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讀紐時學英文
2020/09/25 第314期 訂閱/退訂看歷史報份
 
 
紐時周報精選 Trump Books Keep Coming, and Readers Can't Stop Buying 新書扯上川普大家搶著買 打破飢餓遊戲系列最新作品銷售量
Big Tech Makes Inroads With the Biden Campaign 曾對科技公司持批判態度 科技巨擘打入拜登團隊
紐時周報精選
 
Trump Books Keep Coming, and Readers Can't Stop Buying 新書扯上川普大家搶著買 打破飢餓遊戲系列最新作品銷售量
文/Elizabeth A. Harris and Alex
譯/莊蕙嘉、核稿/樂慧生

新書扯上川普 大家搶著買

Since it was released in May, the latest book in the Hunger Games series, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” has sold 1.3 million copies, a home run of a bestseller by publishing's standards.

飢餓遊戲系列最新作品「鳴鳥與蛇之歌」自五月發售以來,已賣出130萬冊,以出版品的標準而言,算是暢銷書的全壘打。

Mary Trump's memoir about her uncle, “Too Much and Never Enough,” outsold it in its first week.

瑪麗.川普描寫她叔叔的回憶錄「坐擁一切卻永不滿足」(暫譯),出版首周就打破了前者的銷售量。

Books about politicians and government are not considered surefire commercial hits. But since President Donald Trump entered office, books about his campaign, his administration, his family, his business, his policies, even his golf game have poured out of publishing houses big and small.

就商業眼光而言,關於政客及政府的書並不被看好必然熱賣。但是自從唐納.川普上台後,關於他的競選陣營、他的政府、他的家庭、他的事業、他的政策,甚至他的高爾夫球賽的書,卻從大小出版社傾洩而出。

“No matter what your political position, there's really no doubt that the strong feelings around the Trump administration have pushed book sales in a way we've never seen before in the political arena,” said Kristen McLean, the executive director of business development at NPD Books, a market research firm.

「不論你的政治立場如何,那股對川普政府的強烈感覺,無疑以我們在政治場域從未見過的方式,推動了書籍的銷售。」市場研究公司NPDBooks企業開發執行總監克莉汀.麥林說。

Early on in Trump's presidency came the first big journalistic exposés, starting with Michael Wolff's “Fire and Fury” and then Bob Woodward's “Fear,” which sold more than 2 million copies. Next came the insider accounts of the tumult within the White House from the many officials who resigned or were fired and sought to revive their reputations and fortunes with breathless, often news-making memoirs.

川普就任之初,首波是知名記者的爆料之作,以麥可.沃爾夫的「烈焰與怒火」(暫譯)揭開序幕,接著是鮑伯.伍華德的「恐懼」,賣出超過200萬冊。之後是局內人對於白宮內部騷動的說法,來自許多請辭或被開革的官員,用令人屏息且常成為新聞話題的回憶錄,尋求恢復名譽及財富。

“Political books broadly have worked more or less in proportion to how polarizing the figure that they orbit is, and you don't get more polarizing than Donald J. Trump,” said Eamon Dolan, an executive editor at Simon & Schuster who edited Mary Trump's book.

「總的來說,政治書籍的銷售量多少與主題人物造成分化對立的能力成正比,而沒有人比川普更能讓人們分化對立了。」負責編輯瑪麗川普新書的賽門舒斯特執行編輯伊曼.多倫說。

Real-time political books detailing the inner workings of an administration have been a popular genre for decades, dating to the Eisenhower era. But the volume of titles, and the audience for them, has surged in recent years.

描述政府內部運作細節的即時性政治書籍,數十年來一直是受歡迎的類別,可溯至艾森豪時代。但是出版書籍的種數及其受眾,近年卻急速增加。

The subgenres that have emerged—books that praise the president, books that criticize him, White House memoirs, journalistic narratives—have taken off to an unprecedented degree under Donald Trump, said Jon Meacham, a biographer and the author of books about Presidents Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and George H.W. Bush.

曾以湯瑪斯.傑佛遜、安德魯.傑克遜、法蘭克林.羅斯福和喬治.H.W..布希等總統為主題人物的傳記作家強.馬塞姆說,其中出現的的子類別,像是讚美總統的書,批評他的書,白宮回憶錄以及新聞性敘事,在川普上任後增至前所未見的程度。

In the last four years, there have been more than 1,200 unique titles about Trump, compared with around 500 books about Obama and his administration during Obama's first term, according to an analysis by NPD BookScan.

根據NPD BookScan的分析,過去這四年裡,關於川普的書籍種數超過1200本。而歐巴馬第一任期內與歐巴馬及其政府有關的書,則僅只有500本左右。

Some in the industry credit the soaring sales of political books with lifting the industry overall in recent months, despite the pandemic and economic crisis.

儘管處於疫情和經濟危機之中,出版業近幾個月業績卻獲得支撐而不墜,一些人歸功於政治書籍銷量狂增。

“When Donald Trump recommends a book, it has little impact on sales, but when Trump hates a book, it rockets to No. 1,” said Latimer, the Washington literary agent. “You pray for Trump to hate your book, and you pray for him to tweet about it.”

「川普推薦一本書,對銷售沒什麼影響。但是當川普討厭一本書時,它會衝到排行榜榜首。」華盛頓版權代理人拉特莫說,「你祈禱川普討厭你的書,而且還祈禱他推文講這件事。」

說文解字看新聞【莊蕙嘉】

美國總統川普的言行及政策在在成為全球矚目焦點,本文報導川普上任後帶動政治類書籍出版與銷售雙雙熱門的特殊現象。

genre雖意為「類別」,但專門用於藝術、書籍、音樂、電影等所謂具有特殊性的事物。如果是一般商品,就用category。class雖然也有類別之意,通常用於區分具有相似性質的事物,例如social classes(社會層級),也可作動詞。

文中第三段末用了「轉化」的修辭寫法,描述各出版商爭相出版有關川普的書,就像倒水一般的多。pour也常用於形容雨勢猛烈,如The rain is pouring.

出版業在景氣慘澹中反創佳績,業界人士歸功於川普效應。credit...with有正面意味,相同用法還有ascribe...to和attribute...to,用法則正反皆有。credit也有「謝啟」及「演職員表」(常見於電影、戲劇及出版品末尾)的意思。

 
Big Tech Makes Inroads With the Biden Campaign 曾對科技公司持批判態度 科技巨擘打入拜登團隊
文/David McCabe and Kenneth P.
譯/李京倫、核稿/樂慧生

科技巨擘打入拜登團隊

Joe Biden has been critical of Big Tech, admonishing Facebook for mishandling misinformation and saying internet companies should lose a central legal protection.

美國民主黨總統候選人拜登一直對科技巨擘持批判態度,曾譴責臉書未能妥善處理不實資訊,並說網路公司不該享有聯邦法律保護。

But his campaign has quietly welcomed onto its staff and policy groups people who have worked with or for Silicon Valley giants, raising concerns among the industry's critics that the companies are seeking to co-opt a potential Biden administration.

不過,拜登的競選團隊已悄悄地將曾與矽谷大公司合作或為其工作者,納為成員或納入政策建議團體,使對科技業有意見者擔心這些公司想拉攏可能上台的拜登政府。

One of Biden's closest aides joined the campaign from Apple, while others held senior roles at firms that consulted for major tech companies. And a nearly 700-person volunteer group advising the campaign, the Innovation Policy Committee, includes at least eight people who work for Facebook, Amazon, Google and Apple, according to documents reviewed by The New York Times. Other committee members have close ties to the companies, including economists and lawyers who have advised them, and officials at think tanks funded by them.

最貼近拜登的幕僚有一人來自蘋果公司,還有些曾在為大型科技公司提供諮詢的機構擔任高管。根據紐約時報看過的文件,為拜登陣營獻策的近700人志願團體「創新政策委員會」,至少有8人為臉書、亞馬遜、谷歌和蘋果工作,另有些成員與這些公司關係密切,包括為這些公司提供建議的經濟學者和律師,以及這些公司出資設立的智庫成員。

The presence of the industry's allies inside Biden's policy apparatus and campaign and transition teams—and his campaign's effort to ensure the confidentiality of its policy process—has alarmed an increasingly influential coalition of liberals who say the tech titans stifle competition, disregard user privacy and fail to adequately police hate speech and disinformation.

科技業盟友出現在拜登的政策機構、競選團隊和政權交接團隊中,拜登陣營又致力使政策制定過程保密,使得影響力日增的自由派聯盟憂心。聯盟成員認為科技巨擘扼殺競爭,漠視用戶隱私,而且未能充分檢肅仇恨言論與假消息。

They are hoping to dissuade Biden from following the example of his former boss, President Barack Obama, whose embrace of tech companies helped turn them into darlings in Washington.

自由派聯盟想勸他,不要跟前上司歐巴馬總統一樣擁抱科技公司,使之成為華府寵兒。

Today the tech giants are trying to fend off new regulations or antitrust lawsuits. The Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have spent more than a year investigating Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple for possible violations of competition law. During a House hearing last month, lawmakers from both parties grilled the chief executives of all four companies about accusations that their dominance had hurt consumers, rivals and small businesses, as well as what they were doing to police false information.

目前這些科技巨擘正極力避開新的管制和反壟斷訴訟。美國司法部和聯邦貿易委員會已花費一年多時間調查谷歌、臉書、亞馬遜和蘋果有否違反公平競爭法。在眾院7月一場聽證會上,兩黨議員連番質問這四家公司的執行長,如何回應因具宰制性優勢而傷害了消費者、對手和小商家的指控,在檢肅假消息方面又有何作為。

“The environment is very different now,” said Robert D. Atkinson, the president of a think tank that has been funded in part by Google, the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. “When Obama took office, you know, tech was like a bromance kind of thing. Everybody loved it, and people didn't see the issues that some people see now.”

資金部分來自谷歌的智庫「資訊科技與創新基金會」主席艾金森說:「現在的環境跟先前很不一樣,歐巴馬上台時,大夥兒看科技業就像哥兒們一樣,人人喜歡,當時的人並沒有看到現在的人看出來的問題。」

Atkinson is among the allies of Big Tech on the Innovation Policy Committee. While he said the members represented “a fairly diverse set of views,” he predicted that a potential Biden administration would face significant pressure from the left to clamp down on the major tech companies.

艾金森是創新政策委員會成員中的科技巨擘盟友。他表示成員組合反映出「相當多元化的意見」,但他預料,若拜登上台,他的政府會承受左派要他打擊科技巨擘的強大壓力。

 
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