作者：Eco Team

The end of Sri Lanka’s war
斯里兰卡战争结束

Tainted triumph
变质的胜利

May 21st 2009
From The Economist print edition

A bloody victory won, Sri Lanka’s government urgently needs to make peace with the Tamil minority
这场胜利是血腥的，斯里兰卡政府迫切需要与泰米尔民族维持和平。

FOR Sri Lanka’s government and many of its citizens, reactions in the West to the final phase of its 26-year war with the Tamil Tigers have reeked of sanctimonious hypocrisy. The world knows the Tigers to be vicious terrorists. To stave off defeat, they held tens of thousands of civilians as human shields in their shrinking corner of northern Sri Lanka. This was typical of their callous disregard even for those whose rights they claimed to champion. Their crushing and the death of their vile chieftain, Velupillai Prabhakaran (see article), are cause for celebration. And in welcoming the end, surely it is unfair to wring hands at the inevitably bloody means. After all, the West is cheering on Pakistan’s army as it takes on the Taliban, uprooting people in their hundreds of thousands.

斯里兰卡政府与泰米尔猛虎组织持续26年的战争终于到了最后阶段。而对于斯里兰卡政府及其许多市民来说，西方世界假装圣洁的的反应散发出浓烈的伪善气息。世人皆知泰米尔是凶残的恐怖分子。为避免战败，他们在斯里兰卡北部日益缩小的地盘里，将数万名贫民作为人体盾牌。这是他们典型冷酷无情的漠视，甚至对于他们声称会捍卫的人的权利也是如此。他们可耻的最高决策人韦卢皮莱•普拉巴卡兰（Velupillai Prabhakaran）的死亡，是人们庆祝的原因。在迎接战争结束时，在审视不可避免的血腥方式面前缩手缩脚当然是不公平的。毕竟，西方正欢呼于巴基斯坦军队处理塔利班问题的方式——彻底根除数十万的追随者。

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Seabed mining
海底矿产

The unplumbed riches of the deep
来自深海的宝藏

 May 14th 2009 | WOODS HOLE, MASSACHUSETTS
From The Economist print edition

And why they’ll wait a while longer before being disturbed
开采这些宝藏，还需等多久

IN TEENSPEAK, if a star such as Madonna or J.Lo is huge, that is a reference not to her size but to her popularity. Similarly, in the world of seabed geology, if a sulphide deposit is massive, it is not necessarily big, but formless and rich in metals. As it happens, seafloor massive sulphides are also huge—at least they were until recently. The collapse in commodity prices last year has diminished them a bit, but many expect their popularity to recover.

按照青少年的话语，如果像麦当娜和詹妮弗.洛佩兹这些明星是巨星，并不是因为她的体格,而是因为她的知名度。同样，海底地质认为，如果硫化物矿床是巨大的，并不需要其体积大，只需其不定型和其金属含量高。碰巧的是，至少目前海底块状硫化物也是巨大的。虽然由于去年的物品价格暴跌已经使其减弱了很多，但大多数人估计其会反弹。
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Buttonwood专栏

Bucking the trend
逆流而上

Apr 30th 2009
From The Economist print edition

The end of the carry trade brings a new era of complexity to currency markets
套息交易的消逝为货币市场开启了新的复杂性时代

FROM 2002 to 2007, foreign-exchange trading was pretty simple. Buy the currencies with the highest yields and sell those with the lowest. This “carry trade” created high returns with low volatility.

从2002至2007年，外汇交易可谓相当简单。买入最高收益的货币，卖出最低收益的。这样的“套息交易”创造了低波动性的高回报。

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Lexington
列克星敦

Read it and weep
异想天开
May 21st 2009
From The Economist print edition

Comedians have yet to figure out how to mock Barack Obama. The only exception is a newspaper founded in 1421
时政嘲讽砖手多数还未摸到取笑奥巴马的窍门，唯有一家1421年创办的老报鹤立鸡群

Illustration by KAL

REAL reporting is easy. Making the news up is much harder. So the weekly editorial meeting at the Onion, a spoof newspaper based in New York, is intense. One writer clutches a human skull. Another wields a threatening stick. Yet another walks in late, looking scruffy and eating a chocolate cereal bar. Alert readers would recognise him as the cover model for a feature in 2006 on “Heterosexual Men’s Fashion”.
真新闻好做，假新闻难造。固此，在驻守纽约的幽默讽刺报《洋葱》所召集的每周编辑碰头会上，气氛紧张而刺激。一名写手紧抓着一付骷髅头骨，另一位挥动着一根吓人的棍子。还有一人姗姗来迟。他衣衫不整，一边啃着一块巧克力干压谷条。有心的读者不难认出，他曾是06年某期《异性恋男人时尚》杂志上的封面模特。

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The news business
新闻产业

Tossed by a gale
狂风过后

May 14th 2009
From The Economist print edition

It isn’t just newspapers: much of the established news industry is being blown away. Yet news is thriving
不仅仅是报纸，如今新闻界的大部分产业都处在下坡路，但新闻本身，依然兴旺发达



PERHAPS the surest sign that newspapers are doomed is that politicians, so often their targets, are beginning to feel sorry for them. On May 9th Barack Obama ended an otherwise comic speech with an earnest defence of an embattled business. House and Senate committees have held hearings in the past month. John Kerry, the junior senator from Massachusetts, called the newspaper “an endangered species”.
报纸业还是在劫难逃，其中最明显的标志就是：过去一贯为他们所评论的政客们，如今却为其感到惋惜。5月9号，巴拉克奥巴马总统发表了一次不同寻常的充满幽默的演讲，面对如今岌岌可危的局势，奥巴马总统表示会认真做好防御措施。上个月，众议院委员会，参议院委员会分别举行了听证会。约翰克里，一名来自马塞诸塞州的初级参议员，称报业为“一个岌岌可危的行业”。

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Russia and its image
俄罗斯及其形象

Put in more flags
插上更多的旗帜

May 14th 2009 | MOSCOW
From The Economist print edition

What military parades and song contests say about Russia’s future
阅兵与歌唱大赛对俄国的未来有何预示

AMID Russia’s anti-crisis measures, the military parade on Red Square on May 9th was spectacular. Some 9,000 soldiers goose-stepped past political leaders. Tanks, rocket launchers and ballistic-missile carriers scratched the cobblestones; bombers, jets and helicopters flew above St Basil’s Cathedral. The show is meant to mark victory in the second world war. But this genuinely national holiday has long been appropriated by the Kremlin for ideological ends. Rather than celebrating the war’s end, this military parade represented Russia’s readiness for a new fight.

在俄罗斯对抗危机的措施中，五月九日在红场举行的阅兵蔚为壮观。约九千名士兵迈着正步经过政治领袖面前；坦克、火箭发射器与弹道导弹运载车伴随着刺耳的摩擦声碾过卵石路面，轰炸机、喷气机与直升机飞越圣巴西尔大教堂的上空。这场展示活动旨在纪念（俄国）在第二次世界大战中的胜利，但这一真正意义上的全国性节假日长久以来被克里姆林宫用作意识形态方面的目的。与其说阅兵是在庆祝战争的结束，不如说它反映出俄国已准备好踏上新的征程。
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The Supreme Court
美国最高法院

Following Souter
跟随苏特的脚步

May 7th 2009 | WASHINGTON, DC
From The Economist print edition

Barack Obama has a chance to rejuvenate the Supreme Court’s liberal wing
贝拉克•奥巴马有机会复兴最高法院的自由派。

AP

DAVID SOUTER (second from right, above) is a singular character. Though wealthy, he lives the life of Diogenes. He lunches frugally at his desk, typically on yogurt and an apple, which he eats to the core. He seldom goes out. He has no time for modern distractions such as television. But most unusually of all, despite having life tenure as a judge on the Supreme Court, he is planning to retire at the tender age of 69.

大卫•苏特 (图上方从右边数起第二位)是个非凡的人物。尽管他很富有，却过着如第欧根尼（古希腊哲学家，犬儒学派的代表人物，据说第欧根尼住在一个木桶里，所拥有的所有财产包括这个木桶、一件斗篷、一支棍子、一个面包袋——译者注）般的生活。他中午就在办公桌旁简单地吃点东西，通常是酸奶和一只苹果，而且他会把苹果吃得只剩果核，一点也不愿浪费。他极少出门，从不把时间浪费在诸如电视等现代社会中令人分心的事物上。但是最不寻常的是，尽管拥有最高法院法官这一终生职位，他还是计划在69岁这个相对较轻的年龄卸甲归田（读者也许会问，69岁还年轻吗？不妨来看看现任首席法官罗伯茨之前的三任美最高法院首席法官离职时的年龄：威廉•伦奎斯特，81岁，任上病死；沃伦•伯格，79岁，主动退休；厄尔•沃伦，78岁，主动退休——译者注）。
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The view from Brazil
来自巴西的观点

An unruly bunch
不驯之众

May 14th 2009 | SÃO PAULO
From The Economist print edition

How the church is faring in the world’s biggest Catholic country
教会在世界上最大的天主教国家进展如何

THOUGH Pope Benedict’s tenure has not had much effect on Catholicism in Brazil so far, it has entrenched an old conflict. The previous pope’s reign saw a “decapitation of the progressive parts of the church in Latin America and particularly in Brazil,” says Antonio Pierucci of São Paulo University. This war against the progressives was promoted by Benedict when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Its price has been a loss of political influence for the church hierarchy, whereas the liberation theologians whom the bosses shunned continue to have the ear of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ Party. Pope John Paul’s charisma partly compensated for this loss of influence. Pope Benedict does not have that to fall back on.

尽管教皇本笃（十六世）的任期目前尚未对巴西的天主教产生多大影响，但它已经使得一场旧的冲突变得更为根深蒂固。圣保罗大学的安东尼奥•皮耶路奇指出：上一任教皇的统治期内，“拉美地区，尤其是巴西教会中的进步派势力受到打击。”这场针对进步派的战争正是由本笃倡导发起的，当年他的身份还是红衣主教约瑟夫•拉辛格。鉴于那些被上层回避的自由派神学家仍然能在路易斯•伊纳西奥•卢拉•达席尔瓦总统的工人党那里说得上话，这场战争的代价便是教会体系的政治影响力受损。约翰•保罗教皇的个人魅力部分抵消了影响力的丧失，但本笃教皇却没有这种优势可供依赖。

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Unemployment in Spain
西班牙的失业率
Not working
“休假在家”
May 7th 2009 | MADRID
From The Economist print edition
Spain is experiencing Europe’s worst unemployment problem
西班牙正在经历欧洲最严重的失业问题

THE huge signs are up in town squares, city parks and myriad spots where men in overalls dig holes, lay pavements or spruce up public facilities. They proclaim that the work is being paid for by Plan E, the stimulus package pushed through by Spain’s Socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. This included euro 8 billion ($11 billion) for immediate spending by town halls.

大批的西班牙人在市中心广场、城市公园和形形色色的类似场所找到了自己的“用武之地”，在那些地方，人们都在挖坑、铺路，或是“妆扮”公共设施。所有的这些工作的薪金据称都是由E计划来支付的。E计划是由西班牙社会主义者总理José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero所大力推崇并通过的经济刺激方案，其中包括各个市政厅8百万欧元的即时开销。

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Obituary
逝者

Margaret Gelling
玛格丽特·婕玲

 

May 14th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Margaret Gelling, an expert on English place names, died on April 24th, aged 84

玛格丽特·婕玲，研究英国地名的专家，于4月24日去世，享年84岁

AT WIVENHOE, in Essex, the low line of the hills has the shape of the heels of a person lying face-down. The name contains the shape: a hoh is a ridge that rises to a point and has a concave end. At Wooller in Northumberland, however, the hilltop is level, with a convex sloping shoulder. The hidden word here is ofer, “a flat-topped ridge”. Early Anglo-Saxon settlers in England, observing, walking and working the landscape, defined its ups and downs with a subtlety largely missing from modern, motorised English. Dozens of words, none of them synonymous, described the look of a hill, the angle of slope and the way trees grew upon it. And after the Anglo-Saxons, no one looked at the landscape in quite that way until Margaret Gelling.

Essex郡的Wivenhoe镇（Wiven的脚跟[0]），低矮的山脊线好像一个趴在地上的人的脚跟。这种形状其实已经包含在小镇的名字当中：hoh指的就是这样形状的山脊——一边陡，一边缓，缓那边在最低处成凹状。而Northumberland郡的Wooler镇（泉水山=well+ofer），山顶是平的，山坡则向外鼓起。Wooler这个名字里藏的词是ofer——“平顶山”。早期到英格兰定居的盎格鲁·撒克逊人在行走山间，开地垦荒的过程中，对山势的高低起伏观察入微，山有多少种形态，就被定居者们赋予了多少种名字。这种细微在急速膨胀而成的现代英语中已很少见到。而如今，开着汽车穿越群山的英国人，已几乎感觉不到这些细微的差别。古英语中会有几十个不同的词来描绘山的样与貌，坡的陡与缓，林的疏与密，并且每个词都有每个词的独特意思。而盎格鲁·撒克逊人后代们眼中的山已是“千山一律”，直到玛格丽特·婕玲的横空出世。

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