[考博英语]2017考博英语阅读题源经济学人文章每日精析（二十二）_考博_旭晨教育

2017 考博英语 阅读题源经济学人文章每日精析（二十二）

考博英语阅读大部分博士研究生招生院校都使用《经济学人》杂志文章作为题源，旭晨教育考博频道为考博生们将其中的文章进行深度分析，希望能提高大家的考博英语阅读水平，读懂长难句。

导读

作为世界著名时装零售品牌，C&A于1841年始创于荷兰，并以提供年轻新颖且引领潮流的时尚精品而著称。今天，C&A在全球20多个国家占据强大的市场主导地位，拥有超过1,700家专卖店，在全球有超过36,000名员工。

2005年，C&A进入中国市场。目前，C&A已经在中国20个城市开设了46家专卖店。C&A在中国高速发展，未来C&A将走进更多的城市，走进更多中国消费者的生活。

C&A隶属于COFRA控股集团，COFRA旗下拥有零售、商业地产、私人股权投资和金融服务等相关产业。总部设立在瑞士Zug。COFRA致力于在中国的长期发展。

Ghosts in the machine

挥之不去的“幽灵”

How to confront a dark corporate past

如何面对一个企业黑暗的过去

A Dutch case suggests firms with horrible stains on their history are better off facing up to them

荷兰的一个案例表明有不堪历史的公司最好的方法是直面过去

Oct 29th 2016 | From the print edition

2016年10月29日 印刷版

“WE THOUGHT we knew our story, and we knew it wasn’t great,” says Maurice Brenninkmeijer, chairman of COFRA Holding, which owns C&A, a 175-year-old Dutch clothing retailer with over 2,000 stores globally. Yet the full account of how the German branch of his family behaved in the second world war “tore through your heart when you heard it”, he adds. Mr Brenninkmeijer’s ancestors—considered to be genial, virtuous, Catholic and reserved—turned out to have been avid Nazi collaborators. Old letters revealed cosy, corrupt, ties to Hermann Goering. From 1942 onwards C&A and Siemens, a German engineering firm, together exploited forced Eastern European labourers in Germany, keeping them in such a wretched state that malnutrition killed several women and children. C&A profited from “Aryanisation”, grabbing business and property from terrified Jewish owners. Perhaps worst, it used Jewish tailors and leather-workers, corralled in Lodz, a dreadful ghetto in Poland. Of some 200,000 people trapped in inhumane conditions there, only 1,000 survived to liberation.

COFRA控股集团的主席Maurice Brenninkmeijer是C&A公司的的股东。C&A是一个有着175年历史的服装销售商，在全球有2000家分店。Maurice Brenninkmeijer曾说过“我了解我们的过去，我也知道它并不光彩”。当他在了解了其德国分店在二战期间的情况后，他说，“真的是让我痛彻心扉”。人们认为Brenninkmeijer先生的祖先和蔼、善良、宽容大量、内敛。但实际上，他是纳粹党合作者。以往的书信揭露了他是如何贪图享乐，腐败以及如何和Hermann Goering(赫尔曼·威廉·戈林，纳粹德国的一位政军领袖，与“元首”阿道夫·希特勒的关系极为亲密，在纳粹党内有相当巨大的影响力。)相互勾结。从1942年起，C&A和著名的德国工程公司西门子强迫欧洲东部的劳工为他们工作，给他们带去悲惨的生活，许多女人和孩子因为营养不良而死亡。C&A从“反犹排犹”运动中盈利，攫取犹太人的的企业和财产。更糟糕的是，犹太裁缝和皮革工人被关押在波兰的罗兹贫民窟，约200,000的人被困在毫无人道的生活环境中，最后只有1000人活到了解放。

account:n.记述，报告

tore:v.撕，分裂，撕破

ancestor:n.祖先

genial:adj.和蔼的

virtuous:adj.善良的

Catholic:adj.宽容大量的

reserved:adj.矜持的

Wretched:adj.可怜的

译者注：“反犹排犹”：希特勒纳粹主义思想理论的核心之一，便是种族优越论，竭力鼓吹要保持雅利安人(指欧洲日耳曼人)种族的纯洁性，就必须排斥和征服劣等的犹太民族。

Such grim details are now public thanks to Mark Spoerer, a historian in Regensburg who specialises inarchival research to assess companies’ dark pasts, putting “immoral business behaviour” into historical context. Remarkably, his new book “C&A: A family business in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom 1911-1961”, was commissioned by the notoriously reclusive family. Mr Spoerer, over five years and with generous funds, was given unrestricted access to private files, conducted interviews freely and had the right to publish all he found.

雷根斯堡有一位历史学家叫Mark Spoere，他专门通过研究档案来了解企业的黑暗历史，将“不道德的企业行为”结合当时的历史背景，并公布。值得一提的是，他的新书“C&A:德国的家族企业，荷兰和1911-1961年的大不列颠联合王国”是受到了来自这个恶名召彰的隐世家族的委托。在过去的五年中，由于资金充足， Mr Spoerer可以自由查看私人档案，采访并且享有公开他的发现的权利。

grim:adj.冷酷的

archival:adj.关于档案的

immoral:adj.不道德的

remarkably:adv.引人注目的

commissione:v.受委托

notoriously:adv.恶名昭彰的

reclusive:adj.隐居的

Being low-profile went from being something worthy, to something strange, and now suspect, says Mr Brenninkmeijer, in a rare interview. Though some relatives were said to be reluctant to confront oldhorrors, he says all now agree on the need for a sort of corporate therapy, “so we have an understanding of our history, not as a burden but as a platform”. This, he says, helps the family get a deeper sense of itself. A core of 30 family members are active owners and managers of the firm; around 1,300 Brenninkmeijers form an outer circle.

在一次难得的采访当中，Mr Brenninkmeijer说到，放低姿态的过程，一定是从引人注目到鹤立鸡群再到千夫所指的过程。他还说，尽管部分相关人士不情愿去面对过去的不堪，但是他们现在都需要一种“公司疗法”，“了解了我们的企业背景，我们就可以把它当作是过去的一个教训而非负担”。他表示，只有这样才能帮助了企业更加了解自己。该公司决策和管理层由家族30个的核心成员组成，而公司外围的圈子也是由约1300家族成员构成。

reluctant:adj.不情愿的，勉强的

horror:n.恐怖

platform:n.平台

core:n.中心

It is rare for a company to confront an ugly past so openly, especially as C&A faced no loomingpressure from victims’ relatives, journalists or other outsiders. Firms are most likely to do so if they have a strong international presence and deal directly with consumers, says Mr Spoerer. Another corporate historian, Lutz Budrass, assessed 100 companies that thrived in Germany in 1938 and still exist in some form today. He suggests that only 30 have yet organised a serious scholarly assessment of their wartime activities, while 40 have done nothing at all, including five companies which, he says, “were very heavily involved” in Nazi crimes.

很少有企业会愿意如此开放地直面其丑陋的过去，其中特别是C&A公司。该公司面临着来自受害者家属，记者和其他圈外人的潜在压力。Mr Spoerer说，国际知名并且需要直接和消费者打交道的的大公司更愿意坦白。受聘于某公司一位历史学家Lutz Budrass曾对100多家在1938的德国非常繁盛，至今依旧存在经营活动的公司进行研究。据发现，只有30家企业还会针对他们的战时活动组织庄重的学术评价，还有40家则闭口不提，其中包括5家与纳粹罪行有密切相关的公司。

looming:adi.隐约出现的

outsider:n.圈外人

thrive:v.兴盛

He points to Deutsche Post, a successor of Reichspost, and much of the German steel industry as particularly hostile to the idea of exploring their pasts. Siemens has made only partial efforts to assess its wartime role. In the car industry, Volkswagen, BMW and Daimler have owned up to their intimatelyclose associations with Nazis, but other firms have not. Mr Budrass is especially dismissive of German aircraft companies. He was commissioned in 2002 by Lufthansa to write part of its 75th anniversary, especially in explaining its use of 8,000 forced labourers in 1944. But the firm refused to publish it,acceding only this year once Mr Budrass brought out a separate book on the airline’s past. He also argues that Airbus, the European aircraft-manufacturing group which incorporated old entitiesincluding Messerschmitt (one of the largest users of concentration-camp labour), is “trapped by fear of its past” in failing to commission a proper history.

他指出，作为“帝国邮政”继承者的德国邮政总部以及许多德国钢铁公司特别反对他人勘察自己公司的过去。西门子只是轻描淡写地评价了一下战时所扮演的角色。在汽车业中，只有大众，奔驰和戴姆勒曾私下与纳粹有着密切的联系。Budrass先生非常鄙视德国航空公司。2002年，汉莎航空公司曾委托他完成部分公司75周年纪念词，要求公司解释1944年8000个劳动工人受强迫为他们所用的原因。但是汉莎航空拒绝公开，最后做出让步，同意Budrass先生为公司历史出版一本单独的书，但仅此一次下不为例。Budrass认为，欧洲航空制造集团——空中巴”，曾收购了包括梅塞施密特式战斗机(这是集中营战士用得最多的战斗机之一)在内的一些战时企业。由于该公司未能对当年的行为作出解释，如今被不光彩的历史所困，止步不前。

Reichspost:n.帝国邮政

steel:n.钢铁

hostile:adj.敌人的

intimately:adv.私下的，密切的

dismissive:adj.轻蔑的

anniversary:n.周年纪念日

acced:v.正式加入

manufacture:n.制造业

entity:n.实体

How cleansing is the sunshine?

如何看见雨后的阳光?

Perhaps it is not irrational for firms to shy away from difficult memories. And German firms are moretransparent than most. Some 6,000 companies and the German state contributed to a €5.1bn ($4.5bn) fund created in 2000 to compensate victims of forced labour. By contrast, it took until 2014 for foreign relatives of holocaust victims transported by SNCF, the French railway, to be allowed to seek compensation from the state. Many Japanese firms can trace their histories back to wartime exploits, including the use of slave labour, but are far less likely to assess what went on than German ones. Similarly it is rare for American financial firms to admit to profiting from businesses related to slavery in the mid-19th century, as Aetna and JPMorgan Chase have. Nor is there any serious discussion to suggest firms which made money in apartheid South Africa should today offer compensation.

也许众多企业想要回避耻辱的过去并非不理智。德国的公司比大多数公司更加透明。6000家德国公司和德国政府共同贡献了51亿欧元(45亿美元)于2000年创建了补偿强迫劳动受害者的基金会。相比之下，那些大屠杀时被法国铁路局SNCF运回的受害者的家属，直到2014年才被允许寻求国家赔偿。日本许多公司的历史可以追溯到二战时期，包括使用奴隶劳动，但他们能做到像德国的公司一样对受害者家属进行赔偿的可能性微乎其微。同样，在美国的金融公司中，几乎没有公司能像安泰和摩根大通一样承认他们是从19世纪中叶的奴隶制中获益。而针对当年从南非种族隔离运动中大发不义之财的企业是否应该进行赔偿的严肃的讨论也是鲜有耳闻。

irrational： a 不合理的

transparent： a 透明的

holocaust ：n 大屠杀

apartheid ：n (以往南非的)种族隔离制度

Mr Brenninkmeijer and the historians say that understanding the past brings deeper strengths—virtues that can help the business today. Finding out the whole story can be liberating and “helps you understand who you are”, he says. The boss of C&A is preparing for members of the sixth generation of his family to run the private firm and wants them to learn how to hold serious discussions of ethical dilemmas, citing as an example his own worry over the firm’s high consumer-credit charges in Brazil in the early 1990s.

Brenninkmeijer表示，了解过去才能被赋予更强大的力量---美德才是企业发展源源不断的力量。他说，挖掘完整的故事才能“释放”并且“帮助企业发现自我”。(期待您的翻译，您可以将翻译留言到文章底部，第二天会有详细解析哦。)

Liberate： v 释放

Dilemma ：n 进退两难

He argues, too, that managers must give more thought to their supply chain, as in Bangladesh where 30% of the firm’s goods are made, and consider how best to assess whether child labour or dangerous conditions exist; in 2012 a fire in a Dhaka factory supplying Western firms, including C&A, killed 117 people. If Mr Brenninkmeijer is right, then instead of worrying about skeletons in the cupboard, a firm that squarely faces up to its yesterdays should learn how to behave better today.

他认为，管理者必须更多的考虑他们的供应链，如C&A公司30%的产品就是在孟加拉国生产制造的。于此同时，还要考虑是否存在童工以及安全隐患;2012年，在达卡的一家供应厂商发生火灾，并导致117人死亡，供应公司包括了C&A在内的几家西方公司。如果Brenninkmeije先生所言不虚，那么一个企业要做的不是担心家丑外扬，而是要用更好的今天来直面过去。

skeletons in the cupboard ：家丑

Squarely ：adv 直角的