商業英語世界觀-世界公民文化中心

Happy New Year!
明天1/1(一)工商時報內的”世界公民weekly”精彩內容是：
 




Street Smart vs. book smart 是街頭還是書本泡出來的聰明?
好用的美國俚語
Debug：找出英文錯誤，像擦掉眼鏡上的一層霧水！

前幾天剛好在英語新聞裡聽到一個詞Off the cuff，某官員談到社會住宅問題時，說到這不是一個Off-the-cuff idea，而是深思熟慮之後的想法。Off-the-cuff是什麼呢？Cuff就是襯衫的袖口。Off the cuff的意思是：不經心地，臨時想起的，或者是很隨便的。當你回答一個問題，而你對你的答案又不太確定時，你就可以用off the cuff這片語。舉一個例子。
 You want to know how many people work for our company? Off the cuff, I'd say about two thousand. But I'll have to look up the exact number and get back to you later. 
你想知道我們這個機構有多少工作人員？我的印象好像是2千人。但是，我得去查一下確切的數字，然後再告訴你。 
或者，還有個例子，某人正在考慮買一棟房子。他正在跟他的房地產經紀商討論借款和利率問題，計算每月要付多少錢。房地產經紀商說： 
If you want to borrow 80% of the total amount, with the interest rate at 3.5%, off the cuff, you probably will have to pay a little over fifteen hundred dollars a month. But I've got to do a detailed calculation before I can give you an exact number. 
要是你想借八成，利率是3.5%，你大概每月要付一千五百多美元。不過我得仔細算了以後才能告訴你確切數字。 

品牌改logo是時勢所趨，但近來美國服裝國民品牌GAP更新商標在Facebook、Twitter等網站引發軒然大波，甚至最後不得不換回原來商標。我們一起看看生動且戲劇化的事件始末。品牌，不是你說了就算！ 
事件：
The US clothing retailer revealed a new logo across its website in the US in October but it was immediately derided as “unsophisticated,” “uncreative” and “devaluing the brand”.
美國服裝零售業者今年十月在網站上發表了一個新logo，很快地就被譏嘲為「不精緻」、「沒創意」、「降低品牌價值」。
For the past 20 years, the letters G-A-P have resided in a dark blue square, but recently the management of the clothing company announced that the letters had escaped and that a smaller blue square would henceforth sit above the P. All hell then broke loose. Thousands of people protested online and, a week later, Gap backed down. The big box was going to stay.
過去二十年來，在服裝公司Gap的logo中，“G-a-p”三個字母一直放在一個深藍色的方塊裡。Gap管理層近來宣佈，三個字母將跳出方塊，改為在字母“p”的上方壓一個小的藍色方塊。此舉掀起了軒然大波，成千上萬人在網上抗議。一周後，Gap打了退堂鼓，還是回到原來的大方塊。
The new Gap logo was not obviously an improvement on the old one. And the sight of management listening to customers and accepting humiliation in order to satisfy them seemed like a good thing. Yet what happened was not really good at all. It isn’t progress when a company panics and surrenders when faced by an armchair army of protesters. It is feeble.
Gap的新logo並不見得比舊的好。這事件表面上是管理層聽取消費者意見、為迎合消費者喜好而妥協讓步，似乎是件好事情。事實上並非如此。面對只知空談的抗議大軍，一家公司驚慌失措地舉手投降，這不是進步，而是軟弱。
反應：
Once Marka Hansen, the company’s president for North America, got wind of the scale of the protest, she wrote a piece on The Huffington Post defending the “contemporary and current” new logo. Gap then attempted to initiate a crowd sourcing project by asking its Facebook fans to “share their designs”.
Gap北美區總裁瑪卡漢森風聞抗議的規模後，很快在The Huffington Post上發表了一篇文章，說新logo“很有現代色彩和潮流感”。但Gap也同時嘗試在Facebook上發起群眾外包，讓粉絲分享自己的設計。
The company put this message on its Facebook page:
"Thanks for everyone’s input on the new logo! We’ve had the same logo for 20+ years, and this is just one of the things we’re changing. We know this logo created a lot of buzz and we’re thrilled to see passionate debates unfolding! So much so we’re asking you to share your designs. We love our version, but we’d like to see other ideas. Stay tuned for details in the next few days on this crowd sourcing project."
Gap 也在Facebook上說：謝謝各位對新logo的意見。二十年來我們logo一直沒變，現在有一些變化。我們知道新logo引發了一些聲音，熱情的辯論讓我們受竉若驚。所以我們希望邀請你分享你的設計，我們喜歡新logo，也樂見其他的想法。請持續關注我們新的群眾外包計劃。
This drew further criticism and Gap has since scrapped the new logo and crowd sourcing project and retained its original 20-year old “blue box” brand logo.
此舉再度引起批評，Gap只好放棄新logo和群眾外包計劃，回到原來的藍底招牌logo。
"There may be a time to evolve our logo, but if and when that time comes, we'll handle it in a different way," Hansen said, adding that the project was not the right one to offer up to "crowd sourcing."  Crowd sourcing the new logo, or allowing fans to help design a new one, was the company's original solution to the issue of quelling consumer confusion. Marketers are increasingly letting fans help or fully make decisions, including PepsiCo Inc.'s Doritos brand having fans create and vote on Super Bowl commercials. But a logo change left up to the crowd is much rarer.
學習重點：
漢森表示，如果將來得改logo，會以不同方式處理。改logo這件事，原來就不適合「群眾外包」。Gap想以群眾外包方式解決消費者的困惑，反而越弄越糟。以往確實有些案例，像百事可樂或是多力多滋都讓粉絲投票他們的超級杯廣告。但讓群眾來改logo卻很罕見。
She should not have capitulated. By letting tweeters see the whites of her eyes, she has done other companies a disservice. Now that the mob has got its way on this, it is going to be harder for other companies to insist on their management’s right to manage.
她不應該舉手投降。她讓網友靠得太近，也造成了其他公司的麻煩。由於網友們在這件事上想怎麼樣就怎麼樣，其它公司要堅持管理層的管理權，就會變得更加困難。
關鍵重點：
armchair: 空談
armchair原意是扶椅，但它有一個有意思的引申，是「沒有經驗的」、「空談的」，可想而知坐在扶椅上很舒適，只動口不動手，armchair strategist，就是空談的策略家。
crowdsourcing: 群眾外包、藉由網路上的群眾幫忙解決問題
同義詞是Wisdom-of-the-crowd，一般公司把內部的工作外包給體制外的人運作，英文叫做outsourcing。把outsourcing的out改成crowd（群眾）這個字，變成crowdsourcing，就有著把工作或者問題發包給網路上的群眾幫忙解決的意思在。
see the whites of her eyes: 讓人看穿
讓人看到你的眼白，這個比喻來自美國十八世紀將軍William Prescott 的名言，"Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes" 。意思是等到敵人很接近的時候再開火。也有深一層隱喻，攻擊之前，請先全盤瞭解你的敵人。
get one's way: 隨心所欲、為所欲為
Get one's way意思是想做什麼就做什麼。也可以用have one's way。
例句:
He gets everything [it all] his own way. 他無論什麼事都是愛怎麼做就怎麼做.
Have it your own way. 你愛怎麼說就怎麼說吧.
本文刊於99/12/18工商時報"世界公民weekly"。每週訊息更新，歡迎訂閱電子報。

近來校園頻傳霸凌事件，「霸凌」這個字一下竄紅起來，原來「霸凌」取英文字bully 譯音，bully一詞是指「逞威風、欺凌的人」，音與義都說得過去。今天世界公民周報我們就來談談這個有意思的字bully。
Bully最直接的聯想就是bull（公牛），我們說上漲的市場叫bull market，牛頭犬也就叫做bull dog。Bully一定就是負面意思嗎?
霸凌以外的Bully

今天繼續這一週的Debug例句~"這東西擺哪裡?"英文怎麼說才道地?
Where do you put this? (X)      
Where does this go? (O)

Don’t waste your efforts again. (X)
Save your breath. (O)
我們都知道breath的意思是「呼吸」，”save one’s breath”就是省省你的呼吸，說話的進行就是在我們一呼一吸之間，因此要人不要浪費口舌就是省省呼吸。有時也被說成”save one’s energy”，它對應的中文還可以是「白費力氣」。
那麼「白費心思」用英語怎麼說？是bother one’s head for nothing。
講英文時不要被中文困住了！揪出更多bug，你需要加入世界公民一對一！