精讀金融時報：聯(lián)合國稱扶貧取得意外進展
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：聯(lián)合國稱全球扶貧取得意外進展
Up to 80 per cent of the world’s middle classes will live in developing countries by 2030 thanks to surprising recent gains in poverty reduction, according to a United Nations report published on Thursday.
“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” concludes the UN’s latest Development Report. “The world is witnessing an epochal ‘global rebalancing’.”
Underpinning the improvements in the human development index (HDI) was rapid growth in countries such as China, India and Brazil, with China and India having doubled per capita economic output in less than 20 years.But the study stressed that growth and improvements in HDI spread far beyond the four Bric countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China, and included at least 40 countries that had accompanied greater economic dynamism with effective poverty-reduction policies.
Afghanistan, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Angola were among 14 countries that have recorded gains in HDI of more than 2 per cent a year since 2000.Partly as a result, the report found that worldwide extreme income poverty has plunged from 43 per cent in 1990 to just 22 per cent in 2008, including more than 500m being lifted out of poverty in China alone.The report stated that such gains had already helped the world achieve the main poverty eradication goal of the so-called Millennium Development Goals, which called for the share of people living on less than $1.25 a day to be cut by half from 1990 to 2015.
Underpinning this poverty reduction was developing countries’ increasing share of global trade, which grew from 25 per cent to 47 per cent between 1980 and 2010. “The south as a whole is driving global economic growth and societal change for the first time in centuries,” says the report.
The report found that trade among developing countries was the biggest factor in that expansion, increasing from less than 10 per cent of total global trade to more than 30 per cent. “Trade between countries in the south will overtake that between developed nations,” the report said.
學習指南：
1.Word of the day
underpin:?If one thing underpins another, it helps the other thing to continue or succeed by supporting and strengthening it.?加強……的基礎(chǔ)；鞏固，支撐。
ex:...mystical themes that underpin all religions.
例句：支撐所有宗教的神秘主題。
小編注：pin是釘?shù)囊馑?，釘在下面的東西起支撐的作用，這樣是不是很好記呢？
2.Phrase of the day
per capita: The per capita amount of something is the total amount of it in a country or area divided by the number of people in that country or area.??人均的；按人計算的。
ex:They have the world's largest per capita income.
例句：他們的人均收入居世界之首。
3.Sentence of the day
“Never in history have the living conditions and prospects of so many people changed so dramatically and so fast,” concludes the UN’s latest Development Report.?
聯(lián)合國在最新的《人類發(fā)展報告》中表示：“歷史上從未有如此多人的生活條件和前景如此迅速地出現(xiàn)如此巨大的改變。世界正在見證一個劃時代的‘全球再平衡’”。
小編注：這句話出自聯(lián)合國的《人類發(fā)展報告》，連用了三個so，從遣詞造句的角度看，這樣的句子顯得非常有氣勢，也將想要強調(diào)的內(nèi)容強調(diào)得更為突出。
4.Cultural point of the day
人類發(fā)展指數(shù)：以前人們界定一個國家是否屬于發(fā)達國家，是用人均GDP來界定的，但是由于人均GDP很不穩(wěn)定，受匯率，物價等影響而波動，而且只反映了經(jīng)濟水平而沒有反映一個國家的全面發(fā)展水平。因此，聯(lián)合國開發(fā)計劃署編制了“人類發(fā)展指數(shù)”，也就是文中提到的HDI。包括三個指標：預計壽命、成人識字率以及人均GDP。人類發(fā)展指數(shù)不低于0.8即為發(fā)達國家。據(jù)2013年最新的數(shù)據(jù)，中國的HDI為0.699，居世界101位。
5.Translation of the day
The report found that trade among developing countries was the biggest factor in that expansion, increasing from less than 10 per cent of total global trade to more than 30 per cent.
報告還發(fā)現(xiàn)，發(fā)展中國家之間的貿(mào)易是上述貿(mào)易增長的最大因素——發(fā)展中國家之間的貿(mào)易占全球貿(mào)易總額的比重從不到10%增至逾30%。
小編注：我們熟悉的發(fā)展中國家的譯法為“developing country”，而不發(fā)達國家稱為“underdeveloped country”,如果你看過英劇《是，大臣》第一季第二集的話，也許會對此莞爾一笑，片中的非洲小國因為underdeveloped country太難聽而自稱為LDC——less developed country，而小漢又把它稱為HRRC——human resourse rich country。
