【经济学人】非凡亚马逊

【按】本文选自10月28日《经济学人》特别报道，分析了在美国如日中天的亚马逊公司。读完后你将了解：

• 亚马逊的主要业务有哪些？
• 亚马逊带来的影响以及未来的发展方向如何？

建议阅读时间15-20分钟。

• 本文食用方法——建议阅读三遍：
• 第一遍速读，不看注释和翻译，直接阅读原文，遇见生词（大部分已经标粗）猜一下意思或者跳过，不要因为停下了查词而影响了阅读的流畅性。
• 第二遍精读，不认识的词看段后注释和解析，建议多看英文释义（这样才能理解得更全面、准确同时能锻炼阅读能力），对照中文翻译看看自己是否有理解错误的地方。
• 第三遍通读，整体再回顾一遍，在上下文语境中复习刚刚认识的词汇和表达。
  有问题欢迎留言讨论~

新亚马逊总部

Beyond shopping

The mighty Amazon

The one-time bookseller has become a conglomerate

Oct 26th 2017

1. FOR SHOPPERS IN 2017, it can be hard to remember what life was like in the early 1990s. There was mail order, but by and large if you wanted to buy something you went to a shop. Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, who was then working for a New York hedge fund, noticed the exponential growth of the internet. His idea was to create an online company that would bring together shoppers and manufacturers around the world, starting with books.

by and large: For the most part; generally 大体上：总地说来；一般说来
Exponential growth is literally growth that becomes faster and faster as it continues. In ordinary use, however, exponential is understood to mean simply “very fast” when it is used with words like growth and increase.

1. 对于2017年的购物者来说, 很难想起二十世纪九十年代代初的生活是怎样的。当时有邮件订购, 但大体来说，如果你想买东西, 你还是会去商店。亚马逊的创始人杰夫·贝佐斯当时正在为一家纽约的对冲基金工作, 他注意到互联网的指数级增长。他的想法是创建一个在线公司, 将世界各地的购物者和制造商汇聚到一起, 从卖书开始。

2. Not everyone was convinced. A cover story in 1999 in Barron’s, a business weekly, entitled “Amazon.bomb”, argued that the company would struggle to compete with mighty Walmart and Barnes & Noble. But like many of Amazon’s competitors, it failed to predict the firm’s ever-expanding scope, the feverish pace of its spending and the enthusiastic support from investors.

3. 并非每个人都相信。1999年《巴伦周刊》的封面故事《亚马逊. 炸弹》称, 该公司将难以与强大的沃尔玛和巴诺书店竞争。但与许多亚马逊的竞争对手一样, 它未能预测该公司不断扩大的规模、其支出的狂热步伐以及投资者的热情支持。

4. For much of its life Amazon has bled red ink. As recently as 2014 it lost $241m on sales of $89bn. Its e-commerce side now makes money, but its most profitable arm is its cloud-computing business, which last year earned 74% of its operating income. Mr Bezos continues to value long-term growth more highly than short-term profits. Morgan Stanley, a bank, expects Amazon to grow by an average of nearly 20% a year between now and 2025. When the firm announced in September that it would build a second headquarters in North America in addition to its Seattle base (pictured), mayors queued up. In Seattle it now employs more than 40,000 workers, and globally a further 340,000.

bleed red ink: informal if a company or business bleeds red ink, it loses a lot of money rather than making money
queue up: If you say that people are queuing up to do or have something, you mean that a lot of them want the opportunity to do it or have it. (为得到某机会而)排队，排队等候

3. 亚马逊的大部分时候都在亏钱。近至2014年，它的销售额为890亿美元, 损失了2亿4100万美元。它的电子商务部门现在赚钱, 但它最有利可图的是它的云计算业务, 去年它赚取了74% 的运营收入。贝佐斯先生继续高度重视长期增长而非短期利润。摩根士丹利（一家银行）预计亚马逊将在现在和2025之间平均每年增长近20%。当该公司在9月宣布将在西雅图本部之外在北美建立第二个总部 (如图), 市长们都在排队等候。在西雅图, 它现在雇用了超过4万名员工, 全球还有另外34万。

4. Amazon’s mission, to be “Earth’s most customer-centric company”, places few limits on what it might do next. “We want to invent on behalf of customers,” says Jeff Wilke, who runs the company’s e-commerce business. “We’re going to experiment in a host of ways and try things. Some of them will fail and many of them will succeed.”

5. 亚马逊的使命——成为 "地球上最以客户为中心的公司", 对它下一步可能会做什么造成一些限制。"我们想代表客户创造," 杰夫·威尔克说, 他经营着公司的电子商务业务。"我们将以很多方式进行试验, 并尝试各种事情。其中一些将失败, 其中许多将成功。”

6. The company has pursued a strategy of relentless investment to win new customers and generate more cash so it can win yet more customers. What is remarkable about this effort is the scale. In the year to June Amazon spent about $13bn on new technology products for its cloud and e-commerce businesses, nearly 20% more than Google and more than three times as much as Facebook, according to Goldman Sachs.

yet: yet worse, more importantly, etc. used to emphasize an increase in the degree of sth (= how bad, important, etc. it is) (强调程度的增加)更
= even , still ：
e.g. a recent and yet more improbable theory 一个新近提出的但更加不切实际的理论

5. 公司奉行坚持不懈的投资策略, 以赢得新客户并创造更多的现金, 从而赢得更多的客户。这项努力的显著之处在规模上。据高盛公司称, 在今年 6月, 亚马逊为其云计算和电子商务业务在新科技产品上花费了约130亿美元, 比谷歌多近20%, 比 Facebook 多三倍。

6. Amazon aims not just to meet customers’ expectations but to set new ones. Its Prime annual subscription ($99 in America) initially just made it easier to buy things online and covered shipping, but now includes audio and video streaming.

7. 亚马逊的目标不仅是满足客户的期望, 还要创造新的期望。它的Prime会员 (在美国99美元) 最初只是让在线购物变得更简单并且免邮费, 但现在包括音频和视频流服务。

8. With its cloud business, launched in 2006, Amazon created a new way to serve its own computing needs and those of other companies. Instead of investing in their own facilities, firms can rent computing power from Amazon. AWS now provides the infrastructure for startups and a growing number of big firms. Its basic computing business is larger than that of its three closest competitors combined.

9. 随着云计算业务在2006年推出, 亚马逊创造了一种新的方式来满足自己及其他公司的计算需要。公司不必投资于自己的设施, 而是可以租用亚马逊的计算能力。AWS 现在为初创企业和越来越多的大公司提供基础设施。它的基本计算业务量比其三家最接近的竞争者的总和还要大。

10. But Amazon’s biggest impact is still in e-commerce. In America it accounted for more than half the growth in online spending last year. More searches for products begin on Amazon than on Google. The company has found that its entertainment offerings complement its e-commerce business, keeping its Prime subscribers on board. That is important because those subscribers spend more than four times as much as other Amazon shoppers, estimates Brian Nowak of Morgan Stanley. He reckons that in America more than a third of all households have Prime. Its success depends in part on the speed of delivery, usually within a day or two, and the absence of incremental shipping costs. The result is that consumers buy more kinds of goods online.

complement: If people or things complement each other, they are different or do something different, which makes them a good combination.补足;补充;与…相辅相成
on board: as a member of a team or group

8. 但亚马逊的最大影响仍然是电子商务。在美国, 去年的在线支出增长它占到了一半以上。对产品更多的搜索开始于亚马逊, 而不是谷歌。该公司发现, 它的娱乐产品与它的电子商务业务相辅相成, 稳住了其Prime会员。这一点很重要, 因为这些订户的花费是其他亚马逊购物者的四倍, 据摩根斯坦利的布莱恩·诺瓦克估计。他认为, 在美国, 超过三分之一的家庭拥有Prime会员。它的成功部分取决于快递的速度, 通常在一两天之内, 并且没有增加的运费。其结果是, 消费者在网上购买更多种类的商品。

9. In America at least, an exception so far has been groceries, for which most people still trek to supermarkets. But that may change. When Amazon announced in June that it would buy Whole Foods, an upmarket grocer, for $13.7bn, supermarkets’ share prices plunged.

10. 至少在美国, 迄今为止的一个例外是杂货, 大多数的人仍然跋涉到超市去购买。但这种情形可能会改变。当亚马逊在6月宣布, 它将以137亿美元购买全食超市（一个高档杂货商）, 各大超市的股价应声 暴跌。

11. The company’s investments in its warehouses have persuaded ever more independent sellers to use them, too. Amazon’s own inventory now accounts for less than half the sales on its site. Revenue from independent merchants around the world that list their products on Amazon reached $23bn in 2016, about twice as much as two years earlier. Customers enjoy a broader selection and Amazon reaps more profits to reinvest.

reap: If you reap the benefits or the rewards of something, you enjoy the good things that happen as a result of it. 获得；收获；得到；取得

10. 该公司对其仓库的投资已说服更多的独立卖家使用它们。亚马逊自己的库存现在占其网站销售额的不到一半。来自世界各地、在亚马逊上成列产品的独立商家的收入在2016年达到了230亿美元, 几乎是两年前的两倍。客户享有更广泛的选择，而亚马逊获得更多的利润进行再投资。

11. It is a dizzying way to do business. Amazon’s many sources of revenue, as well as its masses of data and comprehensive distribution system, make it difficult for competitors to keep up. And when new ones have emerged, Amazon has often ended up buying them, as it did with Quidsi, an online nappy business, and Zappos, a shoeseller.

12. 这是一个令人眩晕的经商之道。亚马逊的许多收入来源, 以及大量的数据和全面的分销系统, 使竞争对手难以步其后尘。当新的对手出现时, 亚马逊经常会购买它们, 例如 Quidsi（ 一家母婴电商）和Zappos（一家买鞋的网站）。

13. The next thing it might do is to reinvent physical stores—whether Whole Foods or others. In an experimental Amazon shop in Seattle, customers can choose items and pay automatically, without stopping at a checkout, thanks to sensors and machine learning. If it catches on, it could be widely deployed.

14. 接下来它可能做的事情是重塑实体商店——无论是全食超市还是其他。在西雅图的一个实验性的亚马逊商店, 客户可以选择商品并自动支付, 无需在收银处停留, 多亏了传感器和机器学习。如果它能流行起来, 这类商店就会被广泛部署。

15. Among the company’s most interesting new tools is its voice assistant, Alexa, available through its Echo speaker. It offers a way for customers to order goods from Amazon. But the company has also opened the assistant to other firms so that they can enable Alexa to operate their products. In this field, Amazon is competing against Google, Microsoft and Apple. Techies reckon voice assistants could replace phones and tablets as the interface with the digital world. For now, Amazon is far ahead, holding 76% of the American market for smart home speakers.

16. 该公司最有趣的新工具之一是其语音助理, Alexa, 可通过其Echo音箱发挥作用。它为客户提供了一种从亚马逊订购商品的方式。但该公司也向其他公司开放这个助手, 使他们能够让 Alexa 经营他们的产品。在这个领域, 亚马逊正在与谷歌、微软和苹果竞争。技术人员认为语音助手可以取代手机和平板电脑, 成为数字世界的接口。目前, 亚马逊遥遥领先, 持有76%的美国家庭智能音箱市场。

17. Amazon is still seeking new ways to enmesh itself further in its customers’ lives. Consumers in rich countries, in particular, are spending more on services, health care and entertainment as opposed to goods. Amazon intends to follow that business. In America, customers can already use the company to deliver a Chinese meal to their home, hire someone to assemble a flatpack, manage their newspaper subscriptions or search for a local dermatologist.

enmesh: to involve sb / sth in a bad situation that it is not easy to escape from 使陷入，使卷入(困境等)
as opposed to: formal used to make a contrast between two things

14. 亚马逊仍在寻求新的方法使自己进一步渗透进客户的生活。特别是富裕国家的消费者在服务、医疗和娱乐方面的支出比货物更多。亚马逊打算关注这一业务。在美国, 客户已经可以用其将中餐送到他们的家里, 雇人来组装家具, 管理他们的报纸订阅或搜索当地的皮肤科大夫。

15. In effect, Amazon has become a conglomerate—a model that has had its ups and downs. Not everything it has touched has turned to gold. Its Fire phone flamed out disastrously soon after it was launched in 2014. But the company is happy for some of its ventures to flop as long as many thrive. So it will probably continue to expand, reaching ever farther into people’s daily lives. That may seem overambitious, but a precedent already exists: Alibaba in China.

16. 实际上, 亚马逊已经成为一家企业集团——一个已经经历过兴衰的典范。不是它所触及的一切都变成了金子。它的Fire手机在2014年发布后不久就灾难性地熄了火。但该公司很高兴它的一些企业惨败, 只要很多能茁壮成长。因此, 它可能会继续扩大, 更深地触及人们的日常生活。这似乎雄心勃勃, 但一个先例已经存在: 中国的阿里巴巴。

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原文出处：经济学人

翻译：七呵夫

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