考研

　　2022考研英语复习要抓紧，尤其是英语阅读占得分值会比较多。考研英语阅读能力想提升，还需要考生不断地日积月累阅读文章才能进步！文都网校考研小编为大家分享2022考研英语经济学人：后贝索斯时代，希望能帮助到大家~【文末领资料】

2022考研英语经济学人:后贝索斯时代

　　On February 2nd Amazon, America’s third-most-valuable public company, announced its best-ever quarter. Propelled by the covid-19 pandemic, which has confined consumers to their homes, the firm reported that quarterly sales had risen 44% year on year, and exceeded $100bn for the first time.

　　2月2日，美国市值第三大的上市公司亚马逊公布了其有史以来最好的一次季度业绩。新冠肺炎疫情的来袭将消费者都困在了家中，据该公司报告称，其上季度的销售额同比增长了44%，首次跨越1000亿美元大关。

　　It was a barnstorming performance. But it was not the main story. On the same day the firm announced that Jeff Bezos, its boss and founder, will step down as chief executive this summer after nearly three decades in charge.

　　虽然业绩如此耀眼，但这并非故事的主线。就在同一天，亚马逊宣布其老板兼创始人杰夫·贝索斯在执掌该公司近30年后，将于今年夏天卸任首席执行官一职。

　　Mr Bezos will not leave the company. He plans to boot himself upstairs to become executive chairman. That role, he said, will allow him to remain “engaged in important Amazon initiatives”, but also give him more time to focus on other interests, notably space travel, fighting climate change and the Washington Post, a newspaper he bought in 2013.

　　当然，贝索斯并不会离开亚马逊。他计划就任执行董事一职。他表示，这一职位将使他能继续“参与亚马逊的重要项目”，同时也让他有更多的时间专注于其他事业，尤其是太空旅行、应对气候变化以及他在2013年收购的《华盛顿邮报》。

　　His replacement as CEO will be Andy Jassy, a long-serving Amazon employee who built and runs Amazon Web Services (AWS), the firm’s highly profitable cloud-computing division.

　　安迪·贾西将接任亚马逊首席执行官一职。贾西是亚马逊的老员工，过去他主要负责亚马逊最赚钱的云计算部门网络服务的建设和管理。

　　The news prompted gushing tributes to a man who began selling books online in 1994 with a recycled wooden door for a desk. Bernstein, a broker, described Mr Bezos as the “greatest of all time”. Mr Bezos has certainly made a mark. In 2019 Amazon delivered 3.5bn parcels, one for every other human being on the planet—and that was before the pandemic turbocharged online shopping.

　　这一消息引发了人们对贝索斯的热烈赞美，1994年，贝索斯以一扇二手门板作为公司的办公桌，开始在网上卖书。经纪公司伯恩斯坦将贝索斯称为“有史以来最伟大的人物”。贝索斯无疑创造了历史。2019年，亚马逊递送了35亿个包裹，相当于地球上每两个人就收到了一个包裹——而这还是在疫情推动网购热潮之前。

　　His rigorous, tight-fisted insistence that Amazon’s employees treat every day as if it were “day one” at a hard-pressed startup has helped the firm move into new lines of business, from smart speakers and video-streaming to advertising and cloud-computing. Its valuation has risen 3,000-fold since its market debut in 1997.

　　他厉行节俭，严格要求亚马逊员工把每一天都当作是在一家困难重重的初创公司的“第一天”，这帮助公司开拓了从智能音箱、流视频媒体到广告和云计算的一个又一个新业务领域。自1997年上市以来，亚马逊的市值已经上涨了3000倍。

　　Mr Jassy, in other words, will take control of a firm in an enviable position. Amazon is not without problems—it has struggled in some overseas markets, and faces attention from trustbusters in America and elsewhere. Still, few firms are in better nick to face those challenges down.

　　换句话说，贾西将接管一家状况极佳的公司。但亚马逊并非没有问题——它在一些海外市场举步维艰，并且面临着来自美国和其他地方的反垄断调查。尽管如此，很少有公司比亚马逊更有能力去应对这些挑战。

　　Mr Bezos, whose near-$200bn fortune is even larger than Mr Gates’s, may be planning a similar change of focus. He is sympathetic to at least some environmental concerns: he has said before that growing resource consumption is not compatible with a finite planet.

　　贝索斯的个人资产(近2000亿美元)甚至比盖茨还要多，他可能也像盖茨一样计划转移事业的重心。他尤其对环境问题很关心：他曾说过，资源消耗的不断增长与地球有限的资源相矛盾。

　　Of his many other businesses, Blue Origin, his rocketry firm, is widely reckoned to be his favourite. Like Elon Musk, who this year overtook him as the world’s richest man, Mr Bezos is a fully paid-up space cadet. Blue Origin is already involved in America’s plans to return astronauts to the moon.

　　在他的众多其他业务中，人们普遍认为火箭公司“蓝色起源”是他较热爱的事业。与今年取代他成为全球首富的埃隆·马斯克一样，贝索斯也是个不折不扣的太空迷。蓝色起源现已加入美国宇航员重返月球的计划。

　　In 2019 Mr Bezos sketched out a vision of the future in which a trillion humans live in gigantic, artificial space-going habitats, relieving the pressure on a crowded Earth. It is an apocalyptic idea—and, to put it mildly, a bold one. To Mr Bezos it may seem more fun than running an online department store with a sideline in server farms and virtual billboards—even one as era-defining as Amazon.

　　2019年，贝索斯勾勒出了他对未来的愿景：一万亿人生活在巨大的人造太空家园，以缓解拥挤不堪的地球的压力。这是一个启示录式的想法——说得委婉点，也是一个大胆的想法。对贝索斯来说，这可能比经营一家以服务器机房和虚拟广告牌为副业的在线百货商店(即便是亚马逊这样一家划时代的公司)更有趣。

　　重难点词汇：

　　barnstorming [ˈbɑːrnstɔːrmɪŋ] adj. 充满激情的

　　tribute [ˈtrɪbjuːt] n. 礼物;贡物;致敬

　　gigantic [dʒaɪˈɡæntɪk] adj. 巨大的;庞大的

　　apocalyptic [əˌpɑːkəˈlɪptɪk] adj. 启示的;末日的

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