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      考研英语阅读能力想提升，需要考生不断地日积月累阅读文章才能感受到进步!接下来，小编为帮助考生补习英语阅读能力的不足，特意整理——2022考研英语经济学人:纸质名片将退出历史舞台?供考生参考。

2022考研英语经济学人:纸质名片将退出历史舞台?

In Asia meetings do not begin until business cards have been swapped. It is no mere formality. Accept the card with two hands and carefully examine it, noting the giver’s title and other indicators of rank—essential information in any strongly hierarchical business culture.

在亚洲，一场会议开始前，人们总会互换名片。这不仅事关礼节。双手接过名片，仔细查看，留意对方的职级和其他反映地位的信息——在任何等级森严的商业文化中，这都是极为重要的信息。

It is so important to master this ritual in Japan (just how deep does one bow?) that numerous books and courses promise to transform bumbling novices into meishi-koukan (card-swapping) virtuosos. If a new acquaintance fails to give a card to Glenn Lim of CEO Asia, a Singaporean business-networking company, “it makes me forget them,” he says.

在日本，把握礼仪很重要(比如鞠躬应该鞠多深?)，正因如此，不计其数的书籍和课程都自称能把职场新人培养成交换名片的高手。新加坡商业网络公司的亚洲区首席执行官林格伦表示，如果一个刚认识的朋友没有把他的名片递给我，“那么我很容易就会忘记他们。”

Yet the pandemic has put the business card on life support. Networking is difficult when white-collar workers have fled to home offices, business lunches have been cancelled and conferences have migrated online. Orders for business cards from Vistaprint, a multinational printing company, plummeted by 70% in late March and early April and have yet to recover fully.

然而，新冠肺炎疫情的来袭让名片陷入了窘境。当白领们纷纷回到家中办公、商务午餐被取消、会议转到线上时，人际交往变得越来越难。跨国印刷公司 Vistaprint 的名片订单在去年3月底和4月初的时候暴跌了70%，至今尚未完全恢复。

Mr Lim normally hands out about 200 cards a month. In the six months following Singapore’s lockdown in March, he reckons he dispensed about five. “I’ve forgotten what business cards look like,” remarks a British banker based in Singapore. “How do you sanitise them?”

过去，林格伦每个月会递出大约200张名片。而在新加坡去年3月封城后的6个月里，他大概只递出了5张名片。一位驻新加坡的英国银行家说：“我都已经忘记名片长什么样了，你如何对它们进行消毒呢?”

But it is still helpful to know who is who at meetings, even when they take place on Zoom. Companies are therefore reimagining the business card for the era of social distancing.

虽然如今人们都在 Zoom 上开会，但知道谁是谁也很重要。因此，各公司正在重新构思社交疏离时代的名片。

Nagaya, a Japanese firm, prints them on face masks (a literal interpretation of a Japanese metaphor that likens business cards to one’s face). After the launch of the “Meishi” mask, traffic to Nagaya’s website surged by 65,000%.

日本 Nagaya 公司把名片印在了口罩上(蕴含着日本人把名片比作脸面的含义)。在推出“名片”口罩后，Nagaya 网站的访问量激增了65000%。

Sansan, another Japanese firm, allows companies to sort scanned business cards so bosses can see which employees have made new contacts. It also offers “virtual cards”. Users receive QR codes which they display as virtual backgrounds on video-conferencing apps.

另一家日本公司 Sansan 则为各公司提供名片扫描分类的服务，这样老板对新员工建立了哪些新的人际联系便会一目了然。Sansan 还提供“虚拟名片”服务。每位用户都拥有一个二维码，并可将其设置为视频会议软件的虚拟背景。

Scanning the code with a phone camera will summon the user’s digital business card. Some 4,300 companies have begun using Sansan’s virtual cards since they launched in June.

人们用手机扫描这个二维码便可看到对方的数字名片。自去年6月推出以来，已有约4300家公司开始使用 Sansan 公司的虚拟名片。

But Mr Lim, who uses Sansan’s virtual cards, does not plan on binning the paper version just yet. People tend to exchange virtual cards after meetings have started or as they end, forcing participants to ask who does what during the meeting itself.

不过，正在使用 Sansan 公司虚拟名片的林格伦目前还不打算扔掉纸质名片。人们总是在会议开始或结束后才交换虚拟名片，这使得与会者不得不在会议期间询问某人具体负责什么。

“That’s sometimes a little bit rude,” he says. Many others in Singapore are evidently fond of paper cards, too. Sales at ExpressPrint, a printing company, have picked up in the past two months, as more people resume in-person meetings.

他说：“这种行为有点不太礼貌。”许多新加坡人显然也更偏爱纸质名片。在最近两个月，印刷公司 ExpressPrint 的销售额也有所回升，因为越来越多人又开始参加面对面会议了。

Stephen Forshaw, head of public affairs at Temasek, Singapore’s sovereign-wealth fund, says that he recently topped up his supply of cards for the “first time in a long time”. Even Edward Senju, the head of Sansan’s operations in South-East Asia, still keeps some in his wallet, “just in case”.

新加坡主权财富基金淡马锡的公共事务主管斯蒂芬·福肖说道，他最近又印了些名片，“距上一次印制已经过去很长一段时间了”。就连 Sansan 公司东南亚业务的负责人爱德华·森居也在钱包里装了一些名片，“以备不时之需”。

 

重难点词汇：

formality [fɔːrˈmæləti] n. 礼节;拘谨;仪式

bumble [ˈbʌmbl] v. 弄糟;搞坏 n. 错误

virtuoso [ˌvɜːrtʃuˈoʊsoʊ] n. 能手;大家 adj. 熟练的

plummet [ˈplʌmɪt] v. 陡直落下 n. 骤降

metaphor [ˈmetəfər] n. 暗喻;比喻说法

      以上是-2022考研英语经济学人:纸质名片将退出历史舞台?希望对2022考研考生们，在英语阅读上面有所帮助!祝2022考研顺利!

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