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Jargon abhors a vacuum.
行話厭惡空白。
The reasons behind management gobbledygook.
難懂的管理術(shù)語(yǔ)背后的原因。
No child aspires to a life talking the kind of nonsense that many executives speak. But it seems that, as soon as managers start to climb the corporate ladder, they begin to lose the ability to talk or write clearly. They instead become entangled in a forest of gobbledygook.
沒(méi)有哪個(gè)孩子希望過(guò)著像許多高管那樣胡說(shuō)八道的生活。但似乎一旦經(jīng)理們開(kāi)始沿著公司的階梯向上爬，他們就開(kāi)始失去清晰地說(shuō)話或?qū)懽鞯哪芰ΑＯ喾矗麄兿萑肓斯贅游恼碌纳种小?/p>
The first explanation for this phenomenon is that “jargon abhors a vacuum”. All too often, executives know they have nothing significant to say in a speech or a memo. They could confine their remarks to something like “profits are up (or down)”, which would be relevant information. But executives would rather make some grand statement about team spirit or the corporate ethos. They aim to make the business sound more inspirational than “selling more stuff at less cost”. So they use long words, obscure jargon, and buzzwords like “holistic” to fill the space.
對(duì)這一現(xiàn)象的第一個(gè)解釋是“行話厭惡空白”。很多時(shí)候，高管們都知道，他們?cè)谘葜v或簡(jiǎn)報(bào)中沒(méi)有什么重要的東西可說(shuō)。他們可以將自己的言論限制在“利潤(rùn)上升(或下降)”這樣的話上，這是些相關(guān)的信息。但高管們更愿意就團(tuán)隊(duì)精神或企業(yè)精神發(fā)表一些宏大的聲明。他們的目標(biāo)是讓這項(xiàng)業(yè)務(wù)聽(tīng)起來(lái)比“以更低的成本銷售更多的東西”更有啟發(fā)性。所以他們用長(zhǎng)詞、晦澀難懂的行話和像“整體”這樣的流行語(yǔ)來(lái)填補(bǔ)空白。
Another reason why managers indulge in waffle relates to the nature of the modern economy. In the past, work was largely about producing, or selling, physical things such as bricks or electrical gadgets. A service-based economy involves tasks that are difficult to define. When it is hard to describe what you do, it is natural to resort to imprecise terms.
經(jīng)理們沉迷于胡扯的另一個(gè)原因與現(xiàn)代經(jīng)濟(jì)的本質(zhì)有關(guān)。在過(guò)去，工作主要是生產(chǎn)或銷售實(shí)物，比如磚頭或電器配件。服務(wù)型經(jīng)濟(jì)涉及的任務(wù)很難定義。當(dāng)很難描述你所做的事情時(shí)，很自然地就會(huì)使用不精確的術(shù)語(yǔ)。
Such terms can have a purpose but still be irritating. Take “onboarding”. A single word to describe the process of a company assimilating a new employee could be useful. But “to board” would do the trick (at least in American English, which is more comfortable than British English with “a plane boarding passengers” and not just “passengers boarding a plane”). The only purpose of adding “on” seems to be to allow the creation of an equally ugly word, “offboarding”, the process of leaving a firm.
這些術(shù)語(yǔ)可能有其目的，但仍然令人惱火。以“onboarding”為例。用一個(gè)詞來(lái)描述公司吸納新員工的過(guò)程可能是有用的。但是用“to board”就可以了（至少在美式英語(yǔ)中是這樣的，美式英語(yǔ)中的“a plane boarding passengers”比英式英語(yǔ)中的“passengers boarding a plane”要舒服得多）。添加“on”的唯一目的似乎是創(chuàng)造另一個(gè)同樣令人厭惡的詞“offboarding”，也就是離開(kāi)公司的過(guò)程。
Overblown language is also used when the actual business is prosaic. Private Eye, a British satirical magazine that often mocks corporate flimflam, used to have a regular column pointing out the absurd tendency of companies to tag the word “solutions” onto a product; carpets became “floor-covering solutions”. (Bartleby has long wanted to start a business devoted to dissolving items in water so it could be called “Solution Solutions”.) Nowadays, the target for mockery is the use of the term DNA, as in “perfect customer service is in our DNA”.
當(dāng)實(shí)際業(yè)務(wù)平淡無(wú)奇時(shí)，人們也會(huì)使用夸張的語(yǔ)言。英國(guó)諷刺雜志《私家偵探》經(jīng)常嘲諷企業(yè)的鬼話，它曾開(kāi)設(shè)固定專欄，指出企業(yè)在產(chǎn)品上貼上“解決方案”一詞的荒謬趨勢(shì)；地毯變成“覆蓋地板的解決方案”。（巴托比一直想創(chuàng)辦一家致力于將物品溶解在水中的公司，這樣它就可以被稱為“溶液解決方案”。）如今，人們的嘲笑對(duì)象是DNA這個(gè)詞的使用，比如“完美的客戶服務(wù)存在于我們的DNA中”。
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