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Britannia Rues the Waves
大不列顛望洋興嘆
Andrew Neil
安德魯·尼爾
Britain's merchant navy seldom grabs the headlines these days; it is almost a forgotten industry.
英國商船隊的大名如今已很少見諸報紙上的大字標題，它已幾乎被人們遺忘。
Yet shipping is the essential lifeline for the nation's economy. Ninety-nine percent of our trade in and out of the country goes by ship—and over half of it in British ships.
然而，海運業今天依然是英國經濟的主要命脈，我國的內外貿易商品99%要靠海洋運輸--其中一大半是通過英國商船運輸。
Shipping is also a significant British success story. It earns over 1000 million a year in foreign exchange earnings: without our merchant fleet, the balance of payments would be permanently in deficit, despite North Sea oil.
海運業在英國占有舉足輕重的地位，是個興旺發達的行業，它一年可賺取10億多英鎊的外匯。如果沒有我們的商業船隊，那么，就算有北海的石油，我國的收支還會是永遠的赤字。
But ,today this vital British industry is more in peril than ever before. On almost all the major sea routes of the world, the British fleet risks being elbowed out by stiff foreign competition.
然而，如今英國的這一至關重要的產業正面臨著空前嚴重的危機。幾乎在世界上所有的主要航海線上，英國商業船隊都有被強勁的外國競爭對手擠開的危險。
The threat comes from two main directions: from the Russians and the Eastern bloc countries who are now in the middle of a massive expansion of their merchant navies, and carving their way into the international shipping trade by severely undercutting Western shipping compaines;
威脅主要來自兩個方面：其一是蘇聯及東歐集團各國，它們正大力擴充自己的商業船隊，并通過大幅度壓低價格同西方海運公司競爭的手段擠進國際海運界;
and from the merchant fleets of the developing nations, who are bent on taking over the lion's share of the trade between Europe and Africa, Asia and the Far East-routes in which Britain has a bib stake.
其二是發展中國家的商船隊，它們正努力要從對英國利害攸關的幾條航線--歐洲至亞洲、亞洲至遠東等航線上奪走大部分生意。
Today, the British fleet no longer dominates the high seas: our share of the world's merchant fleet has fallen from 40 per cent to around eight per cent.
今天，大不列顛的商業船隊再也不是海上霸王了：我們在世界商船總量中所占的比重已由原來的40%降到現在的大約8%。
But, in terms of tonnage, the British merchant navy has continued to expand, it can now carry over two-thirds more than it could in 1914, and, almost alone among our traditional industries, shipping has remained a major success story.
不過，就商業船只的總噸位而言，英國商業船隊仍保持著繼續擴展的勢態，其裝載總量比起1914年已增加2/3以上。在我國的傳統產業258 中，幾乎還只有海運業至今依然保持著常盛不衰的記錄。
