VOA慢速英语:Words and Their Stories: Money Talks

I'm Susan Clark with WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, a program in Special English on the voice of America.
我是Susan Clark，这里是美国之音慢速英语词汇掌故节目。

People often say that money talks. They mean that a person with a lot of money can say how he or she wants things done. But it is not easy to earn enough money to gain this kind of power.
人们常说：有钱能使鬼推磨。他们的意思是只要一个人有足够多的钱，就可以要求别人怎么做事。但是，想要赚到足够多的钱来获得这种权利却不是件易事。

Ask anyone in a business. They will tell you that it is a jungle out there. The expression probably began because the jungle is filled with wild animals and unknown dangers that threaten people. Sometimes people in business feel competing businesses are as dangerous as wild animals. And they feel that unknown dangers in the business world threaten the survival of their business.
问任何一个生意人。他们都会告诉你生意场就像是野外丛林。这种比喻起初可能是因为丛林里到处野兽以及充满了能威胁到人们的未知危险。有时商人们觉得生意上的竞争就如同野生动物一般危险，商场中未知的风险威胁着他们事业的生存。

People in business have to be careful if they are to survive the jungle out there. They must not be led into making bogus investments. Bogus means something that is not real.
做生意的人如果想要在这片丛林里生存就必须谨慎。他们绝对不能被诱导而做出虚假的投资。Bogus这个单词的意思是不真实的东西。

Nobody is sure how the word got started. But it began to appear in American newspapers in the eighteen hundreds. A newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts said the word came from a criminal whose name was Borghese. The newspaper said Borghese wrote checks to people although he did not have enough money in the bank. After he wrote the checks, he would flee from town. So, people who were paid with his checks received nothing. The newspaper said Americans shortened and changed the criminal's name Borghese, to bogus.
没人确切的知道这个词是什么时候产生的。但是它在19世纪开始出现在美国新闻报纸上。在马萨诸塞州波士顿的一份新闻报刊说这个词来源于一个名叫鲍格才的罪犯。报纸上叙述鲍格才在自己银行账户不够支付的情况下依旧给人们开支票。一旦开完支票，他就会逃离那个城镇。因此，收到支票的人最后将什么都得不到。报纸上写道，美国人将罪犯的名字鲍格才（Borghese）缩写改造成了bogus。

People trying to earn money also must be aware of being ripped off. A person who is ripped off has had something stolen, or at least has been treated very unfairly.
人们在赚钱的时候也要提防被偷。“一个人被撕开”的意思是他被偷了，或者至少是遭到了不公平的待遇。

A writer for the magazine "American Speech" said he first saw the expression used in nineteen seventy-one. It was on a sign that a student carried during a protest demonstration at a university. The message on the sign was that the student felt ripped off, or cheated.
“美国语”杂志的一位作者说他第一次看到这种用法是在1971年，在一个大学生抗议示威的标语中。标牌上的信息是，这个学生觉得被欺骗了。

Perhaps the best way to prevent getting ripped off in business is to not try to get rich quickly. To be successful, a person in business works hard and tries to get down to brass tacks.
在商业中避免欺诈的最佳方案可能就是不要一夜暴富。想要成功，就要努力工作并且脚踏实地。

This expression means to get to the bottom or most important part of something. For example, a salesman may talk and talk about his product without saying the price. You get down to brass tacks when you say, "it sounds good, but how much does it cost?"
该表达的意思是着眼于某事的基础或最重要的部分。例如，推销员可能拿着产品侃侃而谈却迟迟不提价格。当你直接转入要点时你会问：“听起来不错，但是它的价格是多少呢？”

Word expert Charles Funk thinks the expression comes from sailors on ships. They clean the bottom of a boat. When they have removed all the dirt, they are down to the brass tacks, the copper pieces that hold the boat together.
词汇专家查尔斯•方克认为这种表达来自于船上的水手。他们清理掉船底污垢之后，就能看到把船的各部分连接在一起的铜钉了。

So, if we get down to brass tacks, we can prevent ripoffs and bogus ways of earning money in that jungle out there. And, some good luck will help, too.
所以，如果我们脚踏实地，就可以避免被偷被骗。当然，还要有点运气才行。

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