乔布斯传 第232期:NeXT计算机(2)

 　　On a beautiful spring day in 1986,

　　在1986年春天的一个美丽的日子，

　　they met in the publishing house's grand building in the heart of Oxford¹,

　　他们在牛津郡中心的出版社大楼见面，

　　where Jobs made an offer of $2,000 plus 74 cents for every computer sold

　　乔布斯提出，一次性支付2000美元且每卖出一台电脑支付给出版社74美分，

　　in order to have the rights to Oxford's edition of Shakespeare.

　　以获得牛津版莎士比亚作品集的版权。

　　"It will be all gravy² to you," he argued.

　　“这对你们而言就是轻而易举的收入，”乔布斯表示，

　　"You will be ahead of the parade. It's never been done before."

　　“你们将走在潮流的前列，这是别人从来没有做过的事情。”

　　They agreed in principle and then went out to play skittles over beer at a nearby pub where Lord Byron used to drink.

　　出版社大体上同意了，然后他们一同前往拜伦曾经驻足的小酒馆，喝啤酒玩撞柱游戏。

　　乔布斯传

　　By the time it launched, the NeXT would also include a dictionary, a thesaurus, and the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations³,

　　NeXT电脑还将囊括一部字典、一部百科汇编和一部《牛津引语词典》，

　　making it one of the pioneers of the concept of searchable electronic books.

　　这使得NeXT电脑成为实现可搜索式电子书概念的先驱之一。

　　Instead of using off-the-shelf chips for the NeXT,

　　NeXT电脑没有使用现成的芯片，

　　Jobs had his engineers design custom ones that integrated a variety of functions on one chip.

　　乔布斯让工程师们设计定制芯片，能够在一个芯片上集成多种功能。

　　That would have been hard enough,

　　这已经够困难的了，

　　but Jobs made it almost impossible by continually revising the functions he wanted it to do.

　　而乔布斯还在不断修改他想要的功能，这就使得这项工作几乎不可能完成。

　　After a year it became clear that this would be a major source of delay.

　　一年后，这成了产品延迟发布的一个主要原因。

　　He also insisted on building his own fully⁴ automated⁵ and futuristic factory,

　　乔布斯还坚持建设自己的全自动化和未来派的工厂，

　　just as he had for the Macintosh; he had not been chastened by that experience.

　　就像他曾经对麦金塔项目的设想一样。他并未从那次经历中学乖。

　　This time too he made the same mistakes, only more excessively.

　　这次，他犯了同样的错误，而且有过之而无不及。

1 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

2 gravy   

n.肉汁；轻易得来的钱，外快

参考例句：

• You have spilled gravy on the tablecloth.你把肉汁泼到台布上了。
• The meat was swimming in gravy.肉泡在浓汁之中。

3 quotations   

n.引用( quotation的名词复数 )；[商业]行情（报告）；（货物或股票的）市价；时价

参考例句：

• The insurance company requires three quotations for repairs to the car. 保险公司要修理这辆汽车的三家修理厂的报价单。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• These quotations cannot readily be traced to their sources. 这些引语很难查出出自何处。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》

4 fully   

adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地

参考例句：

• The doctor asked me to breathe in,then to breathe out fully.医生让我先吸气，然后全部呼出。
• They soon became fully integrated into the local community.他们很快就完全融入了当地人的圈子。

5 automated   

a.自动化的

参考例句：

• The entire manufacturing process has been automated. 整个生产过程已自动化。
• Automated Highway System (AHS) is recently regarded as one subsystem of Intelligent Transport System (ITS). 近年来自动公路系统(Automated Highway System,AHS)，作为智能运输系统的子系统之一越来越受到重视。