翻译硕士考研者，在暑期阶段需要看双语阅读文章，来提升阅读水平和翻译能力。下面，北京文都考研网为助力翻译硕士学子们在备考上一臂之力，整理了MTI双语阅读精选文章:欧洲为什么产生不了谷歌?供考生参考。
2020考研MTI双语阅读精选:欧洲为什么产生不了谷歌?
ON SUNNY evenings in Brussels, young Eurocrats mingle on the bar terraces of the Place du Luxembourg outside the European Parliament. The continent’s future leaders pay little heed to the bronze-green statue of John Cockerill at its centre. The Englishman commemorated at the heart of today’s EU moved to Belgium from near Manchester in 1802, importing the latest steam technologies. He founded a machine factory in a chateau near Liège which grew into an industrial empire and helped make Belgium second only to Britain in industrial sophistication.
比利时布鲁塞尔夜晚灯火辉煌，，年轻一代的欧盟官员们欧洲议会外的卢森堡广场上举行露台酒会。这些欧洲未来的领袖们对毫不在意伫立的广场中央的约翰·考克里尔古铜雕像。这位在欧洲核心地备受纪念的约翰·考克里尔是英国人，于1802年从曼彻斯特郊区搬到比利时，带来了当时最先进的蒸汽技术。他在列日附近的一座城堡里创办了一家机械厂，发展成为一个工业帝国，让比利时的工业发达程度仅次于英国。
Is Europe living up to Cockerill’s legacy? The continent has world-class companies in fields like biotechnology, luxury cars and nuclear energy, manufacturing sectors incorporating sophisticated software (a BMW these days is as much a computer on wheels as a car). London, a global tech hub, is home to DeepMind, a leading artificial intelligence (AI) outfit; Stockholm is home to Spotify, a dominant music-sharing service; Cambridge-based Arm makes processor chips for almost all the world’s smartphones.
欧洲能在克里尔的技术上发展吗? 在生物技术、豪华汽车和核能以及结合了复杂软件的制造业(一辆宝马就像是一台带轮子的电脑)等领域，欧洲大陆拥有世界一流的企业，作为全球科技中心的伦敦拥有领先的人工智能企业DeepMind;斯德哥尔摩拥有在线音乐巨头Spotify; 剑桥拥有为世界上几乎所有的智能手机生产处理器芯片的Arm。
Yet still Europe lacks large firms in areas like social media, e-commerce and cloud computing comparable in scale to America’s Google and Microsoft, or China’s Alibaba and Baidu. Of the world’s 15 largest digital firms, all are American or Chinese. Of the top 200, eight are European. Such firms matter. They operate dominant online platforms and are writing the rules of the new economy in the way Cockerill’s innovations did in his day.
然而，在社交媒体、电子商务和云计等算领域，欧洲缺乏可与美国谷歌和微软，或中国阿里巴巴和百度相提并论的大企业。全球最大的15家数字企业全部来自美国和中国。在前200名中，只有8家欧洲企业。这样的企业举足轻重，主导网络平台制定经济新规则，犹如考克里尔当所所为。
Mariya Gabriel, the EU’s digital economy commissioner, worries that Silicon Valley and China now make the big decisions about the internet, and that this affects European domestic policy. She is right. Even BMW, for example, does much of its cutting-edge research in California and Shanghai. In Brussels officials talk of a “Sputnik moment”, a sudden realisation of its technological disadvantage, akin to America’s when the Soviet Union put the first satellite into space in 1957. Asked whether the continent will ever produce its own Google, one burst out laughing.
欧盟数字经济专员玛丽亚·加布里尔担心，美国硅谷和中国现在主导互联网，将影响欧洲的国内政策。她是对的。例如，即使宝马，也在加利福尼亚和上海进行了大量前沿研究。在布鲁塞尔，官员们谈到 “人造卫星时刻”，突然意识到其技术劣势，欧洲的处境就像1957年苏联将第一颗卫星送入太空时的美国。当问及欧洲能否产生自己的谷歌时，有人会大笑起来。
Europe’s history explains the lag. In the 18th century, its lack of standardisation made it the cradle of the industrial revolution. Rules and markets varied. Entrepreneurs who did not find support or luck in one country, like Cockerill, could find it in another. All this created competition and variety. Today, however, Europe’s patchwork is a disadvantage. New technologies require vast lakes of data, skilled labour and capital. Despite the EU’s single market, in Europe these often remain in national ponds. Language divides get in the way. Vast, speculative long-term capital investments that make firms like Uber possible are too rarely available on European national markets. True, there is progress. European universities are working more closely together, and in 2015 the EU adopted a new digital strategy that has simplified tax rules, ended roaming charges and removed barriers to cross-border online content sales. But about half of its measures—like smoother flows of data—remain mere proposals.
欧洲的历史解释了它的落后状况。18世纪的欧洲由于没有单一标准，使其成为工业革命的摇篮。规则和市场发生了不同的变化。像考克里尔这样的企业家在一个国家发展受阻还可以选择其他国家。所有这些为欧洲创造了竞争力和多样性。然而，如今，欧洲的多元化却成了一种劣势。新技术需要数量庞大的数据、技术工人和资本。尽管欧盟是统一市场，但在欧洲内部，这些要素局限于各国之内。语言不通成为障碍。像对优步这样的长期巨额投机性投资在欧洲各国市场几乎不可能实现。不过，欧洲的境况仍在进步。欧洲大学之间更加紧密合作。2015年，欧盟采取了一项新的数字战略，简化了税收规则，终止了漫游通讯收费，消除了跨境在线内容销售的障碍。遗憾的是其中有一半措施——例如促进数据流畅——仅止步于提议。
In the 19th century Europe was the first continent to industrialise, and institutions based on that experience have deeper roots there than elsewhere. Most European countries are still run by marmoreal Christian or social democrats descended from the struggle between bourgeoisie and workers. Their propensity for bold thinking is limited. European investors expect to be able to claim physical assets against their losses if a firm goes bust—bedevilling software startups than ten to lack them. Research is too often incremental, not radical. The burden of early industrialisation is also something of a geographic tale. Europe’s traditional industrial heartlands are struggling to adapt to the new digital era, but those once on the periphery—Bavaria and Swabia in Germany, and cities like Helsinki, Tallinn, Cambridge and Montpellier—are leading the way, without the institutional fetters of old factory towns like Liège.
19世纪的欧洲第一个步入工业化，由此发展起来的制度体系比其他地区根基更为雄厚。资产阶级和工人之间的斗争衍生出基督徒和社会民主影响着大多欧洲国家。他们思维保守。 如果一家企业破产，欧洲投资者也希望能够申请实物资产以抵御损失，这让根本没有实物资产的软件创业企业百思不得其解。研究往往是持续性增长的，而不是突发性的。早期工业化的负担可以归因于地理因素。欧洲传统的工业中心地区如今正在努力适应新的数字时代。像德国的巴伐利亚州和斯瓦比亚、赫尔辛基、塔林、剑桥和蒙彼利埃等边缘城市脱颖而出，不受列日市等旧式制度业城市的制度性束缚，。
The 20th century also restrains Europe’s technological competitiveness today. The collective experience of Nazi and Soviet surveillance and dictatorship makes many Europeans protective of their data (Germans, for example, are still reluctant to use electronic payments). Moreover, since 1945 the continent has mostly been at peace and protected by outsiders. So it has no institutions comparable to DARPA, the American military-research institution where technologies like microchips, GPS and the internet were born. Nor has it anything comparable to China’s military investments in technology today.
到20世纪，欧洲的技术竞争力仍没有提升。纳粹和苏联的监视和独裁统治的集体经验使欧洲的数据保护极为严厉 (例如，德国人仍然不愿意使用电子支付方式)。此外，自1945年以来，欧洲大陆基本上处于和平状态，并受到外界的保护。因此欧洲不可能诞生像美国国防部高级研究计划局这样的军方研究机构。该机构开发出了微芯片、GPS和互联网等技术。即使与中国如今的军事技术投入也没有可比性。
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