英国《FinancialTimes》财经词汇3
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中国震撼世界 Shock and ore 我到那儿时，只剩下一块疤了，一块赭色的土疤，有二十五个足球场那么大。十多台挖土机，笨拙地刨着泥土，仿佛心不在焉地寻找丢失的东西。德国最大的钢铁厂之一，自二战前一直矗立此地。如今，这里只剩下几堆扭曲的废铁。我朝路边一位身着工装的男子走去，他正将一截巨大的金属管道吊上卡车。等他把管道放好后，我跟他打招呼。他说，从挖管、搬运到吊装，这种管子已运走了十四根，眼下只剩下三根，够他再干一周。然后，活儿就都干完了。我问管子往哪运。他伸直腰，好像要沿着一条长长的弧线，把什么东西抛向远方；然后说道：“中国。 By the time I got there, there was only the scar. A scar of ochre earth 25 times the size of a football field. A dozen excavators pawed ponderously at the soil as if absently searching for something lost. The place where one of Germany’s largest steel mills had stood since before the second world war was now reduced to a few mounds of twisted metal scrap. I approached a man in worker’s overalls by the side of the road. He was hoisting a huge metal segment of a pipeline on to the back of a truck. After he had settled it in place, I called over to him. He said he had dislodged, lifted and loaded 14 segments like this already and now there were only three left, enough for another week’s work. Then it would all be over. I asked him where the pipeline was going. He straightened his back and made as if to throw something in a gentle arc far into the distance. "China," he said. 钢厂的设备早就运走了。安装在60米高厂房内的顶吹氧转炉，加工卷板长度超过一公里的热轧钢机，一部烧结机，一座鼓风炉，还有许多其它部件，所有设备都用木条箱包装，塞进集装箱，装船启运，然后在长江口附近被拆箱。在长江的平坦冲积平原上，又严格按照在德国的样子，一个螺丝也不差地把设备重新组装。运走的设备总重达25万吨，外加40吨详尽解释重新组装过程的文件。整项工程十分繁复，穿工装的男子直摇头：“设备弄过去后，但愿能用。” The rest of the equipment had gone earlier: the oxygen converters that were housed in a shed 60m high, the hot rolling-mill for heavy steel plates that stretched out over one kilometre, a sinter plant, a blast furnace and a host of other parts. They had all been packed into wooden crates, inserted into containers, loaded on to ships and then unpacked again near the mouth of the Yangtze River. There, on the flat alluvium beds of that mighty river, they had been reconstructed exactly - to the last screw - as they had been in Germany. Altogether 250,000 tonnes of equipment had been shipped, along with 40 tonnes of documents that explained the intricacies of the reassembly process. The man in overalls shook his head at the convoluted nature of it all. "I just hope it works when they get it there," he said. 德国蒂森克虏伯(ThyssenKrupp)在多特蒙德的钢厂，一度雇佣约一万名员工。在赫尔德(Horde)和威斯特法伦区(Westfalenhutte)，数代人都靠钢厂谋生。高耸的烟囱市内各处都能看到，烟囱周围密布着厂房。近200年来，工厂一直在炼钢。德国在1870年、1914年和1939年擂响战鼓时，正是鲁尔河谷这一隅先为普鲁士、后为德意志帝国供应了野战炮、坦克、炮弹和战舰装甲钢板。此地的人们以实物为豪，证据在厂内处处可见。工厂的一条通道边，立着一座矮墩墩的19世纪铁制鼓风炉，人们把它当作纪念碑，文字说明：鼓风炉运自英格兰。附近，有块纪念当地一位工程师的牌匾。 The ThyssenKrupp steel mill in Dortmund once employed around 10,000 people. The communities of Horde and Westfalenhutte, where workshops clustered around chimneys that could be seen from all over the city, had depended on it for generations. People had made steel here for nearly 200 years, and when the drums of German conquest rolled in 1870, 1914 and 1939, it was this corner of the Ruhr Valley that supplied first Prussia and then the German empire with field guns, tanks, shells and battleship armour. A pride in practical things was evident everywhere. A stumpy-looking, 19th- century iron blast furnace, with a notice explaining that it had been brought over from England, stood as a monument by one of the gateways to the former plant. Nearby, a plaque memorialised a local engineer. |
