双语新闻：美国作为创新的摇篮还能维持多久?

2014-10-23 15:28:49来源：可可英语

　　Choon Ng is in several respects a case study in how America has kept its edge. He moved herefrom Malaysia at age 21 to earn a master's degree in engineering from Wichita State University.He hadn't planned on staying, but he was offered a job as a crash-test engineer in the autoindustry. The companies he worked for sponsored him for work visas until, after a dozen years,he had negotiated the arduous path to citizenship. Then inspiration struck.

　　从好几个方面来看，吴昌俊的经历都是美国如何保持优势的一个研究案例。他21岁从马来西亚来到这里，在威奇托州立大学(Wichita State University)攻读工程学硕士学位。吴昌俊本来没有打算留在美国，但他得到了一份工作，在汽车行业担任碰撞测试工程师。在他任职公司的担保下，他拿着工作签证，直到十几年后，他才经过艰难的历程成为了美国公民。然后，灵感突然降临。

　　The loom, originally a wooden tablet with a grid of pushpins, began as an attempt to score dadpoints with his craft-obsessed daughters. When it was a hit at home, he fashioned a versionout of molded plastic, scraped together his savings and loans from his family, and went intobusiness. Eventually he managed to line up a few retailers to stock the loom, and quit his dayjob. He is a cheerful advertisement for the American dream. "The longer you stay, the moreyou see the opportunity," Ng told me from his home in Michigan, where he is working on aloom upgrade and his next invention. "Whatever you work for, you can own."

　　最初的彩虹织机是一块带图钉网格的木板，吴昌俊发明它是为了讨女儿们的欢心，她们非常喜欢做手工。这个东西在家里大受欢迎，于是他用模铸塑料制作了一具彩虹织机，拿出自己的储蓄，又从家人那里凑了一些钱，开始做生意。终于，吴昌俊说服了几家零售商购买彩虹织机，然后他辞去了工作。他是美国梦一个令人愉快的展示。“你留在这里的时间越长，看到的机会就越多，”吴昌俊在他密歇根的家里跟我说，他目前正在研究彩虹织机的升级版以及下一个发明，“不管你为什么缘由努力，你都可以有所收获。”

　　His loom, by the way, is now manufactured in China, which makes a lot of things but inventsvery few.

　　顺便说一下，他的彩虹织机目前在中国制造。中国可以制造很多东西，但发明的东西非常少。

　　In Ng's story you can discern the main components of America's success as an incubator ofnew things: a welcome mat for talented, ambitious immigrants. An education system that(when it is not teaching test-taking) values creativity. The availability of start-up capital.Patent laws that protect intellectual property. An infrastructure that gets things shipped andmarketed. And, perhaps most important, a culture that preaches opportunity and celebratesthe risk-taker, the pioneer. From the Wright Brothers taking flight, to Bill Bowerman of Nikeusing a waffle iron to revolutionize running shoes, to Steve Jobs and his beautiful machines, toChoon Ng, we worship the inventive spark.

　　在吴昌俊的故事里，你可以看到美国作为新生事物孵化器成功的主要元素：对有才华、有事业心的移民的欢迎。重视创造力的教育系统(当它不教应试课程的时候)。可以获得创业资金。有保护知识产权的专利法。有完善的基础设施来运输和销售货物。也许最重要的是，它还有一种宣扬机会，为冒险者、开拓者喝彩的文化。从莱特兄弟(Wright Brothers)的飞行实验，到耐克(Nike)的比尔·鲍尔曼(Bill Bowerman)使用烙饼器来革新跑步鞋，到史蒂夫·乔布斯(Steve Jobs)美丽的苹果设备，再到吴昌俊。我们崇拜发明的火花。

　　The question is, can we keep it up?

　　问题是，我们能保持吗?

　　The culture part, at least, seems to be alive and well. "Entrepreneur" is to the academicachiever of today what "doctor" and "lawyer" were to my generation. "It's the cool thing," saidBill Aulet, who runs a center for entrepreneurship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "I would say nationally we're looking at 20 or 25 percent of the student population that wantsto be entrepreneurs."

　　这种鼓励创业的文化，至少看起来仍然有很大的影响。如今，优秀学生眼中“创业者”的地位，就好像我们那一代人眼中“医生”和“律师”的地位一样。“这是一件了不起的事，”在麻省理工学院(Massachusetts Instituteof Technology，简称MIT)负责一个创业中心的比尔·奥莱特(Bill Aulet)说。“我会说，从全国范围来看，大概有20%或30%的学生想要成为创业者。”

　　But for all the pop-culture enthusiasm, there are signs that our innovative dynamism isdiminishing. The pace of new business creation, on a per-capita basis, has been in a slow butsteady decline since the mid-1980s, according to the Kauffman Foundation, which studiesentrepreneurial trends. That suggests that other essentials of a thriving innovativeeconomy have been neglected.

　　但是，尽管流行文化鼓励创业精神，却有一些迹象显示，我们的创新活力正在不断下降。根据研究创业趋势的考夫曼基金会(Kauffman Foundation)，上世界80年代中期以来，从人均水平来看，新企业诞生的速度一直在下降，虽然下降得很慢。这就意味着一个蓬勃发展的创新性经济所需的其他要素已经被忽视。

　　Let us count the ways. The decline of our education system is exaggerated but real,especially in the scientific and technical fields. The Internet has made it harder to enforceintellectual property rights, creating havens for pirates and narrowing the advantage ofinnovator over copycat. (Ng's greatest frustration is protecting his patent againstaggressively lawyered-up imitators.)

　　让我们来看看造成这个局面的原因吧。我们教育体系的堕落被夸大了，但问题的确存在，尤其是在科技领域。互联网增加了保护知识产权的难度，成了盗版者的避风港，缩小了创新者相对于模仿者的优势。(最让吴昌俊感到沮丧的，是如何保护他的专利不被有律师撑腰的模仿者盗用。)

　　Start-up capital is still more abundant than anywhere else on earth, but the supply has beendepleted by the recession. Dane Stangler, Kauffman's research director, said most new smallbusinesses are financed not by high-profile venture capital firms, but by family and friends,including home equity loans that went away when the housing bubble burst. Crowdfunding isa new source of capital, but still minuscule.

　　美国的创业资本仍然比地球上的任何其他地方都充足，但是已经因为经济衰退而日渐枯竭。考夫曼基金会的研究主任戴恩·施坦格勒(Dane Stangler)说，大多数新建的小型企业的投资，并非来自著名的风险投资公司，而是来自家人和朋友，包括房屋净值贷款，这种贷款在房地产市场泡沫破裂的时候也消失了。“众筹”(crowdfunding)是一种新的资本来源，但规模仍然微不足道。

本文关键字: 美国创新的摇篮