美語情景對話 第444期:Job Description 工作描述

Andy: Alright, Steve, can I ask you a few questions about your job?

安迪：好，史蒂夫，我能問幾個關於你工作的問題嗎？

Steve: You certainly may.

史蒂夫：當然可以。

Andy: OK, what exactly do you do?

安迪：好，你具體是做什麼工作的？

Steve: Well, I work for a publishing company named Longman and I'm one of the sales reps that is based in your Osaka office. (OK) Each of the sales reps have a given territory so I cover the Western Japan region for Longman.

史蒂夫：我在一家名爲朗文的出版公司工作，我是大阪辦公室的一名銷售代表。（好）每名銷售代表都有各自的領域，我負責的是朗文在日本西部地區的銷售工作。

Andy: That's a pretty big region.

安迪：那是一片很大的區域啊。

Steve: It is indeed. It is. It is Andy, yeah.

史蒂夫：的確是。是這樣的，安迪，沒錯。

Andy: Do you get a lot of travelling for that?

安迪：那你去過很多地方嗎？

Steve: We do indeed, yeah. Basically, my main job is to go around to the universities, to some extent the high schools and the private language schools and to see what their needs are, see what kind of books they are using. We are also increasing, we're promoting CD-ROMS and e-learning as well as the tradional textbooks.

史蒂夫：是的，基本上來說，我的主要工作就是在大學周邊走動，在某種程度上來說，會去高中和私人語言學校瞭解那裏的需求，看他們使用的是哪種書籍。我們還在不斷擴張，在傳統書籍的基礎上，我們還會推廣光盤和網絡學習。

Andy: Very nice. Very nice. What kind of schools are buying your books?

安迪：真好。太好了。哪類學校會購買你們的書？

Steve: Well, again the university is a huge part of it because in Japan the first year students and to some extent the second year students have compulsory English education. There's a lot of teachers who have big classes, large enough classes that it makes it very much worth our while to visit those universities and make sure that those teachers are using as many of our books as possible.

史蒂夫：嗯，大學佔據了很大部分份額，因爲英語是日本大學生在第一學年和第二學年的必修課。有許多老師都是上大課，所以我們很有必要去那些大學，以確保這些老師在儘可能多地應用我們的書。

Andy: You mentioned e-learning, like CALL, computer based (Yes, indeed, yeah) English. Is that growing?

安迪：你剛提到網絡學習，就像以電腦爲基礎的計算機輔助語言學習（對，沒錯）。這方面有在增加嗎？

Steve: It is. It is. I mean, it's growing quite slowly because it takes a lot of time for the decision making process, to say for example, a Japanese university to kick in and to invest in our CD_ROM's.

史蒂夫：有。我是說，這方面增長的速度非常緩慢，因爲決定流程要花費很長時間，舉例來說，日本大學在我們公司的光盤項目進行了投資。

Andy: Yeah, sure, plus first they need to have a computer room.

安迪：當然，首先他們需要有機房。

Steve: They do indeed, yeah, yeah.

史蒂夫：他們當然有。

Andy: That's a big investment.

安迪：那可是項大型投資啊。

Steve: But they already made a huge investment in the hardware, and it's actually not a huge leap of faith to persuade them to invest a little bit in the software as well, and the people we have using our software, they're really getting a lot of enjoyment out of it, they're enjoying interacting, not only with the teachers but with the computers as well, and getting immediate feedback with what we're doing.

史蒂夫：他們已經在硬件上進行了大筆投資，實際上說服他們在軟件上也進行一定的投資並不是很有信心，使用我們軟件的人實際上已經從軟件上得到了很多樂趣，他們享受的是，不僅可以與老師交流，而且也可以和電腦交流，這樣他們可以立即得到我們的反饋。

Andy: Um, so you have stuff for windows and the mac, or are they platform based?

安迪：你們有負責windows系統和mac系統，或是基於這些平臺的工作人員嗎？

Steve: That's a little bit of a problem actually, Andy. Most of our software is only supporting the windows platform, but a few things because we noticed that a lot of the university teachers in Japan prefer the Mac platform, we are moving somewhat slowly in that area but we are producing more software to support the Mac platform.

史蒂夫：安迪，實際上有點兒問題。我們大部分的軟件都只支持windows系統，但是我們意識到日本的許多大學教師更喜歡用Mac系統，我們在這一領域移動緩慢，但是我們會製作更多支持Mac系統的軟件。

Andy: Ah very nice.

安迪：真好。

譯文屬僅供學習交流使用，未經許可請勿轉載

重點講解：
1. to some extent
在某種程度上；
eg. Language is a reflector of a society to some extent.
從某種程度上來說，語言反映了社會。
eg. We've altered the original plan to some extent.
我們部分地改變了原計劃。
2. kick in
捐獻；捐助；
eg. Kansas City area churches kicked in $35,000 to support the event.
堪薩斯城地區的教會爲此事捐助了35，000美元。
eg. To keep it going, Lenoire kicked in her own earnings from acting.
爲了使它繼續下去，勒努瓦捐出了自己演戲掙的錢。
3. interact with
相互交流；相互溝通；
eg. These two chemicals interact with each other at a certain temperature to produce a substance which could cause an explosion.
這兩種化學藥品在一定溫度下相互作用併產生一種引起爆炸的物質。
eg. Using a mascot for your company is part of a marketing strategy to further interact with your customers and consumers.
給你的公司使用一個吉祥物是加強與你的顧客和消費者互動的一種營銷戰略。