VOA常速英语:Want a Successful Startup? Adopt Silicon Valley Culture(翻译)

Columbia native Tania Zapata is one of the successful story in Silicon Valley.
哥伦比亚人塔尼亚·萨帕塔的经历是硅谷的成功故事之一。

But the road to running her own tech company has been an unusual one.
但是开办她自己的技术公司之路并不寻常。

“I used to work in radio and I decided to launch, you know, to start my own business as a voice actress, and what I found was that the industry offline was very cumbersome. It was very difficult for me to connect directly with somebody that needed my voice.”
“我以前在电台工作，然后我决定要作为配音员开办我自己的公司。而我发现线下的产业是非常麻烦的，我很难直接与需要我声音的人建立联系。”

Zapata felt the process was broken. With her husband, they created the business online that connected voice actors with clients. That was 13 years ago.
萨帕塔感觉是过程上有问题。她和她的丈夫创办了连接配音员和客户的在线业务。那是13年前。

The business evolved over time to what it is today: a creative services website called Torre. It goes beyond voiceovers, to helping clients find writers and translators in many different languages. Her company is profitable.
这一业务随着时间发展成为了今天的模样：一家名叫Torre的富有创造性的服务网站。它不仅仅是提供声音旁白，还帮助客户找到许多不同语言的作家和译员。她的公司可以带来收益。

“They building a company is not something that they can do on your own. We tried when we started, and I think that we also fell into a lot of mistakes just because we weren’t asking for help. We weren’t reaching, you know, people. And so it’s very difficult. So it’s much better to do it, you know, as a group.”
“建立一家公司不是自己可以独立进行的事情。我们开始时也尝试过，而且我认为我们就因为没有寻求帮助而陷入到许多错误中。我们没有接触人。因此十分困难，所以以团队形式进行会好得多。”

Silicon Valley has unique culture of sharing, networking and cooperating among people and startups. This type of openness has helped many companies become better and succeed. But according to Zapata, this mentality is rare in her native Columbia and other Latin American countries.
硅谷有着分享、建立网络以及和人们和新创公司合作的独特文化。这一种开放帮助许多公司变得更好，取得成功。但是按萨帕塔来说，这一精神在她的家乡哥伦比亚以及其他拉丁美洲国家十分罕见。

“We don’t ask for help. We think, we always, you know like, think that people are going to say ‘no’ immediately so we don’t even ask. We don’t try, because, you know, why would this person help me? And I think that’s very problematic.”
“我们没有寻求帮助。我们一直认为人们会马上拒绝我们，因此我们都不会去问问。我们不会去尝试，因为这个人为什么要帮我。我认为这是有问题的。”

Zapata tries to mentor some of the entrepreneurs. She even created an incubator that provides seed funding for startups from developing countries.
萨帕塔努力指导一些企业家。她甚至创办了一个创业孵化器，为来自发展中国家的新创企业种子基金。

“What we want to make sure is that we help the companies with, you know, experience, with knowledge, connecting them with people that we had already met, that have helped us,and [that] can also help these companies not fall into the same mistakes that we fell.”
“我们想要保证的是我们要用经验、知识帮助这些公司，而且将它们与我们已经接触过、曾经帮助过我们的人建立联系，与那些也能帮助这些公司不陷入我们犯过的错误的人建立联系。”

Zapata says life is only meaningful when she can give back to others and help make a positive impact in their lives.
萨帕塔说人生只有在她能够回报其他人以及在他们生活中产生积极影响时，才是有意义的。

Elizabeth Lee for VOANEWS San Francisco.
伊丽莎白·李旧金山报道。