口译时事：Facebook会议室太冷

　　Here is how it goes: a successful woman writes a book about being a successful woman and then other women write angry articles about her and it.

　　事情通常都是这样发展的：一名成功女性写了一本关于女性怎样获得成功的书，其他女性则就她本人和她的书撰写愤怒的评论文章。

　　So I’ve been duly leafing through Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In trying to find material for my own angry column, only I can’t find anything to feel angry about – or to feel anything about at all. I was about to give up when I stumbled on a fact in an interview the author gave to The Times. It has nothing to do with women or success or leaning in or leaning back or even staying vertical. It’s that Mark Zuckerberg likes to keep the conference room at Facebook at a chilly 15C.

　　因此我认认真真地翻阅了谢乐尔·桑德伯格(Sheryl Sandberg)的《前倾》(Lean In)一书，试图从中为写作一篇愤怒的专栏文章寻找素材，不过我无法找到任何让我感到愤怒的内容——甚至连能让我心有所感的内容都没有。就在我准备放弃之时，我偶然看到了桑德伯格在接受《泰晤士报》(The Times)采访时提到的一个情况。此事与女性、成功、前倾、后仰或者保持垂直都无任何关系。而是马克·扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)喜欢将Facebook会议室的温度保持在凉飕飕的摄氏15度。

　　Now here is something I can really get steamed up about. This single fact hints at all sorts of things about the way we work now. It tells us about the Young Turks of Silicon Valley. It tells us about men and women. It tells us about productivity and the lack of it. But, most fundamentally of all, it raises the question: what is the right temperature to work in? You would think that this was something easy to get right. Yet there is a mysterious law that says offices are invariably the wrong temperature: scorchingly hot in the winter, and arctic in the summer.

　　现在终于有了一件能让我真正愤怒起来的事情了。这一简单事实透露出了与我们当前工作方式有关的各种信息。它告诉了我们有关硅谷少壮派(Young Turks of Silicon Valley)、男人和女人的差异、工作效率高低之别等方面。但最基本的一点在于，它提出了一个问题：适合工作的最佳温度是多少？你或许会认为这是一个很容易解决的问题。但根据一条神秘的法则，办公场所的温度总是无法避免地令人不快：冬天热得像在烤火，夏天则冷得像在北极。

　　Academics from Cornell have researched the matter and concluded that the magic number is 25C.

　　康奈尔大学(Cornell University)的学者们研究了这一问题，得出以下结论：摄氏25度才是适合工作的最佳温度。

　　They tested staff in an insurance office and found that at this temperature the number of mistakes made was minimised.

　　他们在一家保险公司的办公室里对其员工进行了测验，发现在摄氏25度的环境下，工作中出现的差错数量最少。

　　I find this impossible to believe. The temperature at my desk right now is 24.2C (a man from facilities paid me a visit with a thermometer). That’s a nice heat for watching the telly at home, but is far too cosy for work.

　　我认为这一点让人难以置信。目前我写字台前的温度是摄氏24.2度（一位来自设备厂商的人在拜访我时送了我一只温度计）。这个温度对于在家看电视来说非常舒适，但对于工作来说则过于温暖。

　　It’s true that so far today I have made no mistakes, but that is because I haven’t done any work either. The temperature is saying: relax! Take it easy! Check Twitter!

　　虽然今天到目前为止我确实还未犯下任何差错，但这是因为我什么工作也没有做。这个温度就好像是在告诉你：放松！不用着急！先刷一会儿推特(Twitter)！

　　The trouble with being too hot at work is that there is limited scope to adjust your clothing. When you are cold you can always put your coat on, whereas I took off my jacket the minute I got in, and would like to do the same with my woollen trousers, only decorum forbids it. Instead, at my elbow I have a little fan supplied by an entrepreneurial colleague who buys them in bulk for ·4 a go at a car boot sale. It is blowing at me coolingly as I write, though this solution comes with considerable cost to my hair: I end the day looking like Barry Manilow.

　　办公场所温度过高所造成的问题是，你在着装方面的调整空间有限。当你感到冷时你总是可以把大衣穿上，而我则一走进办公室就把外套脱了，并且还很希望能把我的羊毛裤一起脱掉，只不过着装礼仪禁止我这么做。我在身旁摆放了一台小型电扇，这是一位富有企业家精神的同事供应的，他在一个跳蚤市场上以每台4英镑的价格买入了不少。当我写作时这台电扇就向我吹来阵阵凉风，不过这一解决措施使我在发型方面付出了不小的代价——当我结束一天的工作时，看起来活像是巴瑞·曼尼洛(Barry Manilow)。

　　Cold focuses the mind. I did the best work I’ve ever done in my parents’ unheated thatched cottage when I was revising for my finals, crouched over an electric fan heater wearing about 10 jumpers. When you are that uncomfortable you don’t mess about. Cold is particularly useful in meeting rooms as it eliminates the desire to bang on pointlessly. The best board meeting I’ve attended was in a room where the heating was on the blink and we all put on overcoats and things moved along briskly.

　　低温能使人精神集中。我有生以来做事效率最高的一段时间是在父母没有暖气的茅草屋里复习期末考试时；当时我穿着大约10件衣服仍然冷得蜷伏在一台电热取暖扇上。当你处在那种不舒服的环境下时，你不会瞎胡闹。在会议室里低温尤其实用，因为它能使人打消毫无意义的大放厥词的念头。我所参加过的最好的一次董事会议是在一个暖气出了故障的房间里举行的，我们都穿上了厚外套，议程推进得格外轻快顺利。

　　Mr Zuckerberg is right about cold, even if 15C is a little extreme (it’s 1C below the legal minimum in the UK). However, his decision to impose discomfort on others is more controversial. In doing this he is exhibiting the very latest in management fashion from San Francisco: what I call dotcom dogmatism. He is second only to Yahoo’s Marrisa Meyer – who recently told all staff to stop loafing about in Starbucks and to come to Yahoo’s offices instead.

　　扎克伯格正确地认识到了低温的好处，不过摄氏15度确实有点极端（这比英国的法定最低温还低了一度）。但更加引人争议的是，他的决定使其他人被迫处于不适的环境之下。扎克伯格的这一举动展现出了来自旧金山的最新管理潮流——我将其称为是“互联网教条主义”。他在这方面仅次于雅虎(Yahoo)的梅里莎·梅尔(Marissa Mayer)——梅尔近期要求所有手下员工停止在星巴克(Starbucks)游荡，回到雅虎的办公室上班。

　　It is as if these companies, having spent years competing to be like cool friends to their employees, have finally realised that chilling – at least metaphorically – doesn’t work. So they’ve gone to the other extreme and it’s: get your asses into the office. And then freeze them off once they get there.

　　给人的感觉是，这些曾花多年时间争取成为员工之友的公司终于明白，光“酷”是没有用的——这里的“酷”与温度无关。因此它们走向了另一个极端：要求员工到办公室工作，而且员工一到那里就把他们冻成冰棍。

　　In opting for arctic meeting rooms Mr Zuckerberg is presenting a dictatorial face not just to staff but to Facebook’s guests. The home team are forewarned and so can be warm in the hoodies favoured by the boss himself, while guests are left shivering and at a disadvantage. I last witnessed this technique decades ago in the office of the late Lord Weinstock, head of GEC, who used to let visitors sit in almost total darkness while he enjoyed a pool of light at his desk. The chill also has implications for the battle between the sexes. Women feel the cold worse than men as more of their blood goes to protecting their organs – a biological difference that shows men and women were never designed to share offices, let alone beds. At 15C Mr Zuckerberg puts himself at a distinct advantage to Ms Sandberg and Facebook’s other women. So now I think I get what “leaning in” is really all about. If women are that cold, they need to huddle together to keep warm.

　　通过让会议室保持寒冷，扎克伯格不仅向Facebook的员工，也向来访的宾客展现出了独裁者的一面。公司内部人员都已预先得到警告，因此可以穿上扎克伯格自己也非常喜欢的帽衫保暖，而来宾们则被冻得瑟瑟发抖，处于劣势。我上一次见识到这种手段还是几十年前在现已去世的温斯托克勋爵(Lord Weinstock)办公室。温斯托克勋爵曾任英国GEC公司首席执行官，他喜欢让来宾待在近乎完全黑暗的环境中，而他自己则可以沐浴在办公桌前的灯光下。低温也涉及性别之争。女性比男性更不耐寒，因为她们的血液更多流向保护机体器官——这一生理差异表明男性和女性从来就不适合共享工作空间，更不用说共享一张床了。在摄氏15度的环境下，扎克伯格使自己处在较桑德伯格以及Facebook的其他女性员工更具优势的地位。因此我觉得自己领会到了“前倾”的真正含义——如果女性感到寒冷，她们需要挤在一起保持温暖。