居家办公翻译技巧2022(《经济学人》双语：居家办公有哪些虚假魅力？)

原文标题：
Free exchange
Don’t be workshy
Whoops! Working from home is detrimental to productivity, after all
自由交流
不要逃避工作
哎呀! 居家办公竟然不利于生产效率

The working-from-home illusion fades
居家办公的虚假魅力消失了

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A GRADUAL REVERSE migration is under way, from Zoom to the conference room.

一场逆向演变正在进行中，人们从Zoom平台回到会议室开会。

Wall Street firms have been among the most forceful in summoning workers to their offices, but in recent months even many tech titans—Apple, Google, Meta and more—have demanded staff show up to the office at least three days a week.

华尔街公司一直是最积极召唤员工回到办公室的力量之一，但在最近几个月，甚至许多科技巨头--苹果、谷歌、Meta等--都要求员工每周至少有三天到办公室上班。

For work-from-home believers, it looks like the revenge of corporate curmudgeons.

对于居家办公支持者来说，这似乎是办公室办公支持者们的报复。

Didn’t a spate of studies during the covid-19 pandemic demonstrate that remote work was often more productive than toiling in the office?
疫情期间，一系列研究不是证明了居家远程工作通常比办公室辛苦工作更高效率吗？

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Unfortunately for the believers, new research mostly runs counter to this, showing that offices, for all their flaws, remain essential.

然而，对居家办公支持者来说，新研究大多与他们的观点相悖，研究表明尽管办公室有很多缺陷，但仍然至关重要。

A good starting point is a working paper that received much attention when it was published in 2020 by Natalia Emanuel and Emma Harrington, then both doctoral students at Harvard University.

事情得从一篇论文说起，2020年纳塔利娅.伊曼纽尔和艾玛.哈林顿（当时都是哈佛大学的博士生）发表的论文受到广泛关注。

They found an 8% increase in the number of calls handled per hour by employees of an online retailer that had shifted from offices to homes.

她们发现，一家在线零售商的员工从办公室搬到家里办公后，每小时处理的电话数量增加了 8%。

Far less noticed was a revised version of their paper, published in May by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The boost to efficiency had instead become a 4% decline.
纽约联邦储备银行5月份发表的论文修订版则远没有引起人们的注意。这个修订版本表明，效率实际是下降了4%。

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The researchers had not made a mistake. Rather, they received more precise data, including detailed work schedules.

研究人员没有出错。相反，她们收到了更精确的数据，包括详细的工作时间表。

Not only did employees answer fewer calls when remote, the quality of their interactions suffered.They put customers on hold for longer. More also phoned back, an indication of unresolved problems.

员工在远程办公时接听的电话数量不仅减少了，而且互动的质量也受到了影响。他们让客户等待的时间更长了，还有更多的客户打回电话，这意味着问题并没有得到解决。

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Those working at home were 18% less productive than their peers in the office.

居家办公的人比办公室办公的同事们效率低了18%。

Another study determined that even chess professionals play less well in online matches than face-to-face tilts.

另一项研究表明，即使是国际象棋专业人士，他们在在线比赛中的表现也不如面对面比赛好。

Yet another used a laboratory experiment to show that video conferences inhibit creative thinking.
还有一项研究通过实验室实验证明，视频会议会抑制创造性思维。

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The reasons for the findings will probably not surprise anyone who has spent much of the past few years working from a dining-room table. It is harder for people to collaborate from home.

对于这几年大部分时间都在家餐桌上办公的人来说，这些研究结果可能不会令他们感到意外。人们居家办公会更难协作。

Workers in the Fed study spoke of missing their “neighbours to turn to for assistance”.

研究中的联邦政府工作人员表示想念“可以向身边同事寻求帮助”。

Teleconferencing is a pale imitation of in-the-flesh meetings: researchers at Harvard Business School, for example, concluded that “virtual water coolers”—rolled out by many companies during the pandemic—often encroached on crowded schedules with limited benefits.

视频会议只是现场会议的不完美替代品：例如，哈佛商学院的研究者们得出结论，“虚拟水冷却器”——疫情期间的产物——常常会占用本就拥挤的日程表，且效果有限。

All these problems represent an increase in co-ordination costs, making collective enterprise more unwieldy.

所有这些问题都增加了协调成本，使集体企业变得更加臃肿笨拙。

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Some of the co-ordination costs of remote work might reasonably be expected to fall as people get used to it.

远程工作的一些协调成本可能会随着人们逐渐适应而有所降低。

Since 2020, many will have become adept at using Zoom, Webex, Teams or Slack. But another cost may rise over time: the underdevelopment of human capital.

自2020年以来，许多人已经熟练使用Zoom、Webex、Teams或Slack。但随着时间推移，另一个成本可能会上升：人力资本欠发达。

In a study of software engineers published in April, researchers found that feedback exchanged between colleagues dropped sharply after the move to remote work.

在4月份发表的一项关于软件工程师的研究中，研究者发现，在转向远程工作后，同事之间的交流反馈大幅下降。

They documented a relative decline in learning for workers at home. Those in offices picked up skills more quickly.
他们记录了居家办公者学习能力相对下降的情况。而办公室办公者则更快地掌握了技能。

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The price of happiness

幸福的代价

There is more to work (and life) than productivity. Perhaps the greatest virtue of remote work is that it leads to happier employees.

工作（和生活）的意义不仅仅在于生产效率。也许居家远程工作的最大好处是它能使员工更幸福。

People spend less time commuting, which from their vantage-point might feel like an increase in productivity, even if conventional measures fail to detect it.

人们花在通勤上的时间减少了，从他们的角度来看，这可能增加了生产效率，尽管传统的衡量标准无法发现这一点。

They can more easily fit in school pickups and doctor appointments, not to mention the occasional lie-in or midmorning jog.

他们可以更容易地安排接送孩子上学和预约看医生的时间，更不用说偶尔睡懒觉或上午慢跑了。

And some tasks—notably, those requiring unbroken concentration for long periods—can often be done more smoothly from home than in open-plan offices.

而且一些任务--尤其是那些需要长时间不间断集中注意力的任务--通常在家里比在开放式办公室里更容易顺利完成。

All this explains why so many workers have become so office-shy.
这就解释了为什么有这么多员工不喜欢在办公室办公。

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Indeed, several surveys have found employees are willing to accept pay cuts for the option of working from home.

事实上，根据一些调查结果显示，有些员工宁愿接受降薪也要选择居家办公。

Having satisfied employees on slightly lower pay, in turn, might be a good deal for corporate managers.

反过来，以略低的工资让员工感到满意，对企业管理者来说可能是一笔划算的买卖。

For many people, then, the future of work will remain hybrid.

对于许多人来说，未来的工作方式仍然是混合办公模式。

Nevertheless, the balance of the work week is likely to tilt back to the office and away from home—not because bosses are sadomasochists with a kink for rush-hour traffic, but because better productivity lies in that direction.
尽管如此，工作周的天平很可能倾向于办公室办公，而不是居家办公--这并不是因为老板们是喜欢早晚高峰堵车的变态狂，而是因为办公室办公意味着更高的生产效率。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇量780左右，有删减）
原文出自：2023年7月1日《The Economist》Finance & economics版块

精读笔记来源于：自由英语之路

本文翻译整理: Irene

本文编辑校对: Irene
仅供个人英语学习交流使用。

【补充资料】（来自于网络）
虚拟水冷却器Virtual Water Coolers是在线平台或工具，旨在促进远程团队成员之间的社交交流。它模拟了实体办公室中的轻松氛围，使员工能够分享工作和非工作相关的话题，建立联系和互动。在实体办公室中，水冷却器通常是员工交流和社交的场所。然而，在远程工作的环境中，人们无法亲自参加办公室的水冷却器活动。为了弥补这一缺失，虚拟水冷却器成为一种流行的替代方式。

人力资本的欠发达The underdevelopment of human capital是指在一个国家或地区或公司里，人们的教育、技能和知识水平不足的问题。

【重点句子】（3个）
Those working at home were 18% less productive than their peers in the office.
居家办公的人比办公室办公的同事们效率低了18%。

The reasons for the findings will probably not surprise anyone who has spent much of the past few years working from a dining-room table. It is harder for people to collaborate from home.
对于这几年大部分时间都在家餐桌上办公的人来说，这些研究结果可能不会令他们感到意外。人们居家办公会更难协作。

There is more to work (and life) than productivity. Perhaps the greatest virtue of remote work is that it leads to happier employees.
工作（和生活）的意义不仅仅在于生产效率。也许居家远程工作的最大好处是它能使员工更幸福。

自由英语之路