外刊时文DivorceInsurance离婚保险

1、外刊时文Divorce Insurance 离婚保险Divorce Insurance 离婚保险Divorce, like any other risk, can be priced and packaged. With half of all marriages doomed to fail, even the moderately hardheaded may be interested in ways of mitigating the danger. 与其它风险投资一样，离婚可以明码标价并打包。看着一半的婚姻注定走向失败，即使是不那么顽固的人也可能对减轻离婚风险的方式感兴趣。So ho

2、pes ARAG, a German-based insurance firm.（词句为倒装，正常语序是hopes so） From September it will offer a kind of divorce insurance that will pay out if English prenuptial agreements are subject to a legal challenge. Such policies are already common in some continental European countries such as Germany and Spai

3、n, and are offered by some American employers as a perk. But they are so far unknown in Britain, chiefly because prenuptial agreements have had little legal force in English law (Scotlands legal system is separate). Judges have traditionally given much greater weight to circumstances at the end of t

4、he marriage than to any agreements made at the start.ARAG一家总部在德国的保险公司正有此打算。从九月份开始，它将提供一种离婚险：如果英国婚前协议面临法律诉讼，那它将付清一切费用。这样的政策在一些欧洲大陆国家（比如德国和西班牙）已经很常见，也作为一种福利提供给了美国雇员。但目前为止在英国还是鲜为人知，一大原因是婚前协议在英国法中的法律效力很低（苏格兰的法律制度是分离的）。传统上，法官更注重婚姻的结束而非婚初的承诺。That changed in October last year, when a Supreme Court ruling u

5、pheld a German heiresss prenup against a challenge from her ex-husband, who claimed he hadnt realized that it was unfairly one-sided when he signed it. The Law Commission, which helps Parliament tidy up legislation, is currently looking into a statutory framework for prenuptial agreements.去年十月份情况开始有

6、所转变。德国一位财产女继承人被其前夫控告，其前夫称他签署婚前协议的时候不知道它是片面的，而高级法院支持这位女继承人。如今，帮助议会完善立法的法律委员会正在探求婚前协议的法律框架。The new insurance is hedged with conditions. It starts paying out if the prenup is challenged in courtso the companys profit will come from making that unlikely. Only solicitors vetted by the insurers can draft

7、the deals; the prenups must be updated regularly and when circumstances alter (through childbirth, inheritance or changes in earning power, for example). So far two legal firms have signed up: the upmarket Mishcon de Reya, and Prolegal, a commercially minded new entrant.新保险是有条件限制的。只有这份婚前协议被告上法庭了保险公司

8、财会付清一切款项保险公司会打赢这场官司并从中获得利润。只有接受过保险公司审查的事务律师才可以起草这份婚前协议，这份协议必须定期更新，当环境发生改变（比如孩子出生、继承遗产或者赚钱能力发生改变等等）这份协议也须随之更改。目前为止，有两家律师事务所已经签署了：一个是高端市场的Mishcon de Reya，一个是主攻商业领域的新律所。The cover will range from 50,000 to 500,000, says ARAG, with annual premiums from 500, depending on the scope of the policy and the pr

9、iciness of the lawyers. The bare-bones version is simply an indemnity for the cost of a challenge to the prenup; elaborate policies will include other expenses such as mediation and, if that fails, the cost of a contested divorce.“费用将在50,000至500,000欧元不等，”ARAG说道，“每年的分红为500欧元以上，取决于政策的范围以及律师的费率。”最简单的方案

10、是补偿婚前协议破裂所需支付的费用；更详细的方案包括其它费用，比如医疗费用以及如果官司败诉所产生的费用。Unlike those for car insurance, the premiums are flat rates: the libidinous will pay the same as the uxorious. But an American divorce-insurance company, SafeGuard, is planning a more ambitious product that will pay a big bonus to those who stay mar

11、ried for 25 years. Sounds like a nice wedding present.跟车险不同，分红的费率是统一的：弃妻者与爱妻者需要支付同样的价格。然而美国一家离婚保险公司SafeGuard野心更大：它正在酝酿一种方案，这种方案将会给那些婚姻维系25年以上的人更大的分红。这似乎是一份不错的结婚礼物。Where to be born in 2014 2014年，到底投胎到哪儿呢？Warren Buffett, probably the worlds most successful investor, has said that anything good that ha

12、ppened to him could be traced back to the fact that he was born in the right country, the United States, at the right time (1930). A quarter of a century ago, when The World in 1988 light-heartedly ranked 50 countries according to where would be the best place to be born, America indeed came top. Bu

13、t which country will be the best for a baby born in 2014?沃伦巴菲特（Warren Buffett）或许是全球最成功的投资者，他曾经说过：他的成功归根到底是因为他在正确的时间投胎到了正确的地方（他于1930年出生于美国）。25年前，政治与社会发表了一篇文章The World in 1988，文中有一个有意思的排行榜，榜单上列出了50个最适合投胎的国家，美国确实排在榜首。但对于那些将于2014年出生的宝宝们来说，哪个国家才是最佳选择呢？To answer this, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU)

14、 has this time turned deadly serious. It earnestly attempts to measure which country will provide the best opportunities for a healthy, safe and prosperous life in the years ahead.为了回答这个问题，经济学人智库这次以极其严肃的态度对这个问题进行了研究。该机构认真考察了全球哪些国家在将来能为新生婴儿们提供良好的医疗保障、安全的社会环境及富足的物质生活。Its quality-of-life index links th

15、e results of subjective life-satisfaction surveyshow happy people say they areto objective determinants of the quality of life across countries. Being rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the health of family life matt

16、er too. In all, the index takes 11 statistically significant indicators into account. They are a mixed bunch: some are fixed factors, such as geography; others change only very slowly over time (demography, many social and cultural characteristics); and some factors depend on policies and the state

17、of the world economy.该机构评价生活质量的指数考虑到了民众生活满意度调查结果这样的主观指标（被调查者感觉自己是否幸福），也考虑到了各国决定生活质量的客观因素。有钱确实是所有因素里面最重要的一项，但也不是说有钱的人生活质量就高。比如社会犯罪、民众对公共机构的信任度及家庭生活是否幸福对生活质量也有一定影响。经济学人智库的生活质量指数总共考虑了11项有统计学意义的指标。这些指标五花八门：有些指标是固定不变的，如地理位置；也有随时间的推移变化比较缓慢的指标（如人口结构、社会及文化特征）；还有些指标受到国家政策及全球经济状况的影响。A forward-looking element

18、comes into play, too. Although many of the drivers of the quality of life are slow-changing, for this ranking some variables, such as income per head, need to be forecast. We use the EIUs economic forecasts to 2030, which is roughly when children born in 2014 will reach adulthood.还考虑了一些前瞻性的因素。尽管影响生活

19、质量的许多因素变化都比较缓慢，但在制定这份生活质量排行榜的时候需要对诸如人均收入这样的变量进行预测。这里，该机构利用自己到2030年为止的经济预测数据，2014年出生的婴儿到那时候差不多刚好成年。Despite the global economic crisis, times have in certain respects never been so good. Output growth rates have been declining across the world, but income levels are at or near historic highs. Life exp

20、ectancy continues to increase steadily and political freedoms have spread across the globe, most recently in north Africa and the Middle East. In other ways, however, the crisis has left a deep imprintin the euro zone, but also elsewhereparticularly on unemployment and personal security. In doing so

21、, it has eroded both family and community life尽管当前全球面临经济危机，但从某些方面来看，现在确实是一个难得的好时代。虽然全球各国产出的增长率都普遍下降，但人们的收入水平却已接近或达到历史最高水平。人均寿命不断提高，全球也刮起了政治自由之风，如最近发生在北非及中东地区的阿拉伯之春民主运动。然而，另一方面，这场危机也造成了欧元区（还包括其他一些地区）失业率上升、民众人身安全受到威胁等问题。因此，危机也给家庭及社区生活带来了负面影响。What does all this, and likely developments in the years to

22、come, mean for where a baby might be luckiest to be born in 2014? After crunching its numbers, the EIU has Switzerland comfortably in the top spot, with Australia second.这所有的一切及将来若干年内局势可能的发展趋势对于将于2014年出生的婴儿选择最佳出生地意味着什么呢？经济学人智库将相关数据考虑在内，最后计算得出的结果显示瑞士以较大优势名列榜首，澳大利亚紧随其后。Small economies dominate the top

23、 ten. Half of these are European, but only one, the Netherlands, is from the euro zone. The Nordic countries shine, whereas the crisis-ridden south of Europe (Greece, Portugal and Spain) lags behind despite the advantage of a favorable climate. The largest European economies (Germany, France and Bri

24、tain) do not do particularly well.该榜单前十名大多是一些较小的经济体。其中有5个是欧洲国家，但只有荷兰是欧元区成员国。尽管欧洲南部气候宜人，但由于受到当前危机的影响比较大，这份榜单中排名靠前的大多是北欧国家。欧洲最大的几大经济体德国、法国及英国排名都不靠前。America, where babies will inherit the large debts of the boomer generation, languishes back in 16th place. Despite their economic dynamism, none of the B

25、RIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) scores impressively. Among the 80 countries covered, Nigeria comes last: it is the worst place for a baby to enter the world in 2014.在美国，新生儿一出生就要因为婴儿潮时代出生的那一代人而背上很大一笔债务，这导致美国在该榜单中仅排在第16位。尽管金砖四国（巴西、俄罗斯、印度及中国）的经济都很有活力，但它们的得分都不高。在榜单中所有的80个国家中，尼日利亚排名垫底：这是2

26、014年出生的婴儿最不理想的出生地。Companies in Rumors公司面对谣言If you google the phrase “Middle East rumors”, the first link that pops up is not, as you might expect, a website propagating conspiracy theories. It is Coca-Colas website. For several years now the company has struggled to rebut ridiculous rumors about its

27、 products. 如果你Google下这个短语：“中东谣言”，弹出的第一个链接并非是你所想的那样，一个传播阴谋论的网站，而是可口可乐公司的网站。这几年来，可口可乐一直争取澄清关于其产品的荒谬谣言。For example, some people believe that if you read Cokes Arabic logo backwards, it says: “No Muhammad, No Mecca”. Others insist that the company is owned by Jews, or that it bankrolls Israel. These rum

28、ors are one reason why Coke does worse than Pepsi in Arab countries. Yet they are all false, as Cokes website explains in painstaking detail. 举个例子，一些人认为，如果你倒着看可口可乐的阿拉伯语商标，上面则写着：“反对穆罕默德，反对麦加。”其他一些人则坚持认为可口可乐公司为犹太人所有，或者是以色列在背后以资金支持。这些谣言是可口可乐之所以在阿拉伯国家负于对手百事可乐的原因之一。正如可口可乐网站费尽心思的解释所说，这些纯粹是谣言，并不是真的。“Such r

29、ebuttals are unwise”, argue Derek Rucker and David Dubois, of the Kellogg School of Management, and Zakary Tormala, of Stanford business school, three psychologists. By restating the rumors, Coke helps to propagate them. Its web page is a magnet for search engines. And people who read rebuttals tend

30、 to forget the denial and remember only the rumor, says Mr. Rucker. 而凯洛格管理学院Derek Rucker与David Dubois，以及斯坦福商学院的Zakary Tormala这三位心理学家认为，“这样的辩驳是不明智的做法”。可口可乐重申这一谣言，会促使谣言更加广泛的传播开来。公司的网页是搜索引擎的磁石。Rucker先生说道：那些阅读过公司辩驳一文的人们，试图想忘记这些否认，但记住的只有谣言。As information is passed around, important qualifiers are lost. A

31、 rumor may start as “Im not sure if this is true, but I heard that” Then it evolves into: “I heard that” Finally it becomes: “Did you know that?” Even when no one intends to spread falsehoods, they spread. 当谣言散开，重要的修饰语则被省略。一则谣言原本是“我不确定这是否是真的，但是我听说”接着演变成“我听说”，最后就成了“你知道吗？”即使人们并非刻意去散布这些谣言，但是它们的确家喻户晓了。I

32、n several experiments, Mr. Rucker and Mr. Dubois planted rumors among undergraduates. They found that with each repetition, skepticism diminished. The rumors themselves did not change; only the likelihood that the students would believe them.（这个句子the likelihood是主语，后面是同位语从句，谓语changed被省略） These findin

33、gs were published in a report called “The Failure to Transmit Certainty”. Rucker先生和Dubois先生于几次试验中，在大学生中散布了些谣言。他们发现，每一次谣言在被重复中，疑虑的部分会逐渐减少。谣言本身并没有改变，仅仅改变的是学生们相信这些谣言的可能性。这样的发现在无法传播真实的报告中发表出版。Instead of denying false rumors, a company should put out a stream of positive messages about itself, reckon Mr.

34、 Rucker and Mr. Dubois. This deprives myths of oxygen and also nudges people to doubt nasty things they may hear about the company in question. Rucker先生和Dubois先生认为，企业应该向外界发布一连串关于企业的积极讯息，而非去否认这些错误的谣言。这将夺取谣言呼吸所需的氧气，同时能够推动大众去怀疑那些他们所听到的企业谣言。Other companies could learn from this. McDonalds hamburgers hav

35、e been said to contain worm meat, Procter and Gamble is reputed to have satanic links and Facebook is rumored to be shutting down so that its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, can have his life back. All these rumors are utterly false, but the firms in question would be well advised not to bother denying th

36、em. 其他的企业也能够从中得到教训。麦当劳的汉堡中据称含有蟲肉，宝洁商标被认为与撒旦有关，而脸谱网则被谣传关闭歇业使得其创建者Mark Zuckerberg能够过着原来的生活。所有这一切的谣言完全都是假的，但这些处在谣言中的企业们则都被谏言不要费事去否认它们。Latin Is The Best Language拉丁语最好的语言注意：本文中出现的人名和书名等专有名词，在翻译时可以照抄英文I studied Latin for 15 years, and this may well be the first time it has been of direct use in my adult l

37、ife. There was one moment, long ago, when it nearly came in handy. I was reviewing an album by Sting that contained a stab at a traditional wedding song. There are many such songs in Catullus, whose elegant poetry I had spent a whole term plodding through. If ever there was a time to play the Latin

38、card(在此是比喻说法，展示水平), this was it, so I described Stings wedding song as “Catullan”. Somewhere between the Daily Telegraph copytakers and the subs, “Catullan” was changed to “Catalan”. It probably served me right.我学习拉丁语已有15个年头了，写这篇文章很可能是拉丁语在我成年后第一次派上用场。很久以前，我曾有一次差点就用上拉丁语了。那次我在为Sting的一张专辑写乐评，那张专辑里面有尝试传

39、统风格的婚礼曲。卡图卢斯的作品里有很多这样的曲子，而我曾经花了整整一个学期的时间研习过他那些优美的诗歌。那似乎是一个绝佳的机会，让我能显示一下我的拉丁文，因此我用“Catullan”（卡图卢斯的）一词来描述Sting的婚礼曲。结果在经过每日邮报的誊写和审校两道工序之后，“Catullan”被改成了“Catalan”（加泰罗尼亚的）。这也许是我显摆的报应吧。So, direct use: virtually nil. But Latinwhich gives us both “direct” and “use”, both “virtually” and “nil”has been of ind

40、irect use every day of my career. If you work with words, Latin is the Pilates session that stays with you for life: it strengthens the core. It teaches you grammar and syntax, better than your own language, whose（先行词是your own language） structure you will have absorbed before you are capable of noti

41、cing it. Latin offers no hiding place, no refuge for the woolly. Each piece of the sentence has to slot in with the rest; every ending has to be the right one. To learn Latin is to learn rigor.所以要说拉丁语的直接用途嘛：基本为零。但是考虑到“direct”、“use”、“virtually”、“nil”这些词都来自于拉丁语，这门语言在我职业生涯的每一天里都起到间接的作用。如果你的工作是和文字打交道，那么

42、拉丁语就好像你练习了一辈子的普拉提健身一样：它可以强化你的核心。拉丁语能比自己当初学母语更好地掌握语法和句法，因为你在学习母语时还没有注意到这些语言结构就已经把它们吸收了。拉丁语的表意决不模糊，很难做到模棱两可。句子中每一个部份都必须和其它部份统一搭配，所有的词尾都必须满足一定模式。学习拉丁语就等于是在学习何为严密。The price for the rigor is the mortis. Soon enough, someone will helpfully inform you that Latin is a dead language. In one way, sure, but in

43、 others it lives on. It is a vivid presence in English and French, it is the mother of Italian and Spanish, and it even seeps into German. More often than not, the words these languages have in common are the Latin ones: it remains a lingua franca. The words we take from Latin tend to be long, refle

44、ctive, intellectual (the short, punchy words we didnt need to import: live, die, eat, drink, love, hate). Business and academia, two worlds with little else in common, both rely more and more on long Latinate words. The European Union speaks little else. Ten years ago, for another article, I had to

45、read the proposed European constitution. It was a long turgid parade of Latin-derived words. The burghers of Brussels were trying to build a superstate out of abstract nouns.严密换来的代价就是死亡。很快就会有热心人提醒你拉丁语是一门死语言。就某个角度来看，确实是这样的，但是从别的角度看拉丁语依然活着。它很生动地存在于英语和法语里，也是意大利语和西班牙语的母亲，甚至还渗入了德语里。大多数时候，这些语言里共有的单词本身就是拉丁

46、词。拉丁语至今依然是一门通用语。来源于拉丁语的单词通常都是些较长，发人深思或蕴涵知识的词语（那些简短，上口的单词不需要从外语引入，像是live、die、eat、drink、love、hate）。商界和学术界这两个除了拉丁文基本没有什么共通点的领域，都越来越依赖繁长的拉丁词。欧盟除了拉丁语好像就不会说别的了。十年前，为了写另一篇稿子，我不得不阅读当时提议的欧洲宪法。那完全就是一份冗长浮夸的拉丁词展示文。布鲁塞尔的市民在试图用抽象名词建起一个超级邦国。Management-speak and Euro-blather are Latin at its worst, but learning it

47、will still help you cut through them to find clarity. It is a little harder to bullshit when youve learnt Latin (though quite possible to bluster, as Boris Johnson proves). And if you stick at it you discover, after no more than eight or nine years, that this is a glorious language per se.管理阶层专用文和欧盟

48、蠢话是拉丁语最糟糕的一面，但是学习它可以帮你穿越这些混乱重拾清晰。学会拉丁语后要说胡话会比较困难一点（虽然你也可能会因此沾上夸口的恶习，看看鲍里斯约翰逊你就知道了）。如果你坚持学习下来，不超过八九年，你就会发现拉丁语本质上是一门极好的语言。Its literature has stood the test of millennia: Ovid is diverting, Lucretius is stimulating, Cicero is riveting. Horace can be a draglike a bad weekend columnist, always wittering

49、on about his garden and his cellar, except when coming out with quotable drivel about how sweet it is to die in battle. But his contemporary Virgil is majestic. He set himself the most daunting taskgiving Rome its own “Iliad” and “Odyssey”, in a single epic, while staying on the right side of an emp

50、erorand pulled it off. I did French and Greek too for years, and enjoyed them, but nothing quite matched up to the pleasure of reading the “Aeneid” in the original.拉丁语文学经历了几千年的锤炼：奥维德妙趣横生，卢克莱修发人深省，西塞罗引人入胜。贺拉斯可能会让人有点扫兴，就像一位糟糕的周末专栏撰稿人一样，总是喋喋不休自己的花园和酒窖，只有偶尔冒出一两句在战斗中阵亡是多么甜蜜之类可供引用的胡话时还有点意思。但是和他同时代的维吉尔却是那么

51、宏伟壮丽。他赋予自己最艰巨的任务：用一篇史诗为罗马写下自己的伊利亚特和奥德修斯，同时还不能冒犯皇帝，而他最终也做到了。我也曾花多年学习法语和希腊语，而且很喜欢这两种语言，但是没有什么可以比的上用原文阅读埃涅阿斯纪时的愉悦。Worries of University Graduates大学毕业生的烦恼MILLIONS of school-leavers are about to bid a tearful goodbye to their parents and start a new life at university. Some are inspired by a pure love of

52、 learning. But most also believe that spending three or four years at universityand accumulating huge debts in the processwill boost their chances of landing a well-paid and secure job.成千上万的高中毕业生即将泪别父母开始大学生活。他们中有些是被纯粹的求知欲驱使。但是更多人相信读三四年大学虽然会大量负债，但将会有助于他们觅得高收入、稳定的工作。Their elders have always told them

53、that education is the best way to equip them to thrive in a globalised world. Blue-collar workers will see their jobs offshored and automated, the familiar argument goes. School dropouts will have to cope with a life of cash-strapped insecurity. But the graduate elite will have the world at its feet

54、. There is some evidence to support this view（写作句型，可以模仿）. A recent study from Georgetown Universitys Centre on Education and the Workforce argues that “obtaining a post-secondary credential is almost always worth it.” Educational qualifications are tightly correlated with earnings: an American with

55、a professional degree can expect to pocket $3.6m over a lifetime; one with merely a high-school diploma can expect only $1.3m. The gap between more- and less-educated earners may be widening. A study in 2002 found that someone with a bachelors degree could expect to earn 75% more over a lifetime tha

56、n someone with only a high-school diploma.他们的学长总是告诉他们：接受教育是使自己在全球化的世界里立于不败之地的最好办法。蓝领工人将会看到他们的岗位被迁移海外以及被自动化代替，类似的论点层出不穷。辍学者将要过着经济困难的不安定生活。但是毕业生中的佼佼者掌握着主动。一些证据支持着这种看法。乔治敦大学教育和劳动力中心最近的一项研究表明获得高等教育证明总是物有所值。学历与薪酬紧密的联系在一起：在美国，获得专业学位的劳工职业生涯总预期薪酬为360万；仅获得高中文凭的劳工职业生涯的总预期薪酬为130万。这种收入差距还在加大。2002年的一项关于劳工职业生涯中获得

57、的总薪酬研究表明：获得学士学位的将比获得高中学历高出75%。 But is the past a reliable guide to the future? Or are we at the beginning of a new phase in the relationship between jobs and education? There are good reasons for thinking that old patterns are about to changeand that the current recession-driven downturn in the dema

58、nd for Western graduates will morph into something structural. The gale of creative destruction that has shaken so many blue-collar workers over the past few decades is beginning to shake the cognitive elite as well.但是能照搬经验吗？亦或说我们处于职业与学历关系的新阶段吗？有充足的理由让人们相信旧模式即将改变：现今经济不景气导致的对西方毕业生需求的减少将会演变为结构之变。过去数十年

59、来，创造性毁灭之潮使得众多蓝领为之烦恼，如今，它开始席卷认知精英界。 The supply of university graduates is increasing rapidly. The Chronicle of Higher Education calculates that between 1990 and 2007 the number of students going to university increased by 22% in North America, 74% in Europe, 144% in Latin America and 203% in Asia. In

60、 2007 150m people attended university around the world, including 70m in Asia. Emerging economiesespecially Chinaare pouring resources into building universities that can compete with the elite of America and Europe. They are also producing professional-services firms such as Tata Consulting Service