2016年考研英语一阅读 Text 4 原文翻译及答案解析

There will eventually come a day when The New York Times ceases to publish stories on newsprint. Exactly when that day will be is a matter of debate. “Sometime in the future,” the paper’s publisher said back in 2010.

终有一天，《纽约时报》将停止在新闻纸上发表文章。具体何时会是这一天尚存争议。该报出版商在2010年曾表示：“未来某个时候。”

Nostalgia for ink on paper and the rustle of pages aside, there’s plenty of incentive to ditch print. The infrastructure required to make a physical newspaper — printing presses, delivery trucks — isn’t just expensive; it’s excessive at a time when online-only competitors don’t have the same set of financial constraints. Readers are migrating away from print anyway. And though print ad sales still dwarf their online and mobile counterparts, revenue from print is still declining.

抛开对纸墨和书页沙沙声的怀旧之情，放弃印刷版的理由也很充分。制作实体报纸所需的基础设施——印刷机、送货卡车——不仅昂贵；而且在仅有在线竞争对手没有同样财务约束的时代，显得过于庞大。读者正逐渐远离印刷版。尽管印刷广告销售额仍远高于在线和移动广告，但印刷版的收入仍在下降。

Overhead may be high and circulation lower, but rushing to eliminate its print edition would be a mistake, says BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti.

BuzzFeed首席执行官乔纳·佩雷蒂表示，虽然管理费用可能很高、发行量较低，但急于淘汰印刷版将是一个错误。

Peretti says the Times shouldn’t waste time getting out of the print business, but only if they go about doing it the right way. “Figuring out a way to accelerate that transition would make sense for them,” he said, “but if you discontinue it, you’re going to have your most loyal customers really upset with you.”

佩雷蒂认为，《纽约时报》不应浪费时间退出印刷业务，但前提是以正确的方式进行。他说：“找到一种加速转型的方式对他们来说是有意义的，但如果你们停止印刷，最忠实的客户会对你们非常不满。”

Sometimes that’s worth making a change anyway. Peretti gives the example of Netflix discontinuing its DVD-mailing service to focus on streaming. “It was seen as a blunder,” he said. The move turned out to be foresighted. And if Peretti were in charge at the Times? “I wouldn’t pick a year to end print,” he said. “I would raise prices and make it into more of a legacy product.”

有时无论如何都值得做出改变。佩雷蒂举了Netflix停止DVD邮寄服务以专注于流媒体的例子。他说：“这曾被视为一个失误。”但这一举措被证明是有远见的。如果佩雷蒂掌管《纽约时报》会怎样？他说：“我不会设定一个结束印刷的年份。我会提高价格，使其更像一个遗产产品。”

The most loyal customers would still get the product they favor, the idea goes, and they’d feel like they were helping sustain the quality of something they believe in. “So if you’re overpaying for print, you could feel like you were helping,” Peretti said. “Then increase it at a higher rate each year and essentially try to generate additional revenue.” In other words, if you’re going to make a print product, make it for the people who are already obsessed with it. Which may be what the Times is doing already. Getting the print edition seven days a week costs nearly $500 a year — more than twice as much as a digital-only subscription.

根据这一想法，最忠实的客户仍将获得他们青睐的产品，并会感觉自己正在帮助维持所相信事物的质量。佩雷蒂说：“所以，如果你为印刷版多付了钱，你可能会觉得自己在帮忙。然后每年以更高的速率提价，本质上试图产生额外收入。”换句话说，如果你要制作印刷产品，就为那些已经痴迷于它的人制作。这可能正是《纽约时报》已经在做的。每周七天的印刷版订阅费用接近每年500美元——是纯数字订阅费用的两倍多。

“It’s a really hard thing to do and it’s a tremendous luxury that BuzzFeed doesn’t have a legacy business,” Peretti remarked. “But we’re going to have questions like that where we have things we’re doing that don’t make sense when the market changes and the world changes. In those situations, it’s better to be more aggressive than less aggressive.”

佩雷蒂评论道：“这真的很难做到，而且BuzzFeed没有遗产业务是一种巨大的奢侈。但我们将面临类似的问题，即当市场和世界变化时，我们正在做的事情可能不再合理。在这种情况下，更积极比不那么积极要好。”