2017年翻譯資格考試高級口譯翻譯練習（29）

　　【英譯中】

　　Consider the following statements, made by the same man eight years apart. "Eventually, being 'poor' won't be as much a matter of living in a poor country as it will be a matter of having poor skills." That was Bill Gates talking in 1992. Way back then, the Microsoft chairman's image was that of a rather harsh, libertarian-leaning fellow who proudly declared his products alone would "change the world." When asked what he would do with his billions, the boy wonder of Silicon Valley used to shrug off the question, saying his long workdays didn't leave time for charity. But now listen to the same Gates—or perhaps not quite the same Gates—talking in the fall of 2000: "Whenever the computer industry has a panel about the digital divide and I'm on the panel, I always think, 'OK, you want to send computers to Africa, what about food and electricity— those computers aren't going to be that valuable... The mothers are going to walk right up to that computer and say: 'My children are dying, what can you do?'"

　　Yes, even Bill Gates, the iconic capitalist of our day, seems to have come around. The self-assured Gates of 1992 was obviously a man of his times, confident of his industry's ability to change the world, certain that the power of markets and new technology, once unleashed, would address most of the world's ills. But the more skeptical Gates of the new millennium is someone who evinces a passion for giving and government aid. He shares a growing realization, even in the multibillionaire set, that something is amiss with the ideology that has prevailed since the end of the cold war: global-capitalism-as-panacea.

　　【參考譯文】

　　看看下面由同一個人在八年前說過的話：“歸根結底，貧窮不是生活在窮國的問題，而是缺乏技術的問題�！边@是比爾·蓋茨1992年的說法。想當年，這位微軟公司的總裁給人的印象總是言詞尖銳，口無遮攔，躊躇滿志，宣稱自己的產品足以改變整個世界。

　　的確，連蓋茨這個當代備受推崇的資本家也開始清醒過來。1992年的蓋茨充滿自信，顯然是那個時代的風云人物，完全相信軟件業(yè)有能力改變整個世界，確信市場和新興科技的力量，一旦得以釋放，必將消除世界上大部分的頑疾。然而新千年的蓋茨對此表示出了懷疑，對于捐助和政府資助卻表現(xiàn)出極大的熱情。冷戰(zhàn)結束后盛行的觀念是全球資本主義是解決一切問題的良方，而身為億萬富翁的蓋茨也逐漸意識到這種想法有失偏頗。