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原文阅读:香港倡导上市公司增加女董事

Hong Kong has joined international efforts to get more women serving on the boards of listed companies, a rare initiative in a region that has seen a high number of female political leaders.

HSBC, Goldman Sachs, PCCW and Swire Properties are among 35 international and Hong Kong-listed companies whose chairmen are backing the local Women’s Foundation’s launch of the 30 Percent Club on Thursday.

The move also has the support of the securities regulators in Hong Kong and China, as well as key business associations in Hong Kong, and The Hong Kong Institute of Directors.

Roughly 40 per cent of Hong Kong-listed companies do not have a single woman on their boards, according to Su-Mei Thompson, chief executive of The Women’s Foundation. Only 10.7 per cent of all directors in the territory are female, even though a recent survey found that about 30 per cent of senior management positions in Hong Kong are held by women, Ms Thompson added.

“We believe there is a good supply of board-ready women in Hong Kong,” she said. “Women are consistently overlooked for reasons ranging from boards not having a diverse enough range of candidates to persistent gender bias about the leadership aptitude of women.”

Hong Kong is one of the least worst in the region in terms of the overall proportion of female directors, according to a recent study by consultants at Catalyst cited by the 30 Percent Club. The worst is Japan, with just 0.9 per cent of all directors being female, while Indonesia has just 4.5 per cent, Singapore 6.9 per cent, Australia 8.4 per cent and China 8.5 per cent. In the US the number is 16 per cent and in the UK 15 per cent.

Some cultural issues around a strong focus on traditional family roles remain in much of Asia in spite of many more female political leaders in the region than the west. South Korea and Thailand currently have female leaders, as does the more Anglo-Saxon Australia, while Indonesia and the Philippines have had female leaders in the past.

Ms Thompson said that in Hong Kong last year, 25 per cent of women left the workforce when they married, fewer than in the past, but still a significant proportion.

Teresa Ko, chairman of China for Freshfields, the law firm, said that there was less reason for this to happen in Hong Kong than in the west, especially for higher earners.

“In Hong Kong it ought to be easier for women to serve on boards because of the amount of domestic support that is available,” she said. “In the UK and some other countries, many women are forced to make a stark choice between career and family because of the very high costs of child care.”

The Hong Kong 30 Percent Club has had support from the eponymous UK group but is independent of it.

Its main aims are similar in that it does not want to see quotas or legislation to enforce change as has been recommended by the EU and adopted by countries such as Norway.

The club hopes instead to get locally listed groups to increase the number of women on their boards voluntarily by promoting awareness of the benefits of diversity, providing training and helping companies to identify suitable candidates and candidates to identify companies.

学习指南:

1.Word of the day

back: to support by material or moral assistance —often used with up支持。

ex:I'm backing him for President.
例句:我支持他竞选总统。

2.Phrase of the day

gender bias: 性别偏见,这在西方世界是个很严重的指控,尤其是在招聘、选举等方面。但在中国,我们却对性别的偏见司空见惯,比如在招聘条件上明确写着“仅录取男生/男生优先”等。除了性别偏见外,还有年龄偏见age bias,种族偏见race bias(这在中国比较少),地域偏见regional bias等。从bias偏见,我们还能引申出另一个程度更重的单词discrimination歧视。

ex:Bias against women permeates every level of the judicial system.
例句:各级司法机构普遍存在对女性的偏见。

ex:The concept of "genetic discrimination" currently lies in the realm of science fiction.
例句:"基因歧视"这个概念目前还属于科幻小说的范畴。

3.Sentence of the day

Hong Kong has joined international efforts to get more women serving on the boards of listed companies, a rare initiative in a region that has seen a high number of female political leaders.
为顺应国际趋势,香港也开始鼓励上市公司增加董事会中女性的数量。这在亚洲地区是罕见之举,因为这里的女性政治领导人占比已经较高。

小编注:get more women serving on boards这段用了一个get sb doing sth的句式,get sb doing和get sb to do都有一个to make, persuade sb to do sth的意思,这两种说法区别很小,get sb doing表示动作具有进行的含义,比如:
ex:Can you really get that old car going again?
例句:你真能让那老爷车再跑起来吗?
而get sb to do表示的动作可以指现在,也可以表示将来,或者仅仅只是一种可能性。
ex:
You could always get him to go for a walk. Hiking was just his cup of tea.
例句:你可以经常邀他去散步,他最喜欢徒步旅行了。

4.Cultural point of the day

女性职业怎么说。不知道老外是不是默认某些职业注定是男人做的,英文里诸如businessman, fireman, policeman等等带"man"的职业名称比比皆是。但是有道是“改革开放新气象,生男生女都一样”,在女权主义思潮盛行的当代,几乎再也没什么职业是男人专属的了,于是老外发明了不少强调职业性别的新名词。通常规则是以man结尾的改成woman,如:businesswoman, chairwoman;以or或er结尾的改成ress,如:waitress,directress;也有直接在er后面加ess的,如:manageress, porteress, stewardess等,你找出规律了吗?

5.Translation of the day

Teresa Ko, chairman of China for Freshfields, the law firm, said that there was less reason for this to happen in Hong Kong than in the west, especially for higher earners.
富而德律师事务所(Freshfields)中国业务主席高育贤(Teresa Ko)表示,相比西方而言,香港女性这样做的理由没那么充分,特别是对于高收入者来说。

小编注:这里要注意more和less的译法,英文里经常使用more than, less than, not so much as等具有“比较”意义的词,在这里,通过句子的意思,我们判断可以直接翻译为“相比西方……,没那么充分”,但很多情况下是不能这样子翻译的。在许多情况下,这种比较词可以翻译为“与其说……不如说……”比如:
ex1:Miss Hunter is more snobbish than haughty.
例句一:亨特小姐与其说是高傲不如说是势力。

ex2:I was less angry than shocked.
例句二:我与其说是生气,不如说感到震惊。

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