[翻译角]Headline English: A Captain Should Be Pitch Perfect at a Multitude of Skills (ESLPOD Blog)

以下转自www.eslpod.com,翻译为本人添加。其余版权均归原网站所有。

ESLPOD是一个英语学习网站，我最初知道这个网站，是因为“奶爸”《把你的英语用起来》(电子版3元）一书的推荐。

ESLPOD的六本书国内尚未出版。

下面这篇文章是从官网转载的。http://www.eslpod.com/eslpod_blog/

Here’s a recent headline from the Financial Times:

以下是最近刊登在《经济时报》一篇文章的标题：

A Captain Should be Pitch Perfect at a Multitude of Skills

在众多技能中，领导人首先应当方向正确

This headline is for an article that compares the game of cricket, popular in Great Britain and other countries, to the world of baseball. But there are lots of interesting things we can learn from it.

此标题对应的这篇文章主要内容是对比流行于英国的板球和世界范围流行的棒球。但是文章中也有很多有趣的内容可供我们学习。

Let’s start with captain. A captain is a leader in the military (such as the army and navy), but we also use that term for someone who is the leader of a sports team. Sports vocabulary is also very popular in the American business world. So in business, a captain would be a leader, usually of a company.

让我们从“captain”这个词开始吧。Captain是指陆军或海军中的将领。但是我们也会用它来称呼某项运动中的领导。有关运动的词汇在美国商界也很流行。在商界中，captain也会用来称呼领导，通常是某个公司的领导。

There’s an old expression, “the captains of industry,” meaning the business leaders of a country.

曾经人们用这样一个表述“the captains of industry”来表示一个国家中的行业领袖。

The next interesting term here is “pitch perfect.” The word pitch has two different meanings here, and the headline is using both to make a little joke, what we would call word play or play on words. To pitch (as a verb) means to throw a ball, like a player in the game of cricket or baseball might do. But pitch (as a noun) refers to the musical note that a person can sing.

下一个有趣的术语是“pitch perfect”。Pitch在这里有两种意思。标题中同时使用了两种意思来表达一种幽默。这也就是双关。To pitch（作为动词）表示投球，就像板球或棒球中投手所作的那样。但是pitch（作为名词）是指人们歌唱时的声高。

In music, to be “pitch perfect” means to always be able to sing the “right” or correct note, or to recognize it when you hear it. (And, to make things even more confusing, “pitch” as a noun is also used in British English to refer to what Americans would call the “field,” the area where a sport is played.)

当我们谈论音乐时，“pitch perfect”指人们总能唱“对的”音高或者正确的音高，或者使你能够在听到时辨识出的音高。（接下来你也许会更加迷惑，在英国英语中，人们也会用pitch来表示美国人所称作的“field”，运动时的运动场地）

However, in normal conversation, pitch perfect means to do or say exactly the right thing, to be perfectly accurate and effective in what you say or do, or to say something with just the right tone or mood.

然而在日常谈话中，pitch perfect通常是指做或说对的事情，非常准确或者有效的完成你所说的或所做的，或者用对的语气和情绪说话。

Juliana: Did you hear John’s explanation of why we lost 200 million dollars last quarter?

George: Yes. I thought his explanation was pitch perfect. The investors seemed to be less nervous after his talk.

Juliana:你听到John关于为什么我们上个季度失去2亿美元的解释了吗？

George: 是的，听到了。我想他的解释听起来很完美，投资者在听完后看起来没那么紧张了。

I should also add that “pitch” as a verb can also be used to mean to attempt to convince someone to accept your proposal, to buy what you are selling, whether it is a physical object, a service, or even an idea. Pitch can also be a noun meaning the act or process of selling or convincing.

Pitch作为动词也有尝试说服某人接受你的建议或购买你所推销物品的意思，无论是一件实物，还是一项服务或者一个主意。Pitch作为名词也可以指推销或说服的过程。

Gustavo: I have a great new idea for a movie.

Justin: How are you going to pitch it to the movie studios?

Gustavo: I’ll just give them the story idea. You see, there’s a planet full of sharks who are as big as dinosaurs and then they start to eat people and . . .

Justin: Okay, I’ve heard enough (I don’t want to hear any more)!

Gustavo: 我有一个拍电影的好主意.

Justin:你怎么说服电影公司来投资呢?

Gustavo: 我会把这个故事讲给他们听。你瞧，在一个星球上，满是鲨鱼，他们就像恐龙一样大，然后他们开始吃人…

Justin: 行了，我听够了（我不想再听了）

 

The final word of interest here is “multitude.” Business vocabulary in English is filled with polysyllabic words (words that have more than one syllable; poly means “many”) that are used even though you could say the same thing with a shorter, easier word. I guess people think that if you use long words, you are smarter than if you use short ones.

最后一个词是“multitude”。在商业词汇中，你会发现人们使用许多的多音阶词汇，即便可以使用短的简单的词表示同样的意思。我猜，这是因为人们认为使用长词汇比使用短词会被认为更聪明。

Multitude is a good example of a polysyllabic word that people use to impress their colleagues. It just means a large group or number, or simply, “many.” Normally, we use the preposition “of” after multitude, as in a “multitude of skills.”

Multitude 就是一个人们使用多音节词汇以给同事留下深刻印象的例子。它仅仅表示很多，我们其实也可以用短词“many ”来表达同样的意思。通常，我们会在 multitude之后使用介词“of”, 就像 a “multitude of skills.”中那样。

Leo: This project has a multitude of problems, doncha (informal for “don’t you”) think?

Kevin: No more than all of our other projects!

Leo: 这个项目有很多的问题，你觉得呢？

Kevin: 不超过我们其它的项目。

So, to sum it all up (to review or summarize what we just said): this headline says that if you are a leader of a team or company, you need to be able to do lots of things really well. But you probably knew that already, right?

那么，总结起来说，这个标题告诉我们，如果你是一个球队或公司的领导，你需要做很多正确的事.但是你似乎早就知道这些了，是吗？

-Jeff

-杰夫

 

【觉得不错，去感谢奶爸】