考研英語美文賞讀（15）：無意義的工作為何存在？

　　摘要：考研英語作為一門考研公共課，雖然大家都學(xué)了英語十幾年，卻仍經(jīng)常有總分過線掛在英語上的情況，因此英語復(fù)習(xí)不單單是單詞、做題。閱讀作為考研英語的大頭，僅僅做考研真題或許沒法滿足你的閱讀量，因此幫幫之后會(huì)不定時(shí)推出一篇英文美文，這些文章都與考研英語閱讀同源，多讀必有好處。

　　?Imagine having a job that pays you 12，000 pounds to write a two-page report for a big company meeting where the document is never discussed.

　　想象一下，你接了一項(xiàng)工作，為一個(gè)大型公司會(huì)議寫一份兩頁的報(bào)告，你拿到了1.2萬英鎊的報(bào)酬，結(jié)果那次會(huì)議根本沒有討論這份報(bào)告。

　　Or a job that requires you to rent a car and drive up to 500km to oversee a person’s computer being moved five metres from one room to another.

　　或者，你需要租輛車開上500公里，負(fù)責(zé)監(jiān)督一個(gè)人的電腦被從一個(gè)房間挪到5米外的另一個(gè)房間。

　　What about being a receptionist in a publishing company where the phone rings once a day and your only other tasks are filling a dish with mints and winding a grandfather clock once a week？

　　或者在一家出版公司當(dāng)前臺(tái)，電話每天響一次，此外你只需要把盤子裝滿薄荷糖，以及一周給一臺(tái)老爺鐘上一次發(fā)條。

　　These nuggets are strewn through David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs， a provocative， funny and engaging book that claims the world has been engulfed by a rising tide of pointless work.

　　這樣的工作在戴維格雷伯(David Graeber)的著作《論狗屁工作》(Bullshit Jobs)里比比皆是。這本發(fā)人深思又妙趣橫生的書宣稱，世界上到處是沒有意義的工作，而且越來越多。

　　This is a curious charge to hear at a time of rising anxiety about keeping one’s job safe from a robot， or the indignities of the gig economy and sweeping technological disruption. Yet it clearly has appeal.

　　當(dāng)今人們?nèi)找娼箲]該如何在機(jī)器人、不體面的零工經(jīng)濟(jì)，以及科技帶來的廣泛破壞性影響下保住自己的工作，在這樣的背景下，格雷伯的控訴聽起來很奇怪。然而，這本書顯然是有吸引力的。

　　If Graeber’s idea sounds familiar， it is because the book is based on a 2013 essay he wrote for a radical magazine called Strike！ that was such a hit it crashed the publication’s website and was translated into a dozen languages within weeks.

　　如果格雷伯的觀點(diǎn)聽起來似曾相識(shí)，是因?yàn)檫@本書是由格雷伯在2013年為激進(jìn)雜志《Strike！》撰寫的一篇文章延伸而來。當(dāng)時(shí)那篇文章非常熱門，一度導(dǎo)致該雜志網(wǎng)站崩潰。在幾個(gè)星期里，這篇文章就被譯為十幾種語言。

　　The Economist published a critique of it. Adverts quoting it appeared in the London Underground. Eventually， pollsters based a UK survey on it showing that 37 per cent of people did not believe their job made “a meaningful contribution to the world”. A Dutch poll later came up with similar results.

　　《經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)人》專門發(fā)表了評(píng)論文章。引用這篇文章的廣告出現(xiàn)在倫敦地鐵里。后來，英國對(duì)這個(gè)問題進(jìn)行的相關(guān)民意調(diào)查顯示，37%的人不認(rèn)為他們的工作“為世界作出了有意義的貢獻(xiàn)”。接著，荷蘭的一份民意調(diào)查也得出了類似結(jié)果。

　　For Graeber， an American anthropology professor at the London School of Economics， this confirmed he was on to something big about 21st-century capitalism： it looked a lot like 20th-century Soviet socialism， generating myriad pointless jobs to keep workers employed.

　　格雷伯是倫敦政治經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)院(LSE)的美籍人類學(xué)教授。格雷伯認(rèn)為，這證明他發(fā)現(xiàn)了21世紀(jì)資本主義的某種重大特征：無數(shù)沒有意義的工作被創(chuàng)造出來，只為了讓人們得到雇傭，這看起來很像是20世紀(jì)的蘇聯(lián)社會(huì)主義。

　　Given how that particular venture ended， this is a worrying prospect.

　　考慮到蘇聯(lián)社會(huì)主義的結(jié)局，未來的發(fā)展令人擔(dān)憂。

　　And if it is indeed happening， it is bizarre. Capitalism is supposed to deliver efficiency.

　　如果事情真的是這樣，那就很奇怪了。資本主義被認(rèn)為理應(yīng)會(huì)帶來效率。

　　Technological advances are supposed to mean we spend less time at work of any sort (in 1930 John Maynard Keynes suggested it could be as little as 15 hours a week).

　　隨著技術(shù)進(jìn)步，我們?cè)谌魏晤愋偷墓ぷ魃匣ㄙM(fèi)的時(shí)間應(yīng)該更少（約翰梅納德凱恩斯在1930年預(yù)測，未來人們每周只需工作15個(gè)小時(shí)）。

　　Even if this has yet to materialise， the idea that much in the modern office is maddening is hardly new： in 2019 it will be 30 years since newspapers began to publish Dilbert， the satirical take on the corporate workplace that became one of the world’s most popular comic strips.

　　即使這種情況還沒有成為現(xiàn)實(shí)，有關(guān)現(xiàn)代職場越來越瘋狂的想法并不新鮮：到2019年，漫畫《呆伯特》在報(bào)紙上的連載時(shí)間就會(huì)達(dá)到30年。這部以諷刺手法描繪職場現(xiàn)象的作品成為了世界最受歡迎的連環(huán)漫畫之一。

　　全文共400個(gè)詞。

　　?幫幫提示：考研英語同源外刊美文賞讀匯總

　　（實(shí)習(xí)小編：加油豬）