听力达人训练秘籍:Google in Africa

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听力达人训练秘籍:Google in Africa

天之聪教育 2012-08-17 Economist 607次

听力达人训练秘籍之—Economist

Google in Africa

It’s a hit
谷歌在改变非洲大陆
Google casts its web across the continent. Any complaints?
谷歌的生意正在覆盖非洲大陆，但也招来一些抱怨

ONLINE Africa is developing even faster than the new highways of offline Africa. Undersea cables reaching Africa on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, plus innovative mobile-phone providers, have raised internet speeds and slashed prices. In some African markets you can buy a daily dose of internet on a mobile phone for about the cost of a banana (ie, less than ten American cents). This burgeoning connectivity is making Africa faster, cleverer and more transparent in almost everything that it does.

现在，非洲的互联网系统比公路系统发展得还快。沿大西洋和印度洋海岸到达非洲的海底电缆，外加富有创意的手机供应商，使网速大为提高，网费大为降低。在非洲的一些地方，一天的手机上网费相当于一支香蕉的价格（即不到十美分）。蓬勃发展的网络联结使非洲生活的几乎任何方面都更快速、更智慧、更透明。

Google can take a lot of the credit. The American search-and-advertising colossus may even be the single biggest private-sector influence on Africa. It is not just that its internet-search and e-mail are transforming Africa. Take maps. Before Google, ordinary Africans struggled to find maps. Military and civilian mapping offices hoarded rolls of colonial-era relics and sold them at inflated prices. By contrast, Google encourages African developers to layer maps with ever more data. In Kenya 31,000 primary schools and 6,900 secondary schools are marked on Google maps. Satellite views even let users see if the schools have built promised new classrooms or water points. Similar initiatives let voters verify local voting figures at election time. Satellite views of traffic jams have also shamed some African cabinets into spending more on city infrastructure.

这一切在很大程度上要归功于谷歌。这个来自美国的搜索和广告业巨头甚至可能是非洲最具影响力的私人企业。它所起的作用，不仅仅是通过互联网搜索和电子邮件来改变非洲。拿地图来说，在谷歌到来之前，普通非洲民众很难得到地图。军队和政府的地图机构收藏了大量的殖民地时期的老旧地图，以很高的价格出售。但谷歌不一样，它鼓励非洲的研发人员把尽可能多的资料标注到地图上。在肯尼亚有三万一千所小学和六万九千所中学显示在谷歌地图上。谷歌的卫星图甚至可以显示这些学校是否如约建造了新教室和供水点。类似的技术还可以让选民核实在选举日有多少人投了票。卫星地图所显示的交通拥塞状况，还促使一些非洲国家政府增加了对城市基础设施建设的投资。

Google has also pepped up Africa’s media, enabling Africans to read each other’s newspapers. Google is improving translation software to bring more Africans who speak only local languages online. As well as English, French, Portuguese and Arabic, it offers Zulu, Afrikaans, Amharic and Swahili. Languages like Wolof, Hausa, Tswana and Somali are set to follow.

谷歌还促进了非洲媒体的发展，使非洲人可以互相阅读对方国家的报纸。此外，谷歌正在改进翻译软件，从而使越来越多只会说本地语的非洲人也能上网。除了英语、法语、葡萄牙语和阿拉伯语之外，谷歌还提供祖鲁语、南非荷兰语、阿姆哈拉语和斯瓦希里语。其他一些语言，如沃洛夫语、蒙萨语、茨瓦纳语和索马里语等，也会逐步加进来。

Faster downloading speeds have helped make Google’s YouTube video-viewing more popular. Young urban Africans organise YouTube parties. The company is also trying to help African governments digitise information and make it freely available to their citizens. Many rulings in the higher courts of Ghana, for instance, are going online.

更快的下载速度使谷歌的YouTube视频变得人气更高。非洲的城市年轻人到处在举办YouTube派对。谷歌还在帮助非洲国家政府把信息数字化，使普通公民能够免费查询公共信息。例如，加纳高级法院的很多判决已经可以在网上查询。

Yet critics complain that Google is buying up enormous amounts of virgin digital land in Africa at virtually no cost. Within a couple of decades, without the regulatory oversight of the African Union or African governments, they say, Africa’s internet life will be almost entirely in hock to the Google giant. Even the company’s decision to go slow on seeking profits from Africa by offering cheap deals has been attacked by African would-be rivals, which say that such tactics are only extending Google’s unfair advantage.

然而，仍有些批评者在抱怨谷歌，说他们几乎毫无成本地就占据了非洲巨大的数据市场份额。这些批评者说，再有二十年，如果非盟或非洲国家政府不进行监管，非洲的整个网络生活可能会变成谷歌巨人的债务人。甚至谷歌牺牲盈利机会、提供廉价服务的决定，也被潜在竞争者说成只是一种策略，无非为了加强谷歌不公平的优势地位而已。

Google says its recent effort to best a rival South African firm, Mocality, was an embarrassing aberration. Google’s top man in Africa, Joe Mucheru, brushes aside fears of a monopoly. The company’s advertising model, he says, helps African business. “The more Google grows, the more the entire ecosystem grows.” He is especially keen on Google+, a service that seeks to provide an even more useful online community than Facebook.

谷歌承认，它最近对竞争对手(南非企业Mocality)的压制行为，是一个令人尴尬的、偏离谷歌宗旨的事件。谷歌在非洲的负责人乔.穆查鲁认为，对谷歌垄断的担忧是不必要的。他说，谷歌的广告模式有助于非洲企业。“谷歌发展得越快，整个经济体系就发展得越快。”他对“谷歌+”尤其抱有信心，这个谷歌新服务项目试图创造一个比“脸谱”（Facebook）的用途更为广泛的网络社区。

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