精讀金融時報：中日或競爭亞洲開發(fā)銀行行長一職
滬江小編：對于商界精英們來說，閱讀《金融時報》（Financial Times）幾乎成了每天的必修課。FT文章以分析為主，邏輯嚴密，經(jīng)常被各類考試用作考題。非常適合學習BEC、TOEIC、GRE、GMAT的考生來閱讀、練習。滬江小編精選FT上的雙語文章，配上獨家的學習指南，從詞匯、短語、句式、文化、翻譯等多方面來解讀，長期堅持，相信會對英語學習有所幫助。
原文閱讀：中日或競爭亞洲開發(fā)銀行行長一職
It has long been convention that an American heads the World Bank, a European runs the IMF and a Japanese sits atop the Asian Development Bank in Manila.
But now that Haruhiko Kuroda will leave his position at the top of the Asian Development Bank to become governor of the Bank of Japan, western central bankers and academics are braced for the Chinese to launch efforts to install one of their own as Mr Kuroda’s successor.
?“The Chinese have long wanted control of the ADB,” said Eswar Prasad, a senior professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
Taro Aso, Japanese finance minister, made clear this week that Tokyo planned to fight any attempt by any other country to take the top job at the Manila-based ADB. “Japan will have to carry out election activity in order to secure the position to succeed ADB president Kuroda,” he told reporters. Mr Aso also said that Takehiko Nakao, Japan’s top currency diplomat, was among the candidates for ADB chief.
Any such Chinese push would be likely to add to tensions between the two countries, already locked in a dispute over control of the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea. It would also reinforce growing regional anxieties about China’s behaviour, with Beijing taking an increasingly prominent role in multilateral institutions in recent years.
The International Finance Corporation, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank, recently recruited Cai Jinyong as its chief executive in an indication of Beijing’s growing profile.
One likely Chinese candidate to head the ADB is Jin Liqun, at present the chairman of the supervisory board of China’s sovereign wealth fund and a vice-president at the ADB and the World Bank earlier in his career. Zhu Min, now a deputy to Christine Lagarde at the IMF and extremely well regarded, is also seen as qualified although he is likely to prefer to remain in Washington.
While China has long used its teeming foreign reserves and its own policy banks, particularly the China Development Bank, to help its neighbours build their energy and transport infrastructure, there has been a backlash to this approach in recent months.
“Nobody in the region believes in the peaceful rise of China anymore,” said the head of one local bank in Hong Kong.
Beijing’s increase in military spending is part of the reason for those concerns. But so is the feeling that China’s economic relations with its neighbours are often colonial in nature, sucking in raw materials at cheap prices and then selling finished goods in return with little local investment.
Some bankers worry that if China took the top job at the ADB, it would use its position to pursue its political agenda. In the past, China has lobbied against loans to places where it has territorial claims, such as in the province of Arunachal Pradesh in northeast India, which it claims does not belong to India at all.
Staffers at the ADB respond that the Japanese used the bank to further their own agenda at a time when many Asians with memories of the second world war were uncomfortable dealing with Japan directly.
The Japanese finance ministry has regarded the post as its preserve, staffing it with senior officials from its international side who have retired, leading to complaints in many cases that the occupant was too bureaucratic. At the same time, many potential candidates for the job have been reluctant to move to Manila, regarding it as a dangerous backwater.
學習指南：
1.Word of the day
bureaucratic: bureaucratic means involving complicated rules and procedures which can cause long delays.?官僚式的，官僚主義的。
ex1:Diplomats believe that bereaucratic delays are inevitable.
例句一：外交官們認為繁文縟節(jié)造成的延遲是在所難免的。
ex2:The department has become a bureaucratic nightmare.
例句二：該部門的官僚作風非常嚴重。
小編注：bureau是“局、所、司、處、屬”的意思，比如FBI的全稱就叫the Federal Bureau of Investigation，bureau這個詞來自法語，表示辦公室、桌子，最早指暗褐色的桌布，crat為希臘后綴，衍生形式有-cracy, -cratic ,-cratism, -cratically, -cracies，表示統(tǒng)治、權(quán)威、權(quán)力等。不妨閉上眼睛暗想幾個帶這些后綴的單詞吧，用詞根背單詞是很有效的一個方法。參考詞：democract 民主人士、aristocrat 貴族。
2.Phrase of the day
lobby aganst: If you lobby someone such as a member of a government or council, you try to persuade them that a particular law should be changed or that a particular thing should be done. 游說
ex:The union has attacked the plan and threatened to lobby against it.
例句：工會不但會攻擊該計劃，而且還揚言要游說議員反對它。
3.Sentence of the day
It has long been convention that an American heads the World Bank, a European runs the IMF and a Japanese sits atop the Asian Development Bank in Manila.
美國人領導世界銀行(World Bank)，歐洲人領導國際貨幣基金組織(IMF)，日本人領導亞洲開發(fā)銀行（ADB，總部位于馬尼拉），這早已形成一種慣例。
小編注：之所以特地挑出這句話是因為原文中為了表達“領導”這一含義，用了三個不同的表達方式："heads", "runs", "sit atop"，這樣子使得文章的用詞顯得非常豐富而飽含變化，令人耳目一新。我們在進行寫作和翻譯時，也要注意這一點，當連續(xù)出現(xiàn)幾個相同的意義時盡量選擇不同的表達。譯文全部使用“領導”一詞，不免略顯蒼白。
4.Cultural point of the day
lobby：又見lobby，主要是這個詞有一個有趣的典故。lobby一詞中國學生往往是用其名詞“酒店大堂、休息廳”的意思，而在英語世界中，更多地是用其動詞“游說”的含義，并且引申出了另一個詞lobbyist，說客。lobby被引申為“游說”，還有一個小小的典故，據(jù)說美國第18任總統(tǒng)格蘭特每日下午喜歡去華盛頓一家名叫Willard的酒店休息廳喝酒小憩。請愿者不久發(fā)現(xiàn)，在這家酒店的休息廳比在總統(tǒng)辦公室向總統(tǒng)游說更為成功，故而給休息室（lobby）賦予了“游說”的含義。但實際上，lobby作為“政治游說”的用法早在1808年就出現(xiàn)在《牛津英語大詞典》上，其來源不得而知。不過格蘭特的故事反倒能讓我們更好地記住lobby的動詞用法，我們姑且就記住這個小典故吧。
5.Translation of the day
Beijing’s increase in military spending is part of the reason for those concerns.?
中國增加軍事開支是其引起外界擔憂的原因之一。
小編注：英文報刊中經(jīng)常用一國首都來代表該國政府的立場，比如Beijing, Washington等，翻譯時可以直接把它代表的國家譯出來。這句翻譯另一個比較值得學習的地方在于將文中作名詞的increase翻譯成了動詞的“增加”，這是為了語句通順和簡潔而對原句單詞的詞性進行的變通。