通用的悲鳴
2023復習正是強化復習階段，在考研英語中占了40分，所以考研英語閱讀是英語科目中重要的一項。名師老師曾建議過考研生需要堅持每天泛讀10-15分鐘的英文原刊。強烈推薦了雜志《經濟學人》.雜志中的文章也是考研英語的主要材料來源.希望考研考生認真閱讀，快速提高考研英語閱讀水平。 Business 商業報道 General Motors woes 通用的悲鳴 What do you recall? 你召回什么? GM is forced to confront its faults 通用被迫面對它的錯誤 WHEN Mary Barra took the wheel at General Motors in January she inherited a company ingood shape. Mary Barra 在二月份接掌通用汽車時，公司運轉態勢良好。 Five years after bankruptcy, its profits were exceeding expectations and its share price wasrising. 破產5年之后，它的利潤增長超過預期，股價也在持續上升。 But the new boss s to-do list was long: fixing GM s loss-making European arm, keeping upmomentum in China amid signs of a slowdown and rejuvenating the product line. 但是新的掌門人面臨著一系列的問題：整頓歐洲分支的虧損問題;在出現衰退跡象的情況下，保持中國市場的發展勢頭并發展生產線。 Ms Barra s predecessor, Dan Akerson, warned her that she would also face curve balls. Barra女士的前任Dan Akerson 告誡她可能也會面臨曲線球。 The first has arrived sooner than she might have expected. 第一個比她預期的來得更快。 What appeared to be a routine recall in mid-February of about 800,000 older models, linkedto a faulty ignition switch, has turned out to be anything but. 在二月中旬看似是例行召回的800000輛舊款車結果顯示只是因為點火開關的缺陷。 The number of cars recalled has leapt to more than 2.6m. 被召回的車已經超過260萬輛。 The company s inept handling of a safety problem that first became apparent a decade agois now linked to the deaths of at least 13 motorists. 公司對于安全問題的笨拙處理，在十年之前首次顯露。現在已經與至少13位駕駛者的死亡有關。 Called before Congress on April 1st to answer for GM s failings Ms Barra said she was deeplysorry but insisted that the post-bankruptcy new GM was not like the old GM, which hadfailed to deal with the ignition switches for years. 4月1號被召到國會回答通用失敗的原因，Barra說她深表遺憾，但是她強調破產重組后的新通用和處理點火開關多年未果的老通用不同。 Politicians and the public alike want to know how such a problem could have remainedunaddressed for so long. 政客和公眾想知道為什么這樣一個問題能夠懸而未決這么久。 Cars are becoming ever more complex machines, with thousands of mechanical andelectronic parts. 汽車構造越來越復雜，有著成千上萬的機械以及電氣構造。 Recalls are not uncommon. 召回并不罕見。 Last year it happened to 22m vehicles in America, compared with 18m in 2023. 去年美國有2200萬汽車召回，而2023年召回了1800萬輛。 In fact, GM was one of only three brands that recalled fewer vehicles than it sold. 實際上，通用曾是召回比售出少的三巨頭之一。 Niggling problems, like squeaks or rattles, that do not affect safety are more common still. 不影響安全的類似于發出吱吱聲或者為嗡嗡聲的瑣碎問題愈發常見。 They may be fixed at a routine service; the owner may never know. 它們有可能在例行服務中被處理好，汽車所有者可能永遠都不會知道。 The growing number of recalls is testament to an improving system for picking up faults. 增加的召回數量是發現問題體系在不斷完善的明證。 But it is very complicated. 但是這個系統很復雜。 Dealers must record replacements of parts under warranty. 經銷商必須在授權下記錄置換部分。 The carmaker needs to spot the trend, recognise it as a problem and then determinewhether or not it is a design fault that requires wholesale replacement. 汽車制造者需要發現這一趨勢，認定其為一個問題，然后確認是否為需要全部替換的設計失誤。 It relies on accurate recording of every warranty replacement in every region, saysAndrew Bergbaum of AlixPartners, a firm of consultants. 咨詢公司AlixPartners的Andrew Bergbaum說：它依賴于每一地區的每一個授權置換的精確記錄。 This system appears to have broken down at old GM. 但是這一體系在老通用貌似沒能施行。 Ms Barra needs to find out why. Barra需要找出其原因。 At the heart of the matter is a widely used ignition switch that has a tendency to slip fromthe on position to off if a driver uses a heavy keychain or bounces down a rough road. 問題的核心是：廣泛使用的點火開關在駕駛者使用重鑰匙串或者在崎嶇路上顛簸時有從開滑落到關的趨向。 A modification was made in 2008 to prevent the problem, which can lead to the engineshutting off, disabling the airbags. 一個裝置在2008年被設計出來解決這一問題，但是它可能導致引擎熄火和安全氣囊的失效。 But despite a growing list of crashes and deaths, GM failed to order a recall for a componentthat would have cost a few dollars at most. 盡管有著上升的撞車及死亡記錄，但是通用并沒有進行召回，雖然這些召回最多只是花一點錢。 This is odd. 這很奇怪。 Most carmakers want to identify and fix problems speedily despite having to bear the cost ofbuying and fitting a new component. 大多數汽車制造者希望及時發現并處理問題，盡管會支付購買以及安裝新元件的費用。 A small part can do great harm, if bad publicity leads to reputational corrosion, lost salesand litigation, which in America can include hefty punitive damages. 千里之堤潰于蟻穴，如果壞的消息傳開導致名譽受損、銷量下降以及被起訴，這在美國預示著高額懲罰性賠償。 Appearing to put profits before safety is also liable to batter a firm s shares, as GM hasdiscovered. 通用證實了，表現得重利益甚于重視安全也會引起公司股票的大跌。 So far Ms Barra has handled the situation well. Barra到目前為止將這個局面處理得很好。 She seems to have acted as soon as she found out something was awry. 她似乎在一發現事情不對，就立即采取行動。 And she has borrowed strategies from Toyota, which was forced into recalling more than 10mvehicles in 2009 and 2010 after worrying instances of unintended acceleration. 她借鑒了豐田公司的策略。豐田在擔心突然加速的例子，在2009年和2010年先后召回了1000萬輛汽車。 Akio Toyoda, Toyota s boss, also appeared before Congress, contrite and apologetic. 豐田公司掌門人Akio Toyoda也在國會現身，賠禮道歉。 GM, like Toyota, has appointed a worldwide safety tsar to cut through the bureaucracy thatmay have delayed action on the faulty switch. 通用和豐田一樣，任命了一個全球性的安全特使來整飭可能導致拖延問題開關處理的官僚作風。 And in a frenzy of housecleaning, GM has recalled another 2m vehicles in America alone. 在一場狂風驟雨般的清理中，通用單單在美國就另外召回了200萬輛車。 GM looks set to accept moral, if not legal, responsibility. 如果不是法律要求的，通用似乎也會接受道德責任。 The terms of its exit from bankruptcy give immunity to lawsuits for injuries arisingbeforehand. 通用退出破產的條件賦予其豁免于之前傷害訴訟的權利。 But GM is likely to compensate survivors and victims families anyway. 但是通用不管怎樣，可能賠償幸存者以及遇難者家屬。 Toyota had a terrible year after its big recalls, battered by mounting costs and falling sales. 豐田在它的大召回后經歷了困難的一年，深陷于大量的費用以及減少的銷量之中。 But it has since regained the lost ground. 但是它已經重新奪回失去的市場。 It is not yet clear how much of a hammering GM will take. 通用會經受怎樣的打擊現在還不清楚。 But hours before Ms Barra s meeting with Congress, the Insurance Institute for HighwaySafety issued a coveted Top Safety Pick endorsement for the new Chevrolet Malibu, one ofa growing number of well-received cars from GM. 但是在Barra出席國會之前，高速公路安全保險機構頒發了一個令人垂涎的最高安全評價的認證給了通用銷量大漲、廣受歡迎的雪佛蘭邁銳寶。 That suggests it is at least on the road to redemption. 這表明通用至少在救贖的路上。 詞語解釋 1.deal with 應付;對待 He also has some unfamiliar problems to dealwith. 但他還有一些不熟悉的問題需要處理。 Deal with a boss who bullies. 對付以強欺弱的老板。 2.keep up 持續不變;保持;保養 Many japanese strive to keep up egalitarian appearances. 很多日本人努力保持平等待人的形象。 Magritte could not keep up this phlegmatic act, however. 話雖如此，但他似乎無法這種保持冷靜的行為。 3.link to 與連接， 聯系 Why not express those thoughts coherently and all together on a blog or facebook or googleplus post, and link to that from twitter? 為什么不一口氣在博客或者Facebook或者Google Plus的帖子里闡明自己的觀點，再在Twitter上發布相關鏈接呢? I have to say that I am really enjoying my direct link to the cloud, which was inserted in thesoft tissue behind my eye last winter. 我得說，我相當享受與云端的直接鏈接，去年冬天，它們植入了我雙眼下面的軟組織中。 4.fail to 未能 Things change and when you fail to grasp that truth you suffer. 世事變遷，而且你也未能領會承受折磨的真相。 Those who view liquidation of past excesses as the solution fail to understand the risks. 那些認為清除過去的金融過度現象就能解決問題的人，未能理解風險所在。
2023復習正是強化復習階段，在考研英語中占了40分，所以考研英語閱讀是英語科目中重要的一項。名師老師曾建議過考研生需要堅持每天泛讀10-15分鐘的英文原刊。強烈推薦了雜志《經濟學人》.雜志中的文章也是考研英語的主要材料來源.希望考研考生認真閱讀，快速提高考研英語閱讀水平。 Business 商業報道 General Motors woes 通用的悲鳴 What do you recall? 你召回什么? GM is forced to confront its faults 通用被迫面對它的錯誤 WHEN Mary Barra took the wheel at General Motors in January she inherited a company ingood shape. Mary Barra 在二月份接掌通用汽車時，公司運轉態勢良好。 Five years after bankruptcy, its profits were exceeding expectations and its share price wasrising. 破產5年之后，它的利潤增長超過預期，股價也在持續上升。 But the new boss s to-do list was long: fixing GM s loss-making European arm, keeping upmomentum in China amid signs of a slowdown and rejuvenating the product line. 但是新的掌門人面臨著一系列的問題：整頓歐洲分支的虧損問題;在出現衰退跡象的情況下，保持中國市場的發展勢頭并發展生產線。 Ms Barra s predecessor, Dan Akerson, warned her that she would also face curve balls. Barra女士的前任Dan Akerson 告誡她可能也會面臨曲線球。 The first has arrived sooner than she might have expected. 第一個比她預期的來得更快。 What appeared to be a routine recall in mid-February of about 800,000 older models, linkedto a faulty ignition switch, has turned out to be anything but. 在二月中旬看似是例行召回的800000輛舊款車結果顯示只是因為點火開關的缺陷。 The number of cars recalled has leapt to more than 2.6m. 被召回的車已經超過260萬輛。 The company s inept handling of a safety problem that first became apparent a decade agois now linked to the deaths of at least 13 motorists. 公司對于安全問題的笨拙處理，在十年之前首次顯露。現在已經與至少13位駕駛者的死亡有關。 Called before Congress on April 1st to answer for GM s failings Ms Barra said she was deeplysorry but insisted that the post-bankruptcy new GM was not like the old GM, which hadfailed to deal with the ignition switches for years. 4月1號被召到國會回答通用失敗的原因，Barra說她深表遺憾，但是她強調破產重組后的新通用和處理點火開關多年未果的老通用不同。 Politicians and the public alike want to know how such a problem could have remainedunaddressed for so long. 政客和公眾想知道為什么這樣一個問題能夠懸而未決這么久。 Cars are becoming ever more complex machines, with thousands of mechanical andelectronic parts. 汽車構造越來越復雜，有著成千上萬的機械以及電氣構造。 Recalls are not uncommon. 召回并不罕見。 Last year it happened to 22m vehicles in America, compared with 18m in 2023. 去年美國有2200萬汽車召回，而2023年召回了1800萬輛。 In fact, GM was one of only three brands that recalled fewer vehicles than it sold. 實際上，通用曾是召回比售出少的三巨頭之一。 Niggling problems, like squeaks or rattles, that do not affect safety are more common still. 不影響安全的類似于發出吱吱聲或者為嗡嗡聲的瑣碎問題愈發常見。 They may be fixed at a routine service; the owner may never know. 它們有可能在例行服務中被處理好，汽車所有者可能永遠都不會知道。 The growing number of recalls is testament to an improving system for picking up faults. 增加的召回數量是發現問題體系在不斷完善的明證。 But it is very complicated. 但是這個系統很復雜。 Dealers must record replacements of parts under warranty. 經銷商必須在授權下記錄置換部分。 The carmaker needs to spot the trend, recognise it as a problem and then determinewhether or not it is a design fault that requires wholesale replacement. 汽車制造者需要發現這一趨勢，認定其為一個問題，然后確認是否為需要全部替換的設計失誤。 It relies on accurate recording of every warranty replacement in every region, saysAndrew Bergbaum of AlixPartners, a firm of consultants. 咨詢公司AlixPartners的Andrew Bergbaum說：它依賴于每一地區的每一個授權置換的精確記錄。 This system appears to have broken down at old GM. 但是這一體系在老通用貌似沒能施行。 Ms Barra needs to find out why. Barra需要找出其原因。 At the heart of the matter is a widely used ignition switch that has a tendency to slip fromthe on position to off if a driver uses a heavy keychain or bounces down a rough road. 問題的核心是：廣泛使用的點火開關在駕駛者使用重鑰匙串或者在崎嶇路上顛簸時有從開滑落到關的趨向。 A modification was made in 2008 to prevent the problem, which can lead to the engineshutting off, disabling the airbags. 一個裝置在2008年被設計出來解決這一問題，但是它可能導致引擎熄火和安全氣囊的失效。 But despite a growing list of crashes and deaths, GM failed to order a recall for a componentthat would have cost a few dollars at most. 盡管有著上升的撞車及死亡記錄，但是通用并沒有進行召回，雖然這些召回最多只是花一點錢。 This is odd. 這很奇怪。 Most carmakers want to identify and fix problems speedily despite having to bear the cost ofbuying and fitting a new component. 大多數汽車制造者希望及時發現并處理問題，盡管會支付購買以及安裝新元件的費用。 A small part can do great harm, if bad publicity leads to reputational corrosion, lost salesand litigation, which in America can include hefty punitive damages. 千里之堤潰于蟻穴，如果壞的消息傳開導致名譽受損、銷量下降以及被起訴，這在美國預示著高額懲罰性賠償。 Appearing to put profits before safety is also liable to batter a firm s shares, as GM hasdiscovered. 通用證實了，表現得重利益甚于重視安全也會引起公司股票的大跌。 So far Ms Barra has handled the situation well. Barra到目前為止將這個局面處理得很好。 She seems to have acted as soon as she found out something was awry. 她似乎在一發現事情不對，就立即采取行動。 And she has borrowed strategies from Toyota, which was forced into recalling more than 10mvehicles in 2009 and 2010 after worrying instances of unintended acceleration. 她借鑒了豐田公司的策略。豐田在擔心突然加速的例子，在2009年和2010年先后召回了1000萬輛汽車。 Akio Toyoda, Toyota s boss, also appeared before Congress, contrite and apologetic. 豐田公司掌門人Akio Toyoda也在國會現身，賠禮道歉。 GM, like Toyota, has appointed a worldwide safety tsar to cut through the bureaucracy thatmay have delayed action on the faulty switch. 通用和豐田一樣，任命了一個全球性的安全特使來整飭可能導致拖延問題開關處理的官僚作風。 And in a frenzy of housecleaning, GM has recalled another 2m vehicles in America alone. 在一場狂風驟雨般的清理中，通用單單在美國就另外召回了200萬輛車。 GM looks set to accept moral, if not legal, responsibility. 如果不是法律要求的，通用似乎也會接受道德責任。 The terms of its exit from bankruptcy give immunity to lawsuits for injuries arisingbeforehand. 通用退出破產的條件賦予其豁免于之前傷害訴訟的權利。 But GM is likely to compensate survivors and victims families anyway. 但是通用不管怎樣，可能賠償幸存者以及遇難者家屬。 Toyota had a terrible year after its big recalls, battered by mounting costs and falling sales. 豐田在它的大召回后經歷了困難的一年，深陷于大量的費用以及減少的銷量之中。 But it has since regained the lost ground. 但是它已經重新奪回失去的市場。 It is not yet clear how much of a hammering GM will take. 通用會經受怎樣的打擊現在還不清楚。 But hours before Ms Barra s meeting with Congress, the Insurance Institute for HighwaySafety issued a coveted Top Safety Pick endorsement for the new Chevrolet Malibu, one ofa growing number of well-received cars from GM. 但是在Barra出席國會之前，高速公路安全保險機構頒發了一個令人垂涎的最高安全評價的認證給了通用銷量大漲、廣受歡迎的雪佛蘭邁銳寶。 That suggests it is at least on the road to redemption. 這表明通用至少在救贖的路上。 詞語解釋 1.deal with 應付;對待 He also has some unfamiliar problems to dealwith. 但他還有一些不熟悉的問題需要處理。 Deal with a boss who bullies. 對付以強欺弱的老板。 2.keep up 持續不變;保持;保養 Many japanese strive to keep up egalitarian appearances. 很多日本人努力保持平等待人的形象。 Magritte could not keep up this phlegmatic act, however. 話雖如此，但他似乎無法這種保持冷靜的行為。 3.link to 與連接， 聯系 Why not express those thoughts coherently and all together on a blog or facebook or googleplus post, and link to that from twitter? 為什么不一口氣在博客或者Facebook或者Google Plus的帖子里闡明自己的觀點，再在Twitter上發布相關鏈接呢? I have to say that I am really enjoying my direct link to the cloud, which was inserted in thesoft tissue behind my eye last winter. 我得說，我相當享受與云端的直接鏈接，去年冬天，它們植入了我雙眼下面的軟組織中。 4.fail to 未能 Things change and when you fail to grasp that truth you suffer. 世事變遷，而且你也未能領會承受折磨的真相。 Those who view liquidation of past excesses as the solution fail to understand the risks. 那些認為清除過去的金融過度現象就能解決問題的人，未能理解風險所在。
