读马云的传记学点英文
作者Duncan Clark是马云的好基友，也当过阿里巴巴的顾问；他指出，当初没有行使阿里巴巴作为报酬给他的股权，令自己犯下价值3000万美元的错误。
In an error of colossal proportions, I decided not to buy the shares. In the weeks after the company’s September 2014 IPO, this mushroomed into a $ 30 million mistake.
这本书讲述了阿里巴巴的商业帝国之路，从杭州的地理位置和商业文化背景说起，讲述了马云学习英语，赴美谈判被绑架，多次创业，到阿里巴巴经历SARS和金融危机，创建淘宝、支付宝、阿里云等业务，到最后在纽约上市，开始涉足更多领域。
Duncan Clark不愧是马云的好基友，在字里行间中可以看到他对马云的崇拜之情。或许是因为见证了阿里巴巴的成长，情不自禁地主动去维护它的利益。书中并没有什么“爆料”，多是作者的观察和综合媒体的报道。我认为他就是给阿里巴巴打广告的...
今天和大家分享的是书中的一些摘抄，看看这位腐国朋友是如何介绍马云和阿里巴巴以及我们熟悉的一些互联网企业的。
1. 描写马云的长相
Jack is, without doubt, the face of Alibaba. Short and thin, Jack has been described in the media over the years as an “imp of a man,” “a tiny figure with sunken cheekbones, tussled hair and a mischievous grin,” his looks “owlish,” “puckish,” or “elfish.” Jack has turned his distinctive looks to his advantage. At the launch of MYbank, which aims to sign up customers exclusively through facial recognition technology, Alibaba showcased the fact that Jack “who had been unable to live off his face was now going to live off his face.”
作者直接的描述只有"short and thin", 其它的都是引用媒体的报道，这样即客观又不得罪人，话锋一转讲了一个段子写出了马云的自嘲和自信。“靠脸吃饭”就可以说"live off one's face"。
2. 支付宝能做什么？
People use Alipay to make money transfers, top up their cell phone accounts, and make cashless purchases using bar codes at retailers and restaurants, like KFC. Twenty percent of all Alipay transactions involve paying for utilities, such as water, electricity, and gas bills. Customers can also buy train tickets, pay traffic fines, or purchase insurance using Alipay, making it the de facto currency of an increasingly digital China.
这么一段话读起来很简单，但是若是让我们去写恐怕会比这啰嗦很多。不要忽略这些简单的英文。作者用三句话写出了支付宝的功能，先是主要业务，然后是20%的交易来源，最后是一些相比来说的小业务。我们写作的时候要想好如何安排层次，不要直接把一堆数据扔给读者。
这一段中有"top up" "bar codes" "utilities" "de facto"可以学习一下。
3. 淘宝可以做什么？
Taobao isn’t just about products. Customers can also buy services, too. Artists and musicians find commissions on the site. The sheer variety of services on offer provides a revealing insight into China’s fast-changing social mores. Young men can hire a fake girlfriend to attend social events, or outsource a breakup with their real girlfriend to a specialist on Taobao. Wives worried about a straying husband can subscribe to a counseling service offering techniques to fend off a mistress. Busy young urbanites can hire surrogates on Taobao to visit their parents. To overcome a chronic lack of donors, Alibaba’s group buying site, Juhuasuan, even teamed up with sperm banks in seven provinces to entice qualified donors with an offer of more than eight hundred dollars. This is the going rate offline, but with the power of online marketing more than twenty-two thousand men had applied within forty-eight hours.
淘宝之所以是“万能的淘宝”不只是它提供了各式各样的产品，还有服务。作者选用了几个有趣、不可思议的例子向读者介绍了它的万能之处。这本书是写给外国人看的，我们写作的时候要注意自己是写给谁看的，选取例子的时候要综合考虑。
注意mores的发音，mores在这里指的是习俗;传统习惯;惯例。
4. 天猫卖什么？
If Taobao can be compared to a collection of scrappy market stalls, Tmall is a glitzy shopping mall.
类比是一个有效的展示手段，这个句型我们可以学习一下。
Tmall is a veritable A to Z of brands, from Apple to Zara. Luxury brands also sell on the website, although they are careful14 not to cannibalize sales in their physical stores. The presence of Burberry on the site is a sign that Alibaba is no longer just about cheap goods.
天猫产品之多用A to Z就写出来了，又给出了两个例子Apple, Zara。为了写出天猫和淘宝的不同之处，一个Burberry的例子就让读者清楚了。
5. 马云的鸡汤什么味？
In this respect, Jack shares a characteristic with Steve Jobs, whose charisma and means of getting his way were famously described by a member of the original Apple Macintosh design team as a “Reality Distortion Field.”
引出读者熟悉的人物来介绍新事物。我们在写作中也要注意做这种铺垫和对比，例如The Economist在介绍新浪微博的时候会说“China's Twitter-like microblogging service” , 介绍微信的时候提到“Some have compared it to WhatsApp, an American messaging service.”
书中这样的例子有很多，例如讲到温州和义乌对中国商业变革的影响时写道：
Wenzhou and Yiwu have played as important a part in China’s entrepreneurial revolution as the cotton mills of Lancashire did in Britain’s industrial revolution.
Central to Jack’s own distortion field are his skills as a communicator. Jack’s speaking style is so effective because his message is so easy to agree with, remember, and digest. Collections of his quotes circulate widely online, in English as well as in Chinese. Most are bite-size messages of inspiration, words that wouldn’t be out of place on a motivational poster, such as “Believe in your dream and believe in yourself,” or “Learn from others the tactics and the skills, but don’t change your dream.” Other popular quotes read more like an Aesop fable: “If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one. Change your tactics if you need to, but don’t change the rabbit. . . . Get one first, put it in your pocket, and then catch the others.” People have even taken to inventing carpe diem– style quotes from Jack to justify, for example, the purchase of a pair of expensive shoes.
马云的鸡汤演讲风格跃然纸上，这一段写出了为什么马云语录受欢迎，最后给出的例子也反映了马云的影响力之大。后面也提到了“His oratorical skills are so effective because his repertoire is so narrow.” 换句话说就是：他翻来覆去就那么几句话。
6. 微信有多大的影响力？
WeChat is the primary mobile messaging platform in China, benefiting from— and even driving— China’s smartphone boom. WeChat has been described as “one app to rule them all.” Without WeChat a cell phone in China loses much of its utility. The WeChat app effectively has made the contact book redundant. Most users check the application at least ten times a day. But WeChat is about far more than chat. Chinese consumers use it for a much wider range of services than their peers in the West (who use Apple’s iMessage, Facebook’s Messenger, or WhatsApp).
介绍微信的时候我们可以学习这些表达，先说它是什么(mobile messaging platform), 再介绍它的主要影响力(China's smartphone boom), 后面的"without..." "make ... redundant" 都是在具体说明微信对手机行业的影响。最后又补充说明微信不仅如此，用国外的流行app做对比。
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