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  3. One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage ove

One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage ove

admin2015-03-25  60
问题     One of the most startling things about the post-crisis landscape is how tone-deaf the wealthiest Americans remain to outrage over their Croesus-like pay packages.【F1】Silver medals should certainly be handed out to the many executives and corporate lawyers who were complaining last week about the new Dodd-Frank bill, which includes a rule requiring companies to disclose the difference in pay between their chief executive and their lowest-level workers. It would be a "logistical nightmare," these titans of industry cried, for firms to compile this information.
    Well, maybe, but if you issue pay stubs, surely you can tally them up.【F2】The real nightmare will be when the public sees the numbers, which will illuminate just how huge the U. S. pay gap has become. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal think tank based in Washington, the average S&P 500 CEO takes home 263 times what his cheapest laborer does. While CEO pay is indeed down from its pre-crisis highs in 2007, it’s still double what it was in the 1990s, and eight times the level in the 1950s.
    Such facts are inevitably followed by the impossible-to-answer question, do they deserve it?【F3】While the corporate world has certainly gotten more complex over the last 50 years, it’s hard to make the case that CEOs themselves have gotten any smarter, or that investors are doing a better job of judging a CEO’s success. Compensation levels are all too often driven by short-term thinking. The CEOs of the 50 firms that laid off the most workers since the onset of the economic crisis took home 42 percent more pay in 2009 than their peers did—largely because cutting workers boosts short-term profits and appeals to Wall Street.
    Yet a growing body of academic research suggests that downsizing doesn’t always lead to increased profitability over the longer haul, or even lower costs.【F4】There are many reasons for this, ranging from the fact that companies going into layoff mode often lose their best workers to competitors, to the toll taken on R&D spending, which is what produces the revenue and growth potential of the future.
    While one can argue the merits of layoffs on a company-by-company basis, what’s striking is that the executives who are the most willing to ax workers also seem to be the least likely to tighten their own belts.【F5】If nothing else, it could be the starting point of a conversation in which America’s business leaders explain, to their shareholders and to the wider public, exactly why they need so much money to get the job done.
【F5】
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答案最后，美国的商业领袖们可以以此作为对话的出发点，向股东们和广大群众明确解释为什么他们需要这么多工资才能把工作做好。
解析 本句属于复合句，which引导的定语从句修饰前面的conversation，而在这个定语从句中又包含一个由why引导的宾语从句。本句的翻译难点之一在于对英语惯用语If nothing else的理解，这个短语的意思相当于Last but not least，因此在翻译时直接译成“最后”。另一个难点是itcould be the starting point与which从句的顺序，如果直接译成“这是一个对话的出发点，在这个出发点上……”显得比较哆嗦，因此翻译时用“美国的商业领袖们”作主语，用一个动词把“对话的出发点”连接起来，这样就比较符合汉语的表达习惯，也比较简洁。句中的money如果直译成“金钱”可能让人容易误会，因此直接译为“工资”。
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