【难词】
1.rate … as … 认为…是… 2. holds true at sth 确实是….
3. evaluate sth at sth 评估
4. larking around on sth 鬼混、磨时间
5. barrage sb with sth 向某人发送大量的文件、信息、货物等
外刊时文---BBC— Hope to Reform 英国广播
公司—期待改革
BBC— Hope to Reform 英国广播公司—期待改革
The BBC has long dominated Britain’s media, but in recent years it has got even bigger, both absolutely and relatively. Many serious broadsheet and local
newspapers are dying. Tabloid newspapers have been shamed by a phone-hacking scandal, and are likely to endure stricter oversight in future. The corporation gets ￡3.6 billion ($5.7 billion) a year from a license fee levied on every household that watches television, and is therefore invulnerable to the vagaries of the media market, while the technological change that has caused other media outlets to shrink has given the BBC new scope for expansion. It has a huge online presence and a proliferation of digital television channels and radio stations. With a staff of around 23,000, it is the largest broadcaster in the world.
长期以来，BBC一直主宰着英国媒体界，但近几年，无论从绝对还是相对水平看，BBC都
变得更大了。许多严肃的大幅报纸和地方性报刊都奄奄一息，而通俗小报也因电话窃听丑闻名誉受损，在未来受到的监管也可能会更加严格。但BBC每年能通过对电视用户征收电视执照费能获得36亿英镑（57亿美元）的资金，因此媒体市场的风云变幻并不会影响到它。技术的革新使得其他媒体机构逐渐萎缩，但却让BBC得以在更大的范围内进行扩张。该公司网上业务十分庞大，它的数字电视频道和无线电台也在不断增加。该公司拥有约23000名员工，是世界上最大的广播公司。
The BBC makes good use of some of this money. Its documentaries, serious radio output (such as “Today”) and website are excellent. Although polls show trust in it is declining, the reputations of other great British institutions, such as Parliament and the City, have fallen further still. The BBC remains respected around the world and is a handy tool for projecting British interests—cheaper and cleaner than bombs.
BBC充分利用了它的一部分资金，它的纪录片、严肃类无线广播节目（如《今日》）以及网站都十分优秀。尽管民调显示公众对它的信任度正在下降，但英国其他大型机构如国会和伦敦金融城的名誉则损失得更惨。BBC在全球仍旧受到人们的尊敬，它是英国人投射其兴趣的一个得心应手的工具，而且比起炸弹，它来得更加廉价、无害。
Yet Britons’ attention has drifted to other entertainments. The BBC’s share of British viewing time has dropped from over a half three decades ago to under a third today as pay-television and free multichannel services have grown. Britons have noticed. According to a YouGov survey in 2010, 60% regard the license fee as poor value for money. And the decline of private-sector media outlets raises questions about the impact of the BBC’s public subsidy. The Guardian, for instance,
mightmake a go of being a British-based global online, leftish news provider, were it not for the state-funded competition.
然而英国人的注意力已经转移到了其他的娱乐方式上。三十年前，BBC占了英国收视率的一半，但随着付费电视和免费多频道服务的发展，BBC的收视率降到了三分之一以下。英国人注意到了这一点。根据尤戈夫调查公司2010年的调查显示，60%的人认为电视执照费的钱花得不值。而私营媒体机构的衰落也使人们开始考虑政府向BBC提供补贴所带来的影响。比如，如果没有这些国家资助的机构所带来的竞争，总部位于英国的《卫报》可能会成为一个成功的提供左派新闻的网络报纸供应商。
The BBC’s size, as Mr. Entwistle pointed out, is a problem not just for the competition but for the organization itself. Its bloated management means that those at the top do not know what’s going on at the bottom, and stunts creativity. Few of its dramas or comedies are world-beaters (“Downton Abbey”, a current hit, is made by an American-owned independent studio and broadcast on ITV). Even in news, recent big stories have been broken by impoverished newspapers, not thesluggish state-backed monolith.
正如恩特威斯尔所指出的，BBC的规模不仅带来了竞争问题，还给该公司自身带来了麻烦。臃肿的管理层意味着高层不清楚基层的人在干什么，同时也扼杀了创造力。BBC的剧情片和喜剧片中很少有能称得上是世界一流的（最近大受欢迎的《唐顿庄园》是由英国独立电视台⑤旗下的一家独立的美国广播电视公司出品的）。即使是在新闻方面，最近的一些大事也是由已经濒临破产的报纸揭露的，而不是BBC这家由国家资助的笨拙“大块头”。
The radical solution would be to get rid of a lot of the BBC. Public broadcasting should focus on areas where the market does not provide—expensive things such as
investigative journalism and foreign reporting, serious radio, some areas of arts and science broadcasting—and forget about the prime-time entertainment shows and sports where the BBC spends taxpayers’ money bidding up stars’ wages. A smaller, more focused organization would find it easier to take risks and innovate. 最根本的解决方案是大量削减BBC的业务。公共广播应该将重点放在市场顾及不到的那些领域——比较昂贵的有调查性新闻、国外新闻、严肃的广播类节目、涉及艺术与科学领域的
一些报道——去掉黄金时间段的娱乐秀和体育节目（BBC在这些节目上砸了纳税人的钱却涨了明星们的工资）。一个机构在规模更小、关注点更集中后会更容易承担风险、开拓创新。
外刊时文---Imprisoned in Poverty 被穷困禁锢
Imprisoned in Poverty 被穷困禁锢
Most poor children live in single-parent homes, and most families that are poor lack married parents. More than a third of families like Ms Hamilton’s—headed by a single mother, with no husband present—are poor, compared with fewer than one in fourteen families with married parents. Back in 1999 Isabel Sawhill, a poverty scholar at the Brookings Institution, a think-tank, warned of “a bifurcation in children’s life prospects that threatens to divide the US into a society of haves and have-nots”—a bifurcation driven largely by the immense difference in life prospects between children born to rich or poor and to married or unmarried parents. 大多数贫困儿童都身处单身家庭中，而大多数贫困家庭里的父母都没有结婚。和汉密尔顿女士的家庭类似，主要经济来源是没有丈夫帮助的单身母亲的家庭有超过三分之一生活在贫困中。相较之下已婚父母家庭中贫困的比例不到十四分之一。智囊组织布鲁金斯学院的贫困问题学者Isabel Sawhill在1999年就警告说：儿童前途的两极化会把美国分裂成贫富两个群体。这种两极化很大程度上是因为出生在贫穷和富裕家庭里的孩子之间，或出生在父母已婚和单身父母家庭里的孩子之间在前途上存在着巨大差异。
It is not hard to see why marriage aids stability. Consider Ms Hamilton, whose husband is out of the picture. She has no family to fall back on. She has one sister living with multiple sclerosis and a bad heart in an apartment complex that does not allow overnight visitors. Her other sister, also in her 60s, has a husband who does not work and has had cancer for years; they just lost their house. Her son, fortunately, was past childhood when they fell into extreme poverty; had he been younger his future would have been bleaker.
婚姻对稳定生活有利这一点不难看出。看看汉密尔顿女士，她完全没有丈夫帮助。她也没有任何可供依靠的亲人。她有一个姊妹患有多发性硬化症，而且心脏不好。她住的宿舍大楼不允许客人过夜。她另一位姊妹也60多岁了，丈夫没有工作且罹患癌症多年，他们的房子也刚刚被收走。幸运的是，汉密尔顿女士身陷极度贫困的时候她儿子已经长大，如果他年纪再小一些，那贫困将会对他的未来产生更大的影响。
To see how marriage can help, consider Ms Dunham. Her situation is precarious, but without Mr Dunham at home to take care of the children it would be worse. She would have to spend more on child care. Her children would receive less supervision—Mr Dunham is fond of warning Ms Dunham’s 15-year-old son of the perils of “hardheadedness” and gang life, which he blames for his own failings. And though his work may be sporadic and informal, it can swell the family coffers. When Ms Sawhill refers to marriage as providing a “reserve army” for the family—an extra helper, an extra earner—this is what she means. 要想知道婚姻如何能够帮助克服贫困，我们可以看看杜纳姆女士的例子。她的情况并不算好，但如果没有杜纳姆先生在家带孩子则可能会更糟。如果没有丈夫，她将不得不花钱在托儿所上，而且她的孩子受到的看管也会更少。邓纳姆先生喜欢警告他们15岁的儿子“无同情心”和加入帮会会带来多大的灾难。他把自己人生的失败归咎于这两点上。而且虽然邓纳姆先生只能不定期地打点小工，这些收入还是能够帮补到家用。Sawhill女士称婚姻为家庭的“预备军”，就是指婚姻可以提供多一个帮手，多一份收入。
America is not blind nor indifferent to the problems of poverty, even if its rich and poor increasingly live separate lives in separate neighborhoods, and with different social mores. The poor are helped by a number of programs, some of them now creaking under the strain. The amount the federal government spends on food stamps hit a record $75.7 billion in the 2011 fiscal year—more than double the level of 2008. Enrolment in Medicaid, through which federal and
state governments provide health care to low-income Americans, has grown every year since 2008, though its 2012 growth was the slowest since the recession began, and its spending grew at a lower level than enrolment because of federal and state cost-control measures. In 2011 states disbursed $113.3 billion in unemployment benefits to 9.9m recipients, as well as roughly $16.6 billion as part of a federal program called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
虽然美国的穷人和富人越来越倾向于住在互不相干的社区内，双方的习惯风俗也截然不同，但美国并没有对贫困问题视而不见、或漫不关心。穷人受到数个政府项目的贴补，其中一些更是因为资助金额过大而不堪重负。联邦政府花在食物券上的开支在2011财年达到创纪录的757亿美元，是2008年开支的两倍有余。联邦和州级政府为低收入美国人提供的医保计划－医疗补助的注册人数自2008年以来每年都有所上升。不过2012年医疗补助注册人数的增长是经济衰退以来最小的，因为各种联邦和州级开支控制措施，医疗补助的开支增长并没有注册人数增长那么快。2011年各州政府总共为990万名人士提供了总共1133亿美元的失业补助。此外，作为联邦政府名为“贫困家庭临时救助”项目的一部分，各州政府也已发放了166亿美元。
That said, America is unusually reluctant, compared with other rich countries, about giving cash transfers to the poor. The country has a long-standing political aversion to anything that seems to “reward” being poor; instead, it fights poverty using a progressive, if somewhat paternalistic, tax code. The child tax credit allows families with incomes below a certain level to claim a $1,000 credit against their federal income taxes for every dependent child. Though its reach extends into the solidly middle-class, its greatest impact is on the poor. Credits can often eliminate most of their tax liability.
尽管如此，和其它富裕国家相比，美国对于向穷人提供现金补助特别抵触。美国长期以来在政治上厌恶任何有“奖励”穷困倾向的措施，相反，美国一直靠累进（虽然可能有点管得太宽）的税法来对抗贫困问题。儿童税收抵免让收入在一定水平以下的家庭获得每一个受抚养子女1000美元的联邦所得税抵免。虽然该抵免的收入门槛把很多收入不错的中产家庭也包括在内，但其对穷人的影响最大。税收抵免一般可以抵消穷人大多数的税收负担。
America’s most important tax-based cash-transfer program is the earned income tax credit (EITC).