2010年考研英语二阅读 Text 3 原文翻译及答案解析

Over the past decade, many companies had perfected the art of creating automatic behaviors - habits - among consumers. These habits have helped companies earn billions of dollars when customers eat snacks or wipe counters almost without thinking, often in response to a carefully designed set of daily cues.

过去十年间，许多公司已完善了在消费者中创造自动化行为——即习惯——的艺术。这些习惯使公司在顾客几乎不假思索地吃零食或擦拭柜台时，赚取了数十亿美元，而这往往是应对一套精心设计的日常暗示的结果。

"There are fundamental public health problems, like dirty hands instead of a soap habit, that remain killers only because we can't figure out how to change people's habits," said Dr. Curtis, the director of the Hygiene Center at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. "We wanted to learn from private industry how to create new behaviors that happen automatically."

伦敦卫生与热带医学院卫生中心主任柯蒂斯博士表示：‘存在根本性的公共卫生问题，例如因不洗手而非养成用肥皂的习惯而引发的健康威胁，这些问题之所以仍在致命，只是因为我们无法弄清如何改变人们的习惯。’‘我们希望从私营企业那里学习如何创造自动发生的新行为。’

The companies that Dr. Curtis turned to - Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Unilever - had invested hundreds of millions of dollars finding the subtle cues in consumers' lives that corporations could use to introduce new routines.

柯蒂斯博士求助的公司——宝洁、高露洁棕榄和联合利华——已投入数亿美元，寻找消费者生活中那些可供企业利用以引入新日常惯例的微妙暗示。

If you look hard enough, you'll find that many of the products we use every day - chewing gums, skin moisturizers, disinfecting wipes, air fresheners, water purifiers, health snacks, teeth whiteners, fabric softeners, vitamins - are results of manufactured habits. A century ago, few people regularly brushed their teeth multiple times a day. Today, because of shrewd advertising and public health campaigns, many Americans habitually give their pearly whites a cavity-preventing scrub twice a day, often with Colgate, Crest or one of the other brands.

如果你仔细观察就会发现，我们日常使用的许多产品——口香糖、皮肤保湿剂、消毒湿巾、空气清新剂、净水器、健康零食、牙齿美白剂、织物柔软剂、维生素——都是人为制造习惯的结果。一个世纪前，很少有人每天多次刷牙。如今，由于精明的广告宣传和公共卫生运动，许多美国人习惯性地每天两次清洁他们洁白的牙齿以预防蛀牙，通常使用的是高露洁、佳洁士或其他品牌。

A few decades ago, many people didn't drink water outside of a meal. Then beverage companies started bottling the production of far-off springs, and now office workers unthinkingly sip bottled water all day long. Chewing gum, once bought primarily by adolescent boys, is now featured in commercials as a breath freshener and teeth cleanser for use after a meal. Skin moisturizers are advertised as part of morning beauty rituals, slipped in between hair brushing and putting on makeup.

几十年前，许多人除了用餐时间外不喝水。随后，饮料公司开始瓶装遥远泉水的产出，如今办公室职员整天不假思索地啜饮瓶装水。口香糖过去主要由青少年男孩购买，现在在广告中被定位为餐后使用的口气清新剂和牙齿清洁剂。皮肤保湿剂则被宣传为晨间美容仪式的一部分，介于梳头和化妆之间使用。

"Our products succeed when they become part of daily or weekly patterns," said Carol Berning, a consumer psychologist who recently retired from Procter & Gamble, the company that sold $76 billion of Tide, Crest and other products last year. "Creating positive habits is a huge part of improving our consumers' lives, and it's essential to making new products commercially viable."

最近从宝洁公司退休的消费者心理学家卡罗尔·伯宁表示：‘当我们的产品成为每日或每周惯例的一部分时，它们就成功了。’‘创造积极的习惯是提升消费者生活品质的重要组成部分，对于使新产品在商业上可行也至关重要。’

Through experiments and observation, social scientists like Dr. Berning have learned that there is power in tying certain behaviors to habitual cues through ruthless advertising. As this new science of habit has emerged, controversies have erupted when the tactics have been used to sell questionable beauty creams or unhealthy foods.

通过实验和观察，像伯宁博士这样的社会科学家已经认识到，通过无情的广告宣传将某些行为与习惯性暗示联系起来，这其中蕴含着力量。随着这门新的习惯科学的兴起，当这些策略被用于推销可疑的美容面霜或不健康食品时，争议也随之爆发。