Every ten minutes, black Volkswagen shuttle vans ferry delegates from their hotels in Davos, Switzerland, to this year’s World E

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问题     Every ten minutes, black Volkswagen shuttle vans ferry delegates from their hotels in Davos, Switzerland, to this year’s World Economic Forum, held from January 17th to 20th. If you could squeeze the world’s eight richest men into one of these vans, they might feel cramped. 【F1】But they could comfort themselves with an extraordinary statistic; according to Oxfam, a charity, they own as much wealth ($426bn) as half the world’s population combined ($409bn).
    【F2】To make this striking calculation, the charity draws on data from Forbes magazine, which lists the wealth of the billionaires, and Credit Suisse, which estimates the smaller holdings of everyone else, thanks to painstaking work by three scholars of wealth, Anthony Shorrocks, Jim Davies and Rodrigo Lluberas.
    Pedants can nonetheless criticise Oxfam’s headline-grabbing comparison for its handling of debt, the dollar, labour and data. The world’s least wealthy include over 420m adults whose debts exceed their assets, leaving them with negative net worth. Most of this net debt is owed by people in high-income countries. There are, for example, over 21m Americans with a combined wealth of minus $357bn. Only people with relatively good prospects, by global standards, can be so poor; the wretched of the earth could never borrow so much. 【F3】If all of the people with sub-zero wealth are excluded from the comparison, the poorest half of the remaining population would have a combined wealth equivalent to the richest 98 billionaires.
    The Credit Suisse team converts the world’s wealth into dollars at market rates. But the dollar stretches further in poor countries. So studies of global poverty typically make currency conversions at "purchasing-power parity" (PPP) instead. 【F4】Wealth data also exclude the poor’s biggest asset; their labour or "human capital". The returns on that asset—such as wages—do however appear in income statistics. So whereas the bottom half of the global population have a negligible share of global wealth (only 0. 15% at market exchange rates, according to Credit Suisse), they have a bigger share of global income (10.6% at PPP in 2013, the latest number available, according to Christoph Lakner of the World Bank).
    In valuing the poor’s wealth at $409bn, Oxfam also seems to have committed a rounding error. The figure should be just $384bn, according to Mr Shorrocks (although the data are too patchy to allow much precision). For what it’s worth, $384bn is less than the wealth of the world’s seven richest men. There would be no need to squeeze Michael Bloomberg, the world’s eighth-richest person, into the minivan. 【F5】That would leave room for the magnificent seven to stretch their legs.
【F2】

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答案为了作出这个惊人的计算,乐施会采用了《福布斯》杂志和瑞士信贷的数据,前者用来统计亿万富翁们的财富,后者用来估算其他所有人的财产,这些人没有那么富有。在瑞信的统计中,三位财富研究领域的学者安东尼?夏洛克斯、吉姆?戴维斯和罗德里戈?鲁博拉斯付出了辛勤的劳动。

解析 本句是一个复合句。主句主语为the charity,谓语为draws on,宾语为data。“To make…”引导目的状语,“from Forbes magazine and Credit Suisse”为地点状语。两个which引导的非限制性定语从句,第一个从句修饰先行词Forbes magazine,其谓语为lists,宾语为the wealth;第二个从句修饰先行词Credit Suisse,其谓语为estimates,宾语为the smaller holding,thanks to…为状语;by three scholars为后置定语,修饰先行词work。本句涉及非谓语结构的翻译。非谓语动词包括现在分词、过去分词、不定式和动名词四种形式。它们在句中所起的作用不同。翻译方法也不尽相同。1)将非谓语动词直接译成动词:例:Facing their children’s complaints of “nothing to do”,parents were shelling out large numbers of dollars for various forms of entertainment.听到自己的孩子埋怨“无事可做”,父母们花费大笔钱帮孩子寻找各种各样的娱乐活动。2)将非谓语动词译成形容词:例:Most of us have survived a recession, so we’re familiar with the belt-tightening strategies needed to survive a slump.我们大多数人已经经历过经济萧条时期并幸存下来,所以我们很熟悉为了渡过难关所需要的“紧缩”策略。3)将非谓语动词译成名词:例:I am confident of his succeeding.我相信他会取得成功。4)将独立主格译成完整的句子:例:He returned three days later,his face covered with mud and his clothes torn into pieces.他3天后回来了,脸上沾满了污泥,衣服撕成了碎片。“To make”根据动词不定式表目的的特点在译成汉语时弱化其含义,将其功能转化成汉语的介词“为”。
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