埃航坠机波音再受质疑

中国航空公司停飞737 Max

Boeing Faces Questions About Its New 737 Max Jets After Ethiopia Crash

The trouble appeared to begin almost immediately after takeoff. The pilots told air traffic controllers that they were having technical problems. And the plane seemed to repeatedly climb and dive before a final plunge.

看起来问题几乎是在起飞后就立刻就出现了。飞行员告诉空中管制员他们遇到了技术问题。飞机似乎在反复爬升和下坠，直到最后的坠落。

plunge

作名词表示“突降；俯冲”，英文解释为“a sudden movement down or forwards”举个🌰：

The plane began a headlong plunge towards the Earth.

飞机开始栽向地面。

还有价格、价值等的“骤降”的意思（a sudden large decrease in the price, value etc of something），如：a dramatic plunge in house prices 房价的暴跌。

对比dive：

dive

此处作动词，表示“俯冲；下潜”，英文解释为“to travel down through the air or through water to a lower level”；

dive同样也可以作名词，

1）表示“俯冲；下潜”，英文解释为“when something moves down through the air or water”；

2）表示“（数量、价值或运气的）突降，暴跌”，英文解释为“a sudden fall in the amount, value, or success of something ”；举个🌰：

The news put shares in a dive.

这条新闻使得股票大跌。

Two eerily similar scenes have played out in recent months for Boeing's brand-new 737 Max jets: on Sunday, when an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing 157 people, and in October, when a Lion Air disaster killed 189 people in Indonesia.

最近几个月，波音公司(Boeing)全新的737 Max飞机发生了两起诡异的相似事件：周日，埃塞俄比亚航空(Ethiopian Airlines)一航班在从亚的斯亚贝巴起飞后坠毁，造成157人死亡，而去年10月，印尼狮子航空(Lion Air)另一起空难则造成189人死亡。

eerily

eerily /ˈɪəɹɪli/ 表示“怪诞地；奇异地；可怕地”，英文解释为“In a strange and frightening manner”。

The Ethiopian crash occurred just outside the country's capital, leaving a smoking crater where investigators combed over the grim scene. Much about the cause of the crash remains unknown and will take weeks to investigate, and Boeing and the National Transportation Safety Board are sending teams to the crash site.

埃航就坠毁在该国首都郊外，留下了一个冒着烟的大坑，调查人员在可怖的现场进行搜查。关于坠机原因还有许多未知的东西，调查需要进行数周，而波音公司和美国国家运输安全委员会(National Transportation Safety Board)正在派遣调查组前往坠机现场。

crater

表示“（物体坠落、炸弹爆炸等在地上造成的）坑”，英文解释为“a round hole in the ground made by something that has fallen on it or by an explosion”，如：craters on the moon's surface 月球表面的坑。

comb

表示“彻底搜查，四处搜寻”，英文解释为“If you comb a place, you search everywhere in it in order to find someone or something.”举个🌰：

Officers combed the woods for the murder weapon.

警官们彻底搜查了那片树林，寻找杀人凶器。

But the rarity of two planes of the same model going down in such a short time span has urgently caught the attention of pilots, passengers, engineers and industry analysts.

然而，相同型号的两架飞机在如此短的时间内坠毁，这一罕见情况已迫切引起飞行员、乘客、工程师和行业分析师的注意。

For Boeing, the questions go to the heart of its business, as the 737 class is a workhorse for airlines worldwide, and the single-aisle 737 Max has been the company's best-selling plane ever. By the end of January, Boeing had delivered over 350 737 Max jets since putting them in service in 2017. They have a list price of around $120 million, the company said, and around 5,000 more are on order.

对于波音公司来说，问题直指其业务的核心，因为737是全球航空公司的主力机型，而单通道的737 Max则一直是该公司最畅销的飞机。截止1月底，波音公司已交付了350架737 Max，该机型自2017年开始服役。它们的定价约为1.2亿美元，该公司表示，大约还有5000架的订单。

list price

表示“（厂商的）定价，标价”，英文解释为“The list price of an item is the price which the manufacturer suggests that a shop should charge for it.”

“There's a whole lot of questions here and not a lot of answers,” said John Cox, former executive air safety chairman of the Air Line Pilots Association in the United States and now chief executive of Safety Operating Systems, a consulting firm.

“现在有很多问题，答案却不多，”美国航空公司飞行员协会(Air Line Pilots Association)前执行航空安全主席、现任咨询公司安全运作系统(Safety Operating Systems)首席执行官的约翰·考克斯(John Cox)说。

a whole lot

1) 表示“大量”，英文解释为“a large number”举个🌰：

I said no, for a whole lot of reasons.

我拒绝了，原因很多。

2) 表示“非常”，英文解释为“very much”举个🌰：

Things were about to get a whole lot worse.

事情就要变得非常糟糕。

The business of building and selling jets is brutally competitive, and the 737 Max was Boeing's answer to an update that Airbus, the giant European aircraft manufacturer, unveiled for its popular A320 jet that made it more fuel-efficient. The two companies are global leaders in the field, and they have jockeyed for dominance for years. About 10,000 total planes from Boeing's 737 family are in service, compared with over 8,000 in Airbus' A320 family. Many airlines rely on these kinds of planes as linchpins of their fleets. They are designed to efficiently serve short- and medium-haul routes (like New York to Miami or Los Angeles), and carry about 200 passengers.

建造和销售喷气式飞机的业务竞争严酷，737 Max是波音公司对欧洲飞机制造商空中客车公司(Airbus)一款机型的回应，该机型是空客对受欢迎的A320飞机的一次升级，燃料效率高于原机型。两家公司是该领域的全球领导者，多年来一直在争夺主导地位。波音737家族大约有10000架飞机正在服役，而空客的A320家族则有超过8000架。许多航空公司依赖这些型号的飞机作为其机队的支柱。它们在设计上针对的是能够高效服务于中短途航线（如纽约至迈阿密或洛杉矶），可搭载约200名乘客。

sb/sth's answer to sb/sth

表示“与…相当（或同样好）的人（或物）；…的对应物”，英文解释为“If something or someone is the answer to another thing or person, it is or they are considered to be similar or as good.”举个🌰：

The Space Needle is Seattle's answer to the Eiffel Tower.

西雅图的太空针塔堪比艾菲尔铁塔。

在译文中，《纽约时报》把这里的“Boeing's answer to an update that Airbus”译为：波音公司对空中客车公司(Airbus)一款机型的回应。你有更好的译法吗？

1月份的推送：

今天的头条留给微信

顺便提一下，此前

「百度&谷歌」2018年度热搜榜单发布

通常，提到Weibo时候也会介绍为中国版的Twitter，常见的有几种说法（不完全统计）：

1) Weibo, China's heavily censored version of Twitter (The Economist)

2) Weibo, China's Twitter-like service (SCMP)

3) Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter (NPR NEWS)

4) Twitter-like Weibo (Reuters)

5) Weibo, a Twitter-like platform (NYT)

etc. 欢迎补充~

jockey

表示“（为获得最佳位置、最有利形势或最大权力而）激烈竞争”，英文解释为“to compete strongly to get into the best position or situation, or to get the most power”举个🌰：

After the war, rival politicians began to jockey for power.

战后，敌对的政客们开始激烈地争权。

the linchpin of sth

linchpin /ˈlɪntʃˌpɪn/

表示“（团体、制度等的）关键人物/事物”，英文解释为“the person or thing in a group, system etc that is most important, because everything depends on them”。

Boeing's response to its rival's move was a more efficient engine, but the Max engine was bigger than the earlier versions. To address this engineering challenge, Boeing updated the software for the flight control system. After the Lion Air crash, some U.S. aviation authorities said that the change had not been adequately explained to pilots.

波音用一个更高效的引擎来回应其竞争对手的行动，但Max的引擎比早期版本更大。为解决这一工程挑战，波音更新了飞行控制系统的软件。在狮子航空坠机事件发生后，一些美国航空当局表示，这些变化并没有向飞行员作充分的解释。

But in light of the Indonesian disaster, pilots have since been informed by Boeing and regulatory agencies of the Max's new system, and airlines have provided training classes on it. Whether Ethiopian Airlines, which, unlike Lion Air, has a strong safety reputation, carried out that training was not immediately known.

但考虑到印尼的灾难，波音公司和监管机构已向飞行员通报了Max新系统的情况，航空公司也提供了有关该系统的培训课程。与狮航不同，埃航拥有极好的安全声誉，目前尚不清楚公司是否开展了该培训。

in (the) light of

表示“因为，鉴于”，英文解释为“because of”举个🌰：

In light of recent incidents, we are asking our customers to take particular care of their personal belongings.

鉴于最近发生的几起事件，我们提醒顾客要特别注意照看好自己的个人物品。

Boeing installed the system on the new 737s as part of the “control law” — commands issued by the plane's flight-control computer that bypass the pilots. On the Lion Air flight, the swings up and down may have come about as pilots repeatedly tried to keep that system from pushing the nose of the aircraft down and putting it into a fatal dive. Whatever happened, the Indonesian pilots lost their battle after about 12 minutes of flight.

波音公司在新的737飞机上安装了该系统，作为“控制律”的一部分——“控制律”是指飞机的飞行控制计算机绕过飞行员发出的指令。在狮航航班上，飞机的上下摆动可能是因为系统在将机头下压，使飞机开始进行致命的俯冲，而飞行员在反复试图阻止它。无论发生了什么，印尼飞行员在大约12分钟的飞行后输掉了这场战斗。

While a malfunction of that system is a possibility in the Ethiopian flight, which lasted about six minutes and included a shorter series of swings, early information is still too sketchy to draw conclusions. And what is known so far does not rule out pilot error or the malfunction of a completely separate system.

这一次的埃航航班持续了大约六分钟，其中包括一系列较短的上下摆动，尽管有可能是该系统出现了故障，但早期信息仍然过于粗略，无法得出结论。目前所知的情况并不能排除飞行员的失误，或是另一个系统出现故障。

sketchy

表示“不完全的，粗略的，简略的”，英文解释为“not thorough or complete, and not having enough details to be useful”。

Robert Stengel, an expert on flight control systems and a professor of engineering and applied science at Princeton University, said it was not clear whether the rocking trajectory of the Ethiopian jet was caused by a malfunctioning control system or pilots trying to fly the plane manually while distracted by some other, as yet unknown, emergency.

飞行控制系统专家、普林斯顿大学(Princeton University)工程与应用科学教授罗伯特·斯坦格尔(Robert Stengel)说，目前尚不清楚埃航飞机摆动的轨迹是因控制系统故障造成，还是飞行员因其他未知紧急情况而试图手动操纵飞机。

While cautioning that no conclusions could be reached without more information, Stengel said that broad similarities in the two crashes could not help but affect the flying public.

斯坦格尔警告说，在没有更多信息的情况下无法得出任何结论，但他说，两起坠机事件的众多相似之处无法不对乘飞机出行的公众产生影响。

“If you're simply looking at circumstantial evidence, that gives you pause, doesn't it?” Stengel said. “That's not a deep technical observation — that's just human nature.”

“如果只看间接证据，这些已经足以让你犹豫了，不是吗?”斯坦格尔说。“这不是什么深刻的技术观察——这只是人性。”

Analysts agree that Wall Street is not going to be kind to Boeing stock Monday. And whatever hit its shares take will weigh heavily on the Dow Jones industrial average, which in recent years has been lifted by Boeing's success.

分析人士一致认为，到周一，华尔街不会善待波音公司的股票。无论其股价受到何种打击，都会给道琼斯工业平均指数带来沉重压力，近年来，波音的成功提振了该指数。

weigh on sb/sth

表示“（问题、责任等）使（某人）焦虑不安，使（某人）担忧”，英文解释为“If a problem or responsibility weighs on you, it makes you worried or unhappy.”举个🌰：

He's under huge pressure at work and it's really weighing on him.

他工作压力很大，内心负担很重。

Shares of Boeing have tripled since the presidential election in 2016, making it the highest-priced stock in the Dow. From Nov. 8, 2016, through Friday, the Dow added more than 7,000 points, and Boeing's rise accounted for nearly 30 percent of its gain.

自2016年美国总统大选以来，波音股价已上涨两倍，成为道琼斯指数中定价最高的股票。从2016年11月8日到周五，道琼斯工业平均指数上涨了7000多点，波音公司的涨幅占其涨幅的近30%。

At the close of trading Friday, Boeing was valued at nearly $239 billion, with a stock price above $422 a share. The company, which employs about 150,000 people, took in just over $100 billion in 2018, with profit for the year topping $10 billion.

周五收盘时，波音市值接近2390亿美元，每股价格超过422美元。该公司拥有约15万名员工，2018年的收入略高于1000亿美元，全年利润超过100亿美元。

Boeing has said that it is evaluating changes to the new software, and a person briefed on the matter said an upgrade was in the works.

波音曾表示正在评估对新软件的改动，一位知情人士说更新版本正在开发中。

On Monday morning in China, most Chinese carriers stopped using the dozens of Boeing 737 Max jets that they had acquired and began flying Boeing 737-800s on the same routes. The Civil Aviation Administration of China then issued an order for the mandatory grounding of Boeing 737 Max planes by Chinese carriers.

周一上午，大多数中国航空公司已经停止使用其购买的数十架波音737 Max 8飞机，开始在同一航线上使用波音737-800。中国民用航空局随后发布命令，要求中国航空公司强制停飞波音737 Max 8。

grounding

此处的grounding表示“飞机停飞”，英文解释为“the process of officially stopping an aircraft from flying, especially because it is not safe to fly”。

Flight-tracking websites showed that Chinese airlines were starting to substitute Boeing 737-800s on Monday morning on routes on which they had previously operated a Boeing 737 Max.

飞行跟踪网站显示，周一上午，中国航空公司已经在原来使用波音737 Max 8的航线上使用波音737-800进行替代。

China's main airlines are among the biggest users of Boeing 737 Max 8s, having ordered at least 104 of them and taken delivery of at least 70. By contrast, many other carriers, often in slower-growing markets than China's, have taken delivery of only a small fraction of their orders for Boeing 737 Max 8s.

中国各大航空公司是波音737 Max 8的最大用户之一，订购了至少104架，至少70架已经交付。相比之下，其他许多航空公司（往往是在增长速度比中国慢的市场）已获交付的波音737 Max 8飞机只占其订单的一小部分。

The pilots who fly the 737 Max are keeping a close eye on developments. Dennis Tajer, a spokesman for the American Airlines pilot union and a 737 pilot, said the training and other information had restored pilots' confidence in Boeing since the Indonesia crash.

驾驶737 Max的飞行员正在密切关注事态的发展。美国航空飞行员工会发言人、737客机飞行员丹尼斯·塔耶尔(Dennis Tajer)表示，自印尼坠机事件以来，培训和其他信息已经恢复了飞行员对波音的信心。

Tajer said it was too soon to say that the Ethiopian crash would change that view. But, he added, “We're not far off the time when we were being told that new equipment on the Max wasn't disclosed. We have that memory to work with.”

塔耶尔说，现在说埃航的失事会改变这种看法还为时过早。但他补充说，“不久前我们还曾被告知，Max的新设备情况没有被充分披露。我们对此记忆犹新。”

“It's too early,” he said, to say what influence the crash will have, “but boy, are we watching.”

“现在还为时过早，”他是指坠机事件会产生什么样的影响。“但我们正在观望。”

来源：纽约时报

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