座机的消逝 The death of the landline

Hello, I’m Rob, welcome to 6 Minute English. With me in the studio today is Feifei.
大家好，我是Rob。欢迎收听本期BBC六分钟英语。今天我的搭档是Feifei。
Hi Rob.
你好，Rob。
Now the star of today’s programme is not Feifei. But an item of office equipment, which normally doesn’t get much attention – it’s the landline telephone.
今天节目的重点不是Feifei，而是一种常被人忽视的办公设备——座机。
I guess we don’t really give much of a thought to landline phones. Before mobile phones, we didn’t even call them ’landlines’. They were just phones.
说到座机，我们还真没怎么考虑过。手机问世前，它们并非座机，只是电话而已。
They were just phones – phones with a curly wire coming out of them, plugged into the wall.Millions of people had them. Millions more couldn’t afford one, or didn’t live near a phone network - or were on a waiting list to have one installed.In India even today, in the age of the mobile phone, there are still 50,000 people on the waiting list for a landline.But now, all over the world, the number of people with a landline is falling, because people prefer to use mobile phones.Worldwide, four in every five phone numbers are mobile phone numbers. In India, that means there are 614 mobile phones for every thousand people.But FeiFei, how many landlines do you think there are, for every thousand people? a) 2.9 b) 29 c) 290
对啊，就是电话，一边装在墙上，一边有卷电话线。数百万人都有座机，但有更多人要么买不起，要么离电话网络远，要么正等着安装。在当今手机时代，印度仍有5万人等着安装座机。但从世界范围来看，拥有座机的人数正在减少，因为大家更喜欢用移动电话。如：每五个电话号码中，有四个是移动电话号；这相当于印度每1000人里便有614人在用手机。请问：每1000人中有多少位座机用户？A.2.9位 B.29位 C.290位。FeiFei，你觉得是哪个？
I’ll go for b) 29.
我选B.29位。
Ok, we’ll find out if you’re right at the end of the programme. Now, the landline might disappear one day, but it hasn’t gone yet.A big landline phone sits on many office desks round the world. For decades, a landline phone came with a white collar job.
好，节目最后我会揭晓答案。现在咱们来谈谈其他话题。座机可能会在某天消失，但至少现在还没有。不管哪个国家，哪个城市，大大的座机总是摆在办公桌上，和白领工作联系在一起。
A white collar job, meaning an office job.
所谓白领工作，即办公室工作。
Exactly. English journalist Lucy Kellaway has a landline phone on her desk.It’s big, grey and it doesn’t ring very often. And even when it does ring, she doesn’t answer it.
没错。英国记者Lucy Kellaway的桌上有一部座机。它很大、很灰，却并不经常响。即便偶尔响起，Lucy也不接听。
A lot of people don’t answer their landlines these days. You can leave a message as a voicemail, but you don’t know whether it will be listened to.
而今，很多人都不接电话。你可以留言到语音信箱，却不知对方是否会收听。
Well I think maybe it won’t. Lucy Kellaway hasn’t answered her landline phone for a year, or checked her voicemail.And she told the BBC what happened when she found her password, and checked her voicemail after all that time:
我想不会听吧。Lucy Kellaway已经一年没接电话、没查信箱了。她告诉BBC，自己找回密码后检查信箱，发现了以下情况：
Until about a decade ago, the office phone was the symbol of white collar work. It was the most important thing on any desk.But now these clumping phones sit largely silent. My own large grey telephone sits quietly on my desk and when it occasionally decides to ring I don’t usually answer.Just now I decided to see what I’d been missing. It took a while as I couldn’t remember my password, and then I found more than 100 messages were waiting patiently to be heard.
十年前，办公室电话是白领工作的象征。它可是任何桌上最最重要的东西。而今，这种笨重电话已很少响起。我的那款灰色大型电话就是这样，几乎不响，即便偶尔响了，我也不接。刚刚我决定看看自己错过的消息，却因忘记密码而耽误了半天，后来好不容易记起，发现有100多条未读邮件。
Lucy Kellaway checking her voicemail messages after 12 months.
Lucy Kellaway在12个月后才检查语音邮件。
She had 100 messages. That’s bad, all those people must wonder why she didn’t reply to them.
她发现自己有100条信息。这真是糟糕，那些人一定纳闷她为何没回。
Well, actually she found none of the messages were important – they were all duplicates or copies of messages she’d also received by email or text.
可事实上，那里没一条重要消息，全是她已通过邮件或短信收到的消息的副本。
Text as in text message – or SMS.
所谓短信，即文本消息（SMS）。
That’s right. Let’s hear what she found. Here’s Lucy again:
没错。下面听听Lucy发现的消息。
The first voicemail went like this: ’Hi Lucy this is Marcia – just following up on an email I sent.’I pressed delete.The second: ’Hello Lucy, just a quick call, I’m from such-and-such, we just wanted to update our contact details.’ And on it went.All either useless or duplicates of information I got by email or text. By not answering the phone for a year I’d lost nothing and gained much in terms of efficiency and control.It has allowed me to talk only to the people I want to talk to, at a time that suits me.
第一条语音邮件：‘你好Lucy，我是Marcia，收到邮件请回复。’我把它删除了。第二条：‘简短电话。你好Lucy，我是某某，此电以期更新您的联系人信息。’后面还有一些话。所有语音邮件，要么没用，要么我已通过邮件或短信接收。可以说，一年没接电话不但啥都没错过，反而在效率和操作上收获了很多。我可以在合适的时间，和自己想说的人说话。
Hmm, so people were just emailing her and then following up on the emails with a call to her landline.Sometimes if people don’t answer an email, I follow it up with a phone call as well.
恩，这么说，很多人给她发邮件，然后又打了电话。有时别人不回复的话，我也会打电话过去问问。
So maybe Lucy doesn’t answer her emails either! She says not answering her landline means she’s gained in efficiency and control.
所以Lucy可能也没回邮件！她认为，没接电话让自己在效率和操作上收获颇多。
She’s more efficient because she says it doesn’t interrupt her work.
说更有效率，因为电话不会影响她的工作。
And in control because she only talks to people she wants to talk to, at a time when she wants to talk.
说更好掌控，因为她只和自己想说的人讲话，而且是在想说话的时间。
I agree with her, I like to screen calls.
同意，因为我也喜欢过滤来电。
Screening calls – you like to check who’s calling and decide whether to answer? I hope you don’t do that to me!
所谓过滤来电，即先看打电话者，后定是否接听。希望你别对我这样做！
You’ll never know! But really, email and texting is more private. I don’t like talking on the phone in a busy office.
呵呵，你永远不会知道！不过说真的，邮件和短信更私密。我可不喜欢在繁忙办公室里通电话。
Well lots of people agree with you, Feifei. But although she doesn’t answer hers, Lucy Kellaway misses the atmosphere of a busy office. She explains why.
恩，很多人都同意你的观点。Lucy Kellaway虽未接听电话，却错失了办公室的紧张气氛。她解释道：
The death of the landline may be better for us individually but it’s worse for the bonds between us.The saddest thing is what the decline has done to the atmosphere in offices. There are no noisy phones creating buzz and urgency.Once upon a time I found these calls annoying but now the door into the private lives of my workmates is closed. I wish I could open it again.
座机的消逝可能更有利于个人，但它不便于彼此沟通。最糟糕的莫过于办公室气氛受损，换句话说，而今已没有嘈杂电话，亦没有紧迫感。过去，我觉得电话很烦人；而今，我已无法了解同事私生活。我多们希望那些紧闭的门能再次打开。
She’s a journalist, so I imagine her newspaper office used to be very noisy, with lots of phones ringing and urgent phone conversations. That must have been an exciting atmosphere.
Lucy Kellaway是名记者，过去，她的报社应该噪音很大，电话不断，紧急交谈不停。我想，气氛一定很令人兴奋。
Yes, you heard she used the word ’buzz’ for that exciting atmosphere. But she also says some of the calls were annoying.
没错，她用了“嘈杂”这个词形容办公室气氛。但她也表示，某些电话令人心烦。
And it sounds like they weren’t all about important newspaper business, because she mentioned hearing about her colleagues’ private lives.
而且电话内容好像不全和重要报纸生意有关，因为她刚提到了倾听同事私生活一事。
Okay so now to our question. Earlier I asked you about landline phones in India. How many landlines are there for each thousand people?
好了，回到节目开始的问题。我曾问你，印度每1000人中，有多少位座机用户？
And I said b)29.
我选的B.29位。
And you were right. The answer is 29 landlines for every thousand people.Well, we’re out of time. Please join us again soon for 6 Minute English from bbclearningenglish.
回答正确。答案就是每1000人中有29人用座机。好了，本期节目就要结束了。欢迎大家登录bbclearningenglish收听下期六分钟英语。
Bye.
拜拜~