which funds much of the nation's autism research, remembers a time when the
disorder was rarely diagnosed. "When my brother trained at Children's Hospital at
Harvard in the 1970s, they admitted a child with autism, and the head of the
hospital brought all of the residents through to see," says Insel. "He said, 'You've
got to see this case; you'll never see it again.'"
Alas, he was mistaken. According to the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention (CDC), about 1 in 166 American children born today will fall
somewhere on the autistic spectrum. That's double the rate of 10 years ago and
10 times the estimated incidence a generation ago. While some have doubted the
new figures, two surveys released last week by the CDC were in keeping with this
shocking incidence.
No one can say why the numbers have soared. Greater awareness and public
148
retardation Retardation is the process of making something happen or develop more slowly, or the
fact of being less well developed than other people or things of the same kind.[ FORMAL ]
149
fad You use fad to refer to an activity or topic of interest that is very popular for a short time, but
which people become bored with very quickly.
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health campaigns to encourage earlier diagnosis have surely played a part, since
in the past, many such children were probably labeled retarded or insane and
hidden in institutions. But environmental factors may also be contributing to the
spike. To get to the bottom of that mystery and others, federal funding for autism
research has more than tripled in the past decade, to $100 million, although it
pales
150
in comparison with the estimated $500 million spent on childhood
cancers, which affect fewer youngsters.
At the Center for Children's Environmental Health and Disease Prevention at the
University of California at Davis, toxicologist
blood, urine
152
151
Isaac Pessah is studying hair,
and tissue samples from 700 families with autism. He's testing for
17 metals, traces of pesticides 153 , opioids and other toxicants 154 . In March
Pessah caused a stir by releasing a study that showed that even the low level of
mercury used in vaccines preserved with thimerosal155, long a suspect in autism,
can trigger irregularities in the immune-system cells--at least in the test tube. But
he does not regard thimerosal (which has been removed from routine childhood
vaccines) as anything like a smoking gun. "There's probably no one trigger that's
causing autism from the environmental side," says Pessah, "and there's no one
gene that's causing it."
Indeed, most researchers believe autism arises from a combination of genetic
vulnerabilities and environmental triggers. An identical twin of a child with autism
has a 60% to 90% chance of also being affected. And there's little doubt that a
vulnerability to ASD runs in some families: the sibling
156
of a child with autism
has about a 10% chance of having ASD. Gene scientists working on autism have
found suspicious spots on chromosomes
157
2, 5, 7, 11 and 17, but there are
probably dozens of genes at work. "We think there are a number of different
autisms, each of which could have a different cause and different genes involved,"
says David Amaral, research director of the MIND (Medical Investigation of
Neurodevelopmental Disorders) Institute, also at U.C. Davis.
Amaral is heading MIND's efforts to assemble a database of clinical, behavioral
and genetic information on 1,800 autistic kids. One goal is to clearly define autism
150
pale If one thing pales in comparison with another, it is made to seem much less important, serious,
or good by it.
151
toxicologist Toxicology is the study of poisons
152
Urine the liquid that you get rid of from your body when you go to the toilet.
153
pesticide Pesticides are chemicals which farmers put on their crops to kill harmful insects.
154
toxicants Harmful substances, including heavy metals, chemical compounds and excessive
concentrations of nutrients.
155
thimerosal a light-colored crystalline powder (trade name Merthiolate) used as a surgical antiseptic
156
sibling Your siblings are your brothers and sisters
157
chromosome a part of a cell in an animal or plant. It contains genes which determine what
characteristics the animal or plant will have.
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June 2006
subtypes. "It's hard to do the genetics if you're talking about four or five different
syndromes," says NIMH chief Insel. "Does the presence of seizures define a
separate illness? What about the kids who seem to develop normally for the first
year and a half and then regress--is that a separate thing?" And what about the
large number of autistic kids who have serious gastrointestinal
158
problems and
the many with immune dysfunctions--are they distinct subtypes?
Amaral and colleague Judy Van de Water believe they are onto a major discovery
about the origins of at least one type of autism--a strongly familial variety. They
have detected aberrant
159
antibodies in the blood of kids from families with a
pattern of ASD and, significantly, in mothers with more than one autistic child.
"These antibodies are actually raised against proteins in the fetal brain," says
Amaral, who recently submitted a paper on the discovery. The working hypothesis
is that these antibodies may alter brain development in ways that lead to autism.
If correct, the finding could lead to a maternal blood test and the use of a therapy
called plasmapheresis to clear antibodies from the mother's blood. "You get a
sense of the excitement," says Amaral, "if you could prevent, say, 20% of kids
from getting autism. But we don't want to raise false hopes."
THE AUTISTIC BRAIN
WHETHER THE CAUSE IS MATERNAL antibodies, heavy metals or something else,
there is no question that the brains of young children with autism have unusual
features. To begin with, they tend to be too big. In studies based on magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) and basic tape-measure readings, neuroscientist Eric
Courchesne at Children's Hospital of San Diego showed that while children with
autism are born with ordinary-size brains, they experience a rapid expansion by
age 2--particularly in the frontal lobes. By age 4, says Courchesne, autistic
children tend to have brains the size of a normal 13-year-old. This aberrant
growth is even more pronounced in girls, he says, although for reasons that
remain mysterious, only 1 out of 5 children with autism is female. More recent
studies by Amaral and others have found that the amygdala, an area associated
with social behavior, is also oversize, a finding Amaral believes is related to the
high levels of anxiety seen in as many as 80% of people with autism.
Harvard pediatric neurologist Dr. Martha Herbert reported last year that the excess
white matter in autistic brains has a specific distribution: local areas tend to be
overconnected, while links between more distant regions of the brain are weak.
The brain's right and left hemispheres
158
159
160
160
are also poorly connected. It's as if
Gastrointestinal relating to the stomach and intestines
aberrant unusual and not socially acceptable.
hemisphere A hemisphere is one half of the earth.
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there are too many competing local services but no long distance.
This observation jibes
161
neatly with imaging studies that look at live brain activity
in autistic people. Studies using functional MRI show a lack of coordination among
brain regions, says Marcel Just, director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Cognitive
Brain Imaging in Pittsburgh, Pa. Just has scanned dozens of 15- to 35-year-old
autistic people with IQs in the normal range, giving them thinking tasks as he
monitors their brain activity. "One thing you see," says Just, "is that [activity in]
different areas is not going up and down at the same time. There's a lack of
synchronization162, sort of like a difference between a jam session and a string
quartet163. In autism, each area does its own thing."
What remains unclear is whether the interconnectivity problem is the result of
autism or its cause. Perhaps all that excess wiring is like the extra blood vessels
around the heart of a person who has suffered a heart attack--the body's attempt
to route around a problem. Or perhaps the abnormal growth of the brain has to do
with the immune system; researchers at Johns Hopkins have found signs that
autistic brains have chronic inflammation. "It's impossible to tell the chicken from
the egg at this point," Just says.
Autistic people have been shown to use their brains in unusual ways: they
memorize alphabet characters in a part of the brain that ordinarily processes
shapes. They tend to use the visual centers in the back of the brain for tasks
usually handled by the prefrontal cortex164. They often look at the mouth instead
of the eyes of someone who is speaking. Their focus, says psychologist Ami Klin of
Yale's Child Study Center, is "not on the social allegiances--for example, the
longing gaze
165
of a mother--but physical allegiances--a mouth that moves."
Do these differences reflect fundamental pathology, or are they downstream
166
effects of some more basic problem? No one knows. But the fact that early
intervention brings better results for children with ASD could be a clue that some
161
jibe If numbers, statements, or events jibe, they are exactly the same as each other or they are
consistent with each other.[ mainly AM ]
162
synchronization If you synchronize two activities, processes, or movements, or if you synchronize
one activity, process, or movement with another, you cause them to happen at the same time and speed
as each other.
163
string quartet A string quartet is a group of four musicians who play stringed instruments together.
The instruments are two violins, a viola, and a cello.
164
cortex The cortex of the brain or of another organ is its outer layer
165
gaze You can talk about someone's gaze as a way of describing how they are looking at something,
especially when they are looking steadily at it.[ WRITTEN ]
166
downstream Something that is moving downstream is moving towards the mouth of a river, from a
point further up the river. Something that is downstream is further towards the mouth of a river than
where you are.
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of the odd brain anatomy and activity are secondary--and perhaps even
preventable. Studies that look at whether early therapy might help normalize the
brain are beginning at York University in Toronto, but results are probably years
away.
AUTISM FROM THE INSIDE
IN THE MEANTIME, 300,000 SCHOOL-AGE American children and many adults are
attempting to get through daily life with autism. The world has tended to hear
from those who are highest functioning, like Temple Grandin, the author and
Colorado State University professor of livestock behavior known for designing
humane
167
slaughterhouses. But the voices of those more severely affected are
beginning to be heard as well. Such was the case with Sue Rubin, 27, a college
student from Whittier, Calif., who has no functional speech and matches most
people's stereotyped image of a retarded person; yet she was able to write the
narration for the Oscar-nominated documentary about her life, Autism Is a World.
What such individuals have to say about their experience is offering new clues to
their condition. It also conforms remarkably to what scientists see inside their
brains. By and large, people with ASD have difficulty bringing different cognitive
functions together in an integrated way. There is a tendency to hyperfocus on
detail and miss the big picture. Coordinating volition with movement and sensation
can be difficult for some. Chandima Rajapatirana, an autistic writer from Potomac,
Md., offers this account: "Helplessly I sit while Mom calls me to come. I know what
I must do, but often I can't get up until she says, 'Stand up,'" he writes. "[The]
knack
168
of knowing where my body is does not come easy for me. Interestingly I
do not know if I am sitting or standing. I am not aware of my body unless it is
touching something ... Your hand on mine lets me know where my hand is. Jarring
my legs by walking tells me I am alive."
Such descriptions shed light on seemingly self-destructive behavior like biting,
scratching, spinning and head banging. For people like Rajapatirana, banging
against a wall can be a useful way to tell, quite literally, where their head is at.
"Before we extinguish [such behaviors], we need to understand what they are
telling us," writes Judith Bluestone, a Seattle-based therapist who is autistic, in
The Fabric of Autism.
In his new book Send in the Idiots, British journalist Kamran Nazeer, who is also
autistic, describes the need for repetitive motions or words as a search for "local
167
humane Humane people act in a kind, sympathetic way towards other people and animals, and try to
do them as little harm as possible.
168
knack a particularly clever or skilful way of doing something successfully, especially something
which most people find difficult.
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coherence169" in a world full of jarring randomness. He also conveys
170
June 2006
the social
difficulties: "Striking up conversations with strangers," he writes, "is an autistic
person's version of extreme sports." Indeed, at a recent retreat for people with
ASD, attendees wore colored tags indicating their comfort level with spontaneous
171
conversation: red meant don't approach, yellow meant talk if we've already met,
green indicated, "I'd love to talk, but I'm not good at initiating."
Perhaps the worst fate for a person with ASD is to have a lively intelligence
trapped in a body that makes it difficult for others to see that the lights are on.
Neuroscientist Michael Merzenich at the University of California, San Francisco,
studied an autistic boy who is unable to speak or even sustain his attention to a
task for more than a few moments, and yet is aware of his condition and writes
remarkable poetry. How many other autistic kids, Merzenich wonders, "are living
in a well where no one can hear them"?
Luckily for Hannah, her voice and thoughts are being heard. Since learning to type,
she has begun to speak a few words reliably--"yes," "no" and the key word "I"--to
express her desires. All this seems miraculous to her parents. "I was told to give
up and get on with my life," says her mother. Now she and her husband are
thinking about saving for college.
—With reporting by With reporting by Dan Cray/Los Angeles
169
coherence Coherence is a state or situation in which all the parts or ideas fit together well so that
they form a united whole.
170
convey To convey information or feelings means to cause them to be known or understood by
someone.
171
spontaneous A spontaneous event happens because of processes within something rather than being
caused by things outside it.
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Sight Translation Lesson 6
The party, the people and the power of cyber-talk
From The Economist print edition
At present the party has the upper hand. It is starting to sweat, though
“DO YOU know how serious a mistake you've made?” Yan Yuanzhang recalls an
official asking him not long ago. Mr Yan had been summoned to Beijing's Internet
Propaganda Management Office to talk about his websites. They were causing, he
was told, the Communist Party to lose face. They were providing material that
foreign media could use to attack China. They were illegal and must be closed
down within 24 hours.
“Farewell, worker comrades172,” wrote Mr Yan in notices posted that day on his
China-based websites, China Workers Net and Communist Net. Visitors could hear
a lugubrious
173
rendition
174
of the communist anthem, the Internationale,
through their computer speakers as they read. “Whether there is any hope of
starting again, heaven knows.” He says now that he will relaunch one of the two
sites on May 1st, this time on a server in Taiwan.
It is remarkable that the websites lasted as long as they did. Mr Yan, who is not a
party member, launched them on May 1st last year to mark Labour Day. The aim,
he says, was to provide platforms for a “leftist” critique of China's embrace of
“Dickensian capitalism”. They did not, as he tried to explain to the city government,
172
comrade Your comrades are your friends, especially friends that you share a difficult or dangerous
situation with.[ LITERARY ]
173
lugubrious If you say that someone or something is lugubrious, you mean that they are sad rather
than lively or cheerful.[ LITERARY ]
174
rendition A rendition of a play, poem, or piece of music is a performance of it.
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attack the party itself or its leaders. But they did provide something the party
abhors175 : uncensored news about worker unrest. In September he launched a
bulletin board on which visitors could directly post their comments. Messages
complained about corruption, the privatisation of state-owned enterprises and the
hardships of unemployed workers.
As Mr Yan talks, he gets a text message on his mobile phone. It is from Tan
Jiaming, a university student in southern China who has been running a website of
similar outlook, Revolutionary Marxism. It too, the message says, has been closed.
The student had posted a notice entitled “Strongly Protest the Snuffing Out
176
of
the China Workers Website by the Beijing Authorities”. He was summoned to hear
a dozen officials threaten him with expulsion
177
from his university for backing Mr
Yan.
Six years ago Bill Clinton described China's efforts to restrict the internet as “sort
of like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall”. But as China's web-filtering technology has
grown more sophisticated, and the ranks of its internet police have swelled178 ,
some have begun to wonder. A report in 2003 by the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace suggested that, despite the difficulties the internet posed to
authoritarian regimes, it could also be used to fortify them. China, the authors
concluded, had been “largely successful at guiding use” of the internet. At a
congressional hearing in February on American companies involved in internet
business in China, a Republican congressman, Christopher Smith, said the internet
there had become “a malicious tool, a cyber sledgehammer
179
of repression”.
Some of the companies testifying at the hearing—Cisco, Google, Microsoft and
Yahoo!—deserved a grilling180. Why, for instance, had Microsoft, at the request of
Chinese officials, removed a popular site in December from its Chinese version of
MSN Spaces, a service for personal diaries and blogs? Yahoo! too had questions to
answer about reports that information it provided to the police about its e-mail
services had helped put dissidents
181
behind bars. More recently Reporters
Without Borders, a human-rights group, said that a Hong Kong unit of Yahoo! had
given the police a Chinese user's draft e-mails. These were then used as evidence
175
abhor If you abhor something, you hate it very much, especially for moral reasons.
snuff out To snuff out something such as a disagreement means to stop it, usually in a forceful or
sudden way.
177
expulsion Expulsion is when someone is forced to leave a school, university, or organization.
178
swell If the amount or size of something swells or if something swells it, it becomes larger than it
was before.
179
sledgehammer a large, heavy hammer with a long handle, used for breaking up rocks and concrete.
180
grilling If you grill someone about something, you ask them a lot of questions for a long period of
time.
181
dissidents Dissidents are people who disagree with and criticize their government, especially
because it is undemocratic.
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at his trial for subversion, for which he received a four-year jail sentence. Yahoo!
has condemned efforts to suppress freedom of speech, but says it must obey
Chinese law.
For foreign companies, the internet business in China is certainly a moral minefield.
But the internet should not be dismissed as merely an instrument of control for the
Communist Party. In the past three years, China has seen far more extensive use
of the internet and the rapid development of groups that share views online that
are by no means always the same as the party's. The numbers of internetconnected computers have more than doubled since the end of 2002, to 45.6m,
and internet-users have risen by 75%, to 111m. China now has more internetusers than any country but America, and over half of them have broadband (up
from 6.6% at the end of 2002). Users of instant computer-to-computer messaging
systems have more than doubled, to 87m. Blogs—online personal diaries, scarcely
heard of three years ago—now number more than 30m. And search engines
receive over 360m requests a day.
The spread of mobile telephony
182
has been no
less spectacular. At the end of last year China
had 393m mobile-phone accounts, nearly 200m
more than at the end of 2002 and more than any
other country. If, as many believe, China's first
third-generation mobile-network licence is to be
awarded in the coming year, internet access at
broadband speeds will become available on
mobile handsets. And, crucially, many people in
towns can now afford all this technology. China's
economy in the past three years has been
growing at around 10% a year, enriching a
growing middle class that increasingly sees the
internet as an aid to information-gathering,
communication and entertainment. Even many students can afford laptops. In big
cities, they congregate
183
in cafés that offer free wireless access.
Moreover, the technological transformation is spreading far into the hinterland184.
Almost every county now has broadband. Internet cafés with high-speed
connections are ubiquitous and cheap even in remote towns. Fixed-line internet
access is still uncommon in rural homes. But in many parts of the countryside, it is
182
183
184
telephony Telephony is a system of sending voice signals using electronic equipment.
congregate When people congregate, they gather together and form a group.
hinterland The hinterland of a stretch of coast or a large river is the area of land behind it or around
it.
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possible to surf the internet at landline modem speeds using a mobile handset
(though few peasants can afford to). With the government's encouragement,
state-owned companies have poured quantities of money into the building of a
telecoms infrastructure worthy of the rich world.
Keeping the genie half in the bottle
The government has also spent freely to keep its liberating side-effects under
control. The committed few who are brave or foolhardy
185
enough to use the
internet to challenge the authorities now face a police force of some 30,000 online
monitors, say foreign human-rights groups. They also say that China has jailed
over 50 people for expressing views online or in text messages. Worried about the
forces unleashed
186
by rapid economic and social change, China's leaders have
stepped up their efforts in recent months to control not only the internet but other
media too. A handful of outspoken newspapers have been closed and their editors
sacked.
At
187
February's
congressional hearing,
representatives
of
America's
internet
companies argued that their presence was helping to promote access to
information by encouraging the internet's development in China. Jack Krumholtz of
Microsoft said the Chinese people would be the principal losers if his company's
internet services ceased in China. They would be denied, he said, “an important
avenue of communication and expression”. That was an exaggeration. Foreign
companies help to spur competition. But it is Chinese companies—some of them
listed on American stock exchanges—that in many respects, and often unwittingly,
are transforming China faster.
Google's decision to set up a self-censored version of its search engine in China
this year aroused a storm of criticism in America. But iResearch, a Shanghai-based
market-analysis firm, says China's Baidu enjoys more than 56% of the search
market; Google follows with less than a third, having been the leader three years
ago. Popular features of Baidu's engine are its ability to link searches to related
chat forums, and hunt for MP3 music files, most of them pirated.
Baidu's searches are not nearly as comprehensive as Google's. But self-censorship,
both by Baidu and by Google in its new China-based engine, still allows
information through that the party dislikes. For instance, news about the
congressional hearing—ignored by China's print media—can be found on both.
185
foolhardy If you describe behaviour as foolhardy, you disapprove of it because it is extremely risky.
unleashed If you say that someone or something unleashes a powerful force, feeling, activity, or
group, you mean that they suddenly start it or send it somewhere.
187
sack If your employers sack you, they tell you that you can no longer work for them because you
have done something that they did not like or because your work was not good enough.[ BUSINESS ]
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Entering the Chinese-character equivalents of the words “Congress America
internet freedom” into Baidu produces three prominent results relating to the
hearing. All are blogs. Two even contain advertisements with links to pornographic
websites.
Google's engine in China produces more relevant results. But many are blocked by
a firewall, the barrier between the internet in China and the rest of the world that
filters out banned sites and those containing prohibited keywords. Curiously, it is
the Chinese search engine with a more rigorous filtering system than Google's that
provides the readiest access to uncensored information about the congressional
hearing. For those who know English, the House of Representatives' website offers
copies of evidence and a webcast of the entire proceedings. These are not blocked.
The firewall is porous 188 . Imaginative users can find ways of searching for
sensitive topics such as news about Falun Gong, a banned spiritual movement. In
Google, entering the words “Falun Gong” will cause the entire results page to be
blocked, but “FLG movement” will not. Many Chinese internet-users are well
practised in configuring their internet browsers to route page requests through
unblocked proxy servers outside China. These help bypass the firewall.
Blog-standard evasion
Blogs make the censors' work all the more difficult. China's fast-growing legions
189
of bloggers know they must avoid taboo keywords, including those programmed
into the Chinese version of MSN Spaces. If you enter any of those, the postings
will not be shown or your attempt to set up a blog will be denied. But, as China's
internet companies engage in fierce competition to draw blog traffic to their
portals, few checks seem to be made about who is writing them. A blog can easily
and quickly be set up on a Chinese portal, and no one asks for verifiable personal
information. Bloggers often display postings that would make party censors
shudder 190 . Mr Tan, the student who used to run the Revolutionary Marxism
website, has a blog on MSN Spaces that keeps up his campaign for workers' rights
despite the demise
191
of his own site and continued harassment by officials.
Human intervention is no less fallible
192
than the firewall. In the middle of the
huge open-plan newsroom of Sina Corporation in north-western Beijing, a score of
censors sit in front of their screens. They are young employees whose job is to
188
porous Something that is porous has many small holes in it, which water and air can pass through.
legion A legion of people or things is a great number of them.[ WRITTEN ]
190
shudder If something such as a machine or vehicle shudders, it shakes suddenly and violently.
191
demise The demise of something or someone is their end or death.[ FORMAL ]
192
fallible If you say that someone or something is fallible, you mean that they are not perfect and are
likely to make mistakes or to fail in what they are doing.[ FORMAL ]
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examine thousands of blogs and comments posted by internet-users on Sina's
news items. It is a round-the-clock task, designed to find anything that could have
got through the filters and might still offend the authorities.
Direct attacks on the party, its leaders or on the political system rarely get
through (or at least, not for long). But that still allows room for far more vigorous
debate on a range of social and economic issues than China has enjoyed before
under Communist rule. According to Qian Hualin of the government-affiliated
China Internet Network Information Centre, Chinese service-providers report that
some 70% of their bandwidth is taken up with pirated music and films. That still
leaves lots of room for discourse193.
Even the party itself pays attention to the deluge
194
of public comment. Eager to
acquire some legitimacy, but anxious to avoid democracy, it is trying its hand at
populism. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said last month that the government
should listen “extensively” to views expressed on the internet. With few other
ways of assessing the public mood, the internet is indeed a barometer, even
though surveys suggest that users are hardly representative of the general
population, being mainly young, better educated and male.
In 2003 many internet-users expressed outrage on bulletin boards over the
beating to death in jail of just such a young, well-educated man who had been
arrested for failing to carry the right identity documents. This led to the scrapping
of a decades-old law giving the police sweeping powers to detain anyone
suspected of staying without a permit in a place other than his registered home
town. Later that year the commuting of a death sentence of a gang boss prompted
a similar online furore. The Supreme Court retried the case and ordered his
execution.
The knitting of a network
Guo Liang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences describes 2003 as a
“milestone” in the development of the internet in China. During the outbreak early
in the year of SARS, an often fatal respiratory disease, many people stayed at
home and made extensive use of the internet to gather information and keep in
touch. The government's efforts to block news of the outbreak collapsed as word
spread by e-mail, computer and text message. By late 2004 home installation of
broadband began to take off, and with it the growth of blogging, instant
messaging and internet-based phone and video calls.
193
discourse Discourse is spoken or written communication between people, especially serious
discussion of a particular subject.
194
deluge A deluge of things is a large number of them which arrive or happen at the same time.
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The party worries about any unregulated networking among ordinary people. It
severely
limits
the
activities
of
non-governmental
straightforwardly charitable ones. It ruthlessly
195
organisations,
even
suppresses organised dissent.
But China's love affair with the mobile phone, text and instant messaging has
helped people to form networks on a scale and with a speed that is beyond the
party's ability to control. Windows Messenger, Microsoft's instant-messaging
system, is one popular tool. But by far the biggest share of this market is enjoyed
by a Chinese company, Tencent. Its messaging service, QQ, generates revenue by
linking a free online system with mobile phones, for which users must pay.
The QQ service has helped Mr Yan retain some of his online network of contacts
since the closure of China Workers Net and Communist Net. He replaced the two
home pages with notices inviting anyone interested in staying in touch to join a
QQ chat group called China Working Class Net. Members can hold discussions with
dozens of people all at once. With webcams, some chatters can also see and hear
each other. Some even go in for luoliao, naked chatting, which is causing the
authorities and parents some concern. The government, however, seems to
devote more resources to controlling politics on the internet than to controlling sex.
One frequently criticised aspect of China's internet development is that nationalist
diatribes
196
have a much better chance of getting past the censors than other
political comment. But nationalism has also provided a convenient cover for
experimenting with new forms of mobilisation. The power of instant messaging, for
instance, became evident in April last year, when it was used to organise big antiJapanese protests in several cities. In the build-up to the protests, Sina organised
an online campaign aimed at demonstrating public opposition to Japan's bid for
permanent membership of the UN Security Council. Some 20m people submitted
their names. Since starting a similar campaign a few weeks ago, Sina's rival, Sohu,
has gathered more than 15m names. “It shows the power” of the internet, says
Charles Chao, Sina's boss.
The government keeps issuing new rules to keep users of both the internet and
mobile phones in line. Last September news portals were banned from publishing
anything that might incite
197
protests; anything issued in the name of any “illegal
civil organisation” was also forbidden. According to news reports, the government
195
ruthlessly If you say that someone is ruthless, you mean that you disapprove of them because they
are very harsh or cruel, and will do anything that is necessary to achieve what they want.
196
diatribe A diatribe is an angry speech or article which is extremely critical of someone's ideas or
activities
197
incite If someone incites people to behave in a violent or illegal way, they encourage people to
behave in that way, usually by making them excited or angry.
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plans this year to issue rules to require people buying pre-paid mobile phone cards
to submit proof of identity: over half of China's mobile-phone accounts are not
registered in any name, making it easy for criminals—or dissidents—to use them
without being identified by the police. “The internet in China is a wild place, it's
crazy,” says Charles Zhang, head of Sohu. “I don't think it's monitored enough.”
Catch me if you can
But the market is likely to prevail over restrictions. Limiting phone-card sales to
just a few shops with the ability to process registration requirements would be a
blow to mobile-phone companies and huge numbers of private vendors
198
who
thrive on such business. It is hard to see how it could be enforced any more
rigorously than, say, China's ban on the unauthorised reception of satellite signals.
Illegal sales of satellite dishes and cable services offering uncensored foreign
satellite channels are big underground businesses in urban China.
China's news portals, in their competition for traffic, will continue to test the limits
of official tolerance. And in a competitive market few internet-café operators pay
attention to government requirements that users' identities should be registered.
An hour on a broadband connection in an internet café in a small town can cost as
little as one yuan—about 13 cents.
Research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences suggests the scale of the
government's task. Over 20% of people surveyed in five Chinese cities last year
said the internet had increased their contacts with others who shared their political
interests—a far higher proportion than found in a similar survey conducted in
America (8.1%) by collaborators in the investigation. Nearly half of the
respondents said going online increased their contacts with people who shared
their hobbies, compared with less than 20% in the United States (networked roleplaying games, growing fast in popularity in China, may partly account for this).
And nearly 63% agreed that the internet gave them greater opportunities to
criticise the government.
“ China is changing, it's improving,” says Jack Ma, head of Alibaba, which last year
took over the running of Yahoo!'s Chinese operations—for, despite an early start in
China, Yahoo! has been elbowed aside
199
by domestic rivals. “Ten years ago, 20
years ago, in Chairman Mao's time, if we came here to talk about these things
[government censorship],” he begins. Then he puts an imaginary pistol200 to his
head and, with a grin, fires it. That, of course, was when power just grew out of
198
vendor someone who sells things such as newspapers, cigarettes, or food from a small stall or cart.
elbow aside If you elbow people aside or elbow your way somewhere, you push people with your
elbows in order to move somewhere.
200
pistol A pistol is a small gun.
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June 2006
the barrel of a gun. Now it also grows out of the infinite, albeit virtual, barrels of
the internet.
Sight Translation Lesson 7
Q: What Scares Doctors? A: Being the Patient
What Insiders Know About Our Health-Care System That the Rest of Us Need to
Learn
By NANCY GIBBS, AMANDA BOWER (Time Magazine)
May 1, 2006
It's easy to imagine that doctors don't get sick. Surely the hygienic
the sterile
203
202
201
shield of
white coat guards them from ever having to put on the flapping
gown and flimsy
204
bracelet205, climb meekly
206
into the crisp
207
bed and be
at the mercy of the U.S. health-care system. And if somehow they did enter the
hospital as a patient, physicians ought to have every advantage: an insider's
knowledge, access to top specialists, built-in second opinions, no waiting, no
insane bureaucratic battles and no loss of identity or dignity when you turn into
the "bilateral mastectomy
208
in Room 402." But it doesn't usually work that way.
While doctors are often in a better position than most of us to spot the hazards in
the hospital and the holes in their care, they can't necessarily fix them. They can't
even avoid them when they become patients themselves. When Dr. Lisa Friedman
felt the lump
209
in her breast in the summer of 2001, she did--nothing. "I just sat
on it," she says, "because I clicked into the mode of being physician, not patient,
and I thought, 'Most lumps are not cancer, I'll just watch this.'" That was her first
mistake.
By September Friedman had watched long enough. An internist in a practice that
covers much of southern Wisconsin, she went to her radiology department to
schedule a mammogram210. The administrators turned her down: her HMO paid
for routine mammograms every two years, and she'd had one 18 months before.
201
hygienic Something that is hygienic is clean and unlikely to cause illness.
sterile Something that is sterile is completely clean and free from germs.
203
flap If something such as a piece of cloth or paper flaps or if you flap it, it moves quickly up and
down or from side to side.
204
flimsy Flimsy cloth or clothing is thin and does not give much protection.
205
bracelet A bracelet is a chain or band, usually made of metal, which you wear around your wrist as
jewellery.
206
meekly If you describe a person as meek, you think that they are gentle and quiet, and likely to do
what other people say.
207
crisp Crisp cloth or paper is clean and has no creases in it.
208
mastectomy A mastectomy is a surgical operation to remove a woman's breast.
209
lump A lump on or in someone's body is a small, hard swelling that has been caused by an injury or
an illness.
210
mammogram A mammogram is a test used to check whether women have breast cancer, using xrays.
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June 2006
"I said, 'Wait a minute, I feel a lump. This is not routine.' They still wouldn't let me
do it."
This is the stuff bad movies are made of. Friedman had to appeal to the HMO's
board of directors. "I said, 'I'll pay for my own mammogram. Just let me get it
done.'" She won her appeal and finally had the test. "They didn't even have to do
a biopsy211," she says. "The radiologist just looked at it and said, 'Oh, my God.
You've got breast cancer.'"
The education of Lisa Friedman, patient, had begun. Like any other patient--and
perhaps even more so--she had to drag information out of her physicians. "They
were treating me like I was knowledgeable, but they weren't listening to me."
When she found out that the cancer had spread to several places in one breast,
Friedman told her surgeon there was no need to preserve her breast for cosmetic
reasons; she was more concerned that the cancer be entirely removed. She asked
for a mastectomy--but she was told that a lumpectomy would do the job fine. "I
went along with it," she said. That was her second mistake. Her breast was riddled
with tumors. "They ended up doing three lumpectomies 212 . They were cutting
away at my breast until I had no breast left. I said, 'Will you please take it all
off?'"
Friedman's doctors weren't incompetent. They didn't operate on the wrong breast
or give her the wrong drugs or commit any egregious
213
medical errors--and that
is the whole point. While there are bad doctors practicing bad medicine who go
undetected, that's not what scares other physicians the most. Instead, they have
watched the system become deformed
214
over the years by fear of litigation215,
by insurance costs, by rising competition, by billowing
216
bureaucracy and even
by improvements in technology that introduce new risks even as they reduce old
ones. So doctors resist having tests done if they aren't absolutely sure they are
needed. They weigh the advantages of teaching hospitals at which you're more
likely to find the genius diagnostician vs. community hospitals where you may be
less likely to bring home a nasty hospital-acquired infection. They avoid having
elective surgery in July, when the new doctors are just starting their internships in
teaching hospitals, but recognize that older, more experienced physicians may not
211
biopsy A biopsy is the removal and examination of fluids or tissue from a patient's body in order to
discover why they are ill.
212
lumpectomy an operation in which a woman has a lump such as a tumour removed from one of her
breasts, rather than having the whole breast removed
213
egregious Egregious means very bad indeed.[ FORMAL ]
214
deformed If something deforms a person's body or something else, it causes it to have an unnatural
shape. In technical English, you can also say that the second thing deforms.
215
litigation Litigation is the process of fighting or defending a case in a civil court of law.
216
billowing When smoke or cloud billows, it moves slowly upwards or across the sky.
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be up to date on the best standards of care.
Most doctors freely admit that they do everything they can to work the system.
"As much as we all value fairness, if you think you can get some special attention
for someone who's important to you ... I don't know anybody who would not play
that card," says Michael McKee, vice chairman of psychology and psychiatry at the
Cleveland Clinic. But talk to doctors about their experiences and you'll be surprised
by how little power they have to bend the system to their will.
This is one abiding
217
irony of progress. The most wondrous technology exists
that can pinpoint the exact location of a tumor, thread a tiny catheter up into the
brain to open a clogged
218
artery 219 , pulverize
220
a kidney
221
stone without
breaking the skin. But the simple stuff--like getting an MRI on time, being given
the right drugs at the right time, making sure everyone knows which side of your
brain to operate on--can cause the biggest problems. "A patient with anything but
the simplest needs is traversing a very complicated system across many handoffs
and locations and players," says Dr. Donald Berwick, a pediatrician and president
of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. "And as the machine gets more
complicated, there are more ways it can break."
HOW TO GET THE RIGHT CARE
"Doctors are terrible patients because they know too much," says Dr. Pamela
Gallin, director of pediatric ophthalmology
222
at New York Presbyterian-Columbia
Medical Center and author of How to Survive Your Doctor's Care. "They can't be
both doctor and patient at the same time." They don't like appearing weak; they
are schooled in a culture of stoicism
223
and sacrifice that cautions against
complaint. In studies of the behavior of doctors, most admit to writing their own
prescriptions, self-diagnosing, avoiding checkups. When they do have to enter a
hospital as a patient, they struggle with their role, scanning their bedside monitors
and watching their colleagues so closely that everyone can get a little spooked224.
"I don't like the role reversal," says McKee. "I suppose it's the way you feel when
you're 80 or 90 and your kids are taking care of you. It doesn't feel right."
217
abiding An abiding feeling, memory, or interest is one that you have for a very long time.
clog When something clogs a hole or place, it blocks it so that nothing can pass through.
219
artery Arteries are the tubes in your body that carry blood from your heart to the rest of your body.
Compare vein.
220
pulverize To pulverize something means to do great damage to it or to destroy it completely.
221
kidney Your kidneys are the organs in your body that take waste matter from your blood and send it
out of your body as urine.
222
ophthalmology Ophthalmology is branch of medicine concerned with people's eyes and the
problems that affect them.
223
stoicism stoical behavior, If you say that someone behaves in a stoical way, you approve of them
because they do not complain or show they are upset in bad situations.[ FORMAL ]
224
spooked If people are spooked, something has scared them or made them nervous.[ mainly AM ]
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But their innate
225
June 2006
resistance to treatment carries a message for the rest of us as
well. It requires almost a stroke of luck to enter a U.S. hospital and receive
precisely the right treatment--no more, and no less. A landmark Rand Corp. study
published in 2003 found that adults in the U.S. received, on average, just 54.9%
of recommended care for their conditions. Average blood sugar was not measured
regularly for 24% of diabetes patients. More than half of all people with
hypertension did not have their blood pressure under control; one third of asthma
226
patients eligible to get inhaled steroids did not get them.
Even more insidious is the danger of overtreatment. With well-insured patients
inclined toward hypervigilance 227 , doctors afraid of missing something and a
reimbursement
228
system that rewards testing over talking, there is embedded
in the system a dangerous impulse toward excess. Specialists are typically paid
much more to do a procedure than the family doctor who takes the time to talk
through the treatment options. A doctor who does a biopsy may be paid as much
as $1,600 for 15 minutes' work, notes Dr. Jerome Groopman of Harvard Medical
School. "If you're an internist, you can easily spend an hour with a family where a
member has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's or breast cancer, and be paid $100.
So there's this disconnect between what's valued and reimbursement."
And yet sometimes, talking is the more important and certainly the safer
treatment. Ten more minutes spent taking a family history can reveal clues that
prevent a misdiagnosis or an unnecessary test; that childhood injury, that illness
during a trip abroad, that family history of excessive bleeding. When the
orthopedist
229
hears that Mary broke her leg when she was 2 years old, he can
hope that the dark spot on her tibia
230
may not be a deadly bone cancer but
something more benign, like a Brodie's abscess. He may still remove the abscess
but not have to do a whole invasive tumor workup. Doctors talk privately about
the cost--economic and physical--of the bias toward overtesting. They are less
beguiled
231
by flashy technology, more aware of the risks of even simple
procedures and thus more willing to trust their doctor's instincts. If everything in
his experience tells your doctor that the lump on the back of your hand is a
ganglion and not a malignant tumor, it may not make sense to run the risk that
225
innate An innate quality or ability is one which a person is born with.
asthma Asthma is a lung condition which causes difficulty in breathing.
227
hypervigilance Someone who is vigilant gives careful attention to a particular problem or situation
and concentrates on noticing any danger or trouble that there might be.
228
reimbursement If you receive reimbursement for money that you have spent, you get your money
back, for example because the money should have been paid by someone else.[ FORMAL ]
229
orthopedist A physician specializing in problems relating to bones, joints and muscles
230
tibia Your tibia is the inner bone of the two bones in the lower part of your leg.[ MEDICAL ]
231
beguiled If something beguiles you, you are charmed and attracted by it.
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goes with surgical excision. If your baby is born after a very long labor but shows
no sign of infection, then agreeing to a spinal tap just to be sure may not always
be worth the risk.
Doctors will argue privately that there is not enough watchful waiting and reexamination anymore, partly because patience literally doesn't pay. "The areas in
the U.S. with the highest rates of use of hospital beds, intensive-care units,
specialist consultations and invasive testing don't have the best quality of care and
outcomes," says Berwick. "In fact, they often have the worst. It would be a great
advance in both quality and cost if somehow the American public came to
understand that 'more care' is not by any means always 'better care,' and that
new technologies and hospital stays can sometimes harm more than they help."
HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT DOCTOR
You would think doctors have a great advantage in knowing whom to see for their
particular problem, and in one sense they do: they can tap into the medical
grapevine
232
to find out who has the best reputation and the most experience
with a given procedure. They just have to hope that person isn't their colleague
down the hall. In a system that can seem infuriatingly
233
impersonal, a little
distance is a valuable thing.
Doctors will often choose not to be patients at their own hospital. There's a risk
that when treating a colleague, the physicians may lose their objectivity and the
patient his or her privacy. The same holds true for anyone who goes to a doctor
who is also a friend; you run the risk of losing both. This is the hard fact that
doctors know and patients have a hard time believing: it's not just bad doctors
who screw up. To an outsider, everything that happens in a hospital has an air of
magic, and the people in the coats seem like wizards. But doctors know that
physicians are people too, who can get tired, or distracted, or simply one day fall a
millimeter short of perfection, sometimes with disastrous consequences.
Dr. Robert Johnson, a busy Southern California orthopedic surgeon, skidded
234
instantly from doctor to patient one day as he walked toward the operating
room, scrubbed hands raised, and slipped on a freshly mopped
the scaphoid bone
236
235
floor. He broke
in his right wrist, a bone that anchors all the bones in the
hand, especially vital for the physically demanding work of an orthopedic surgeon.
232
grapevine If you hear or learn something on the grapevine, you hear it or learn it in casual
conversation with other people.
233
infuriatingly Something that is infuriating annoys you very much.
234
skid If a vehicle skids, it slides sideways or forwards while moving, for example when you are
trying to stop it suddenly on a wet road.
235
mopped If you mop a surface such as a floor, you clean it with a mop.
236
scaphoid bone the largest wrist bone on the thumb side
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So he called on a friend who was a renowned hand specialist. "I knew the
procedure well," he says. "Remove the scar tissue and place a tendon
237
from my
own body to stabilize the other hand bones." Naked under his hospital gown,
Johnson was rolled into the operating room cracking jokes with his doctor. "I felt
bad to be a bother," he says. Together Johnson and his friend decided to go with
general anesthesia238. An hour later, Johnson woke up and said, laughing, "That
was quick!"
But his friend the surgeon was distraught239. He had used a tool called a rongeur
to chew up the scar tissue and had accidentally chewed up the scaphoid bone-ending Johnson's ability to do orthopedic surgery. "The actual damage happened
in a matter of seconds," he says. "I heard later that he had told my wife while I
was still under anesthesia. She said, 'You go and fix it before he wakes up!' What
she didn't know was that there are some things that can't be fixed."
Although Johnson thinks his case was a "rare aberrant fluke240," that's not exactly
true. More than 1 in 3 doctors in a 2002 survey by the Harvard School of Public
Health reported errors in their own or a family member's medical care. Dr. Robert
Wachter, chief of the medical service at the University of California, San Francisco
Medical Center, who co-wrote last year's best seller Internal Bleeding: The Truth
Behind America's Terrifying Epidemic of Medical Mistakes, says he has seen it all:
patients who had the wrong leg amputated241, were given the wrong (and deadly)
medicines, had surgical instruments left behind in the abdomen 242 . Not all the
errors are due to ignorance or incompetence; even the best doctors can make
mistakes.
Imagine the dilemma of a physician trying to watch over a loved one when things
are going badly. Sherwin Nuland is a celebrity doctor; he was a surgeon for 30
years, teaches surgery and gastroenterology
243
at Yale and is author of How We
Die, which won a National Book Award. Last fall his daughter, 21, faced a crisis.
237
tendon A tendon is a strong cord in a person's or animal's body which joins a muscle to a bone.
anesthesia Anaesthesia is the use of anaesthetics in medicine and surgery, anesthetics : Anaesthetic
is a substance that doctors use to stop you feeling pain during an operation, either in the whole of your
body when you are unconscious, or in a part of your body when you are awake.
239
distraught If someone is distraught, they are so upset and worried that they cannot think clearly.
240
fluke If you say that something good is a fluke, you mean that it happened accidentally rather than
by being planned or arranged.[ INFORMAL ]
241
amputated To amputate someone's arm or leg means to cut all or part of it off in an operation
because it is diseased or badly damaged.
242
abdomen Your abdomen is the part of your body below your chest where your stomach and
intestines are.[ FORMAL ]
243
gastroenterology Diagnosis and treatment of problems of the digestive system
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June 2006
She had been born with hydrocephalus244--fluid on the brain. A shunt was put in,
which worked fine for 21 years until it closed down. "She needed a total of four
operations to get this straightened out," Nuland says. The experience tested his
self-control. "It helped that I knew what [her doctors] were going through as
these complications occurred--how badly it was affecting them emotionally.
Because she was the daughter of a senior member of their faculty." But in an
emergency, emotion is not an antidote
245
for much of anything. However much
we long for Marcus Welby, it is less important to know and love your doctor than
to trust and respect him. And your prospects may benefit from his treating you
with the cool commitment of a professional rather than the comforting warmth of
a friend.
HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT HOSPITAL
Finding the right doctor is important: but so is choosing the right hospital. There
are all kinds of guides that can tell you what percentage of heart-attack patients
were prescribed beta blockers upon arrival or sell you a report about your
particular doctor. The problem is that it takes a doctorate
246
in statistics to sort
out the data. "The world's best orthopedic surgeon will be sent everyone's disaster
cases," says Wachter. "He may be spectacular and still have worse outcomes than
the crummy
247
surgeon across the street who has better outcomes because he
gets the slam dunks." Almost every knee replacement results in few days of postop fever. It's normal--but it can still be cited in a report on the "high rate of
postoperative
248
infection."
The most basic challenge facing every patient is knowing when to go to the local
community hospital and when to seek out the major teaching center. For all their
fame and all-star doctors, teaching hospitals carry risks of their own. The sickest
patients often have compromised immune systems and may need to be treated
with broad-spectrum antibiotics--which increases the chance that antibioticresistant strains of staph
249
and other bacteria will make the rounds of the
intensive-care unit. As a rule, doctors decide where to go based on how sick they
are. For fairly routine care--a hip replacement, a hernia
250
operation--they will
often opt for the convenience and comfort of a community hospital. But if there is
244
hydrocephalus An accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid within the skull.
antidote An antidote is a chemical substance that stops or controls the effect of a poison.
246
doctorate A doctorate is the highest degree awarded by a university.
247
crummy Something that is crummy is unpleasant, of very poor quality, or not good
enough.[ INFORMAL ]
248
postoperative Postoperative means occurring after and relating to a medical operation.
249
staph staphylococcus, a group of bacteria that cause a multitude of diseases directly by infection, or
indirectly through products they make, such as the toxins; the main culprit in hospital-acquired
infections causing thousands of deaths every year
250
hernia A hernia is a medical condition which is often caused by strain or injury. It results in one of
your internal organs sticking
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any mystery about the symptoms, the rule is Get Thee to a Teaching Hospital. The
meals will probably be worse, the beds may not get made on time, a spirit of
competent chaos may abide; but for complicated surgeries, the mortality rate is
typically lower because the volume of cases is higher and the surgeons are more
experienced. Plus, the presence of all those interns and residents has a way of
keeping doctors on their toes.
There is, however, at least one exception to the rule.
HOW TO SURVIVE JULY
Harvard's Groopman, who has written three books about the doctor-patient
relationship, lived through his own doctor-patient nightmare. It started when his
son had a medical emergency in July, which every doctor knows is the worst of all
months to go to a teaching hospital. "The new interns and residents begin July 1,"
he explains. "There's a very morbid
251
joke: don't get sick on the July 4
weekend." But years ago, when he and his wife were new parents, they were
visiting her family in Connecticut for the holiday when their 9-month-old son
became cranky252, ran a fever, got diarrhea253. They went to a local pediatrician,
who essentially said, 'Oh, it's nothing: you're just neurotic doctor-parents. Give
him some Tylenol.'"
By the time they arrived back in Boston, it was clear to both of them that the baby
was very sick. "He was flailing
254
and arching
255
his knees to his chest. So we
rushed to the emergency room of the Children's Hospital." Their son was seen by a
brand-new surgical resident, who diagnosed an intestinal
256
obstruction 257 .
"This resident said to my wife--this is now midnight--'Well, in my experience, this
can wait until morning.'" Since his experience at that point in his residency
amounted to roughly three days on the job, the Groopmans pulled rank. They
called someone who called someone who happened to be home on the holiday,
and they wound up with a senior surgeon who came in, did an emergency
operation at 3 a.m. and, Groopman says, saved his son's life.
251
morbid If you describe a person or their interest in something as morbid, you mean that they are
very interested in unpleasant things, especially death, and you think this is strange.
252
cranky Cranky means bad-tempered.[
253
diarrhea A condition in which a person's bowel movements are too frequent and the consistency is
abnormally soft and loose
254
flail If your arms or legs flail or if you flail them about, they wave about in an energetic but
uncontrolled way.
255
arch If you arch a part of your body such as your back or if it arches, you bend it so that it forms a
curve.
256
intestinal Your intestines are the tubes in your body through which food passes when it has left your
stomach.
257
obstruction An obstruction is something that blocks a passage in your body.
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That was an extreme lesson in the value of experience; no one recommends
seeking out doctors who are brand new on the job, and doctors admit to
scheduling elective surgery--even planning childbirth--around the intern calendar.
This is not paranoia258: the average major teaching hospital typically sees a 4%
jump in its risk-adjusted mortality rate in the summer, according to the National
Bureau of Economic Research. But there is a larger issue that doctors argue about:
which matters more, information or experience? Broadly speaking, a younger
doctor is likely to have been trained in the newest surgical procedures, be more up
to date on the literature, and be more open to new techniques. Older doctors have
had more years to develop the instinctive diagnostic skills that can make the
difference in complicated cases and may be skeptical of innovations that are driven
more by marketing than medicine.
Older doctors are also worried that rules designed to make young doctors' lives
easier may make patients' outcomes worse. Back in the day, grizzled
259
veterans
say, a medical resident was called that for a reason: he--and they were all men-actually lived in the hospital. "We were aggressive about our training," recalls a
former surgical resident at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital. "The only
thing wrong with every other night call was that you missed half the good cases."
But these long hours of dedication came at a cost: tired doctors made mistakes.
Studies showed that long work hours increased stress, depression, pregnancyrelated complications, car wrecks and damage to residents' morale
260
and
personal life. So now residents' hours are limited to 80-hr. workweeks averaged
over a month, in shifts that are limited to 24 hours of patient care, with at least 1
day off in 7. Remaining on call in the hospital is limited to every third night.
Hospitals that fail to comply can lose their accreditation261.
The reforms made intuitive sense; but the unintended result, older doctors warn,
is a 9-to-5 mentality that detaches the doctor from the patient. They fear that
young doctors don't get the experience they need or build the instincts and muscle
memory from performing procedures so many times that they can do them in their
sleep. Even the residents may agree: in a 2006 study in the American Journal of
Medicine, both residents and attending physicians reported that they thought the
risk of bad things happening because of fragmentation of care was greater than
the risk from fatigue due to excess work hours. Other residents say that while they
may feel more rested, they sense that they are not learning as much or as fast as
258
paranoia If you say that someone suffers from paranoia, you think that they are too suspicious and
afraid of other people.
259
grizzled A grizzled person or a person with grizzled hair has hair that is grey or partly grey.
260
Morale the amount of confidence and cheerfulness that a group of people have.
261
accreditation If an educational qualification or institution is accredited, it is officially declared to be
of an approved standard.[ FORMAL ]
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they need to.
"I know that I will not like it 20 years from now when I'm 68 and having to be
taken care of by these guys," says Dr. Paul Shekelle, a professor of medicine at
UCLA. "It's all shift work now. When 5 o'clock comes, whatever it is they're doing,
they just sign it all out to the 5 o'clock person. It's eroding the sense of duty, or
commitment to being the person responsible for a patient's care."
But younger physicians may have other advantages--like a fresher sense of the
latest standards of care. Many doctors have concluded that there is something of a
sweet spot on the age-education-experience continuum
262
. They seek out
clinicians who are no more than 10 years out of residency, old enough to have
some mileage, young enough to be up to speed. There is actually some hard data
for this rule. A review published last year in the Annals of Internal Medicine
examined the connection between a doctor's years in practice and the quality of
care he or she provided. To the surprise of everyone--including the review's author,
Harvard Medical School's Dr. Niteesh Choudhry--more than half the studies found
decreasing performance with increasing years in practice for all outcomes
assessed; only 4% found increasing performance with increasing age for some or
all outcomes. One study found that for heart-attack patients, mortality increased
0.5% for every year the physician had been out of medical school.
HOW TO SURVIVE TECHNOLOGY
We think of hospitals as cathedrals
263
of science, yet doctors walk around with
their pockets stuffed with 3-by-5 cards on which they write patient information;
when they sign off for the day they read from the card to the doctor coming on
duty. "My pizza parlor
264
is more thoroughly computerized than most of health
care," says Berwick. It's easy to see the advantage of giving everyone easy access
to a patient's history and test results. But getting there can be painful. Enter a
hospital when it is in the process of introducing more computers, they say, and
you can hear the sound of nurses growling265. Doctors using laptops sometimes
have to wrestle with incompatible systems, manually retyping lab results from one
computer into another.
The introduction of computerized patient information and medication orders is
meant to reduce "adverse
262
266
drug events" and ensure that the patient's history
continuum A continuum is a set of things on a scale, which have a particular characteristic to
different degrees.[ FORMAL ]
263
cathedrals A cathedral is a very large and important church which has a bishop in charge of it.
264
pizza parlor pizzeria: a shop where pizzas are made and sold
265
growling When a dog or other animal growls, it makes a low noise in its throat, usually because it is
angry.
266
adverse Adverse decisions, conditions, or effects are unfavourable to you.
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and treatment notes are available to everyone who needs them. But progress does
not always equal safety. "Technology should remove the burden, but you can get
problems. You can hide behind technology and spend more time talking to your
computer than to your patients," says Dr. Albert Wu, a professor of medicine at
Johns Hopkins. "And as with any new thing, people screw things up worse before
they make things better." Doctors say there is a temptation to trust computers too
much: they seem objective and infallible, but if the wrong information is entered in
the first place, or the bar-coded wristband is put on the wrong patient, it can be
harder to prevent mistakes down the line. In one case study, a patient with
pneumonia
267
had his wristband mixed up with a diabetic patient and came very
close to being given a fatal dose of insulin.
This is why doctors are reluctant to be hands-off when it comes to a loved one's
care. Until proper safeguards are built into the system, what a patient needs most,
many doctors agree, is a sentinel--someone to take notice, be an advocate, ask
questions. Now that the family doctor has been squeezed out of that role,
someone else has to step in. But even a doctor--family member may not be able
to counter the complexity of the system. Dr. Berwick of the Institute for
Healthcare Improvement tells the story of his wife Ann's experience when she
developed symptoms of a rare spinal-cord
268
problem at a leading hospital. His
concern was not just how she was treated; it was that so little of what happened
to her was unusual. Despite his best efforts, tests were repeated unnecessarily,
data were misread, information was misplaced. Things weren't just slipping
through the cracks: the cracks were so big, there was no solid ground.
An attending neurologist said one drug should be started immediately, that "time
is of the essence." That was on a Thursday morning at 10 a.m. The first dose was
given 60 hours later, on Saturday night at 10 p.m. "Nothing I could do, nothing I
did, nothing I could think of made any difference," Berwick said in a speech to
colleagues. "It nearly drove me mad." One medication was discontinued by a
physician's order on the first day of admission and yet was brought by a nurse
every single evening for 14 days straight. "No day passed--not one--without a
medication error," Berwick remembers. "Most weren't serious, but they scared us."
Drugs that failed to help during one hospital admission were presented as a fresh,
hopeful idea the next time. If that could happen to a doctor's wife in a top hospital,
he says, "I wonder more than ever what the average must be like. The errors were
not rare. They were the norm."
267
pneumonia Pneumonia is a serious disease which affects your lungs and makes it difficult for you to
breathe.
268
spinal-cord Your spinal cord is a thick cord of nerves inside your spine which connects your brain
to nerves in all parts of your body.
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After he publicized
269
his experiences, Berwick was besieged
270
June 2006
by other doctors
saying, "If you think that's terrifying, wait until you hear my story." One
distinguished professor of medicine whose wife was hospitalized
271
in a great
university hospital was too frightened to leave her bedside. "I felt that if I was not
there, something awful would happen to her," he told Berwick. "I needed to
defend her from the care."
It's hard to find a doctor who doesn't worry about how medicine is changing, since
they suffer at both ends: as providers of health care and as consumers. "What
scares me most about the current medical environment is complacency
272
with
the status quo," says Martin Palmeri, an internal medicine resident at DartmouthHitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. Burgeoning bureaucracies, managed
care, the mass production of health-care services and a worsening malpractice
climate only strain the doctor-patient relationship. In this environment, the patient,
typically a physician's source of inspiration, can become the source of frustration.
"When I refer one of my family members to someone," Palmeri says, "I want to
make sure that they are the type of physician who leaves no stone unturned and
will burn the midnight oil if need be to ensure the highest-quality care possible."
What frightens doctors--young ones like Palmeri as well as older ones--is that
those doctors may be harder and harder to find. Scientific knowledge improves,
but the care doesn't keep up; it is easier to gather gigabytes of information than
to acquire the judgment to apply it wisely. It might comfort the rest of us to think
that with just a little more knowledge or a personal doctor at our side, we could
get the best out of America's extraordinary health-care system without suffering
from its gaps and failures. But since even an insider can suffer, we are left with
the much harder challenge: to fix the system for everyone.
—With reporting by With reporting by Coco Masters/ New York
269
publicized If you publicize a fact or event, you make it widely known to the public.
besieged If you are besieged by people, many people want something from you and continually
bother you.
271
hospitalize If someone is hospitalized, they are sent or admitted to hospital.
272
Complacency being complacent about a situation. A complacent person is very pleased with
themselves or feels that they do not need to do anything about a situation, even though the situation may
be uncertain or dangerous.
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Sight Translation Lesson 8
Canola and soya to the rescue
From The Economist print edition
As petrol prices rise, policymakers and venture capitalists are suddenly embracing
funky alternatives. Will the fad last?
IN HIS long career in country music, Willie Nelson has always been on the leftish
273
side of things. Now, at 73, he is in the vanguard274. Mr Nelson, who lives on a
ranch outside Austin, powers his Mercedes with the help of vegetable oil. He has
even created his own line of this cleaner-burning diesel blend, “BioWillie”, which is
distributed at several sites in Texas and is going national, too. Mr Nelson argues
that it will help America's farmers, truckers and the environment while, at the
same time, reducing dependence on foreign oil.
With high petrol prices causing havoc
275
in Washington, DC, everyone is casting
about for alternatives. Soyabeans, canola (rapeseed), switchgrass, anything, is
being investigated. Even George Bush, a former oilman with a devout following in
the industry, called last week for more research into ethanol and biodiesel—two
key types of biofuels—and boldly predicted that “ethanol will replace gasoline
consumption”. Jim Woolsey, a former head of the CIA and a borderline
neoconservative, notes that developing biofuels is in the national interest, since it
is high time America weaned
fanatical
277
276
itself off Saudi oil and thus stopped funding
Wahhabism.
Unfortunately for Mr Bush's political fortunes, a biofuels revolution will not happen
in time to ease America's current pain at the pump. Right now, ethanol—a cleanburning, high-octane alcohol typically derived from corn in America, or sugar in
Brazil—accounts for just 3% of America's petrol use, though American cars can
handle a 10% ethanol blend. Biodiesel is used even less.
But government policy is beginning to lift biofuels from obscurity278. In Montana,
Hawaii and Minnesota all petrol must contain 10% ethanol, while Washington state
273
leftish tending toward the political left
vanguard If someone is in the vanguard of something such as a revolution or an area of research,
they are involved in the most advanced part of it. You can also refer to the people themselves as the
vanguard.
275
havoc Havoc is great disorder, and confusion.
276
weaned If you wean someone off a habit or something they like, you gradually make them stop
doing it or liking it, especially when you think is bad for them.
277
fanatical If you describe someone as fanatical, you disapprove of them because you consider their
behaviour or opinions to be very extreme.
278
obscurity Obscurity is the quality of being difficult to understand. An obscurity is something that is
difficult to understand.
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requires petrol and diesel to contain 2% renewable fuel by volume. For both
ethanol and biodiesel, Congress has mandated a near-doubling of production by
2012. Both blends, notes Mr Woolsey approvingly, need little new infrastructure to
support them (unlike, say, hydrogen fuel-cell cars). Ethanol can be dispensed at
regular petrol stations and works, within limits, in today's cars. Biodiesel fuelling
stations, such as those for BioWillie, are popping up around America.
All is not perfect. Ethanol is typically blended with regular fuel, and a widespread
switchover to an ethanol blend (a result of another provision of last year's energy
bill) has contributed to some petrol shortages in Texas and elsewhere, as the
supply chain creaks
279
into life. Sceptics
280
argue that growing crops for ethanol
will burn more petrol than it will save. But others are persuaded, despite the
teething pains. “If I had to bet 100 bucks, I'd bet on biofuels,” says Hunter Lovins,
co-author of “Natural Capitalism”, adding that she would favour them even over
plug-in hybrids and hydrogen fuel cells. Rich investors are also bullish281. Richard
Branson, a British entrepreneur who heads the Virgin conglomerate, recently
announced plans to invest up to $400m in ethanol production.
Can production be scaled up? A recent bioengineering breakthrough means that it
should soon be possible to convert plant products far more efficiently to ethanol.
This lends promise to cellulosic
282
ethanol—a product that can be made from
agricultural “waste”, such as corn cobs or weeds, which is widely available. (Once
corn kernels
283
and sugar-cane
284
sap285 have been taken away for sugar, they
leave plenty of stalks and leaves behind.) The most promising source of cellulosic
ethanol, say experts, is switchgrass, a native American grass that grows naturally
in the prairie
286
heartland and thrives in the poor Mississippi Delta.
Biodiesel, as yet, is a smaller enterprise. Its plants require less capital than those
for ethanol. It is growing fast—sales volume tripled, to 75m gallons, between 2004
and 2005—but that is still a drop in the tanker of the 60 billion gallons of diesel
that Americans consume each year. Much of the stuff is made from soyabeans,
and Jeff Plowman of Austin Biofuels, a tiny start-up, notes that soyabean futures
are tracking the price of heating oil for the first time. In Texas, Mr Plowman also
279
creak If something creaks, it makes a short, high-pitched sound when it moves.
Sceptic A sceptic is a person who has doubts about things that other people believe.
281
bullish If someone is bullish about something, they are cheerful and optimistic about it.
282
cellulosic ethanol Cellulosic ethanol is a blend of normal ethanol that does not use feedstock -instead it uses grasses and agricultural waste. It is said to be very efficient, and does not produce
pollution when it is processed. The technology is very new, however, and some dispute these assertions
283
kernel The kernel of a nut is the part that is inside the shell.
284
sugar-cane Sugar cane is a tall tropical plant. It is grown for the sugar that can be obtained from its
thick stems.
285
sap Sap is the watery liquid in plants and trees.
286
prairie A prairie is a large area of flat, grassy land in North America. Prairies have very few trees.
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June 2006
sees potential for cottonseed oil, a byproduct of cotton production. Elsewhere,
there is even talk of producing biodiesel from pig manure287.
A few hiccups
288
have curbed the enthusiasm. In Minnesota, a mandate to have
2% of diesel made from soya was suspended last year when truckers began to
complain of clogged filters. But it was fairly quickly reinstated289.
Could biofuels, in addition to easing the strain on the environment and on wallets,
help to save American farms? Some policymakers certainly hold out this dream,
particularly in the Midwest, where ethanol and biodiesel production is concentrated.
Montana's Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer, who uses biodiesel (made for
example from canola) in his own Volkswagen Jetta, bubbles with optimism about a
technology that he hopes “will jump-start rural America”. He points out that
America exports masses of wheat, soyabeans and corn, and talks of “convert[ing]
those export acres to biofuels”. When the 2007 farm bill is debated, he hopes for
“a vision that helps American farmers once again produce their own horsepower
on their own farms”. This “vision” would include federal crop insurance for farmers
who grow canola290, safflower
291
and camelina292, bringing them up to the level
of wheat and soyabeans.
The notion of American farmers defying the tide of capitalism to grow their own
fuel is a glorious delusion. But Mr Schweitzer is right that Congress has some big
decisions to make about biofuels. To what extent, if any, should government
subsidise this nascent industry? Already it has received plenty of help. Ethanol
producers get a tax credit worth 51 cents a gallon, much to the delight of industry
powerhouses such as Archer Daniels Midland. There is also a 54 cents-a-gallon
tariff on imports of ethanol from Brazil. Starting with the removal of that tariff,
Congress needs to rethink its wrong-headed energy policies. Nathanael Greene, of
the Natural Resources Defence Council, argues that the federal government's most
important immediate step should be to enact a loan guarantee to create America's
first cellulosic ethanol plant, which would probably be built in Idaho.
If biofuels do take off, environmentalists and policymakers will still be unable to
287
manure Manure is animal faeces, sometimes mixed with chemicals, that is spread on the ground in
order to make plants grow healthy and strong.
288
hiccup You can refer to a small problem or difficulty as a hiccup, especially if it does not last very
long or is easily put right.
289
reinstate To reinstate a law, facility, or practice means to start having it again.
290
canola In agriculture, Canola is a cultivar of the rapeseed plant from which rapeseed oil is obtained.
291
safflower thistlelike Eurasian plant widely grown for its red or orange flower heads and seeds that
yield a valuable oil
292
camelina The flowering plant family Brassicaceae, known as the mustard/cabbage family, provides
much of the world's winter vegetables.
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relax. Mr Greene emphasises, rightly, that biofuels are “not a silver bullet”. His
organisation argues that although American production could rise to 100 billion
gallons of biofuels by 2050, such changes also need to be combined with improved
fuel efficiency and better city planning. (Environmentalists also worry about the
pesticides involved in a big American agricultural push.) More flex-fuel vehicles,
which can take up to 85% ethanol blended with petrol, would be particularly
sensible. On such matters, the rest of the world has led the way.
Depends on where you are
From The Economist print edition
The cheerful numbers mask wide regional differences
THE good news continues about Japan's economic recovery. In its latest outlook
for the economy, released on April 28th, the usually cautious Bank of Japan noted
healthy exports and business investment, along with rising household income and
consumption. It declared Japan's output gap, between what the economy can
produce and what it is actually producing, at long last to be closed. The bank's
prediction of a “sustained period of expansion” for the coming year would, if true,
make this recovery, which began in 2002, the longest post-war unbroken
expansion.
This week came more striking news. In the year to April, Japan's labour force rose
for the first time in eight years: the number of those in, or looking for, work rose
by 150,000, to over 66.5m. The rise seems to show that people who dropped out
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of the labour market when prospects looked bleak
293
June 2006
are now willing to rejoin it.
And, with a working-age population that is already shrinking, more women and
older people than before are seeking work. Over the past three years, some
220,000 women have joined the labour force, for instance; so, over the past five
years, have some 450,000 people aged 60 and over.
There are now—just—more jobs on offer in Japan than applicants. Not all the jobs
are permanent ones. Yet for the first time since the start of the decade, the
number of full-time jobs on offer is growing again: in March, the number in regular
employment grew by 0.6%, twice the pace of recruitment of those in part-time
work or on temporary contracts.
Yet there is no disguising the strong regional bias
Job
prospects
are
generally
uninterrupted megalopolis
295
bright
in
294
Japan's
to the employment picture.
powerhouse—the
nearly
that stretches south-west in a strip nearly 300
miles (480km) long down Japan's main Honshu island, from Tokyo, through to
Osaka, Japan's second city, to beyond Kobe. Half-way down the strip, in Aichi
prefecture, home to Toyota, the world's second-biggest carmaker, and a slew of
companies dependent upon it, nearly 1.8 jobs are on offer for every job-seeker;
Brazilians of Japanese descent are being recruited to come for work. And in Tokyo,
despite the capital's high business costs, 1.6 jobs exist for every applicant.
Go to the extremities of Japan's long island chain, however, and the picture is less
bright. Subtropical Okinawa, perched296 out at sea at Japan's southernmost end,
boasts fewer than half as many jobs as applicants, for all its beachside attractions.
Its economy has long relied on income from America's military bases, and on
subsidies from central government, most recently to help make it a call-centre hub.
Hokkaido, in Japan's far north, is faring not much better. It never had a history of
heavy industry. Its farms and fisheries are tended increasingly by older folk, while
its tourism—trekking
297
and hot-spring dipping in the summer, skiing in the
winter—is seasonal. The educated young are leaving in droves for the warmer
climate and brighter lights of Honshu.
Variations in economic prospects can be quite marked even within a single region.
Take the lush
298
southern island of Kyushu, Japan's third-largest and home to
14m people. The area on the north coast around the island's biggest city, Fukuoka,
293
294
295
296
297
298
bleak If a situation is bleak, it is bad, and seems unlikely to improve.
bias Bias is a tendency to prefer one person or thing to another, and to favour that person or thing.
megalopolis a very large city, or a group of cities that has merged into one
perch To perch somewhere means to be on the top or edge of something
trekking If you trek somewhere, you go on a journey across difficult country, usually on foot.
lush Lush fields or gardens have a lot of very healthy grass or plants.
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is abuzz 299 . Toyota and Nissan make cars there, and Honda motorcycles, with
much of the output going to China and elsewhere in Asia. A vibrant two-way
entrepreneurial trade takes place with China and South Korea, while Fukuoka is
also a tourist and shopping destination for East Asians (Seoul is closer than Tokyo).
Nagasaki on Kyushu's west coast tells a different tale. Its history was built upon its
openness—it was for long the only place where Europeans could stop in Japan. Yet
this pleasant port-city today feels something of a backwater, cut off by mountains
and winding roads from the rest of Kyushu. During Japan's slump, the central
government sent money for road and other construction, but that has now dried
up. Nagasaki's garment
300
and assembly shops have long since gone to China.
Carmakers and microchip companies that have set up elsewhere in Kyushu cannot
be persuaded to come. Even the memorial park commemorating
301
the victims
of Nagasaki's atomic bomb is no longer the draw it once was with school parties; a
Chinese couple were the only people there on a recent Saturday visit.
Not all is gloom. Shipbuilding is still big business in Nagasaki, and order books are
full until 2009, but the rising price of steel means worries about margins. Keiko
Suehiro, director of the labour ministry's employment bureau in Nagasaki, says
there has been some success with call centres. But, she says, Nagasaki needs to
foster the kind of entrepreneurship that a long reliance on big companies like the
shipbuilders has squelched 302 . Otherwise, half of Nagasaki's graduates will
continue to leave home in search of work.
On the main island of Honshu, home to most Japanese, the north-east is sharing
in the recovery least equitably. In the mountainous Iwate prefecture, the flatter,
southern part (helpfully close to the big city of Sendai) is doing well enough: over
the years a number of manufacturing and assembly plants have been persuaded
to move from other prefectures, often with beggar-my-neighbour tax breaks. But
since the end of a railway and road-building binge, the rural northern half of Iwate
has languished. Along Iwate's rocky coast, four commercial ports once offered
hope, but these have been squeezed by bigger ports to the north and south. One
of the ports, Kamaishi, is struggling to recover from the closure of its steel
industry: it was home, in 1857, to Japan's first western-style blast-furnace303 ,
299
abuzz If someone says that a place is abuzz with rumours or plans, they mean that everyone there is
excited about them.
300
garment A garment is a piece of clothing; used especially in contexts where you are talking about
the manufacture or sale of clothes.
301
commemorate To commemorate an important event or person means to remember them by means
of a special action, ceremony, or specially created object.
302
squelched To squelch means to make a wet, sucking sound, like the sound you make when you are
walking on wet, muddy ground.
303
blast furnace a large structure in which iron ore is heated under pressure so that it melts and the
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and at its peak in the 1970s the city's population stood at over 90,000. Today, it is
a little over 30,000.
Some 40 businesses are now at work, with government help, in the old buildings:
making canoes304, growing mushrooms and even, in the old magnetite
305
mines,
bottling mineral water. Still, none of that is enough. Yes, says an official, that old
fall-back of the call-centre has been tried in the prefectural capital, Morioka, with
some success. The trouble, he says, is that most people in the north-east speak
with such a thick accent that you'd need an interpreter to tell the customer what
they're saying.
pure iron metal separates out and can be collected.
304
canoe a small, narrow boat that you move through the water using a stick with a wide end called a
paddle.
305
magnetite mineral that is naturally magnetic and mostly made of iron oxide.
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Sight Translation Lesson 9
Up from the dead
May 4th 2006 From The Economist print edition
Genetically modified foods keep on growing
A DECADE ago, Franken-foods mauled
306
Monsanto. The American agribusiness
firm had hoped its fancy new seeds, genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
designed to reduce pesticide use, would win over farmers the world over. In the
event, a consumer backlash fomented
scuppered
308
307
by environmental activists in Europe
those plans and even led to the fall of Robert Shapiro, the
company's previously high-flying boss.
GMOs remain controversial. Despite a WTO ruling in February striking down
Europe's moratorium on GM food, the European Commission pushed the EU's foodsafety agency to make its GMO-evaluation process even stricter in April.
Another controversy erupted last month
when British officials admitted that more
than a hundred genetically modified trees
are being grown in secret locations around
the
country.
government's
That
previous
reversed
the
position,
and
embarrassingly came on the heels of a
rancorous UN meeting in Brazil where
representatives warned that fast-growing
GM trees could “wreak ecological havoc”
by crowding out other species.
Companies that pursue GMOs are also still being hounded 309 . On April 26th,
DuPont faced a shareholder resolution at its annual meeting demanding that the
firm “disclose any potentially material risk or ‘off-balance sheet liability’” related to
its push into GM foods. The measure failed, but activists have vowed to try again
next year—and to pursue Dow Chemical and other firms keen on this technology
with equal vigour.
306
maul If you are mauled by an animal, you are violently attacked by it and badly injured.
foment If someone or something foments trouble or violent opposition, they cause it to
develop.[ FORMAL ]
308
scuppered To scupper a plan or attempt means to spoil it completely.[ mainly BRIT,
JOURNALISM ]
309
hound If someone hounds you, they constantly disturb or speak to you in an annoying or upsetting
way.
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So is this Monsanto all over again, and are GMOs really destined for the rubbish
310
heap311 of history? Not at all. In fact, there is even reason to think they are at
last ready for prime time. One reason is that while the EU has dithered312, other
parts of the world have forged ahead with313 GM crops. The technology is now
accepted in more than 20 countries, including India, China, South Africa and Iran.
Last year the billionth acre was planted, and growth rates remain in the double
digits (see chart on previous page). On one estimate, GMOs made up more than
half the world's soya crop by area, a quarter of its corn and over a tenth of its
cotton.
Monsanto still dominates the $5.6 billion market for agricultural biotechnology. As
the market for conventional seeds stagnates, however, rivals are taking aim. Last
month, DuPont announced a cross-licensing deal and a joint venture with
Syngenta, a Swiss seed giant, to sell GM corn and soyabean technology to seed
producers. Peter Siggelko of Dow sees GMOs as such a big business opportunity
that he vows his firm will remain steadfast
314
in the face of activist shareholders:
“We don't intend to budge—this is better and safer for farmers.”
Activists complain that GM crops put farmers in the clutches
315
of big business,
but farmers in many countries do like them because they are pest-resistant or give
better yields. Researchers at Monsanto and elsewhere are working quietly on the
next potential breakthrough in agriculture: drought-resistant crops, which are
meant to help farmers cope in an increasingly water-scarce world. The best news
for boosters of GMOs is that a wave of innovative new foods is now coming out of
the laboratories with properties that should directly benefit consumers.
Researchers in Pittsburgh have recently raised GM pigs that produce omega-3
fatty acids. These compounds, which help reduce the risk of heart disease, are
typically derived from fish, and so taste unpleasant to some and carry the risk of
increased mercury consumption. If pork is not to your taste, Monsanto and BASF
will soon offer you soyabeans enriched with omega-3. Researchers in Arizona have
just come up with an oral tuberculosis
310
316
vaccine produced from a GM crop, while
rubbish If you think that something is of very poor quality, you can say that it is rubbish.[ BRIT,
INFORMAL ]
311
heap Heaps of something or a heap of something is a large quantity of it.[ INFORMAL ]
312
dither When someone dithers, they hesitate because they are unable to make a quick decision about
something.
313
forged ahead with If you forge ahead with something, you continue with it and make a lot of
progress with it.
314
steadfast If someone is steadfast in something that they are doing, they are convinced that what they
are doing is right and they refuse to change it or to give up.
315
clutch If someone is in another person's clutches, that person has captured them or has power over
them.
316
tuberculosis Tuberculosis is a serious infectious disease that affects someone's lungs and other parts
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a rival team has come up with an oral vaccine produced in GM tobacco plants that
can fight the E. coli bacterium (a common source of food poisoning).
Such “nutraceuticals 317 ” are undoubtedly impressive, but the biggest GMO
success may come from a product that virtually every home owner with a lawn or
garden will appreciate. Scotts Miracle-Gro, an American lawn
318
-care firm,
recently announced that it is developing genetically engineered strains of grass
that are pest-proof and that grow so slowly that they may require no mowing319.
Yet even this breakthrough could prompt criticism—for it could mean that the only
form of exercise taken by many middle-aged men will soon be history.
A heated debate
May 4th 2006 From The Economist print edition
A clue to an old ecological mystery
OF ALL the patterns in nature, one of the simplest, yet hardest to unpick, is that
the further you travel from the tropics, the fewer species there are. This trend is
found both by land and by sea, and applies to a vast range of different organisms.
Despite the pattern's simplicity, though, its explanation is elusive 320 , and the
quest to find that explanation is one of the enduring themes of ecology. The latest
attempt to crack the problem has just been published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences by Shane Wright and Jeannette Keeling, of the
University of Auckland, and Len Gillman of AUT University, both in New Zealand.
They think it is all a question of heat.
Most ecologists who have studied the phenomenon agree that the climate explains
it somehow. It can surely be no coincidence that it is a great deal warmer and
more pleasant in the tropics than at the poles321. But quite how a nicer climate
ends up producing more species is a mystery.
That there is more sunlight—and so more opportunity for photosynthesis322—at
the tropics explains why warm climates create more living matter (or biomass, as
it is known to ecologists). It does not, however, explain why this biomass is
apportioned
323
into more species. Theories have ranged from the mundane
of their body.
317
nutraceutical Foods with specific health or medical benefits. Differentiate from supplements, which
supplies missing nutrients.
318
lawn A lawn is an area of grass that is kept cut short and is usually part of someone's garden or
backyard, or part of a park.
319
mowing If you mow an area of grass, you cut it using a machine called a lawn mower.
320
elusive Something or someone that is elusive is difficult to find, describe, remember, or achieve.
321
pole The earth's poles are the two opposite ends of its axis, its most northern and southern points.
322
photosynthesis the way that green plants make their food using sunlight.[ TECHNICAL ]
323
apportion When you apportion something such as blame, you decide how much of it different
people deserve or should be given.
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324
June 2006
(the greater stability of tropical climates imposes fewer random extinctions on
species that are already there, allowing varieties to accumulate) to the wacky
325
(that centrifugal force caused by the Earth's rotation exerts a slight pull towards
the equator, thus biasing migration patterns). The theory examined by Dr Wright,
Dr Keeling and Dr Gillman, however, is that evolution happens faster in the tropics
because tropical conditions increase the mutation rate, and thus the amount of
genetic variation available for natural selection to act on.
To test this idea, the team studied the DNA of pairs of closely related plant species
in which one member of the pair was tropical and the other was found closer to
the poles. For each pair of species, they worked out the rate at which changes
were happening to the chemical “letters” in which the genetic message is encoded.
This process, known as molecular evolution, results in changes in the genes, the
proteins made from those genes and, ultimately, the organisms the genes reside
in.
The researchers found that the rate at which nucleotides
326
changed in tropical
species was more than twice that found in species from temperate latitudes327.
That strongly suggests a faster mutation rate is at least part of the answer.
Dr Wright, Dr Keeling and Dr Gillman could think of three explanations why
tropical plants might have higher rates of molecular evolution than temperate
plants. The one they favoured is that the higher temperature of the tropics means
that chemical reactions happen faster and metabolic rates are therefore higher.
That increased metabolism would, in turn, generate more oxygen-rich molecules
of a type known as free radicals, which are potent inducers of mutation.
To support this idea, the team had to eliminate the two alternative explanations.
One is that because tropical species often have smaller populations than
temperate ones, they are more susceptible
328
to genetic drift. (In other words, a
mutation can more easily become ubiquitous by chance in a small population than
in a large one.) The other is that the relationship between mutation rates and
speciation is the other way round, because a higher speciation rate causes natural
selection to preserve more of the mutations that arise, even though the mutation
rate itself has not changed.
324
mundane Something that is mundane is very ordinary and not at all interesting or unusual.
wacky If you describe something or someone as wacky, you mean that they are eccentric, unusual,
and often funny.[ INFORMAL ]
326
nucleotides The basic building blocks of DNA and RNA, abbreviated A, G, C, and T (in DNA), or
A, G, C, and U (in RNA).
327
latitudes The latitude of a place is its distance from the equator.
328
susceptible If you are susceptible to something or someone, you are very likely to be influenced by
them.
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325
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The researchers eliminated the first possibility by selecting particularly common
species for their study. The second they eliminated by looking at species from
groups that (contrary to the trend they were attempting to explain) were as
diverse in temperate climes as in the tropics. These, too, showed more tropical
than temperate mutations.
By a process of elimination, therefore, the three researchers were left with the
conclusion that, by pushing metabolic rates up, tropical heat causes more
mutation and thus more speciation. In other words, evolution happens at a faster
rate in Kenya than, say, in Kansas. It does, though, occur in Kansas, too—
whatever some of its citizens might think.
Damned if you do
May 4th 2006 From The Economist print edition
A technology company takes a beating for trying to compete
PITY the world's biggest software firm. When Microsoft abuses its dominance,
regulators rightly beat it back. But when it tries vigorously to compete, the
stockmarket slams it and rivals still race to the regulators.
In April Google complained to competition authorities in America and Europe that
an upgraded version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser, to be released
later this year, may unfairly harm competition because it could send search
queries
329
to Microsoft's own search-engine by default. Although users can easily
change the settings to other search sites, Google fears that few will do so, placing
it at a disadvantage.
Meanwhile, Microsoft's share price plunged 11% in a single day last week after the
company said it would spend an additional $2.5 billion to compete against rivals in
gaming consoles, search technology and to develop online functions for the new
versions of its Office software and its operating system, called Vista.
In recent days Microsoft, which turned 30 last autumn, has been criticised for
failing to react quickly to changes in the technology business. Yet its attempts to
catch up risk inviting regulatory penalties. On the surface, there is plenty to fear.
The extent to which web browsers are open to outside firms is important because
they represent a platform for providing services via the internet, overshadowing
330
329
the primacy of the operating system as the platform for PCs. Whoever controls
query a question, especially one that you ask an organization, publication, or expert.
overshadowing If an unpleasant event or feeling overshadows something, it makes it less happy or
enjoyable.
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June 2006
these platforms is in a position to determine what users can do—as well as steer
sales.
So the same regulatory issues that bedevilled Microsoft with its Windows operating
system are now cropping up with its browser. Last week the European Union
defended its antitrust sanctions in 2004 against Microsoft at an appeals court in
Luxembourg. And it has warned the firm that embedding new functions into Vista
could run foul of competition rules. In America Microsoft's antitrust settlement
with the Department of Justice (for bundling its browser with Windows) expires331
in November 2007, leaving open the question how the firm will act when it is not
under such close regulatory scrutiny.
The business and regulatory challenges facing Microsoft are related, because the
firm needs to be free to compete against rivals in nascent
332
markets on the one
hand, yet almost anything it does will invite antitrust concerns on the other.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer holds roughly 85% of the market, while the rival
Firefox browser boasts 10-15%. But Microsoft lags behind in search. Worldwide,
Google has around 50% market share, Yahoo 28% and Microsoft's MSN 13%. The
stakes are huge: online advertising in America, today estimated to be worth $12.5
billion, is expected to double by 2010.
At the same time, revenue is starting to emerge from new areas. So PC vendors
are able to earn income from software firms for pre-installing their code on
machines; web-browser firms can sell to search engines the right to be the default
setting (or favour their own brand, as with Microsoft). This should be allowed—it's
a free market, after all and Google, not Microsoft, is dominant. Antitrust rules are
good for many things, but thwarting
331
333
competition should never be one of them.
expire When something such as a contract, deadline, or visa expires, it comes to an end or is no
longer valid.
332
nascent Nascent things or processes are just beginning, and are expected to become stronger or to
grow bigger
333
thwarting If you thwart someone or thwart their plans, you prevent them from doing or getting what
they want.
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Sight Translation Lesson 10
Watch out, India
May 4th 2006 | XIAN From The Economist print edition
China is way behind India in the business of outsourced services, but it has now
started to catch up
IN A vast curtained room in Xian in
western China, rows of dark, ponytailed heads are silently bowed, fingers
moving
quickly
and
expertly.
They
might be in any Chinese factory—
except that they are not assembling
shoes, nor soldering circuit boards, but
sitting
at
computer
terminals
processing medical-claim forms from New York and car-loan applications from
Detroit and marking examinations for high-school students in Melbourne, Australia.
“This is the future of the global back office,” says Michael Liu. Mr Lui, founder of
CompuPacific International, one of China's few indigenous
334
business-process
outsourcing (BPO) firms, returned after a decade in health-care IT in America,
determined to prove that China can do just as well as India in outsourced services.
It is fitting that this future should be emerging in Xian, an old imperial capital that
was the final stop for caravans travelling east along the Silk Road from central
Asia and the entry-point for new cultural and scientific ideas. Though tourists know
Xian for its army of terracotta
335
warriors, the capital of Shaanxi province is
quietly becoming one of China's most modern cities. Xian is the birthplace of the
nation's space programme, its aircraft-construction hub and home to one of
China's biggest technology parks—a 35-square-kilometre Chinese Silicon Valley
housing 7,500 companies and supported by more than 100 universities that churn
out 120,000 graduates a year, half in computer sciences alone. And that is just the
start. The Xian High-Tech Industries Development Zone will eventually span336 90
square kilometres at a cost of 100 billion yuan ($12 billion), says Jing Junhai, its
director.
The sheer size of this undertaking betrays China's ambition to become a global
power in software and services to match its pre-eminence in manufacturing.
Attracting outsourced business is central to this. The worldwide market for
offshore spending on IT services for (predominantly) Western companies will reach
334
indigenous Indigenous people or things belong to the country in which they are found, rather than
coming there or being brought there from another country.[ FORMAL ]
335
terracotta Terracotta is used to describe things that are brownish-red in colour.
336
span If something spans a range of things, all those things are included in it.
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$50 billion by 2007, according to Gartner, a consultancy, and is growing in double
digits. The market for BPO, which encompasses
337
processing bills and credit-
card applications to managing entire human-resources operations, should be worth
another $24 billion by next year, and is expanding even faster.
India has captured the bulk of this work. While China is the world's top location for
contracting out manufacturing, it has just $2 billion of the outsourced-services
market,
reckons
Bill
Lewis,
the
founder
of
Temasys,
a
Singapore-based
consultancy. What activity there is happens mostly in Dalian, a north-eastern city
where, for reasons of history and geography, many locals speak Japanese and
Korean, and which therefore handles back-office functions for companies from
Japan and South Korea. Xian's annual outsourcing revenues are a tiny 300m yuan
($40m), according to official figures. Over 90% of that comes from Japan.
But China has plenty of potential. Its workers are well educated in basic computing
and mathematics. They may lack creativity, but they are disciplined and readily
trained, making them better at tedious
338
jobs than most Indians are. This suits
the BPO business. “These are repetitive, rules-based tasks which you can train an
army of people to do,” says Sujay Chohan, Gartner's research director. “They are
not tasks that require innovation.”
Army is the right word: this business needs millions of low-cost workers, and
China has them. India used to be cheaper, but salaries for graduates, engineers
and programmers have been climbing fast and staff turnover at IT companies can
reach 30-40% a year. China, where an entry-level BPO staffer is paid around $300
a month, one-tenth of the comparable American wage, is now very competitive.
Henning Kagermann, chief executive of SAP, one of the world's biggest software
companies, gave warning in January that India was becoming too expensive to
outsource work there. China's big coastal cities are getting more expensive, but
prices inland remain keen. Foreign firms are looking beyond Xian at cities such as
Chengdu and Wuhan. Kaoru Miyata, head of NEC Xian, says both rental and salary
costs in Xian are 40-50% lower than in Beijing and Shanghai, while Yasuo Noshiro,
head of Fujitsu Xian system engineering, says the city is cheaper than fastgrowing Dalian; and staff, with fewer opportunities to job hop339, are more loyal.
Throw in China's superior infrastructure, tax breaks (though India's are also
generous) and strong support from the state, plus the desire of multinational
companies to spread risk away from India, and it is clear why many large
337
encompass If something encompasses particular things, it includes them
tedious If you describe something such as a job, task, or situation as tedious, you mean it is boring
and rather frustrating.
339
hop A hop is a short, quick journey, usually by plane.
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companies are turning to China. IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, Siemens and
Infineon have been in China for several years and all are busily adding staff.
Japan's consumer-electronics giant, NEC, has 180 people doing research and
development in Xian and rival Fujitsu has 120 writing software.
The latest lot of companies to discover China, is, revealingly, the very Indian firms
that make their money from outsourcing services. Tata Consultancy Services
(TCS), the biggest, has a campus in Hangzhou. Infosys and Wipro are in Shanghai
and Beijing and plan to increase their workforces from a few hundred to 5,0006,000 each over the next few years. Genpact, the former offshore BPO arm of
General Electric, also based in India, intends to triple its staff in Dalian from 1,800
to more than 5,000.
This expansion is being driven by burgeoning demand from overseas clients who
want lower costs, a better spread of risk and local support for their growing
Chinese operations. There is also a trickle of business from domestic Chinese
companies. TCS is designing and installing a new software system for Huaxia Bank,
China's 12th-largest. With every Chinese state-owned company hungry for basic
IT and back-office support, that trickle could turn into a flood. James Amachi who
runs the Xian office of GrapeCity, a Japanese IT outsourcing firm, says the
domestic market is taking off sooner than he expected it to: “We thought it would
be two or three years before we saw Chinese clients, but we are already working
on a big domestic telecom project.”
Yet China is still five to ten years behind India, say most observers. It has two big
disadvantages. First, although many Chinese can read English, they speak and
write it badly. That's a problem in services that require frequent communication
with overseas offices. Infineon employs two full-time English teachers in its Xian
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outpost340. Michael Tiefenbacher, the managing director there, says: “It looks bad
if our people cannot talk to their counterparts elsewhere. People confuse language
competence with technical ability.”
Theoretically yes, in practice no
What's more, few Chinese engineering and computer graduates are as good as
their qualifications suggest. While they often have a more solid grasp
341
of theory
than their European counterparts, few leave university able to apply it to real-life
problems, such as developing software. “It is as if they can describe a hacksaw
342
and how it works perfectly,” says Mr Amachi, “but have no idea how to build a
door with it.” On a recent hunt for software developers, GrapeCity received 1,200
applications from Xian's six best technical universities. Only seven of them were
suitable.
One reason is a lack of vocational training and few links between business and
academia343. In Europe and India, by contrast, engineering degrees demand work
experience. And university teachers educated in a rigid, theory-based system are
not able to prepare students for the real world. Wang Yingluo, a professor at Xian
Jiaotong University and a member of the Chinese academy of engineering, says “a
lot of us are not from industry and have no experience of the commercial world.”
As a result, foreign companies in China are spending a small fortune “subsidising
China's education system”, as one puts it. Fujitsu's Mr Noshiro has put some 40
Chinese workers through intensive training in Japan, at a cost of $30,000 a year
each. “They need two years of full-time training just to become a middle-level
engineer and four years to get to be a project manager.” Mr Amachi says even
after three years of training “only 10-20% of programmers ever get to a really
good level and can become an architect. China has so many colleges and so many
graduates, but the degrees are not as good as they sound.”
The same can be true for China's infrastructure. GrapeCity found its building and
its computers flooded when it rained heavily the day after it moved into its new
home in the Xian office park.
The fragmentation of China's domestic outsourced-services sector does not help.
Most companies have fewer than 1,000 staff. CompuPacific has under 600
340
outpost An outpost is a small group of buildings used for trading or military purposes, either in a
distant part of your own country or in a foreign country.
341
grasp A grasp of something is an understanding of it.
342
hacksaw A hacksaw is a small saw used for cutting metal.
343
academia Academia refers to all the academics in a particular country or region, the institutions they
work in, and their work.
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employees, compared with 60,000 at India's TCS. Though small-scale mergers will
happen—CompuPacific has been approached by a local rival, a venture capitalist,
and an American outsourcer looking to diversify
hinder
345
consolidation
346
344
out of India—local politicians
, sometimes blocking mergers with firms outside their
regions if they risk losing influence. India, by contrast, has a national trade body,
Nasscom, which can encourage developments such as consolidation that look likely
to help the industry.
Meanwhile fears about piracy of intellectual property—more rampant
347
in China
than India—will constrain growth. Though foreign companies in China say that
copying sophisticated IT processes is difficult and can be thwarted by relatively
simple safeguards, the perception that sensitive business information is at risk is
likely to slow development.
All this suggests that, for the moment, China is likely to capture an increasing
share of low-level BPO tasks, such as data entry, form processing and software
testing, while India continues to dominate higher-value functions, such as research
and design, which require greater creativity and language skills. However, this will
change
as
more
western firms
demand
support
in
China
and
domestic
opportunities grow. And it isn't just pure competition between the two countries:
last year, TCS signed a deal with the Chinese government and Microsoft to build
China's first big software company, which aims to provide IT services for the
Olympics.
Golden years
May 11th 2006 | BEIJING From The Economist print edition
GOOD news for a country trying to promote domestic consumption: record
numbers of Chinese tourists travelled around their own country during a sevenday national holiday last week and spent record amounts of money. But it is the
swelling numbers of big spenders taking holidays abroad that excites China's
neighbours and many Western countries most. How long, though, will either boom
last?
The numbers look promising. Officials estimate that excursions
344
348
within China
diversify When an organization or person diversifies into other things, or diversifies their range of
something, they increase the variety of things that they do or make.
345
hinder If something hinders you, it makes it more difficult for you to do something or make progress.
346
consolidation To consolidate a number of small groups or firms means to make them into one large
organization.
347
rampant If you describe something bad, such as a crime or disease, as rampant, you mean that it is
very common and is increasing in an uncontrolled way.
348
excursions You can refer to a short journey as an excursion, especially if it is made for pleasure or
enjoyment.
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during “golden week” numbered 146m, up 20% over the same period last year.
Income from tourism grew in nominal terms by more than 25% to some $7.3
billion, with domestic travellers spending an average of about $50 each, up around
4%, or 3% in real terms.
China has not released figures for visits abroad
during the May Day holiday. But officials have
predicted that the total number, for both
business and leisure, would rise to some 35m
for the whole year, an increase of 12.9% (see
chart). By 2004, they say, China had already
become the biggest source of travellers within
Asia. The World Tourism Organisation reckons
annual visits abroad from China could rise to
100m within 15 years. And Wang Shan of
CContact, a British tourism consultancy, says
that 150m Chinese are already affluent
349
enough to take holidays abroad.
Around 90% of visits are still to other Asian destinations, including Hong Kong
(part of China but in effect abroad as far as tourists are concerned). But tourism
agreements reached with EU countries in the past couple of years have boosted
travel to Europe. Canada is hoping for a similar deal in the coming months.
Although Chinese tourists often eat cheaply and avoid the most luxurious hotels,
Western luxury retailers see an exciting new source of custom. A slight
strengthening of China's yuan since last year and a recent easing of its controls on
buying foreign currency could make them even more willing.
Two of the biggest attractions for Chinese tourists, Taiwan and the United States,
are still beset with problems, however. America worries about the potential for
illegal immigration if it makes tourism too easy, while with Taiwan the difficulty is
deeply political. Last month, in an overture
350
to the island, China's government
said it would allow travel agencies to organise tours to Taiwan. Taiwan also
expressed a willingness to open up, albeit still with a quota. But, as ever, actually
starting talks about the issue is proving a big obstacle.
349
350
affluent If you are affluent, you have a lot of money.
overture If you make overtures to someone, you behave in a friendly or romantic way towards them.
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Sight Translation Lesson 11
Fuzzy maths
May 11th 2006 | SAN FRANCISCO From The Economist print edition
In a few short years, Google has turned from a simple and popular company into a
complicated and controversial one
MATHEMATICALLY confident drivers stuck in the usual jam on highway 101
through Silicon Valley were recently able to pass time contemplating
billboard that read: “{first 10-digit
352
351
a
prime found in consecutive digits of
e}.com.” The number in question, 7427466391, is a sequence that starts at the
101st digit of e, a constant that is the base of the natural logarithm353. The select
few who worked this out and made it to the right website then encountered a
“harder” riddle. Solving it led to another web page where they were finally invited
to submit their curriculum vitae.
If a billboard can capture the soul of a company, this one did, because the
anonymous advertiser was Google, whose main product is the world's most
popular
internet
search
engine.
With
its
presumptuous
354
humour,
its
mathematical obsessions, its easy, arrogant belief that it is the natural home for
geniuses, the billboard spoke of a company that thinks it has taken its rightful
place as the leader of the technology industry, a position occupied for the past 15
years by Microsoft.
351
contemplating If you contemplate an idea or subject, you think about it carefully for a long time.
digit A digit is a written symbol for any of the ten numbers from 0 to 9.
353
logarithm In mathematics, the logarithm of a number is a number that it can be represented by in
order to make a difficult multiplication or division sum simpler.
354
presumptuous If you describe someone or their behaviour as presumptuous, you disapprove of them
because they are doing something that they have no right or authority to do.
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In tone, the billboard was “googley”, as the firm's employees like to say. That
adjective, says one spokeswoman, evokes a “humble, cosmopolitan, different,
toned-down” classiness. A good demonstration of googley-ness came in the
speeches at a conference in Las Vegas this year. Whereas the bosses of other
technology companies welcomed the audience into the auditorium with flashing
lights and blasting
355
rock music, Google played Bach's Brandenburg Concerto
Number Three and had a thought puzzle waiting on every seat. The billboard was
also googley in that, like Google's home page, it had visual simplicity that belied
the sophistication of its content. To outsiders, however, googley-ness often implies
audacious
356
ambition, a missionary calling to improve the world and the
equation of nerdiness with virtue.
The main symptom of this, prominently displayed on the billboard, is a deification
of mathematics. Google constantly leaves numerical puns and riddles for those
who care to look in the right places. When it filed the regulatory documents for its
stockmarket listing in 2004, it said that it planned to raise $2,718,281,828, which
is $e billion to the nearest dollar. A year later, it filed again to sell another batch of
shares—precisely 14,159,265, which represents the first eight digits after the
decimal
357
in the number pi (3.14159265).
The mathematics comes from the founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. The
Russian-born Mr Brin is the son of a professor of statistics and probability and a
mother who works at NASA; Mr Page is the son of two computer-science teachers.
The breakthrough that made their search engine so popular was the realisation
that the chaos of the internet had an implicit
358
mathematical order. By counting,
weighting and calculating the link structures between web pages, Messrs Page and
Brin were able to return search results more relevant than those of any other
search engine.
So far, they have maintained this superiority. Danny Sullivan, the editor of Search
Engine Watch, an online industry newsletter, ranks Google as the best search
engine, Yahoo! as second-best, Ask (the re-named Ask Jeeves) third, and
Microsoft's MSN last among the big four. Google's share of searches has gone up
almost every month of the past year. Including those on AOL, an internet portal
that uses Google's search technology, Google had half of all searches in March.
Excluding AOL, the figure was 43%. This is why people “google”—rather than, say,
355
blasting If you blast something such as a car horn, or if it blasts, it makes a sudden, loud sound. If
something blasts music, or music blasts, the music is very loud.
356
audacious Someone who is audacious takes risks in order to achieve something.
357
decimal A decimal is a fraction that is written in the form of a dot followed by one or more numbers
which represent tenths, hundredths, and so on: for example .5, .51, .517.
358
implicit If you say that someone has an implicit belief or faith in something, you mean that they
have complete faith in it and no doubts at all.
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“yahoo”—their driving directions, dates and recipes.
Mathematical prowess
359
is also behind the other half of Google's success: its
ability to turn all those searches into money. Unlike software companies such as
Microsoft which get most of their revenues from licence fees, Google is primarily
an advertising agency. It does not sell the usual sort of advertising, in which an
advertiser places a display on a page and pays per thousand visitor “impressions”
(views): it has perfected the more efficient genre of “pay-per-click” advertising. It
places little text advertisements (“sponsored links”) on a page in an order
determined by auction among the advertisers. But these advertisers pay only once
an internet user actually clicks on their links (thereby expressing an interest in
buying). This works best on the pages of search results, which account for over
half of the firm's revenues, because the users' keywords allow Google to place
relevant advertisements on the page. But it also works on other web pages, such
as blogs or newspaper articles, that sign up to be part of Google's “network”.
The world brain
These two interlocking
360
“engines”—the search algorithms coupled with the
advertising algorithms—are the motor that powers Google's growth in revenues
($6.1 billion last year) and profits ($1.5 billion), as well as its $117 billion market
capitalisation. Its horsepower is the reason why Andy Bechtolsheim, Google's first
investor (as well as a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, a big computer-maker) still
holds on to all his shares in the firm. It's all about advertisers “bidding up the
keywords” in Google's auctions, he says. “How far this thing could go, nobody can
say.”
Since its stockmarket debut, however, Google
has been adding new and often quite different
products to this twin engine. It now owns Picasa,
which makes software to edit digital photos on
computers;
Orkut,
a
social-networking
site
popular mainly in Brazil; and Blogger, which lets
people start an online journal. It also offers free
software
telephony,
for
instant-messaging
for
searching
on
and
internet
the
desktop
computers of users, for (virtually) flying around
the Earth, for keeping computers free of viruses,
for
uploading
and
sharing
videos,
and
for
creating web pages. It has a free e-mail program and calendar. It recently bought
359
360
prowess Someone's prowess is their great skill at doing something.[ FORMAL ]
interlock If systems, situations, or plans are interlocked or interlock, they are very closely connected.
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a firm called Writely, which lets people create and save text documents (much as
Microsoft's Word does) online rather than on their own computers. Google is also
scanning books in several large libraries to make them searchable. It is preparing
to offer free wireless internet access in San Francisco and perhaps other cities, and
dabbling
361
in radio advertising. And that is only the start of a long list.
Whether these are arbitrary
362
distractions or not depends on one's point of view.
For Messrs Brin and Page, they make mathematical sense. Mr Brin (“the strategy
guy”) has calculated that Google's engineers should spend 70% of their time on
core products (ie, the search and advertising engines), 20% on relevant but
tangential
363
products, and 10% on wild fun that might or might not lead to a
product. The result is that lots of tiny teams are working on all sorts of projects,
the most promising ones of which end up on the prestigious
364
“top 100” list that
Mr Page (“the product guy”) spends a lot of his time on. Most of the items on that
list in theory have something to do with Google's mission, which is “to organise
the world's information”. Scanning and indexing books, for instance, brings offline
information online.
The outside world increasingly sees it differently. Among Google fans, the
company has come to epitomise
365
the more mature (ie, post-bust) internet
generation, which goes by the marketing cliché
366
“Web 2.0” (see article). In
this context, it is assumed to be working on absolutely everything simultaneously,
and every new product announcement, no matter how trivial, is greeted as a tiny
step toward an eventual world-changing transformation.
At a minimum, this hypothetical
367
transformation would consist of moving
computation and data off people's personal computers and on to the network—ie,
Google's servers. Other names for this scenario are the “GDrive” or the “Google
grid” that the company is allegedly working on, meaning free (but ultimately
advertising-supported) copious online storage and possibly free internet access.
Free storage threatens Microsoft, because its software dominates personal
361
dabbling If you dabble in something, you take part in it but not very seriously.
arbitrary If you describe an action, rule, or decision as arbitrary, you think that it is not based on
any principle, plan, or system. It often seems unfair because of this.
363
tangential If you describe something as tangential, you mean that it has only a slight or indirect
connection with the thing you are concerned with, and is therefore not worth considering
seriously.[ FORMAL ]
364
prestigious A prestigious institution, job, or activity is respected and admired by people.
365
epitomize If you say that something or someone epitomizes a particular thing, you mean that they
are a perfect example of it.
366
cliché A cliché is an idea or phrase which has been used so much that it is no longer interesting or
effective or no longer has much meaning.
367
hypothetical If something is hypothetical, it is based on possible ideas or situations rather than
actual ones.
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computers rather than the internet; free access threatens other internet-access
providers.
At a maximum, the transformation goes quite a bit further. George Dyson, a
futurist who has spent time at Google, thinks that the company ultimately intends
to link all these digital synapses
368
created by its users into what H.G. Wells, a
British science-fiction writer, once called the “world brain”. Google, Mr Dyson
thinks, wants to fulfil the geeks' dream of creating “artificial intelligence”. Passing
the so-called “Turing test”, created by Alan Turing, a British mathematician, to
determine whether a machine can be said to be able to think, would be the
ultimate reward.
From primes to share prices
But many who deal with Google in their daily lives are getting fed up with such
grandiose notions. Google's shares, after nearly quintupling
369
since they began
trading, have fallen in recent months. Pip Coburn, an investment strategist, says
that “Google was a simple story at one point: online ads on top of the most
popular search mechanism on the planet. Simple. But now it is pretty much a
mess and to get the stock going again, the company may need to work on its own
simplicity so as to match the simplicity of the Google home page itself.”
Mr Sullivan of Search Engine Watch says
Google has become distracted. “Oh, give me a
break,” he wrote in his blog after yet another
product announcement. “A break from Google
going in yet another direction when there is so
much stuff they haven't finished, gotten right
or need to fix.” He points to a rule in Google's
corporate philosophy that “it's best to do one
thing really, really well,” and suggests that the
company is “doing 100 different things rather
than one thing really, really well.”
Google is thus starting to look a bit as Microsoft did a decade ago, with one
strength (Windows for Microsoft, search for Google) and a string
mediocre
368
371
370
of
“me-too” products. Google Video, for instance, was supposed to
synapses A synapse is one of the points in the nervous system at which a signal passes from one
nerve cell to another.[ TECHNICAL ]
369
quintupling increasing by a factor of five
370
string A string of things is a number of them on a piece of string, thread, or wire.
371
mediocre If you describe something as mediocre, you mean that it is of average quality but you
think it should be better.
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become an online marketplace for video clips, both personal and business, but has
been overtaken by YouTube, a start-up that is a few months old but already has
four times as much video traffic. Google News, where the stories are,
characteristically, chosen by mathematical algorithms rather than by editors,
perennially
372
lags behind Yahoo! News, with its old-fashioned human touch.
Google's instant-messaging software is tiny compared with AOL's, Yahoo!'s and
MSN's.
Google is beginning to resemble the old Microsoft in another way, too. A decade
ago, Microsoft stood accused of stifling innovation, because entrepreneurs would
stay away from any area of technology in which it showed any interest. Google,
whose slogan is “ Don't be evil”, hates this comparison and wants to think of itself
as ventilating rather than stifling the ecosystem of developers and entrepreneurs.
“I don't see how they can say that,” says an entrepreneur and competitor who is
too afraid of unspecified consequences to speak on the record. Like most of Silicon
Valley these days, he finds Google's slogan ridiculous, because “we're not evil
either, we just don't go around saying it.”
Entrepreneurs like him are getting annoyed by Google's seemingly endless “betas”,
also known as “technical previews”, when new products are not yet officially
launched but available, ostensibly
373
for testing and review. Traditionally, beta
reviews were meant to last weeks or months and were targeted at testers who
would find and report bugs. Google seems to use betas as dogs sprinkle trees—so
that rivals know where it is. Google News recently graduated out of its beta after
about four years.
In fairness, Google's role today is more complex than Microsoft's was in the 1990s,
when start-ups often hoped to “exit” by listing their shares on the stockmarket,
and were occasionally expunged
374
by Microsoft before they got there. Today,
start-ups (such as Writely, Picasa, Orkut and Urchin) often use Google (or the
other internet titans) as the exit, selling themselves to the big guy. It works for
individuals too. Paul Rademacher is a software engineer who last year came up
with a clever way of combining Google's interactive maps with other websites.
Google hired him.
To Google's initial surprise and subsequent chagrin 375 (is it not enough to
372
perennially You use perennial to describe situations or states that keep occurring or which seem to
exist all the time; used especially to describe problems or difficulties.
373
ostensibly Ostensible is used to describe something that seems to be true or is officially stated to be
true, but about which you or other people have doubts.[ FORMAL ]
374
expunged If you expunge something, you get rid of it completely, because it causes problems or bad
feelings.[ FORMAL ]
375
chagrin Chagrin is a feeling of disappointment, upset, or annoyance, perhaps because of your own
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vow never to be evil?), it alienates more groups of people as it enters more areas
of modern life. It appeared to be genuinely taken aback that some book publishers
oppose its plan to scan their books and make them searchable. Google also
seemed surprised when privacy advocates voiced concerns over its practice of
placing advertisements in contextually related e-mail messages on its webmail
service, and again this year when it announced a Chinese version that censors the
search results.
Slowly, the company is realising that it is so important that it may not be able to
control the ramifications
376
of its own actions. “As more and more data builds up
in the company's disk farms,” says Edward Felten, an expert on computer privacy
at Princeton University, “the temptation to be evil only increases. Even if the
company itself stays non-evil, its data trove
377
will be a massive temptation for
others to do evil.” In a world of rogue employees, intruders
378
and accidents, he
says, Google could be “one or two privacy disasters away from becoming just
another internet company”.
Such concerns are forcing Messrs Brin and Page, still in their early 30s, and Eric
Schmidt, whom they hired as chief executive and who is in his early 50s, to
behave increasingly like a “normal” company. Google recently sent its first
lobbyists to Washington, DC. Its decision to build an “evil scale” to help it devise
its China strategy was more unusual, but its hiring of Al Gore, a former American
vice-president, to aid the process, was just the kind of thing that old-fashioned
empire-building firms do all the time.
Other companies are reacting in traditional ways to Google's dominance. Former
rivals, such as eBay, Yahoo! and Microsoft, are exploring alliances to counter its
influence. When Microsoft tried to buy AOL from its parent, Time Warner, Google's
Mr Schmidt flew in for talks that led to Google taking a defensive stake in AOL,
thus keeping it out of Microsoft's and Yahoo!'s reach. In response, Microsoft has
contemplated buying all or part of Yahoo!, and has recently announced a vague
but large increase in research spending which amounts to an arms race. Google is
now alleging that Microsoft is unfairly steering users of its web browser to MSN for
searches, and is preparing to dispatch lawyers to keep Microsoft in check.
Google thus finds itself at a defining moment. There are plenty of people within
the company who want it to play the power game. “The folks who are closest to
failure.[ FORMAL, WRITTEN ]
376
ramification The ramifications of a decision, plan, or event are all its consequences and effects,
especially ones which are not obvious at first.
377
trove You can refer to a collection of valuable objects as a treasure trove.
378
intruder An intruder is a person who goes into a place where they are not supposed to be.
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Larry and Sergey are very, very worried about Microsoft, as well they should be,”
says John Battelle, the author of a blog and a book on Google. Yet the company's
founders themselves may not be prepared to drop their idealism and their faith in
their own mathematical genius. They have always wanted to succeed by being
good and doing good. “Never once did we consider buying a big company,” says
David Krane, Google's 84th employee, by way of example. It would not be googley.
It would, he says, be “yuck379”.
379
yuck Disgust
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Sight Translation Lesson 12
A giant stirs, a region bridles
May 11th 2006 | TOKYO From The Economist print edition
More and more Japanese want their country to have a normal foreign and defence
policy. America agrees. China and South Korea aren't so sure
AN ASCENDING
industrialising
challenges
power;
over
disputes
spheres
380
economy,
fast,
that
the
established
hungry
competition
energy
over
of
resources;
territory
influence;
or
and
nationalisms inflamed on one
side by grievance
381
and on
the other by the opponent's presumption. It is becoming fashionable in
policymaking circles to compare the situation of China and Japan today to that of
Germany and Britain a century ago. Kent Calder of Johns Hopkins University,
writing recently in Foreign Affairs, quoted Thucydides: fluid perceptions of power
and fear are the classic causes of war.
The security perceptions in East Asia are fluid indeed, and so are the realities.
China's attempts to modernise its armed forces have brought big increases in
defence spending every year for several years, and the shopping-list is still
growing: fighter aircraft, frigates382, nuclear submarines and now aircraft-carriers.
Some of the build-up has to do with China's desire to bring Taiwan back into the
fold. But China also has ambitions for a blue-water navy, and seems to be probing
at its biggest neighbour's defences as well. In November 2004 the Japanese found
a Chinese submarine in their waters near the island of Okinawa. The Chinese
claimed this was a mistake, and later apologised, but a dispute between China and
Japan flared383 up last year over some oil-and-gas fields in the East China Sea,
and Chinese spy planes have provocatively flown into the disputed airspace since
then.
The lack of openness that accompanies China's military modernisation may reflect
380
ascend If something ascends, it moves up, usually vertically or into the air.[ WRITTEN ]
grievance If you have a grievance about something that has happened or been done, you believe that
it was unfair.
382
frigate A frigate is a fairly small ship owned by the navy that can move at fast speeds. Frigates are
often used to protect other ships.
383
flare If something such as trouble, violence, or conflict flares, it starts or becomes more violent.
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the backwardness
384
June 2006
more than the potency of the army: a Japanese general
says that, were he in command of such decrepit
385
equipment, he would not
boast about it either. Still, the opaqueness merely adds to the neighbours'
concerns about China's long-term intentions.
Profound changes are also under way in the armed forces of Japan and its ally, the
United States. After the second world war, America imposed a pacifist constitution
on the defeated Japanese. In return, it agreed to guarantee their defence, though
they had to pay part of the bill. That is the way it still is. America has some 50,000
troops in Japan, a handful of air bases (including its biggest marine base abroad)
and a port for the Seventh Fleet. Now, after nearly ten years of talks and much
wrangling386, the United States and Japan have at last reached an agreement on
how to refresh this long-standing alliance.
It was clear that some changes were due. When the arrangements were put in
place, the chief security risk in the region was thought to be an invasion of Japan
by the Soviet Union. In 1996, with both risk and country gone, Bill Clinton and
Ryutaro
Hashimoto, then America's president and Japan's
prime minister
respectively, said it was time for a review. Nothing has become easier since then.
China has continued to rise. The possibility of a war over Taiwan, whose security
America also guarantees, remains. Recalcitrant
387
North Korea has developed
both nuclear weapons and new missiles to carry them. And, since September 11th
2001, everyone is on the lookout for terrorism.
The new agreement completes the most sweeping reorganisation of American
forces in the Pacific since the Vietnam war. By 2014 some 8,000 marines and their
families will leave crowded Okinawa, home to half of all American servicemen in
Japan, for the Pacific island of Guam, an American dependency. From Guam, the
marines are supposed to be able to respond with lightning speed to an array
regional
emergencies.
Whatever
benefits
the
Americans
have
388
brought
of
to
Okinawa—in terms of cash, employment and security—they have also earned
some hostility, especially when one of their number has raped or murdered a local
girl. The marines' Futenma air base, the most unpopular of all the bases in
Okinawa, will now be closed, and the land returned to farmers who have grown
rich off the Americans' rent and will now grow richer still by selling their acres for
384
backwardness If someone takes a backward step, they do something that does not change or
improve their situation, but causes them to go back a stage.
385
decrepit Something that is decrepit is old and in bad condition
386
wrangling If you say that someone is wrangling with someone over a question or issue, you mean
that they have been arguing angrily for quite a long time about it.
387
Recalcitrant If you describe someone or something as recalcitrant, you mean that they are
unwilling to obey orders or are difficult to deal with.[ FORMAL ]
388
array An array of different things or people is a large number or wide range of them.
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development: the base is jammed
389
June 2006
next to the town of Ginowan. A new floating
heliport, controversial but less so than Futenma, is to be built for the marines over
a coral reef
390
off Okinawa's less populated eastern coast.
In addition, an American naval air wing now based at Atsugi, just outside Tokyo,
will move to Iwakuni, 725 kilometres (450 miles) to the south-west, near
Hiroshima; a dozen refuelling aircraft from Futenma will also go to Iwakuni.
Other servicemen are also expected to move to Guam, or even Hawaii.
Japan's politicians will be pleased to have reduced a long-standing irritant391. For
their part, the Americans believe they will be able to react faster to a wider range
of possible emergencies—a crisis involving North Korea, say, or Taiwan, or an act
of terrorism that might perhaps threaten the crucial shipping lanes of South-East
Asia, or indeed anything at all that might happen in the “arc
392
of instability” that
Pentagon planners see stretching from North Korea to the Middle East.
And that is not all. While America keeps Japan as its main base in Asia, Japan will
play a much greater part in its own defence. Politicians in Washington, DC,
complain that Japan gets American protection on the cheap, spending just 0.9% of
GDP on defence, or $45 billion a year, barely a tenth of America's military budget.
389
jam If you jam something somewhere, you push or put it there roughly.
coral reef A coral reef is a long narrow mass of coral and other substances, the top of which is
usually just above or just below the surface of the sea.
391
irritant If you describe something as an irritant, you mean that it keeps annoying you.[ FORMAL ]
392
arc An arc is a smoothly curving line or movement.
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The total cost of the new “realignment” has not been made public, but Japan has
agreed to pay three-fifths of the $10 billion that moving the marines alone will
cost. In the long run, says America's chief negotiator, Richard Lawless, Japan will
have to fork out
393
at least $26 billion. And the Japanese will have to carry out,
and pay for, some of the work that the United States has been doing on their
behalf in the past.
Prometheus loosens his bonds
In fact, America's military transformation in Asia could mean an equally profound
transformation of the Japanese armed forces. The change is already under way.
During the cold war, Japan's own “ground self-defence forces” (pacifist Japan's
term for its army) laid stress on tank and infantry divisions, with the aim of
repelling
394
a Soviet invasion. Since then, Japan's ground forces have shrunk in
importance, whereas its navy has grown into a force of considerable reach and
sophistication. Japan has recently launched its own spy satellites. A sweeping
reorganisation of the self-defence forces last month put the navy, army and air
force under a single command for the first time since the second world war.
Japan and America increasingly emphasise the sharing of technology. They are
also trying to improve their joint command structure—an essential part of the two
countries' new agreement—and they have recently started to test anti-missile
systems. Japan's enthusiasm for missile defence leapt in 1998, when North Korea
test-fired a Taepodong rocket that crossed the main island of Honshu. North
Korea, though, is not the only worry. Japanese defence planners admit in private
that missile defence is also being developed with China in mind. After all, the 800
missiles that China has ranged against Taiwan could also reach Japan—and, as a
senior American official admits, the defence of Taiwan could not be accomplished
without using bases in Japan. To accusations from China of meddling
395
in
“internal” Chinese affairs, Japan now says it considers Taiwan to be a security
concern shared in common with America.
Expectations are now growing both inside Japan and beyond for the world's
second-biggest economy to perform a more muscular role in international security
operations. Yet Japan's military modernisation is rubbing up against the limits of
the constitution. These have already been stretched, notably by Junichiro Koizumi,
prime minister since 2001. After the attacks on the Twin Towers, Mr Koizumi threw
Japan's loyalties firmly behind George Bush's “war on terror”. In late 2001 he won
393
fork out If you fork out for something, you spend a lot of money on it.[ INFORMAL ]
repelling When an army repels an attack, they successfully fight and drive back soldiers from
another army who have attacked them.[ FORMAL ]
395
meddling If you say that someone meddles in something, you are criticizing the fact that they try to
influence or change it without being asked.
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parliamentary backing to send two naval refuelling tankers to the Indian Ocean to
help the United States and its NATO allies topple the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Though a new law had to be written, and the ships were limited to giving
logistical
396
support, this was, by post-war Japan's standards, an unprecedented
projection of its military capabilities.
Later, Mr Koizumi pushed for Japanese peacekeeping troops to be sent to southern
Iraq. The 600 troops there are still embarrassingly constrained in their actions—
they are, in effect, protected by Australian peacekeepers nearby—but their
presence nevertheless marks another bold move by Mr Koizumi. They show that
Japan's leaders now see that the national interest may sometimes lie far from
home—and that the constitutional taboo on sending Japanese troops abroad can in
fact be broken.
The prime minister has proved an acute judge of a changing national mood. What
is sometimes called the “normalisation” of Japan is increasingly popular. In a poll
for the Yomiuri Shimbun last month, for instance, over half of those asked said
they favoured changing the constitution in order to allow Japan to play a greater
international part. Other polls suggest that most people support Japanese troops'
active involvement in peacekeeping.
A hint of extroversion
The new mood is reflected in the shifts taking place in politics. The landslide of Mr
Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in last September's general election
buried what remained of the pacifist left in Japanese politics. A majority of LDP
members of parliament favour changes to the constitution. An amendment drafted
by the party last autumn proposes to remove the ambiguities397 surrounding the
role of the armed forces and to underline Japan's right to take part in international
operations outside the country's borders. The main opposition group, the
Democratic Party of Japan, is also increasingly robust about foreign policy. Its new
leader, Ichiro Ozawa, elected last month, has long argued for a more assertive
398
Japan. So constitutional debate, including the possibility of rewriting the pacifist
Article 9, is now on the political agenda, even if it is likely to be years before any
constitutional change is agreed on.
Whereas Americans, in particular, think that Japan is taking only baby steps
towards assuming a greater international role, and are impatient for more, two of
its closest neighbours view the prospects of a more activist Japan with rising alarm.
396
logistical Logistic or logistical means relating to the organization of something complicated.
ambiguity If you say that there is ambiguity in something, you mean that it is unclear or confusing,
or it can be understood in more than one way.
398
assertive Someone who is assertive states their needs and opinions clearly, so that people take notice.
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Policymakers in China and South Korea claim to detect in Japan's push for
“normalisation” the dangerous rearming of an historical foe and colonial overlord.
Much of this is overblown. Even the hawkish LDP's latest constitutional draft
reasserts Japan's renunciation of war as a sovereign right. And the notion that
Japan still harbours territorial designs on either the Korean peninsula or the
Chinese mainland (or even Taiwan) is potty399. Unfortunately, Japan does itself no
favours when it comes to reassuring the neighbours.
Picking at the scabs
400
of history
The problem is that the normalisation of Japan's defence is not being matched by
what could be called the normalisation of its nationalism, and the prime minister
shares a part of the blame. In his five years in office, Mr Koizumi has five times
visited Tokyo's Yasukuni shrine, where the 2.5m servicemen who have fallen in
wars since 1868 are honoured, but where the names of 14 Class A war criminals
from the second world war are also memorialised. Mr Koizumi claims to visit the
shrine as an individual, not an office-holder, and does so, he says, in order to
honour the innocent dead. He usually accompanies his visits with a condemnation
of Japan's past belligerency401. Still, the visits feed into deeply held feelings in
China and South Korea that, despite dozens of official apologies, Japan has yet to
atone
402
fully and sincerely for its wartime past. The point is also emphasised by
school textbooks that gloss over Japan's wartime atrocities403, and by continued
Japanese reluctance to compensate the victims of Japanese militarism.
Yet the shriller
404
China and South Korea become—venomous
405
anti-Japanese
riots broke out in China last year—the more inclined are ordinary Japanese to
thumb their nose at
406
the complaints. In that sense, Mr Koizumi merely
exemplifies an attitude that seems to find honour in Japan's isolation. And this
provides cover for the Japan-as-historical-victim school that exists not just on the
far right of Japan's politics, but also as a central if small part of the LDP.
Even so, Japan pays a price for being on bad terms with its neighbours. No summit
399
potty A potty is a deep bowl which a small child uses instead of a toilet.
scab A scab is a hard, dry covering that forms over the surface of a wound.
401
belligerency belligerence: hostile or warlike attitude or nature
402
atone If you atone for something that you have done, you do something to show that you are sorry
you did it.[ FORMAL ]
403
atrocity An atrocity is a very cruel, shocking action.
404
shriller If you describe a demand, protest, or statement as shrill, you disapprove of it and do not like
the strong, forceful way it is said.
405
venomous If you describe a person or their behaviour as venomous, you mean that they show great
bitterness and anger towards someone.
406
thumb one’s nose at If you thumb your nose at someone, you behave in a way that shows that you
do not care what they think.
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June 2006
meetings have been held with China since 2001. If Mr Koizumi meets Chinese
leaders at all, he meets them briefly on the fringes of multilateral gatherings.
President Roh Moo-hyun of South Korea has also suspended meetings with Mr
Koizumi. Diplomats say that Japan's bilateral relations with China and South Korea
have been damaged at every level, and former channels of communication closed.
A consequence is that Japan is unable to take any regional initiative (over the
environment, for instance, or energy use) at the very time it is seeking
international “normalisation”.
The scratching of historical scabs has also inflamed the many island and seabed
407
disputes in the seas dividing Japan from China and South Korea. China has long
challenged Japan's control of the Senkaku islands, a rocky outcrop
408
known as
the Diaoyutai in Chinese. More recently, China and Japan have squabbled about
409
some oil and gas deposits below the East China Sea. China has now annoyed
Japan by starting to extract some of the gas.
A simmering
410
dispute between South Korea and Japan over two islets, the
Dokdo, which Korea controls but which Japan claims and calls Takeshima, has
suddenly boiled over. Japan's coastguard said last month that it was sending two
unarmed vessels to map the seabed around the blasted rocks, a couple of months
before an international hydrographic conference at which South Korea was
expected to offer Korean names for some submerged features. Furious, South
Korea dispatched armed patrol boats to the area. Diplomats scrabbled to avert
411
a confrontation, and achieved a deal whereby Japan would withdraw its
surveyors if South Korea withdrew its list of names.
The matter is unlikely to stay shelved412. President Roh went on television a few
days after the deal in belligerent mood to say that “Japan's present claim to Dokdo
is an act of negating
413
the complete liberation and independence of Korea...no
compromise or surrender is possible, whatever the costs and sacrifices may be.”
Mr Koizumi's offer of a summit was rebuffed.
The incident is a reminder of how suddenly Japan's relations with its neighbours
407
seabed The seabed is the ground under the sea.
outcrop An outcrop is a large area of rock sticking out of the ground.
409
squabble When people squabble, they quarrel about something that is not really important.
410
simmer If a conflict or a quarrel simmers, it does not actually happen for a period of time, but
eventually builds up to the point where it does.
411
avert If you avert something unpleasant, you prevent it from happening.
412
shelve If someone shelves a plan or project, they decide not to continue with it, either for a while or
permanently.
413
negating If one thing negates another, it causes that other thing to lose the effect or value that it
had.[ FORMAL ]
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can get out of hand. Plainly, repairs are needed, and plenty of suggestions have
been forthcoming. They include joint history projects that might attempt to reach
a consensus of sorts about the past; more regional forums; and a national debate
in Japan about how to honour the dead and guard a sense of national identity
without inflaming neighbours. Some of the more sensible ideas come from Japan's
soldiers. One suggests building trust with China by setting up joint search-andrescue missions and procedures for accidental collisions in an ever-busier sea.
Infantile paralysis
China will certainly need to play its part. The leadership of China's Communist
Party has for so long used anti-Japanese sentiment to bolster
414
its own
legitimacy that once-warm feelings in Japan towards the Chinese have cooled,
particularly since the anti-Japanese demonstrations last spring, when 24m Chinese,
it was claimed, signed an internet petition opposing Japan's bid for a permanent
seat on the UN Security Council. Such stridency
415
constrains any Japanese
leader judged at home to be appeasing China.
Japanese politicians can be blamed for doing too little to assuage
416
fears by
making their case, which is a reasonable one, clearly and unthreateningly. Yet Hu
Jintao, the Chinese president, has also made a poor fist of relations with Japan.
Though he has written off all hope of improving ties with Mr Koizumi, he is under
pressure at home to make a fresh start with Japan after the prime minister goes in
September. One Beijing academic likens
417
the two countries in the East China
Sea disputes to “children climbing on the table to fight over a glass of milk”.
Japan's role in the region suddenly seems to be a factor in the LDP race to succeed
Mr Koizumi (see article). Candidates are under pressure to show the neighbours a
measure of good faith, starting by staying away from Yasukuni. Both Japan and
China appeared this week to be groping towards better relations. They said their
talks over the East China Sea gas fields would restart next week, and their foreign
ministers will meet again before long, too.
At some point, mutual suspicions over Taiwan will also have to be dealt with, and
on this some Japanese see hope. They argue that Mr Hu's recent rather subtle
approach towards the island—courting the opposition Kuomintang, isolating
President Chen Shui-bian and his crumbling independence movement, and
414
bolster If someone tries to bolster their position in a situation, they try to strengthen it.
stridency If you use strident to describe someone or the way they express themselves, you mean that
they make their feelings or opinions known in a very strong way that perhaps makes people
uncomfortable.
416
assuage If you assuage an unpleasant feeling that someone has, you make them feel it less
strongly.[ LITERARY ]
417
liken If you liken one thing or person to another thing or person, you say that they are similar.
100
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counting on greater economic integration between Taiwan and the mainland to
achieve more than bluster
418
and military threats—could do much to reassure
Japan about China's intentions. So there is a chance that Japan and its neighbours
could start to put their problems behind them. But that's what it is—a chance, no
more than that for now.
418
bluster If you say that someone is blustering, you mean that they are speaking aggressively but
without authority, often because they are angry or offended.
101
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Korean English Reading Lesson 1
Donald Rumsfeld and smart power
The Korea Herald
By Joseph S. Nye – April 26, 2006
Donald Rumsfeld, America’s Secretary of Defense, recently spoke about the Bush
administration’s global war on terror. "In this war, some of the most critical battles
may not be in the mountains of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq, but in
newsrooms in New York, London, Cairo and elsewhere. Our enemies have skillfully
adapted to fighting wars in the media age, but for the most part we have not."
The good news is that Rumsfeld is beginning to realize that the struggle against
terrorism cannot be won by hard military power alone. The bad news is that he
still does not understand soft power - the ability to get what you want through
attraction rather than coercion. As the Economist commented about Rumsfeld`s
speech, "until recently he plainly regarded such a focus on `soft power` as, well,
soft - part of `Old Europe`s` appeasement of terrorism."
* alone ~만 (~한 것은 아니다)
노력만 한다고 되는 것이 아니다. 돈, 용기, 운, 끈이 다 있어야 한다.
You can’t get it with effort alone. You also need money, courage, luck and connections.
Now Rumsfeld finally realizes the importance of winning hearts and minds, but,
as the Economist put it, "a good part of his speech was focused on how with
slicker PR America could win the propaganda war." In other words, in blaming the
media for America`s problems, Rumsfeld forgot the first rule of marketing: if you
have a poor product, not even the best advertising will sell it.
* win hearts and minds 민심을 사다, 사람들의 마음을 얻다
America may have won the war in Iraq, but it failed to win hearts and minds of the Iraqi
people.
* as the Economist put it 이코노미스트의 말을 빌자면
As most Korean-Americans put it, Koreans just don’t know how to teach English.
Rumsfeld’s mistrust of the European approach contains a grain of truth. Europe
has used the attractiveness of its Union to obtain outcomes it wants, just as the
United States has acted as though its military pre-eminence could solve all
problems. But it is a mistake to count too much on hard or soft power alone. The
ability to combine them effectively is “smart power.”
During the Cold War, the West used hard power to deter Soviet aggression, while
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it used soft power to erode faith in Communism behind the iron curtain. That was
smart power. To be smart today, Europe should invest more in its hard-power
resources, and America should pay more attention to its soft power.
During President George W. Bush’s first term, Secretary of State Colin Powell
understood and referred to soft power, whereas Rumsfeld, when asked about soft
power in 2003, replied "I don’t know what it means." A high price was paid for that
ignorance. Fortunately, in his second term, with Condoleezza Rice and Karen
Hughes at the State Department and Rumsfeld’s reputation dented by failures that
in the private sector would have led to his firing or resignation, Bush has shown an
increased concern about America’s soft power.
Of course, soft power is no panacea. For example, soft power got nowhere in
attracting the Taliban government away from its support for al-Qaida in the 1990s.
It took hard military power to sever that tie. Similarly, North Korean dictator Kim
Jong-il likes to watch Hollywood movies, but that is unlikely to affect his decision
about whether to give up his nuclear weapons program. Such a choice will be
determined by hard power, particularly if China agrees to economic sanctions. Nor
will soft power be sufficient to stop Iran’s nuclear program, though the legitimacy
of the Bush administration’s current multilateral approach may help to recruit
other countries to a coalition that isolates Iran.
* get nowhere 아무데도 가지 못하다, 아무 효과도 없다, 무의미하게 되다
수년간 경제를 살리고자 정부가 노력했지만 모두가 허사였다.
Years of painstaking effort by the government to boost the economy have gone nowhere.
* take 필요하다, ~가 들다
It takes a strong determination to win the war.
That’s all it took.
But other goals, such as promoting democracy and human rights, are better
achieved by soft power. Coercive democratization has its limits, as the United
States has learned in Iraq.
This does not mean that Rumsfeld`s Pentagon is irrelevant to American soft power.
Military force is sometimes treated as synonymous with hard power, but the same
resource can sometimes contribute to soft power. A well-run military can be a
source of attraction, and military cooperation and training programs can establish
transnational networks that enhance a country’s soft power. The U.S. military`s
impressive work in providing humanitarian relief after the Indian Ocean tsunami in
2004 helped restore America`s attractiveness, and enhanced its soft power.
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But the misuse of military resources can also undercut soft power. The Soviet
Union possessed a great deal of soft power in the years after World War II. But the
Soviets` attractiveness as liberators was destroyed by the way they later used
their hard power against Hungary and Czechoslovakia.
Brutality
and
indifference
to
"just
war"
principles
of
discrimination
and
proportionality can also destroy legitimacy. The efficiency of the initial American
military invasion of Iraq in 2003 created admiration in the eyes of some
foreigners. But this soft power was undercut by the inefficiency of the occupation,
the mistreatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, and the policy - initiated by Rumsfeld
- of detainment without hearings at Guantanamo.
* in the eyes of ~가 보기에는
The campaign to eradicate terrorism drew hatred in the eyes of most muslims.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. (제눈에 안경)
To be sure, no on expects that we can ever attract people like Mohammed Atta or
Osama bin Laden. We need hard power to deal with such cases. But today`s
terrorist threat is not Samuel Huntington`s clash of civilizations. It is a civil war
within Islam between a majority of normal people and a small minority who want
to coerce others into accepting a highly ideological and politicized version of their
religion. We cannot win unless the moderates win. We cannot win unless the
number of people the extremists recruit is lower than the number we kill and deter.
Rumsfeld may understand this calculus in principle, but his words and actions
show that he does not know how to balance the equation in practice. Doing so and thus being in a position to win the war - is impossible without soft power.
Joseph S. Nye is distinguished service professor at Harvard and author of "Soft
Power: The Means to Success in World Politics." - Ed.
Back to the Security Council
The Washington Post
Editorial – May 2, 2006
Iran says it won't heed a U.N. resolution -- but that's not the point
THE UNITED STATES will begin a long, difficult and possibly unsuccessful campaign
this week to persuade the U.N. Security Council to order an end to Iran's nuclear
program -- even though Iran's president has already said the regime does "not
give a damn about such resolutions." While the diplomacy drags on, Iran's race
for a bomb will continue: The International Atomic Energy Agency reported Friday
that Tehran's work on enriching uranium was accelerating even as it continued to
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stonewall inspectors' attempts to learn about still more troubling parts of its
program. The Bush administration's pursuit of a resolution at the United Nations is
nonetheless a necessary step -- in part because of what it may reveal about the
international coalition it has tried to build against Iran.
* give a da** about 관심 없다, 신경 안쓰다
* drag on 지겹도록 계속되다, 끝나지 않다
그 법안을 둘러싼 정치적 공방이 계속되는 가운데, 사람들의 불만은 커져만 가고 있다.
As the political wrangling over the bill drags on, people’s discontent is only growing.
A debate on a legally binding resolution should set the United States and its
European allies more firmly on a course toward adopting specific sanctions
against Iran. It should also force China and Russia to decide whether they wish to
be partners of the West in addressing such threats to global security. Russian
President Vladimir Putin has skillfully exploited the growing crisis with Iran,
cooperating with the West just enough to forestall a response to his increasingly
belligerent policies in other parts of the world, while also reaping the benefit of
rising oil prices -- and retaining the option of selling advanced weapons to Tehran.
By the time of this summer's Group of Eight summit in St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin
should be obliged either to stand with the democratic governments he will host in
supporting Security Council action or to demonstrate that he does not belong in
their company. China, too, will show whether it is interested in taking up the role
of global "stakeholder" urged on it by the Bush administration.
* set ~ on a course ~가 ~하도록 만들다
양측은 이대로 가면 충돌한다.
The two sides are on a collision course.
그 법안으로 그 나라는 좀 더 진보적인 사회로 변할 것이다.
The bill would set the country on a course towards a more liberal society.
Russian and Chinese diplomats say their resistance to sanctions stems from
concern that they will lead to more defiance by Iran, military action by the United
States, or both. The same worries prompt the growing chorus of calls in Europe
and in Washington for the Bush administration to offer the mullahs a "strategic
dialogue." If there is to be a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear threat,
some such negotiations will eventually be needed. But the United States has
already spent most of the past year supporting negotiations with Iran by Britain,
France, Germany and Russia; their offers were crudely rejected. Iran's leaders
evidently have concluded that they need not respond to offers of carrots because
the coalition they face is incapable of producing a stick. The United States and its
allies must now prove that thinking wrong -- ideally within the Security Council,
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but if necessary outside of it.
Exercise questions
1. 국무장관의 말을 빌자면 북한의 ‘악의 꽃’이다.
2. 양측의 협상이 지지부진하게 계속되자 일각에서는 협상을 아예 그만두라는 목소리까
지 나오고 있다.
3. 개도국이 보기에 미국은 마음대로 힘을 휘두루는 깡패국가에 불과하다.
4. 보씨는 자신이 내놓은 새 세제 법안에대해 국민의 지지를 받지 못했다.
5. 그녀의 마음을 얻으려던 수년에 걸친 노력이 결국 실패했다.
6. 복권당첨은 운만 가지고 되는 것이 아니다.
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Korean English Reading Lesson 2
Expressions Drill
1. 서술부
1) add fuel to ~에 기름을 붓다 (상황을 악화시키다) 가장 일반적 형태는 add fuel to
the fire
예문) His mild words only added fuel to the fire. Isabelle was furious.
영작연습) 그의 독도에 대한 발언으로, 그 섬의 영유권에 대해 벌어지고 있는 그렇지
않아도 뜨거운 논쟁이 더욱 뜨거워졌다.
모범역례) His statement on Dokto islet added fuel to the already heated debate
over the islet’ s territorial rights. (물건주어 구문으로)
2) add to ~에 더해진다
예문) The witness's remarks added to the ambiguity.
영작연습) 푸시의 도발적 언동으로, 그렇지 않아도 위태롭던 한반도 상황이 더욱 위태
로워지게 되었다.
모범역례) Mr. Push's provocative remarks added to the already precarious
situation on the Korean peninsula.
3) allow (‘허용하다’가아니라) ~덕분에 ~가 ~하게 되다
예문) The innovation allowed users to browse the Net with much greater ease.
영작연습) 한선생의 혁신적 교수법 덕분에 내가 영어란 무언인지에 눈을 뜨게 되었다.
모범역례) – B 로 쓰자.
A: Thanks to Mr. Han's innovative teaching methods, I could open my eyes to
what the English language is.
B: Mr. Han's innovative teaching methods allowed me to wake up to what the
English language is all about.
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4) apply pressure on ~에게 압력을 가하다
cf. put pressure on ~ to
예문) The U.S. has been applying pressure on China to revalue its currency.
영작연습) 국제사회는 북한에게 6 자회담에 다시 참여하라고 압력을 가하고 있다.
모범역례) The international community is putting pressure on North Korea to
return to the negotiating table.
5) approach(reach) a point where (at which) ~한 시점에 다다르다.
예문) His anger reached a point where he couldn’t tolerate it any longer.
영작연습) 경제는 이제, 외부 조력 없이는 장기 침체에서 벗어날 수 없는 시점까지 왔
다.
모범역례) The economy is approaching a point where it needs external help to
pull itself out of the long-term recession.
6) as strong as ever 그 어느때만큼이나 강력하다
예문) Achieving those goals remains as difficult as ever.
영작연습) 그 남자는 그 여자가 자신을 아직도 똑같이 사랑하고 있다고 잘못 생각하는
것 같다.
모범역례) He seems to mistakenly believe that her love of him is as deep as
ever.
7) at issue 걸려있다 (be at issue) ~이 문제다
예문) What's really at issue is the future of public education
영작연습) 그 회사가 계속 영업을 할 수 있게 내버려둘지여부가 문제다.
모범역례) At issue is whether to allow the abominable company to survive.
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8) at the whim of ~의 변덕에 따라
예문) Poor countries remain literally at the whim of nature. That is, every time
flood hits those countries they're left powerless.
cf. remain at the mercy of ~ 의 비위만 맞추다
영작연습) 야당은 정부가 항상 북한의 비위만 맞추려 든다고 주장한다.
모범역례) The opposition party is accusing the government saying that it remains
at the mercy of the North’s intentions.
Exercise questions
1. 북한은 국제사회로부터 핵개발을 중단하라는 압력을 받고 있다.
2. 현재 문제는 그런 말도 안되는 소리에 대꾸를 해야 하느냐 말아야 하느냐이다.
3. 고이죽어씨는 그 섬에 대한 일본 영유권을 주장함으로서 그렇지 않아도 과열되었던
논란을 더욱 가중시켰다.
4. 그 남자는, 서방에 있는 그 사람을 지칭하며, ‘우리는 모두, 조금은 덜떨어진 편집증
에 걸린 칼잡이의 손아귀에 있다’고 말했다. (retarded, saber-rattler)
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5. 그의 도발적 언사가 그 논란을 가중시키고 있다. (fuel)
6. 한국이 한 발 물러섰기 때문에 양측의 관계가 회복되었다. (allow)
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Korean English Reading Lesson 3
World Cup Season
The Korea Times
Editorial May 13, 2006
People Want Reenactment of Legend
The World Cup soccer season has arrived. People's excitement began moving
toward a peak Thursday when national team coach Dick Advocaat announced the
names of the 23-man squad selected to compete in the 2006 German World Cup
finals next month. The new team is hoped to startle the world once again by
reenacting the legend of four years ago.
The just-formed team is a combination of oldtimers and newcomers. Ten have the
experience of playing in the previous World Cup. Five are now playing on
professional European teams. There are enough experienced players to lead the
team to achieve their best possible capabilities on the World Cup stage.
There is only less than a month to go until the opening game with Togo in
Frankfurt on June 13. The new team is still considered to require a great deal of
improvement, especially in defense. The four-back system Advocaat employs has
been found to be a weak point, being easily overcome in previous friendly matches.
Special measures are needed to bolster our defense line.
* there is a month to go until (before) ~하려면 ~ 남았다.
We have only a week to go before the party.
The party is only a week away.
Football is often said to be the magical game that makes the impossible possible.
That may be the reason the sport drives people mad. Nobody thought it possible
for the Korean team to make the final four in the 2002 World Cup. Korea's
soccer warriors beat such powerhouses as Portugal, Spain and Italy one after
another, turning the whole country into a frenzied cauldron. Korean people still
vividly remember the enthusiasm and passion of four years ago.
Everyone turned into a supporter, the "Red Devils" and the deafening sound of
cheering reverberated through the whole country. It was a precious moment for all
of us to know that we became one through the sport of soccer.
However, enthusiasm toward the World Cup is not limited to certain countries. The
quadrennial soccer extravaganza is a global festival for people the world over. The
64 matches played in the month-long tournament will attract a cumulative live
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television audience of more than five billion, according to foreign broadcasting
analysts. The final match alone is expected to attract as many as 300 million
viewers, depending on which teams participate.
The loftiest obstacle facing Korea, set to fight Togo, Switzerland and France, is
advancing to the second round. None of the three is considered easy for our
team. Advocaat told reporters "if we manage to break through the first round,
then all the possibilities will remain open including making the final four."
* advance to the second round 2 차전 (16 강)에 진출하다
그 팀이 결승전에 진출했다는 것은 축구 역사상 가장 예기치 못했던 일이다.
The team’s advance to the final was the most unexpected event in soccer history.
Too much expectation of our team could serve to put pressure on the players.
Guss Hiddink, the former Korean team coach, who arrived here Thursday, called
the achievement of the Korean team in 2002 a miracle, saying that "the miracle is
something hard to repeat." He advised the Korean people to enjoy the World Cup
itself. We should be ready to give our warriors whole-hearted applause as
long as they do their best, regardless of the end result.
* give ~ whole-hearted applause 큰 박수갈채를 보내다
Please join me in a warm round of applause.
Microsoft: no time to fight the last war
The Financial Times
Editorial Comment – April 25, 2006
Even in the age of globalisation, there is something extraordinary about this
week's court case pitting the European Commission against Microsoft over its
use of the Windows operating system.
* pit ~ against ~와 ~를 싸움 붙이다. 경쟁시키다
그 문제 때문에 보수적이지만 경건한 기독교인들이 무례한 무신론자들과 대립하고 있다.
The issue is pitting conservative but pious Christians against rude atheists.
More than two years after the Commission's landmark antitrust ruling, Microsoft is
appealing against the regulators to the European Court of First Instance in
Luxembourg rather than in its home country. And this when the companies
claiming to have suffered abuse are themselves American.
Furthermore, the complex remedies originally imposed by Mario Monti, the
commissioner then responsible for enforcing competition policy in Brussels, have
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signally failed to achieve their desired effect. Microsoft's position in the market for
media players and server operating systems has gone from strength to
strength.
* go from strength to strength 계속 강해지다 cf. go from bad to worse
니가 도착하고 나서 상황이 계속 악화되었어.
Things have gone from bad to worse with your arrival.
The case against Microsoft is, of course, that it is no ordinary company. Its
operating systems power nine out of 10 personal computers today. Microsoft's
towering position in desktop operating systems owes much to luck, innovation
and, above all, business acumen. There are also sound technical reasons for
Microsoft's success in some markets, such as servers.
But what is at stake in the Commission's case is not Microsoft's desktop
monopoly but the way it uses that monopoly to foreclose competition in adjacent
markets. Over the past decade, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Microsoft's
practice of integrating ever more features into its operating system has hurt
innovation and undermined healthy competition.
* what is at stake is 지금 걸려 있는 것은
지금 걸려있는건 돈 뿐이 아니다. 당신 일자리를 잃을 수도 있다.
What is at stake is more than money. You may lose your job.
Few in the software industry have forgotten the fate that befell Netscape's internet
browser once Microsoft bundled Explorer with Windows. Despite the Commission's
intervention, the same approach has tipped the market for media players towards
Microsoft. In neither case was the company first to develop the leading product.
Few believe its products were innately superior to those of its rivals.
Looking ahead, Microsoft's plan to integrate a string of crucial new functions and
programmes into Vista, the new operating system that it plans to unveil next year,
will create fresh tensions. Vista will pose a direct challenge to Adobe's PDF
Reader software and Symantec's security products. Plans to integrate an internet
search engine have even rattled mighty Google - the group's principal challenger.
Microsoft's defence rests heavily on intellectual property arguments and the right
to innovate and improve its flagship product. Adding more functions to Windows is
an obvious and, in principle, perfectly acceptable way of doing so. In some cases,
Windows may actually require such bolt-ons. Microsoft has argued plausibly that
barring it from improving Windows' security would be similar to preventing BMW
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from building airbags into cars.
* rest won (with) ~에 놓여있다, ~에 의존하다
검사는, 책임이 전적으로 사장에게 있다고 말했다.
The responsibility rests soley with the president, said the prosecutor.
Another argument in favour of Microsoft is that the Commission's ban on
"bundling" in the name of protecting consumers creates a troubling precedent.
Consumers may well prefer to search from their desktops. How should one view
Google, which has a 70 per cent market share in many countries? In particular,
how might the regulators treat Google's aim to use search to expand into classified
advertising and e-commerce?
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Commission ruling is the way in which it
foreshadows a permanent regulatory relationship between the Brussels authorities
and the world's largest software company. In effect, the bureaucrats have
awarded themselves a de facto veto over the way Microsoft develops, designs
and markets its desktop operating system. Indeed, they have already sent a
warning shot over Microsoft's integration plans for Vista.
There must always be a place for behavioural remedies in antitrust cases, just as
the European Commission must have a key role in scrutinising competition issues
raised by global businesses such as Microsoft. If market abuse is truly egregious,
regulators may also opt for drastic action, such as breaking up the company (a
solution proposed but later rejected by successive US justice departments that
looked at the Windows server issue).
Yet the Commission's ruling against Microsoft seems not only overly complex, it
also involves powers which are not subject to any time limitations. This must
strike those who oppose state intervention and support free markets as dubious at
best.
As a matter of principle, the commercial success of any product should be decided
by price, quality and the value consumers attach to the brand - not whether it is
linked to a monopoly. Microsoft's past behaviour may not give a great deal of
comfort but, to some extent, the world is moving on.
On the web, the battle is between Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. On the server, it is
Microsoft versus open source. On games consoles, the model pits Microsoft's Xbox
against Sony and Nintendo. The PC monopoly that Microsoft enjoys is still a lever
that can help in these markets, but it will be increasingly less significant.
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The Luxembourg court must weigh these market developments carefully. It is
beside the point to argue that a negative verdict would cause irreparable
damage to the Brussels authorities' standing. Nor should the judges support an
open-ended veto on Microsoft's behaviour in return for a self-denying ordinance
from the regulators.
* weigh 재보다, 여러 가지의 경중을 따져보다
그는 그 비판에 대해 어떻게 대처할 지 대안을 고심하고 있다.
He is weighing options as to how to respond to the criticisms.
* beside the point 초점을 벗어난 것이다
Cheney is sick now. But his health is beside the point in Bush dynasty.
Absent a clear market failure, regulators should always leave market forces to
erode monopolies and restore competition. On balance - and it is a fine balance this is a case for the market rather the regulators to decide. This is no time to
fight the last war.
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Exercise questions
1. 여기에는 약 400 만 불의 돈이 걸려있기 때문에, 난 절대로 물러서지 않을 것이오.
2. 결정은 당신에게 달려있소. (rest)
3. 그는 조용하고 수줍음만 타는 소년이었는데 이제는 자신감 넘치는 근육질의 남자로
변모했다.
4. 한국외대통번역대학원 입시까지 이제 불과 5 개월 남짓밖에 남지 않았다.
5. 미국 경제에 관한 당신의 발언은 지금 중요한게 아니오.
6. 한국 축구대표팀은 많은 전문가들의 예상을 뒤엎고 결승전에 진출했다.
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Korean English Reading Lesson 4
Expressions drill
9) attribute ~ to ~을 ~ 탓으로 돌리다가 아니라, ~은 ~ 때문이라고 (말)하다
예문) When males succeed, they attribute their success to ability and when
females succeed, they attribute their success to luck.
영작연습) 사람들은 이씨의 죽음이 지나친 스트레스였다고 말한다.
모범역례) People generally attribute Ms. Lee's death to too much stress.
* 피할 문장: People say that Mr. Lee’s death was because of too much stress.
10) be a long way off 아직 멀었다.
예문) The high jobless rates indicate that the economic recovery is still a long way
off.
영작연습) 일반 대중이 우주여행을하는 일은 아직 멀었다.
모범역례) Space travel for the general public is still a long way off
11) be a precursor to ~에 대한 전조가 되다
예문)
A: Why do you feel that diabetes is a precursor to cancer?
B: Because both diabetes and cancer are associated with anaerobic metabolism.
영작연습) 미국의 경기침체는더 광범위한 전세계 경기침체의전조가 되어왔다.
모범역례) American economic slowdown has been a precursor to a wider recession
around the world.
12) be at loggerheads over ~ 를 두고 (양측이) 대립하고 있다. syn. be at odds
예문) Turkey and the United States are at loggerheads over where to station
Turkish troops in war-torn Iraq.
영작연습) 의사들은 콜레스테롤강하제 한피토의 효과를 두고 의견이 분분하다.
모범역례) Physicians are at odds over the benefits of the cholesterol-lowering drug
Hanpito.
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13) be at risk ~의 위험에 처해있다.
예문) Security of the country is now being put at risk by al Qaeda.
영작연습) 그 사람이 부주의해서 수백명의 목숨이 위태로워졌다.
모범역례) His carelessness put hundreds of people’s lives at risk.
14) be at war 전쟁중이다
예문) No parent would be willing to send his child to a country at war.
영작연습) 한반도는 엄밀한 의미에서 아직 전쟁중이다.
모범역례) The Korean peninsula is technically at war.
15) be awash in (with) ~로 가득차 있다.
예문) Sub-Saharan Africa is awash with all kinds of militias.
영작연습) 비무장 지대에는 한국전쟁 이후 수백 명의 목숨을 앗아간 지뢰가 가득하다.
모범역례) The DMZ is awash with landmines that have killed hundreds of people
since the Korean War.
16) be advised to ~는 ~ 해야 한다 / ~하는게 좋을껄~
예문) The government is advised to remain vigilant against the avian flu.
영작연습) 시민들은 선거법 위반사례를보면 내놓고 이야기해야한다.
모범역례) Citizens are advised to speak out when they see cases of election law
violations.
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Exercise questions
1. 그 지역은 말라리아에서 조류독감에 이르기까지 온갖 종류의 질병으로 가득하다.
2. 당신의 무례한 한 마디 때문에 우리 모두가 위험에 처하게 되었소.
3. 내가 ‘임계질량’에 다다르는 건 머나먼 얘기 같다. (off)
4. 한국과 미국은 아직도 그 탈북자를 북한에 돌려보낼 지 여부를 두고 사이가 안좋다.
5. 대부분의 사람들은 한국이 4 강에 진출한 것이 운이었다고 한다.
6. 한반도는 아직 엄밀히 따지면 전쟁중이다.
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June 2006
Korean English Reading Lesson 5
Bush's CIA takeover
The Boston Globe
Editorial – May 9, 2006
BECAUSE PRESIDENT Bush's nominee to head the Central Intelligence Agency, Air
Force General Michael Hayden, ran the National Security Agency's warrantless
eavesdropping on Americans and has publicly defended that evasion of the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he carries a heavy burden entering Senate
confirmation hearings.
* eavesdropping 엿듣기, 도청 wiretapping, bugging
* confirmation hearing 인준 청문회
Some have voiced concern about Hayden's military background. But this should be
less of a hindrance than his cavalier disregard for the law. Other military
officers have headed the CIA without compromising that civilian agency's
independence from the Pentagon.
* be less of ~ than ~ 라기 보다는 ~이다
그 사람의 외고집은 타고난 것이라기 보다는 습득된 성격이다.
His bigotry is less of an innate trait than an acquired character.
Hayden has demonstrated his own readiness to stand up to Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld in the most telling way. In 2004, when Congress was creating
the Office of National Intelligence to oversee 16 intelligence agencies, Hayden
testified that the branch of military intelligence he led, the NSA, should report to
the new director of national intelligence rather than the Defense Department. In
the give-no-quarter world of Washington power struggles, this amounted to a
secessionist rebellion against the secretary of defense by the chief of an agency
that commands a major share of the intelligence budget. And Rumsfeld made his
displeasure known to Hayden.
Even if they are satisfied that Hayden will not make the CIA just one more branch
of a Pentagon that controls 80 percent of the intelligence budget, senators do need
to come down hard on his responsibility for wiretapping Americans without
obtaining a warrant from a judge on the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
court. Those judges hardly ever refuse to issue such a warrant, and if intelligence
officials feel they must intercept a phone conversation or an e-mail immediately,
under the law they may do so -- provided only that they obtain a warrant after 72
hours.
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It is not enough for Hayden to say, as he has in the past, that the NSA's
warrantless taps on Americans are not the result of indiscriminate data-mining but
are strictly ''targeted and focused" on terrorist suspects. He must explain why the
72-hour grace period is not sufficient, why he thought the NSA could simply
ignore the law, and why he did not ask Bush to ask Congress to change the law if
it hindered efforts to prevent another Sept. 11.
A CIA director should be someone who will obey the law, will not turn the powers
of his foreign intelligence agency on Americans, and will resist any temptation to
tailor the intelligence ''product" to suit the policy preferences of a president, a
powerful vice president, or any other policy maker.
Integrity in the leader of the CIA means, above all, having the backbone to resist
pressure from the White House to politicize intelligence. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney are not the only occupants of the White House who have wanted the
CIA director to produce intelligence that suit their policy intentions. But they have
taken the practice to an extreme.
Indeed, the CIA's reduced role in the past couple of years is traceable less to
any failure to foresee Sept. 11 than to the enmity of neoconservatives who have
long resented the refusal of agency analysts to verify the neoconservatives'
notions about an active nuclear weapons program in Saddam Hussein's Iraq or
operational collaboration between Hussein and Al Qaeda. Because of that
resentment, many CIA veterans have been nudged into retirement and the
president's crucial daily intelligence briefing is no longer given to him by the CIA
director but by the national intelligence director, John Negroponte.
* be traceable to (can be traced to) ~에 기인하다, 흔적을 찾아보면 ~까지 거슬러 올라가다
His resentment of the Japanese can be traced to his grandfather’s death in the hands of
cold-blooded Japanese soldiers during the colonial rule.
* be nudged into ~ 의 촉구를 받아 ~하게 되다
The 54-year-old manager was nudged into signing the deal although he knew it was bad for
the company.
Bush has now nominated Negroponte's deputy director of national intelligence to
run the CIA. The Senate must not let the agency, which has already lost its roles
as chief provider of analysis and coordinator of cooperation with foreign
intelligence services, also lose its very independence. The new CIA director should
be independent of policy makers who want their intelligence cut to suit the fashion
of the day, but must not be independent of laws passed by Congress.
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Shuffling Spies Around
The New York Times
Editorial - May 9, 2006
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said on Sunday that Gen.
Michael Hayden, President Bush's choice to succeed Porter Goss at the Central
Intelligence Agency, is "the wrong person, the wrong place, at the wrong
time." While this page hasn't found too much common ground with the
Congressional Republican leadership lately, that assessment, by Representative
Peter Hoekstra, is a hard one to quibble with.
* fine common ground 공통점(공통분무)를 찾다, 동의하는 부분을 찾다
By almost all accounts, General Hayden, a four-star Air Force general, has an
excellent reputation on Capitol Hill. Much has been made of his ability to brief well
— that is to say, his ability to explain to lay people in the administration and
Congress what American wiretaps and intelligence show about threats around the
world. He led the National Security Agency from 1999 until 2005, and he is
credited with taking an agency that once concentrated on the cold war and
refocusing it on terrorism.
* by all accounts 누구의 얘기를 들어봐도
* be credited with ~를 했다고 인정을 받다, ~에 대해 공로를 인정받다 deserve credit for
The president is credited with taking the country to war twice in his term and driving the
economy to deflation.
But the next director of the C.I.A. needs to know the business of espionage, and
what General Hayden knows is gadgets, not people. The most important thing a
director of the C.I.A. must understand is how to use human intelligence. The Bush
administration's vision of the agency's future would push that further, and have
the agency focus almost entirely on gathering information on the ground while
others concentrate on high-tech spying and analyzing data. It's therefore peculiar
that the White House immediately reached out to General Hayden, whose
background is far from what would seem to be required.
* reach out to ~에게까지 손을 뻗다, ~에게까지 도움을 구하다, ~와 접촉을 시도하다
He even reached out to criminals to get the job done.
Recruiting spies is different from eavesdropping, the skill that General Hayden
honed at the National Security Agency. In fact, he's been spending time lately
defending the agency's wiretaps of Americans without warrants.
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After The New York Times disclosed last December that the White House was
wiretapping without getting warrants, the international calls and e-mail of people
in the United States, General Hayden piped up as part of the White House's
scripted defense of the program. The nation needs a C.I.A. director who has both
a sensitivity to civil liberties issues and a willingness to buck any administration
that wants to trample them. The president, clearly, wants exactly the opposite.
It also seems ill advised to put an Air Force general at the helm of the C.I.A.,
a civilian agency, at a time when it is fending off the Pentagon's efforts to expand
its own spying operations. Morale at the C.I.A. is at an all-time low, and the
choice of General Hayden sends a politically tone-deaf signal to the men and
women in the field who themselves are fending off encroachment from the
Pentagon.
* put ~ at the helm of ~를 ~의 수장으로 삼다
* be at an all-time low 사상 최저치다
유가가, 배럴당 72 달러로, 오늘 사상 최고치를 기록했다.
Oil prices hit an all-time low of 72 dollars a barrel today.
* politically tone-deaf 정치적으로 민감하지 못한
There's no question that the C.I.A. needs reform after the successive catastrophic
intelligence failures of 9/11 and Iraq. Porter Goss's abrupt departure after an
unusually brief tenure is welcome; Mr. Goss, a former congressman, was obsessed
with rooting out whistle-blowers, a campaign that didn't do much for morale at
the depleted agency.
Mr. Goss's departure has opened up the opportunity for new and creative
approaches to intelligence. We dearly hope that Arlen Specter, the Senate
Judiciary Committee chairman, who routinely promises to ask tough questions of
nominees only to lie down and roll over once hearings are convened, will surprise
the country this time and take a hard look at General Hayden. President Bush
did the country, and the C.I.A., a disservice in his appointment of Mr. Goss; he
now seems determined to make the same mistake twice.
* take a hard look at ~를 면밀히 검토하다
그 제안을 더 면밀히 검토해봐야 합니다. 무조건 제안을 받아들이지 않으면 안됩니다.
You need to take a closer look at the proposal. Just dismissing proposals is not the way.
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Exercise questions
1. 오늘 원-달러 환율이 사상 최저치인 750 을 기록했다.
2. 일각의 설명에 따르면, 한씨는 이 일과 아무런 관련이 없다고 한다.
3. 한국은 전쟁으로 폐허가 된 아프리카 국가들에게 손을 내밀고 있다.
4. 우리는 미국이 제안한 계획을 면밀히 검토해야 한다.
5. 경제회복은 대통령 덕분이었다는 견해가 지배적이다. (credited)
6. 세계보건기구 총재를 맡았던 한국인 외교관 이종욱씨가 오늘 서거했다.
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Korean-English Reading Lesson 6
17) be attributed to ~에 기인하다, ~ 때문이다
예문) The police attribute the incident to carelessness on the victim’s part.
영작연습) 한국 경제가 이렇게 오랜 장기침체에 빠져있는 것은 주로 미국경기의침체 때
문이다.
모범역례) The longer-term recession of the Korean economy is largely attributed
to the slowdown in the American economy.
18) (be) bent on ~에 혈안이 되어, ~에만 관심을 두고
cf. keen on
예문) The Japanese are bent only on making money.
영작연습) 김 국방위원장은 미국의 공격에 대한 억제책으로서 핵무기를 보유하는 데 혈
안이 되어있다.
모범역례) Defense chairman Kim remains bent on having a nuclear weapon as a
deterrence against a possible U.S. attack.
19) balk (at) ~을 할지 말지 머뭇거리다(hesitate)
예문) The horse balked at crossing the bridge.
영작연습) 생물학을 전공하는 대학생이라도 동물실험을 한다면 기꺼이 나서지는 못할
것이다.
모범역례) Even biology undergraduates may balk at animal experiments.
20) (be) behind the times 시대에 뒤쳐진
예문) Given the pretty low penetration rate of the Internet, Australia is behind
the times.
영작연습) 거의 매일 인터넷에 접속하지 않는 사람은 시대에 뒤쳐지고 있는 것이라고
말해도 무방하다.
모범역례) Anyone without almost daily access to the Internet is falling behind the
times, it's fair to say.
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21) be better off 더 (생활, 삶 등이) 낫다, 더 잘 살다
예문) You’re now better off than 5 years ago when you went to the U.S.
영작연습) 이제 우리도 최악의 지도자를 맞이하게 되었으니, 지금부터 4 년 후 우리는
지금보다 못할 것이다.
모범역례) Now that we've got the worst leader of all times, we're going to be
worse off 4 years from now.
22) be bound to 반드시 ~하게 되어 있다, 반드시 ~할 것이다.
예문) The new immigration policy is bound to fail because it was Mr. Bosh who
designed it.
영작연습) 그 이주계획은, 대다수 주민이 반대하고 있기 때문에 결국 실패할 것이다.
모범역례) The scheduled relocation plan is bound to fail because a majority of
the residents are opposed.
23) be based in ~ (사람이면) 집이 어디다. (기업이면) 본사가 어디다. (연구소 등이면)
본부가 어디다.
예문) Based in Paris, the pharmaceutical company has been accused of making
false claims about the new drug.
영작연습) 독일에 본사를 둔 그 생명공학 회사는 미국 시장으로 진입하기 시작했다.
모범역례) The biotech company, based in Germany, made inroads into American
markets.
24) bear the brunt of ~의 여파를 선봉에서 맛보다, 가장 큰 피해를 입다
예문) Children and women in Niger are bearing the brunt of this year’s food
security crisis, brought on by a combination of drought and locust infestation.
영작연습) 장기화된 침체의 여파를 가장 크게 느끼고 있는 사람들은 다름 아닌 이 나라
젊은이들이다.
모범역례) It the the nation's youths who are bearing the brunt of the prolonged
recession.
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Exercise questions
1. 개인적인 탐욕 때문에 만들어진 계획은 반드시 실패하게 되어있다.
2. 파리에 본사를 둔 그 자동차제조업체는 높아가는 인건비 때문에 결국 문을 닫았다.
3. 교통흐름이 원활하지 못한 것에 대해 여성 운전자들을 욕하는 것은 시대에 뒤쳐진
발상이다.
4. 아프리카에서는 여성들이 널리 퍼져있는 에이즈의 가장 큰 희생자가 되고 있다.
(bear)
5. 이라크 사람들이 지금 전보다 살기가 좋냐는 질문에 한 마디로 대답하면, 아직
말하긴 이르다는 것이다.
6. 아무리 터프한 남자라도 그 숲에 혼자 들어가라면 머뭇거릴 것이다.
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June 2006
Korean English Reading Lesson 7
And the oil price keeps on rising
The Financial Times
Editorial Comment – May 1, 2006
At the end of 2000, the International Monetary Fund published research examining
the economic impact of high oil prices. With oil then at $32 a barrel, up
sharply from $11 in February 1999, the researchers examined the impact of "a
sustained $5 per barrel increase". With oil prices now above $70 per barrel,
such research now seems rather quaint.
* with 구문 복습하기
유가가 배럴당 70 달러를 기록한 가운데 세계경제가 고전하고 있다.
With oil prices at more than 70 dollars a barrel, the world economy is ailing.
The IMF anticipated that the $5 increase would suppress global economic growth
by about 0.25 per cent a year. In spite of vastly higher increases, the world
economy has grown strongly, with 2004 a record year for economic growth. We
have escaped lightly so far but it would be a serious mistake to be complacent
about the state of the oil market.
Even though oil prices have looked worryingly high for some time, today's oil
prices are far higher. In 2004, the average oil price was in the mid-$40s. In 2005,
it was in the mid-$50s. So far this year it has averaged in the mid-$60s and the
futures markets predict worse to come.
The forces behind these figures are unlikely to evaporate: strong growth in
demand and an anaemic supply response, punctuated by disruptions. It is true
that speculators have also driven futures prices up but that does not mean the
shortage is illusory. Informed speculators believe the market will be even tighter in
the future than it is today, and if they are correct they will only have eased the
situation by persuading the market to fill storage tanks.
* drive prices up (higher, down) 가격을 올리다 (우리말에선 ~때문에 가격이 오르다)
The political strife in the Middle East is helping drive oil prices up across the world.
The second reason for caution is that interest rates are rising. Low rates,
especially in the US, have helped cushion the impact of high oil prices. It was
never possible that they could be held down forever.
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Producers and consumers must both now respond to this growing force for
economic disruption. Producers are wise to save large parts of the windfall rather
than splurging as they did in the 1970s. But they should be liberalising their oil
production industries. Too much exploration and production has been stymied by
corrupt or incompetent state-run oil companies. Oil producers should bring in
global expertise while using competitive bidding to ensure they receive a fair price.
But political interference is not limited to oil producers. Many oil importers, notably
China, are shielding customers from the rise in energy costs with subsidies or price
caps. This is madness. It discourages customers from saving energy and makes
the price rise more acute.
Meanwhile, in the US, oil companies are lambasted for greed and price gouging.
Nothing could be more counter-productive than threats to confiscate profits or to
regulate prices, even if such threats turn out to be bluster. If the oil companies do
not feel safe to reap the rewards of producing oil when prices are high, they will
not provide the investment in refining the US desperately needs.
There are plenty of profitable sources of oil at prices well below those of today, as
well as alternative sources of energy. They will be tapped, although without
widespread interference in the energy markets they would have been tapped
sooner. But another reason the supply response has been muted is that oil
producers feared a glut of oil and a price collapse. Such prophesies are
understandable but self-defeating. Now that the market has finally abandoned all
hope of cheaper oil prices, there is a chance we shall eventually see them.
Coddling oil addicts
The New York Times Editorial – April 26, 2006
In his State of the Union speech last January, President George W. Bush correctly
diagnosed America's oil consumption as an addiction. Unfortunately, Bush is
balking at taking the steps to cure the abuse.
On Tuesday, the president told an audience of the Renewable Fuels Association in
Washington that he would try to lower gasoline prices by increasing the supply of
oil available to Americans this summer. His plan is to refrain from topping off the
nation's strategic petroleum reserve, but it could backfire. The reserve has a
capacity of 727 million gallons but is nearly full already, so skipping a few deposits
won't appreciably affect supply or prices. In the event of a true energy
emergency, however, a less than full reserve could add to nervousness in the
market, which could push up prices.
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* in the event of 만약 ~가 된다면, ~라면
그 거대 자동차제조업체가 문을 닫는다면 수천 명이 일자리를 잃을 것이다.
In the event that the giant carmaker goes under, thousands of people will lose job.
* push up prices
Bush's other recommendations were similarly off point. For instance, he
acknowledged that higher prices reflected global demand. But he offered no
strategy to combat demand-driven price rises. The obvious solution, to increase
fuel efficiency standards for ordinary cars, was not mentioned. The current
standard, 27.5 miles per gallon, on average, has not been raised in more than two
decades.
Instead, Bush pledged to crack down on price gouging in local markets. That's a
sideshow. He also offered some veiled environmental rollbacks as a way to
increase supply and lower prices. He proposed to loosen the rules on "boutique
fuels": formulations that are required in some areas but not in others. That would
make the market more flexible. But if specially formulated blends were eliminated
without imposing a higher overall environmental standard for gasoline, the result
would be more pollution. Similarly, Bush's suggestion to streamline the refinery
approval process would also amount to an environmental end run, if, as is
suspected, it simply allowed refiners to avoid meeting established standards.
The president made no mention of the Iraq war, which pushes up prices by
reinforcing the market's anxiety over political upheaval in oil-producing areas. But
he did make another pitch for drilling in protected Alaskan wilderness.
The alternative energy technologies Bush emphasized - biofuels, hybrids,
hydrogen power - are important and promising. What's missing is a plan to get us
from here to there. That means oil and gas prices will continue to rise, as America
leads the world in draining the planet's petroleum resources
Phony War on Gas
The Washington Post
Editorial - April 27, 2006
Attacks on 'price gouging' make good politics, but they don't help consumers much.
NO DOUBT IT makes everyone feel better when the president states his concern
for Americans, who are now paying more than $3 a gallon for gasoline.
Unfortunately, the measures President Bush chose to announce this week to
combat high prices are either meaningless or possibly dangerous in the long run,
even if they do offer a bit of temporary relief. For example, just talking publicly
about "price gouging" can spook gasoline providers into slightly lowering prices.
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And maybe it's useful to inspire state officials to start looking harder for crooks,
given that price gouging is defined at the state level, not by the federal
government. But in the long term, such talk encourages the public to believe that
evil price gougers are responsible for higher pump prices, when the real culprits
are global economic growth, increased demand and Americans' own large cars.
The president's other tactics seem no less dubious. Stopping the filling of the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve won't increase supply by much, and it sets a bad
precedent: The reserve, after all, is meant for national emergencies, which this
is not. Temporarily waiving fuel blend or environmental requirements could help
with spot shortages in a few places but won't have much effect on the long-term
price. Calling for the construction of more refineries is unnecessary. Although the
president is right to state that "there hasn't been a new refinery built in 30
years," it is also true that the oil companies have expanded refineries every year
since 1996 and are expected to continue doing so through 2025, according to
Energy Department statistics.
* set a precedent 선례를 남기다
He got away with murder in the end, setting a bad precedent in America’s legal system.
* be meant for ~를 위한 것이다, ~를 위해 존재하다
A government is meant for helping the people, not dictating what to do.
The president has, of course, had plenty of opportunities over the past five years
to shape a more rational energy policy, one that would have provided incentives to
move away from oil and toward other energy sources. He could have lobbied
harder to remove the oil industry tax benefits from the energy bill he signed. He
could have insisted that Congress add more tax breaks for hybrid cars, as he now
says he wishes it had done. He could lift the tariffs on Brazilian ethanol, which
would help address some of the ethanol shortages across the country. He could
have endorsed a tax on oil and coal, which of course would not lower the price of
gasoline but would, again, begin to reduce demand while encouraging investment
in new technologies.
And he could have used his statutory authority to raise automobile fuel economy
standards or persuaded Congress to find other ways to improve mileage per gallon
of U.S. vehicles. Again, if he were completely honest, the president would tell
Americans that the main reason fuel prices are higher in this country is because
demand is growing -- and one reason for growing demand is that people drive
inefficient cars. They drive inefficient cars because public policy, long shaped by
the president and by Congress, has made it advantageous to do so. Until that
changes, little else will.
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Carbon trade on trial
The Financial Times
Editorial Comment - April 28 2006
Every market, especially one as young as the European carbon emissions trading
system that started last year, is prone to sharp swings. But the 25 European
Union governments that have created this market have no interest in seeing the
traded price of carbon suddenly halve, as it did in the period of only 48 hours this
week. Such market plunges could undermine what ought to be the most efficient
and flexible way for EU governments to implement their carbon reduction
obligations under the Kyoto climate change treaty.
* be prone to ~에 취약하다, ~하기 쉽다
The coastal regions are prone to earthquakes. * flood-prone area 상습침수지역
Moreover, the remedy lies in the hands of governments that, in concert with the
European Commission, decide how many pollution permits to supply to the system
that covers 11,500 energy-intensive industrial installations across the EU. Supply
of these permits should be less than demand for them; otherwise there will be no
reduction in carbon pollution.
* lie in the hands of ~의 손에 있다
안된다고 말할 권리는 대통령에게 있다.
The right to say NO lies in the hands of the president.
This is a tricky time for the trading system because governments are, for the first
time, reporting their actual level of emissions. What put the carbon price into
temporary free fall was the news that Spain had generated less pollution in 2005
than the market had expected, though still in excess of its allocated permits for
that year. At the same time, four countries - France, the Netherlands, Estonia and
the Czech Republic - also reported carbon pollution last year that fell short of
their national permit levels. But it would be premature to trumpet this as good
news. For there is a strong suspicion that EU governments, of which at least 15
are on track to exceed their eventual Kyoto targets, are being too generous in
awarding permits to their industries rather than the latter being unexpectedly
successful in cutting pollution.
* be in excess of ~를 초과하다, ~를 넘다
Any individual making profits in excess of one millions dollars a year must pay much higher
taxes.
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* be on track to ~대로만 하면 ~가 된다, ~를 향한 궤도에 올라서 있다.
이대로만 하면 일자리를 2 백만 개는 창출할 수 있다.
We’re right on track to create two million new jobs.
However, while the figures for actual pollution last year have posed a problem for
the carbon trading system this week, they will, as they become available for the
whole EU next month, give Europe a chance to rebase its system on reality. It may
be too late to rein in the level of permits that have already been set for this year
and next. But it is not too late to tighten the system for 2008-12, the period when
Kyoto enters into force and widens the trading system to include other Kyoto
signatories such as Japan, Canada and Russia. For the EU is negotiating its permit
allocations for this later period now.
The advantage of Europe's trading system is that its traded price of carbon is in
effect a carbon tax on many big polluting industries. But there is still scope for
governments to introduce similar carbon penalties on businesses and consumers
whose activities are too small scale or complex to roll into an EU-wide scheme.
This debate is, for instance, now fully engaged in the UK where the opposition
Conservatives are proposing to replace the existing climate change levy on energy
inputs with a tax on carbon output. There is no reason why this should not mesh
in well with the EU scheme.
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Exercise questions
1. 그 회사는 그 법안을 위한 로비자금으로 100 만 불이 넘는 돈을 썼다. (excess of)
2. 목재는 습기와 햇빛에 의해 쉽게 손상될 수 있다. (prone to)
3. 이 시설은 시각장애인들을 위해 지어진 것이다.
4. 한국은 그렇게 열망하던 일인당 국민소득 2 만 불을 곧 성취하게 될 것이다. (track)
5. 알 카에다가 서울에서 테러공격을 감행하게 되면 한국정부도 대대적인 공격으로
대응할 것이다. (event)
6. 그 새로운 발견 소식이 전해지자 생명공학 기업들의 주가가 올라가고 있다.
(drive up)
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Korean-English Reading Lesson 8
25) become the first to ~ 처음으로 ~하다
- 동사 for the first time 의 대용으로 유용
예문) The 18-year-old boy has become the first to fly around the world.
The 18-year-old boy has flown around the world for the first time. 과 비교
영작연습) 그 여선생님은 여성으로서는 최초로 50 일 만에 세계일주를 마쳤다.
모범역례) The female teacher became the first woman ever to travel the entire
globe in under 50 days.
26) behind bars 감옥에 갇혀
예문) The serial killer has been hehind bars for 10 years now.
영작연습) 그 사업가는 사기혐의에대해 유죄판결을받은 이후 감옥에 갇혔다.
모범역례) The businessman was put behind bars after he was convicted of fraud.
27) better late than never 늦게라도 하면, 안하는 것 보다는 낫다.
cf. better safe than sorry
예문)
A: We've checked the roof a hundred times, Jack.
B: Oh, I know, but it's a lot better safe than sorry.
S: Sir, I'm sorry I'm late.
T: No problem, kid. Better late than never.
영작연습) 전 올해 28 살인데 지금 통역대학원을 준비하면 너무 늦지 않을까요?
늦게라도 안하는 것 보다는 낫죠.
모범역례)
I’m 28 years old. Isn’t it too late for me to start preparing for the GSIT?
Better late than never, ma’am.
28) bother to 굳이 ~하려 들다 (보통 부정문에서)
예문) The students didn’t even bother to open the book.
영작연습) 그 수사관은 굳이 증거를 찾아보려고도 하지 않았다.
모범역례) The investigator didn't even bother to look for evidence.
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29) bottom out (= hit the bottom) 바닥을 치다 (침체가 끝나고 회복세에 접어들다)
예문) Real estate values are still falling, and show no signs of bottoming out.
영작연습) 종합주가지수(KOSPI)가 1300 을 넘은걸 보면, 경기가 이제 바닥을 친 것 같
다.
모범역례) Given the KOSPI went past 1300 point, the economy seems to have
hit the bottom.
30) bow to the pressure ~의 압력에 굴복하다
예문) The Japanese prime minister bowed to the pressure from Korea and China
and agreed not to visit the shrine ever again.
영작연습) 판사는 압력에 굴복해서, 3 천만불을 지급하라는 판결을 번복했다.
모범역례) The judge bowed to the pressure and threw out the $30 million
decision.
31) brace for ~에 대비하다 (특히 나쁜 것)
예문) The U.S. is bracing itself for yet another potentially disastrous hurricane.
영작연습) 전 세계는, 철새가 전 세계로 퍼뜨리고 있는 그 끔찍한 전염병에 대비하고
있다.
모범역례)The entire world is bracing for the deadly pandemic carried around the
world by migrant birds.
32) brief ~ on ~ 에게 ~에 관해 브리핑하다
예문) Condolpizza Lice briefed her boss on the recent bribery scandal.
영작연습) 총사령관은 보좌관으로부터 이라크 전황에 대해 보고받았다.
모범역례) The Commander-in-Chief was briefed by the adviser on where things
stand in Iraq.
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Exercise questions
1. 그 사람을 뺀 모든 사람들이 이제 경제가 침체에서 벗어나고 있다고 생각한다.
2. 정부는 시민단체들의 압력에 무릎을 꿇어, 미국의 제의를 거부했다.
3. 한국은 아시아에서는 처음으로 월드컵 결승전에 진출했다.
4. 그 남자는 굳이 사전을 찾아보려 하지도 않았다.
5. 사장은 한씨로부터 현재 LCD 시장 상황에 대한 보고를 받았다.
6. 한반도는 지금 역사상 최악의 태풍에 대비하고 있다.
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Korean-English Reading Lesson 9
Why the animal rights fanatics are wrong
The Financial Times
Editorial Comment – May 10, 2006
Animal rights extremists have opened a new front in their campaign of intimidation
against laboratory animal testing. They must not be allowed to win. The letter to
private investors in GlaxoSmithKline warning them that their details would be
posted on the internet if they did not sell their stakes within two weeks is a
threat to those individuals. It is also a broader challenge to the way in which lawful
business can be pursued within a democracy.
* stake 지분
Han holds a 43% stake in the company.
Selling stakes in the company runs against the national sentiment.
The targeting of these small shareholders by the previously unknown group
Campaign Against Huntingdon Life Sciences is particularly unpleasant bullying. It
is small comfort to the victims who contacted GSK on the receipt of the
unsigned letters that they will have access to sensible advice from the company.
There may well be others, perhaps even more vulnerable, who simply sit and
worry about a firebomb through the window.
* it is small comfort 별로 위안이 되지 못한다.
마을사람들이 모두 장례식에 참석했다는 말을 들으니 적잖게 위안이 된다.
It is no small comfort to hear that each and every villager came to the funeral.
This latest act of subversion from the animal rights fanatics comes as the trend of
illegal activities by anti-vivisectionists in general is falling. This suggests it is a sign
of weakness. Certainly, frightening people rather than engaging in argument is a
mark of desperation. The weakness, however, does not mean that it can be taken
lightly. Preventing such tactics gaining currency demands decisive leadership.
Leadership must begin with the government. It must ensure that the national unit
dedicated to tackling animal rights extremists both has proper resources and the
urgent co-operation of local police forces. Ministers should also use the company
law reform bill to make it possible for small private investors to hold shares
anonymously through nominee accounts without having to give up shareholder
rights. It would be good if individual shareholders felt brave enough not to use
nominee accounts, but they should not have to lead the charge.
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The corporate community also has a strong interest in giving a lead. GSK is a large
and respected pharmaceutical group. Its use of animal testing is lawful, indeed
legally required, and its business depends crucially on a pipeline of new drugs. Its
suppliers, including accountants and bankers, have the option of looking elsewhere
for clients. They should not do so in the face of this threat. Instead, they should
make it clear that there will be a collective response. They have a duty to protect
their staff but there is a broader duty too. They should make a clear statement
that, if necessary, they will all join together to provide services to the company
under attack.
Organizations that are not even indirectly involved in animal testing may believe
they can sit on the sidelines. They cannot. If animal rights extremists find that
threats and intimidation are effective, then other campaigners who feel strongly
about other causes are more likely to resort to them too. This is a struggle with no
room for spectators.
Insuring against disaster
The New York Times
Editorial – May 1, 2006
The pictures of starving babies on CNN are both the savior and curse of
international relief efforts. Those pictures bring in the money. But by then the
famine is usually months old.
For food relief groups, the primary problem is raising enough money; the second
problem is getting it on time. In March, the UN World Food Program announced
a novel way to combat both problems: It has paid $930,000 for an insurance
policy against drought in Ethiopia. If rainfall indicators at 26 sites drop below a
certain level between March and October of this year - a sign the harvest could fail
- the French insurer AXA Ré will pay the agency up to $7.1 million, which it will
distribute to 67,000 affected households.
The policy, paid for almost entirely by the U.S. Agency for International
Development, would help only a small fraction of affected farmers. But it is a first
stab at what may become a wider solution to some of the most vexing problems in
aid.
* paid for by ~에 의해 비용이 충당되다
The rent, utilitie bills and all other expenses are paid for by the boss.
Hunger is becoming more widespread and persistent even as donors become less
interested in financing food. At least 19 African nations have food crises. The
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number of the world's hungry, which fell in the 1990s, has been rising steadily
since. But in 2004, the volume of food aid given to the World Food Program was
half that of 1999. The agency continually runs a third short of what it needs.
To have money at the ready, the United Nations has set up a central emergency
relief fund. But donations have fallen far short of the need, leading to the
dilemma of whether to spend all on early disasters and risk leaving nothing for
later.
* fall short of ~에 미치지 못하다, 부족하다
올해 수확은 기대에 크게 미치지 못했다.
This year’s harvest fell far short of expectation.
* risk leaving nothing for: risk + ~ing ~할 위험을 감수하다
그 사람을 믿으면 모든 걸 잃을 수도 있다.
You’re risking losing everything by betting on him.
If rich countries bought insurance premiums instead of food, they could budget
predictable amounts in advance. It is currently expensive, but costs will fall as
more countries and risks broaden the portfolio and disaster insurance becomes
less of a novelty for insurers. If it can make timely food aid possible, however,
harvest insurance may end up saving money and lives.
* (monthly) premium 월 보험금, 보험납입금
- deductible 면책금액 (개인부담금 상한선) – copayment 공동부담금
* less of a novelty 덜 생소한 것.
America's expanding secret
The New York Times
Editorial – May 13, 2006
Ever since its secret domestic wiretapping program was exposed, the Bush
administration has depicted it as a narrow examination of calls made by and to
suspected terrorists. But its refusal to provide any details about the extent of the
spying has raised doubts. Now there is more reason than ever to be worried - and
angry - about how wide the government's web has been reaching.
According to an article in USA Today, the National Security Agency has been
secretly collecting telephone records on tens of millions of Americans with the
cooperation of the three largest telecommunications companies in the United
States. The scope of the domestic spying described in the article is breathtaking.
The government is reported to be working with AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth to
collect data on phone calls made by untold millions of customers.
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The government has emphasized that it is not listening in on phone calls, only
analyzing the data to look for calling patterns. But if all the details of the program
are confirmed, the invasion of privacy is substantial. By cross-referencing phone
numbers with databases that link numbers to names and addresses, the
government could compile dossiers of what people and organizations each
American is in contact with.
* listen in on 엿듣다, 도청하다, bugging, wiretapping, tapping, eavesdropping
그 용의자는 여자친구라고 주장하는 여성이 머물던 호텔방을 도청하다가 잡혔다.
The suspect was caught bugging the hotel room where his alleged girlfriend was staying.
* be in contact with ~와 연락을 취하고 있다.
She’s been in contact with nobody for all these years.
The phone companies are doing a great disservice to their customers by
cooperating. To its credit, one major company, Qwest, refused, according to the
article, because it had doubts about the program's legality.
* do a disservice to ~에게 못할 짓을 하다
일본경찰에 협조하는 것은 이 나라에 할 짓이 아니다.
You’re doing a great disservice to the nation by cooperating with the Japanese police.
* to one’s credit ~는 ~가 잘한 것이다.
To his credit, the young man jumped onto the rail, snapped up the little girl and moved off
the other side safely.
What we have here is a clandestine surveillance program of enormous size, which
is being operated by members of the administration who are subject to no limits or
scrutiny beyond what they deem to impose on one another. If the White House
had gotten its way, the program would have run secretly until the war on terror
ended - that is, forever.
Congress must stop pretending that it has no serious responsibilities for
monitoring the situation. The Senate should call back Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales and ask him - this time, under oath - about the scope of the program.
This time, lawmakers should not roll over when Gonzales declines to provide
answers.
Most of all, Congress should pass legislation that removes any doubt that this kind
of warrantless spying on ordinary Americans is illegal.
Bush began his defense of the NSA program Friday by invoking, as he often does,
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Sept. 11. The attacks that day firmed America's resolve to protect itself against its
enemies, but they did not give the president the limitless power he now claims to
intrude on the private communications of the American people.
Exercise questions
1. 대통령이 그 이웃국가 정상의 초청을 거절한 것은 잘한 일이다.
2. 그에게 전화하지 않으면 좋은 친구 하나를 잃을 수도 있어. (risk)
3. 두 사람이 대화를 하고 있는 가운데 그는 대화내용을 엿듣고 있었다.
4. 모든 여행경비는 회사에서 충당된다.
5. 그것은 위협이라기 보다는 권고였다. (less, than)
6. 사장님이 다시 나를 복직시켰다는 말도 내게는 큰 위안이 되지 않았다.
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Korean-English Reading Lesson 10
33) bring ~ a step closer to ~덕분에 ~로 한 걸을 더 가까이 가게 되다.
예문) The family reunion event brought the divided peninsula a step closer to an
eventual reunification.
영작연습) 그 발견 덕분에 이제 인류는 지금까지 불치병으로남아있던 질병들에 대한 치료
제를 개발하는 데 한 걸음 더 다가가게 되었다.
모범역례) The discovery brought the mandkind one step closer to finding cures for
hitherto incurable diseases.
34) bring ~ closer ~ 덕분에 더 가까워지다
예문) The short conversation brought the two strangers closer together.
영작연습) 그 새로운 기기는 서로 대화할 기회를 더 많이 제공해, 가족 구성원이 더욱 가
까워지는데 도움을 줄 수 있다.
모범역례) The new gadget brings all family members closer to each other by
providing more opportunities to talk to each other.
35) bring ~ to a vote ~을 표결에 부치다 (put)
예문) Parents brought the proposal to a vote.
영작연습) 빈곤층을 돕고자 고안된 그 방안이 오늘 의회에서 표결에 부쳐졌다.
모범역례) The new scheme designed to help the nation's poor was put to a vote in
Congress today.
36) bring to light ~ 밝힌다, 공개하다, ~을 빛 아래로 가져오다
예문) The sex scandal was brought to light by an anonymous source from the
government.
영작연습) 일주일에 걸친 그 조사로, 소비자보호원에 만연해있던 온갖 부정행위가 드러났
다.
모범역례) The week-long investigation brought to light all the irregularities
rampant in the Consumer Protection Agency.
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37) bristle at ~에 대해 버럭 화를 내다
예문) He bristled at the suggestion that he knew more than he says he did.
영작연습) 그 여성은 자신과 다른 흑인 동료들이 받은 형편없는 대우에 대해 격분했다.
모범역례) She bristled at the poor treatment she and other African Americans
have received.
38) build a consensus 중지를 모으다, 만장일치를이끌어내다.
cf. garner a consensus
예문) If we can build a consensus on the priorities, it will make it much easier for
the government to make the decisions.
영작연습) 전국적인 프로젝트를 시작하기 전에는 중지를 모으는 것이 중요하다.
모범역례) It's important to build a consensus before launching a national project.
39) burnden falls on ~ 부담이 ~에게 지워진다
cf. responsibility falls on 책임은 ~에게 있는 것이다.
예문) The burden of proof falls on the prosecutor in this case.
(이번 재판의 입증책임은 검사측에 있다.)
영작연습) 아이들의 성교육 책임은 부모에게 있는 것이다.
모범역례) The responsibility falls on parents to give sex education on kids.
40) buy into ~을 적극 지지하다, 돈을 들여 ~의 회원이 되다, ~의 주식을 사서 그 회사
의 주주가 되다.
예문) Many consumers bought into the health plan they thought was a medical
insurance.
영작연습) 부동산으로 수십만 달러를 잃고 그는 삼성 주식을 사기로 했다.
모범역례) After losing hundreds of thousands of dollars on real estate, he decided
to buy into Samsung.
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Exercise questions
1. 해결책을 마련하려고 노력하는 것 보다 지금은 중론을 모으는게 더 중요하다.
2. 그의 결백을 입증할 책임은 전적으로 당신에게 있소.
3. 그 역사적 정상회담으로 양국은 한층 더 가까워졌다.
4. 한박사의 발견으로 인류는 암 치료제를 개발하는 데 한 발 더 가까이 다가가게
되었다.
5. 누구라도 부모님에 대한 모욕적인 언사를 들으면 발끈 화를 낼 것이다.
6. 그 비밀 거래가 알려지게 된 것은 모두 그 두 형사 덕분이었다.
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Korean-English Translation Lesson 1
[사설] 부동산보다 경기하락 위험 관리하라 (한국일보 5 월 22 일)
유가와 환율이 궤도를 이탈해 춤을 춰도 수출과 내수의 회복세가 탄탄해 올해 5% 성장은
무난할 것이라고 줄곧 주장해온 정부가 돌연 자세를 낮췄다. 재정경제부는 엊그제 고유가
추세가 지속될 경우 민간 소비와 기업 투자여력이 줄고 환율 하락으로 인한 기업채산성 악
화가 수출물량 감소로 이어져 하반기엔 경기후퇴 위험이 크다고 밝혔다.
“ 성장률보다 성장속도가 문제” 라고 얼버무렸지만 성장률 전망을 하향조정한 한국은행과
민간 경제연구기관 등에 슬그머니 가세한 셈이다.
국내외 경제환경이 나빠진 만큼 전망을 조정하는 것은 불가피하다. 그러나 중요한 것은 정
부가 우리 경제의 현실과 추이를 제대로 관리하지 못했고, 따라서 적절한 정책수단을 발휘
할 시기를 놓치고 있다는 지적과 비판이다.
지금 와서 “ 5% 안팎의 성장을 지속하기 위해선 GDP 의 50% 이상을 차지하는 민간소비
의 안정적 증가가 필요하다”
“ 중국요인, 기업의 위험회피, 새 수익모델 결여 등 구조적
요인이 상존해 설비투자의 큰 폭 개선에 한계가 있다” 고 말하는 것은 참으로 염치없다.
수출은 두 자릿수 증가세를 유지하고 있다지만 고유가와 저환율로 자동차등 주력 품목의
쇠퇴세가 두드러지고, 수입품의 단가상승에 따라 교역조건도 날로 악화하고 있다. 그 결과
소비-투자-고용-소득의 대내 순환과 수출-소득-투자-고용의 대외 순환 모두 삐걱댄다. 내
수 회복에 힘입어 1 분기에 6%대의 성장을 이뤘다고 떠들었지만, 정작 그 온기를 목말라
하는 윗목을 데울 ‘ 땔감’ 이 떨어진 형국이다.
노무현 대통령까지 나선 정부의 부동산 거품론이 본말을 뒤바꾼 것이라는 비판은 이 같은
진단에서 비롯된다. 정부가 주도한 전국적 개발거품과 저금리 등으로 시중에 돈이 넘쳐난
다.
그렇다면 소비와 투자 등의 출구를 제공하는 정교한 정책조합을 찾는 것이 해법인데도, 정
부는 잘못된 정책의 결과물인 부동산 폐해만 붙잡고 있다. ‘ 버블 세븐’
운운하며 소모적
부동산 논쟁으로 지새는 사이 우리 경제는 멍들어 간다.
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Korean-English Translation Lesson 2
[기고] 원천기술의 젖줄 항공우주산업 (한국일보)
최근 들어 과학 강국들의 우주 개발 연기가 다시 뜨겁다. 지난해 미국 항공우주국(NASA)
은 2018 년까지 총 1,040 억 달러(약 100 조원)를 들여 달에 우주전진기지를 건설하겠다
고 발표하였으며, 중국도 지난해 10 월 두번째 유인 우주선인 선저우(神舟) 6 호 발사에
성공했다.
● 새로운 성장동력산업 창출
이처럼 강국들이 항공우주산업에 심혈을 기울이는 이유는 그 자체가 국력이며, 고부가가치
의 새로운 성장동력산업 육성으로 산업구조를 고도화하기 때문이다.
또한 우주 개발에는 첨단기술이 필요하지만, 역으로 우주 개발의 결과로 얻어진 기술을 이
용해 많은 원천기술을 선점하고 이를 통해 막대한 이익을 창출할 수 있기 때문이다.
NASA 를 중심으로 추진된 달 탐사 계획인 아폴로 계획은 1 달러 당 7 달러의 경제적 이익
을 창출한 것으로 추산되고 있다.
최근 우리나라는 유가 급등과 원화 절상의 이중고로 기업 경영에 많은 어려움을 겪고 있으
며 이러한 경영환경을 타개하기 위해 기술개발, 경영혁신 추진, 생산성 향상, 원가 절감
등의 자구노력을 강도높게 추진하고 있다. 한편 정부는 향후 10 년 내 국민소득 3 만달러
시대를 열기 위해 산업발전 비전을 제시하며 철강, 조선, 자동차, 반도체를 이을 차세대
신 성장동력산업의 육성을 추진하고 있는데, 항공우주산업은 산업의 발전뿐만 아니라 기술
강국, 특허강국으로의 발전을 촉진해나갈 것으로 기대된다.
우리나라는 지난 4 월부터 최초의 우주인 공모를 진행 중이다. 2 년 후에는 우리나라도 우
주인을 배출하여 유인 우주시대 개척에 새로운 이정표가 될 것이다. 국내총생산(GDP) 기
준으로 세계 10 위의 경제력을 지닌 우리나라가 이제야 우주인을 공모한다는 것은 때늦은
감이 있지만 우주인 탄생은 국민들에게는 과학의 대중화를, 청소년들에게는 꿈과 희망을
주는 계기가 될 것이다. (하략)
정해주ㆍ한국항공우주산업진흥협회 회장
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Korean-English Translation Lesson 3
[사설] 어린 학생들 외국으로 내보내는 우리 교육 (5 월 12 일 중앙일보)
지난해 서울 지역에서만 조기유학을 떠난 초.중.고 학생이 처음으로 7000 명을 넘어섰다.
하루 평균 19 명이다. 전국을 합치면 조기유학생은 최소 1 만 명 이상일 것이다.
자녀를 국제화 시대의 인재로 키우려는 데 목적이 있겠지만 폐해도 적지 않다. 유학비로
인한 외화 유출이 2 년 전에 7 조원을 넘어섰고, 늘어나는 '기러기 가족'은 심각한 사회 문
제가 됐다. 조기유학을 하지 못하는 학부모.학생들의 상대적인 박탈감도 커져 양극화 문제
를 부추긴다. 그럼에도 무리를 해서라도 자녀를 유학 보내거나 이민 가는 사례는 갈수록
늘고 있다.
그 원인이 외국어 조기교육 이외에도 우리 교육환경에 대한 불만에 있다고 한다면 과언인
가. 획일적인 교육 평등주의에 젖어 수월성(秀越性) 교육을 외면하는 정부, 자립형 사립고
를 확대하겠다고 했다가 하루아침에 번복하는 교육부총리, 이념 교육과 집단 이기주의에
빠진 전교조, 내일 어떻게 바뀔지 아무도 모르는 대입 정책…. 우수 인재 양성과 교육 자
율성을 강조하는 선진국 흐름과는 거꾸로 가는 우리 교육이다. 아무리 사교육비를 쏟아부
어도 교육환경은 갈수록 힘들어지니 차라리 조기유학을 보내려는 부모들이 늘어나는 것이
다. 심지어 '충동 조기유학'마저 성행한다고 한다.
노무현 대통령은 교육발전을 강조해 왔지만 그 결과는 거꾸로다. 이 정부가 들어선 2003
년에 비해 지난해 서울의 조기유학생이 58%나 증가한 것도 그 한 예다. 노 대통령은 하
루빨리 교육에 대한 발상을 획기적으로 전환해 학부모.학생들이 신뢰할 수 있는 교육정책
을 펼쳐야 한다. 그것이 많은 사람을 고통에서 벗어나게 하고, 우리 교육과 미래를 살리는
길이다.
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June 2006
Korean-English Translation Lesson 4
[고승덕 칼럼］아름다운 재벌승계 나올까
신세계가 증여세를 제대로 내고 후계절차를 밟겠다고 해서 화제가 되고 있다. 1 조원 이상
의 세금을 내고서라도 경영권을 승계시키겠다는 것이다. 그렇게만 된다면 불법과 탈법으로
얼룩진 우리나라 재벌의 역사에 새로운 장을 쓰게 된다.
재벌은 원래 국민의 부담으로 성장했다. 다 컸다고 부모 은덕을 잊어버리는 자식처럼 사주
들은 이제 와서 혼자 성공한 것처럼 착각하는 경우가 적지 않은 것 같다. 엄연한 현실은
재벌이 성장하기까지 국가로부터 온갖 금융 혜택과 정책 지원을 받았다는 사실이다. 그러
한 은혜는 누구에게나 주어지는 것은 아니었다.
권력과 유착된 기업은 재벌로 성장할 수 있었고, 권력의 눈에 거슬린 대기업들은 국제, 율
산과 같이 하루아침에 사라졌다. 살아남은 재벌은 권력의 장학생이었고, 보살핌에 대한 보
답으로 막대한 정치자금을 내놓는 등 공생관계를 유지했다. 그러다보니 재벌은 존경의 대
상이 될 수 없었다.
권력과 유착관계를 가지려면 비자금이 필요했다. 지금도 검찰이 칼을 휘두를 때마다 재벌
들의 분식회계와 횡령, 업무상배임이 드러나고 있다. 걸리는 기업들은 재수 없다고 생각할
지 모르지만 많은 대기업들이 불법으로 비자금을 조성해서 일부는 정치자금으로 내고 일부
는 유용하는 식으로 비리를 저질러 왔다.
-국민 부담으로 이룬 부의 축적재벌은 이제는 권력이 무시할 수 없을 정도로 성장했다. 성장 과정은 그렇다치더라도 성장
한 재벌이 국민에게 보답하는 것은 내야 할 세금을 제대로 내는 것이다. 재벌 2 세에게 경
영권이 승계된다 하더라도 세금만 정당하게 낸다면 누가 문제 삼을 리 없다. 세금을 제대
로 내고 재벌 그룹을 승계 받는다면 그것 자체로도 존경할 만한 일이다.
지금까지의 현실은 그렇지 않았다. 재벌마다 줄줄이 편법 승계를 시도해 왔다. 정확히 말
한다면 편법이 아니라 불법이었다. 불법 승계에 사용된 수법은 다양했지만 공통된 점은 부
당한 내부거래였다. 초보적인 방식은 회사 재산을 헐값으로 넘겨받고 자기 재산은 비싼 값
에 회사에 넘기는 것이다.
상장 주식은 객관적인 거래가격이 정해지기 때문에 거래가격이 불확실한 비상장 주식이나
전환사채와 같은 유가증권이 부당거래의 도구로 이용되어 왔다. S 그룹은 비상장 주식을
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비싸게 지주회사 주식과 교환하는 방식을 사용했고, 또 다른 S 그룹은 전환사채를 헐값에
인수하는 방식을 택했다. 1 백조원이 넘는 기업의 후계구도를 확립하기 위해서 낸 증여세
는 몇백억원에 지나지 않았다.
최근 재벌 사이에 유행하고 있는 불법 승계 방식은 상장회사에서 알짜 사업을 떼어내서 사
주 일가가 지배하는 별도 회사에게 넘겨주는 방식이다. 이런 방식으로 S 그룹 C 회장이 인
수한 주식 가치는 10 년 만에 1,000 배를 넘었고, H 그룹 C 사장이 만든 회사는 5 년 만에
250 배로 커졌다. 세금 한 푼 내지 않고 이루어진 일이다. 이런 식이라면 재벌 2 세, 3 세
도 국민으로부터 존경 받기는 힘들 것이다. 변호사와 회계사를 동원하여 그럴 듯하게 포장
하지만 본질은 업무상배임이다.
재벌이 재산을 헌납한다는 발표는 하나같이 순수하지 않았다. 얼마전 S 그룹 일가가 8 천
억원을 헌납한다고 발표하던 날 신문 한쪽에는 검찰이 같은 그룹의 총수 일가가 96 년의
편법증여에 개입한 정황을 밝힐 증거를 확보했다는 기사가 조그맣게 실렸다.
-정당한 세금부담 신선한 충격H 그룹은 재산헌납 의사가 없다고 부인했다가 총수가 구속되자 갑자기 몇천억원을 내놓겠
다고 발표했다. 위기에 몰리면 꼬리를 끊고 도망가는 도마뱀처럼 재벌은 사법의 칼날이 목
에 들어와야 먹은 재산의 일부를 토해 내는 속성이 있다.
이번에 신세계 측이 세금을 정당하게 내고 승계를 하겠다고 발표한 것은 국민에게 신선한
충격이다. 세금 제대로 내면 경영권 상속이 사실상 불가능하다는 것이 재벌 사주들의 하소
연이었기 때문이다. 회계 장난 없이 재벌을 승계하는 사례가 나올 수 있을까. 국민은 아름
다운 재벌 승계를 보고 싶어 한다.
〈고승덕/변호사·객원논설위원〉
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Korean-English Translation Lesson 5
집중호우 왜 자주 발생하나
올해는 예년보다 빠른 지난 7 일에 150 ㎜ 이상의 호우로 남해안 일부 지방에서 침수 피
해가 있었으며, 북한에서도 많은 비가 내려 댐 방류로 임진강 유역에 수해가 발생하기도
했다. 올 장마는 6 월 하순에 시작돼 7 월 중순까지 이어질 것으로 전망된다. 장마가 시작
되기도 전에 이렇게 많은 비가 내리는 것을 보면 올여름에도 자연재해가 크지 않을까 우려
된다.
집중호우는 장마전선 외에도 발달한 저기압, 태풍, 고기압의 가장자리에서 대기가 불안정
하여 발생하기도 한다. 또, 같은 150 ㎜의 비가 내린다고 해도 강우의 집중성, 규모, 나타
나는 지역, 강수 지속시간 등 어떠한 강우 시스템과 연관돼 있느냐에 따라 큰 차이가 있다.
이로 인한 피해 정도도 다르다. 도시에서는 도로포장, 고층빌딩, 지하차도 건설 등 도시화
로 인해 빗물이 자연 침투되지 않는 경우가 많다.
도시의 강우 유출량이 늘어남에 따라 하수관의 배수 용량이 부족하게 됨으로써 저지대에서
는 시간당 30 ㎜ 안팎이 1~2 시간만 내려도 쉽게 침수되곤 한다. 이같이 새롭게 침수가
예상되는 곳은 배수시설, 공사장의 안전 조치 등 사전 점검과 그에 따른 보강이 절실하다.
또 농촌과 산간지역에서는 노후 가옥 보수, 비닐하우스 관리, 소하천 관리, 산사태 등을
대비하여 사전에 배수로를 설치하거나 위험지역에 대한 경계를 철저히 할 필요가 있다.
2002 년 8 월 31 일에 태풍 ‘ 루사(RUSA)’ 가 우리나라를 통과하면서 집중호우가 났고,
특히 강릉지방에서는 태풍 전면에서의 수렴대와 지형효과 때문에 하루동안 870.5 ㎜가 내
려 그야말로 전무한 호우 기록을 세웠다. 1904 년 근대 기상관측이 시작된 이래 하루강우
량 극값을 경신했는데, 전기와 통신까지 두절돼 국가 비상사태에 이르기까지 했다. 전국적
으로 246 명이 사망·실종되고 사상 최대인 5 조 1479 억원의 재산피해가 발생했다.
(하략)
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Korean-English Translation Lesson 6
영국대사의 한국경제 내셔널리즘 우려 (문화일보 사설 5 월 17 일)
‘경제에는 국경이 없다.’ 이것이 글로벌 경제의 표제어가 된 지 오래다. 그런데도 이따금씩
나타나는 ‘ 경제 내셔널리즘’ 은 외국 투자가들의 우려를 사기에 충분하다. 워릭 모리스
주한 영국대사도 16 일 “ 한국이 동북아의 경제허브가 되려면 정부가 외국기업들에 일관
된 메시지를 주어야 할텐데 어떤 때는 비즈니스에 긍정적이고 우호적인 메시지를 주다가도
어떤 때는 덜 긍정적인 메시지를 준다” 고 말했다. 이어 “ 외국 기업인들은 한국인의 민족
주의적 경향에 대해 가끔 걱정을 한다. 한국에 진출하고 싶어하는 외국인들도 환영받지 못
한다고 생각하면 투자를 망설이게 될 것” 이라고 덧붙였다.
국내에 진출한 외국 금융자본의 과다 이익을 못마땅하게 여기는 심사가 정부와 정치권에서
자주 표출되는 상황을 보면 우리는 모리스 대사의 우려를 질정(叱正)으로 받아들이지 않을
수 없다. 외국자본을 더 필요로하는 처지이면서 왜 반외자(反外資) 정서에 물든 것으로 비
치게 됐는지 그 잘못을 반성해야 한다.
외자는 국부(國富) 증진의 한 수단이다. 외자가 국내에서 아무리 많은 이익을 챙겨가도 그
것이 법의 테두리 안에 있는 한 부정적으로 볼 수는 없다. 외자와 관련하여 우려해야 하는
것은 외자 우대에 치우친 나머지 국내자본에 대한 역차별로 기업의 경영권이 위협받는 일,
또 법의 허점 혹은 맹점을 이용해 내야 할 세금을 내지 않는 일부 헤지펀드의 조세 회피
등이다. 물론 이같은 경우라 하더라도 국내법을 정비하든지 글로벌 스탠더드에 맞는 국제
적 규제에 동참하는 식으로 접근해야지 외국자본에 대한 반감부터 앞세우는 것은 옳지 않
다.
“영국 기업인 1 명이 한국에서 400 명을 고용하는 영업장을 열었다면 그것은 곧 한국 기업
이나 마찬가지” 라는 모리스 대사의 우회적 비유는 적실하다. 외국인 투자가 1% 증가하
면 고용효과가 0.02% 오르고, 1 억달러가 들어오면 국내총생산(GDP)이 5000 억원 더 늘
어난다는 계량적 분석도 나와 있다. 정부·정치권의 폐쇄주의적 접근이 외자를 내쫓아선 안
된다.
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Korean-English Translation Lesson 7
[세계의 눈/폴 크루그먼]미국 경제 현실로 돌아오다
지난주 뉴욕 증시가 큰 폭으로 떨어졌다. 그런데 다시 반등할 것이라는 기대감은 그리 크
지 않은 듯하다.
물론 주가의 단기 등락에 지나치게 큰 의미를 부여할 필요는 없다. 그러나 이번 주가 급락
이 심각한 것은 미국 경제에 대한 인식에 근본적인 변화가 일고 있기 때문이다.
투자자들은 미국 경제에 대한 확신을 잃은 것 같다. 요즘 경제지표를 보면 확신을 잃는 것
이 당연하다.
지난해 가을부터 본격 상승하기 시작한 미 증시는 한 가지 믿음에 근거하고 있었다. 국가
와 개인 차원에서 소득보다 더 많이 소비할 수 있다는 믿음. 그것도 영원히 그럴 수 있다
는 자신감이다.
얼마 동안은 그럴 수 있는 듯했다. 지난해 미국의 무역적자는 7000 억 달러를 넘어섰지만
달러 가치는 상승을 멈추지 않았다. 주택 가격은 계속 상승곡선을 그렸지만 주택 구입 열
풍은 그치지 않았다. 가솔린 가격이 갤런당 3 달러까지 올랐지만 가솔린과 생필품 소비는
줄지 않았다. 물론 소비자들은 소비 수준을 유지하기 위해 돈을 빌려 와야 했다. 미국의
저축률은 1930 년대 이후 처음으로 마이너스로 떨어졌다.
그런데 몇 주 전부터 미국 경제에 중력이 작용하기 시작했다.
본격적인 달러 가치 하락은 한 달 전 시작됐다. 아직 엔화와 유로화 대비 하락률은 10%
정도이지만 다른 나라들에 달러가 전만큼 매력적이지 못한 것만은 분명하다.
주택시장도 빠르게 냉각되고 있다. 지난해 내내 전미주택건설업협회(NAHB)의 주택시장
지수는 높은 수준을 유지했다. 그런데 15 일 발표된 지수는 1995 년 이후 가장 낮았다.
고유가로 인해 소비도 얼어붙기 시작하고 있다. 최근 전미소매업협회(NRF)는 “ 에너지 가
격 상승이 소비 활동에 영향을 미치기 시작했다” 고 발표했다.
경기 둔화 전망이 늘고 있는 것에 대해 조지 W 부시 행정부는 애꿎게 언론 탓을 하고 있
다.
백악관은 ‘ 오해 바로잡기: 경제 성장에 대한 뉴욕타임스의 왜곡된 시선’ 이라는 제목의
보도 자료를 15 일 발표했다. 임금 상승이 가솔린과 의료비 상승을 따라잡지 못하고 있다
는 보도가 잘못됐다는 것. 백악관 자료는 “ 지난 12 개월 동안 시간당 임금은 3.8% 올라
서 최근 5 년 만에 가장 큰 폭의 상승세를 보였다” 고 밝혔다.
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과연 그럴까. 존 스노 재무장관은 17 일 하원에 출석해 임금 상승 주장을 되풀이했다. 그
러나 바니 프랭크 민주당 의원의 반격도 만만치 않았다. “ 임금 상승이 인플레율을 고려한
것이냐” 는 그의 질문에 스노 장관은 마지못해 “ 그렇지 않다” 고 시인했다. 사실 인플레
를 감안하면 임금 상승분은 거의 사라지고 만다.
지난 3 년 동안 경제 성장은 주택시장 활황과 소비 증가에 기인한다. 주택 가격은 계속 올
랐지만 낮은 금리 덕에 미국인들은 주택을 살 수 있었다. 낮은 금리는 다른 나라들이 미국
채권을 사들여줬기 때문에 가능했다. 또 미국인들은 임금상승률이 인플레율을 따라잡지 못
함에도 불구하고 계속 높은 소비 수준을 유지할 수 있었다. 주택담보대출로 생긴 현금이
있었기에 가능했다.
그러나 이런 ‘ 게임’ 이 끝나가고 있다. 이제 우리는 경제를 운영할 다른 방법을 찾아야
한다. 다른 방법에 적응하려면 시간이 걸리기 마련이다.
미국에 그런 시간이 있을까. 벤 버냉키 연방준비제도이사회(FRB) 의장은 최근 나타나고
있는 주식시장 냉각을 “ 매우 온건한 수준” 이라고 평했다. 그의 말이 맞을지 모른다. 그
러나 만약 아니라면 최근 미국 증시 급락세는 심각한 경기둔화의 시작으로 기억될 것이다.
폴 크루그먼 뉴욕타임스 칼럼니스트
Tel: 735-3322
154
e-mail: paulfan@freechal.com
PLAN TEST GSIT PREP COURSE INSTRUCTOR: HAN HYEONG-MIN
June 2006
Korean-English Translation Lesson 8
[사설]아이 울음소리 끊기면 미래 없다
세계 최저의 출산율보다 더 심각한 문제는 저출산이 불러올 미래의 재앙에 대한 인식이 우
리 사회에 전반적으로 부족하다는 점이다. 선진국들이 일찌감치 대책을 세워 출산율을 다
시 끌어올리는 데 성공한 것에 비해 우리는 무관심 속에 방치하다가 출산율을 수직 추락시
켰다. 2000 년에 가임여성 1 인당 평균 자녀 수가 위험선인 1.5 를 뚫고 내려와 5 년 만에
1.08 로 떨어지도록 속수무책이었다. 부부가 아이 한 명만 낳는 세태가 보편화됐고, 결혼
을 안 하고 독신으로 살거나 만혼(晩婚)하는 풍습도 저출산을 거들고 있다.
이에 따른 인구 감소는 나라 경제와 연금제도에 심각한 위협이 되고 나아가 사회 구성과
전통까지 바꿔 놓게 된다. 노동인구의 감소와 임금 인상은 필연적으로 경제의 쇠퇴를 부른
다. 젊은이들이 부담할 수 있는 한계를 넘어서면 연금 재정이 파탄 나 베이비붐 세대의 고
령인구 전체가 복지 난민(難民)으로 전락할 수 있다. 군대 갈 남자가 모자라면 군을 유지
하기 위해 여성까지 징집해야 하는 사태가 생길지도 모른다.
상황이 이렇게 절박한데도 당장 내 발등에 떨어진 일이 아니어서 심각함에 둔감하다. 젊은
세대에게 아이를 가진 삶의 기쁨을 제대로 교육하지 못한 탓도 있다. 교황 베네딕토 16 세
는 “ 참된 사랑의 부족으로 오늘날 젊은 남녀들이 결혼하지 않고, 하더라도 실패하고, 출
산율이 떨어지고 있다” 고 지적했다. 새겨들을 말이다.
저출산은 인구 폭발보다 더 무섭고 복잡한 재앙인데도 정치인과 정부의 관심은 피상적이다.
고령 인구는 투표권을 갖고 있지만 태어날 어린아이는 당장 정권 교체에 영향을 미치지 않
기 때문인 것 같다. 일본에서는 인구 10 만 명 이상의 지방 도시들이 저출산에 따른 인구
감소로 몰락하고 있다. 한국도 이 추세로 가면 지방 소도시부터 시들어 버리기 시작할 것
이다. 너무 늦기 전에 정부가 실행 계획을 세워야 한다. 둘째, 셋째 아이를 갖는 가정에
과감한 인센티브를 주고 교육비 부담을 덜어 주는 방안이 필요하다. 아이 울음소리가 들리
지 않는 나라는 미래가 없다.
Tel: 735-3322
155
e-mail: paulfan@freechal.com