VOA标准英语2012--美国公司白领对办公环境叫苦不迭

（单词翻译）

US Worker Bees Toil¹ in Cubicles³

美国公司白领对办公环境叫苦不迭
Every day, and certainly on Sunday when many newspapers produce a separate comics section, millions of Americans check out the strip called “Dilbert,” created by cartoonist Scott Adams. It satirizes⁴ worklife in white-collar offices, particularly those in which people toil in confined spaces called “cubicles.”
每一天,尤其是在周日的时候，许多报纸会为读者奉上一个单独的漫画栏目,数百万的美国人会意犹未尽的享受由漫画家斯科特?亚当斯创造的这个被称为“呆伯特”的漫画。它专门讽刺位于狭窄空间内,人们俗称“一人占一坑”的办公室白领阶层。
Fortune magazine, which writes about the people who make, well, a fortune, once focused on average "worker bees” in the corporate⁵ world who sit inside these "modules," as they're called, separated by partitions, at built-in desks with eye-level shelves, all easily interchangeable. The movable walls are designed to give workers at least a tad of privacy.
财富杂志曾写报道过那么多的人发迹,而这一次却将注意力集中在当下世界公司里的“工蜂”们，这类人坐在被称为“独立单元”的办公区域。当中内置书桌和与眼同高的置物架轻易可互换位置。而移动墙的设计初衷是给工人们增加至少一点点隐私。
As Fortune lays out the story, Robert Propst, a young industrial designer in the Midwest state of Michigan, dreamed up the office cubicle² in 1968.
财富杂志讲的这个故事,罗伯特?普罗斯特，一位年轻的密歇根州中西部设计师，在1968年空想出了这种办公室结构，并使其变为现实。
Soon office mazes⁶, or "cubicle farms," sprouted⁷ everywhere. It seemed like everyone below the rank of vice⁸ president soon worked in one of these office boxes, identical to the next one save for the photos of the family and dog.
很快这种办公室迷宫,或“小室格局”将会发芽生根无处不在。看起来每个职位像副总统的人很快就会在这样一间办公室中工作，和隔壁屋子相同的设置是都有家人和狗的照片。
Today, cubicles are ridiculed⁹ - even loathed¹⁰ - as symbols of conformity¹¹, their inhabitants as clones and drones. Even the privacy part didn't work, as workers cannot help but overhear their colleagues' conversations and phone calls.
今天,这种办公室布局风格被人厌恶甚至嘲笑作为符号的统一,其居民是一直忍辱负重。隐私部分甚至没办法让人工作,员工不得不听同事们的对话和电话内容。
Lots of people, including cartoonist Adams, have tried to humanize the sterile¹² cubicle. In real life, he’s even designed what he calls the "ultimate cubicle," which would allow occupants to vary the flooring and lighting¹³. They can even add a fish tank. But a box is still a box.
很多人,包括漫画家亚当斯,都试图让这种办公室格局更加人性化。而在现实生活中,他甚至设计出一种“终极工作间”，这将允许使用者可以享受不同的地板和照明，甚至可以增加一个鱼缸。但是盒子终归是盒子，不管人们如何装饰，终究也无法摆脱。
Before he died in 2000, Bob Propst, the father of the cubicle, told friends he was sorry, all his days, that he’d unleashed¹⁴ the idea on the world. He called his invention an act of "monolithic¹⁵ insanity¹⁶.”
直到2000年去世前,这种办公室格局的缔造者罗伯特?普罗斯特,告诉他的朋友自己感到很难过,在他不多的日子里,他会致力于向全世界传达这种思想，他称自己的发明是“整体的疯狂。”