乔布斯传 第545期:铃鼓先生(1)

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Mr. Tambourine¹ Man

“铃鼓先生”

Andy Lack's first annual meeting at Sony was in April 2003, the same week that Apple launched the iTunes Store.

安迪·拉克在索尼参加的第一次年度会议是在2003年4月，和苹果公司推出iTunes商店的时间在同一周。

He had been made head of the music division four months earlier, and had spent much of that time negotiating with Jobs.

他在4个月之前被指派掌管音乐部门，花了很多时间和乔布斯谈判。

In fact he arrived in Tokyo directly from Cupertino, carrying the latest version of the iPod and a description of the iTunes Store.

实际上，他带着最新版本的iPod和关于iTunes商店的介绍，从库比蒂诺直接飞到了东京。

In front of the two hundred managers gathered, he pulled the iPod out of his pocket.

在200位经理面前，他从口袋里拿出了iPod。

"Here it is," he said as CEO Nobuyuki Idei and Sony's North America head Howard Stringer looked on.

“就是这个。”CEO出井伸之和索尼北美区总裁霍华德·斯金格看了看。

"Here's the Walkman killer². There's no mystery meat.

“随身听的大敌来了。这并不是个徒有其表、滥竽充数的东西。

The reason you bought a music company is so that you could be the one to make a device like this. You can do better."

我们收购一家音乐公司的原因就是为了能做出这样的产品。我们可以做得更好。”

But Sony couldn't. It had pioneered portable music with the Walkman,

但是索尼并没有做到。它拥有前卫的便携式随身听系列，

it had a great record company, and it had a long history of making beautiful consumer devices.

有一家很棒的唱片公司，还有多年制造精致的消费电子产品的经验。

It had all of the assets to compete with Jobs's strategy of integration³ of hardware, software, devices, and content sales.

它拥有所有能与乔布斯的“硬件、软件、设备、内容销售整合战略”相匹敌的资本。

Why did it fail? Partly because it was a company, like AOL Time Warner,

那为什么失败了？一部分原因在于索尼是一家像AOL时代华纳这样的大公司，

that was organized into divisions (that word itself was ominous) with their own bottom lines;

旗下有多个分支（“分支”这个词本身就不吉利），每个分支都有自己的“底线”。

the goal of achieving synergy in such companies by prodding⁴ the divisions to work together was usually elusive⁵.

在这样的公司里，如果让多个分支为了共同目标而协同运作，通常是很难实现的。

1 tambourine   

n.铃鼓，手鼓

参考例句：

• A stew without an onion is like a dance without a tambourine.烧菜没有洋葱就像跳舞没有手鼓。
• He is really good at playing tambourine.他很擅长演奏铃鼓。

2 killer   

n.杀人者，杀人犯，杀手，屠杀者

参考例句：

• Heart attacks have become Britain's No.1 killer disease.心脏病已成为英国的头号致命疾病。
• The bulk of the evidence points to him as her killer.大量证据证明是他杀死她的。

3 integration   

n.一体化，联合，结合

参考例句：

• We are working to bring about closer political integration in the EU.我们正在努力实现欧盟內部更加紧密的政治一体化。
• This was the greatest event in the annals of European integration.这是欧洲统一史上最重大的事件。

4 prodding   

v.刺，戳( prod的现在分词 )；刺激；促使；（用手指或尖物）戳

参考例句：

• He needed no prodding. 他不用督促。
• The boy is prodding the animal with a needle. 那男孩正用一根针刺那动物。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》

5 elusive   

adj.难以表达(捉摸)的；令人困惑的；逃避的

参考例句：

• Try to catch the elusive charm of the original in translation.翻译时设法把握住原文中难以捉摸的风韵。
• Interpol have searched all the corners of the earth for the elusive hijackers.国际刑警组织已在世界各地搜查在逃的飞机劫持者。