英国女性用品之母杰奎琳·戈尔德 | 经济学人讣告

2023-04-01 03:04

写在前面

感想作者：

Cece，消防人+经济学人粉丝（组长）

02 新手必读

现在翻译组成员由牛津，耶鲁，LSE ，纽卡斯尔，曼大，爱大，圣三一，NUS，墨大，北大，北外，北二外，北语，外交，交大，人大，上外，浙大等70多名因为情怀兴趣爱好集合到一起的译者组成，组内现在有catti一笔20+，博士8人，如果大家有兴趣且符合条件请加入我们，可以参看帖子我们招人啦！

五大翻译组成员介绍：（http://navo.top/7zeYZn）

1.关于阅读经济学人（如何阅读经济学人？）

2.TE||如何快速入门一个陌生知识领域（超链，点击进入）

2.为什么希望大家能点下右下角“在看”或者留言？

在看越多，留言越多，证明大家对翻译组的认可，因为我们不收大家任何费用，但是简单的点击一下在看，却能给翻译组成员带来无尽的动力，有了动力才能更好的为大家提供更好的翻译作品，也就能够找到更好的人，这是一个正向的循环。

精读|翻译|词组

Jacqueline Gold

杰奎琳·戈尔德

英文部分选自经济学人20230325期讣告

Jacqueline Gold

杰奎琳·戈尔德

Good vibrations

纯纯欲动

Jacqueline Gold, builder of the Ann Summers empire, died on March 16th, aged 62

安·萨默斯帝国缔造者杰奎琳·戈尔德于2023年3月16日去世，享年62岁

The party wasn’t one Jacqueline Gold would normally have gone to. It was in a council flat in Thamesmead, a dreary estateout on the estuary. She was used to more select Biggin Hill farther south, where she grew up in a big detached house with a pool and a view over rolling fields. But in 1981 she went to Thamesmead with a friend, to a Pippa Dee party, where women got together to buy clothes. Home-selling had been a craze for a while, starting with Tupperware, where bored housewives sold each other countless plastic bowls and jugs to get commission and free gifts. Pippa Dee parties were a bit more fun than that.

和杰奎琳常光顾的聚会不同，这次聚会的地点在泰晤士米德的一间政府公租屋里。这栋楼坐落在泰晤士河口湾，氛围显得沉闷单调。而杰奎琳则出身南边的比金山上流住宅区，在带室外泳池的独栋洋房中长大，窗外风景绵延开阔。1981年，她与一位友人到泰晤士米德，参加了一场Pippa Dee聚会，看到女人聚在一起买衣服。由特百惠引领的家庭聚会式销售那会儿已经火爆一段时间了。聚会上，闲来无事的家庭主妇们互相售卖各种各样的塑料瓶瓶罐罐，以此赚取些回扣和免费礼物。相比之下，Pippa Dee聚会多少还有趣一些。

注释：

泰晤士米德（Thamesmead）是位于伦敦东北部的一个地区，分属格林威治皇家自治市和贝克斯利伦敦自治市。泰晤士米德位于查令十字以东 15.1公里，人口约5万。

This one certainly was. For a start, men were banished to the shed or the pub. The wares were interesting, with quite a lot of lingerie in decent fabrics. Then the wine came out, and the women started to play games. In one, she was asked to draw her husband’s “meat and two veg” off the top of her head. The room was in peals of laughter. They all knew she was handling the payroll for the four run-down Ann Summers sex shops which her father David had acquired. What about an Ann Summers party? someone said. It sounded a great idea.

杰奎琳去的这一次聚会当然也不乏趣味。首先，聚会把男士们打发到工具间和酒馆去了。然后，货品很有趣，都是些面料考究的贴身内衣裤。后来，女士们边品着葡萄酒，边开始玩起了游戏。有一个游戏要求杰奎琳凭记忆画出老公的“一荤两素”。杰奎琳画的时候引起阵阵哄堂大笑。大家都知道她掌管着父亲收购的四家安·萨默斯门店的财政大权，不过这几家店生意并不景气。聚会中有人提议说：“要不办个安·萨默斯聚会？”杰奎琳觉得这个想法似乎很不错。

注释：

meat and two veg: (Britain, slang) The male genitals.

Things couldn’t go on as they were. Many women wanted to spice up their marriages, but wouldn’t venture near the blank windows of a sex shop. She wouldn’t dream of it; she was shy enough, painfully shy, as it was. The customers were almost all male and seedy, the dirty-mac brigade, and they bought the sorts of things they, not their wives, thought sexy: slutty, scratchy underwear in red and black nylon, or sky-blue nylon baby-dolls. Women were silently fed up with this, and something had to change.

安·萨默斯不能继续走老路了。女人也想给婚姻生活增加一点情趣，但她们不敢靠近成人用品店的大橱窗，反正她本人是想都不敢想；她是个性格腼腆的人，可以说是极为腼腆。店里的顾客基本都是下流好色的大老爷们，他们买的东西都是他们自认为性感的物品而不考虑他们老婆的感受：面料粗糙扎人的黑红的尼龙情趣内衣，或者是天蓝色的玩具娃娃式尼龙睡裙。虽然女人们默默地忍受着这一切，但这种情况必须有所改变。

注释：

The dirty mac brigade is British slang for lascivious men who delight in pornography and strip clubs.

In middle-class Biggin Hill she tried her idea out. She held a girls-only party to which, casually, she also brought sex toys. After lingerie time, she switched the toys on and passed them round. The women had never seen such items before. They were giggly, nervous and excited, all at once. Clearly, there was a market there. Into the 2000s she built that hunch up to a peak of 13,000 party hosts (during covid, on Zoom, ardour multiplied), around 150 high-street-worthy shops, a racy online presence and a turnover of £150m a year. Women in Britain had been freed to have the sex lives they wanted, without necessarily involving a man at all.

杰奎琳在中产阶级聚集的比金山试水。她办了一场仅限女宾的派对，并顺便带了些“羞羞玩具”。内衣售卖环节之后她把玩具打开，让客人们依次把玩。这些女人哪见过这种东西，一时间又是紧张，又是兴奋，一个个咯咯笑得不停——不消多言，这些宝贝拥有巨大的市场潜力。时光荏苒，到了21世纪初，杰奎琳最初的灵光一现，已经发展成为一项大生意，顶峰时期拥有13,000多名派对主持人（疫情期间线下派对转为线上聚会，热情更加高涨），一家业务红火的线上商城，公司年营收达1.5亿英镑。英国女性已可以随心所欲地享受性生活带来的愉悦，甚至都无须男性角色的参与。

Of course men, even in 1981, took some convincing. When she presented her idea to the Ann Summers board, all middle-aged males in grey suits, they were scornful; she was only on work experience and paid less than the tea lady. One member complained that women weren't even interested in sex. But her father supported her, giving her £40,000 to take the company where she wanted. It was a big change of heart for him, a man who had clawed his way up from East End rags to riches, and who cried when she was born because she wasn't a son who could carry on his businesses after him. Well, surprise, that was just what she could do.

但在当时，尽管已经1981年了，让男性接受这个新点子可是费了一番功夫。杰奎琳向安·萨默斯董事会提议时，这些每天西装革履的中年男性，对这个小实习生嗤之以鼻——薪水还没有茶水间的阿姨高，竟敢在这里指手画脚。有一位董事会成员甚至认为女性对性根本不感兴趣。但是她的父亲却全力支持，拨出4万英镑，让女儿按照自己的想法经营公司。对他父亲而言，这一心态转变可谓巨大。曾经，他努力打拼一步步摆脱东区贫民窟迈入了富裕阶层；曾经，杰奎琳的降生令他哭泣，只因她非男儿身，无法继承家业。然而，命运弄人，杰奎琳偏偏要来继承家业。

So off she went, placing ads for party hosts in the Evening Standard and driving regularly to the Strand Palace hotel in her mustard-yellow Mini to hold recruiting seminars. She found 500 in a year, bold stuff, since to the authorities this was still illegal sex work. In Bristol, at a trade show, she was arrested and told to close down her stall. Job Centres refused to let her advertise her vacancies, until a judge ruled in her favour. In Dublin, when she opened her “pleasure emporium” on the sacred site of O'Connell Street opposite the Post Office, she was sent a bullet in the post.

说干就干，杰奎琳一边在《旗帜晚报》上刊登广告，招募派对主持人，另一边开着芥末黄的迷你库珀，定期在斯特兰德宫酒店举办招聘会。第一年，她就招到了500人。这可谓相当大胆，因为在当局眼里，她从事的仍然是非法的性工作。有一次，在布里斯托的展销会上，杰奎琳被当场逮捕，被勒令关停摊位。就业中心拒绝发布她的招聘需求，直到她在法庭上胜诉，才有所改善。更有甚者，在将她的“欢愉商城”开在都柏林神圣的奥康奈尔街邮局对面之后，有人给她邮寄过来一颗子弹。

注释：

1.旗帜晚报（Evening Standard）原名旗帜报（The Standard，1827-1904），又称伦敦旗帜晚报（London Evening Standard），是英国伦敦的一份免费报纸，该报周一至周五以小报形式出版。https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/伦敦旗帜晚报

2.奥康奈尔（O'Connell）街道位于都柏林市中心，是爱尔兰共和国最著名的街道之一，被认为是爱尔兰共和国的象征之一。而位于O'Connell街道的邮局则是爱尔兰共和国独立的象征之一，所以这个地点被认为是具有神圣意义的地方。

She defused the opposition, first, by being herself. She was not some intimidating over-made-up madam but a small, pretty woman with long brown hair and an easy, open smile. Setbacks simply encouraged her. The party atmosphere spread from suburban living rooms to the shops, where mannequins in microunderwear filled the windows, and where browsers could find strip-search-policewomen’s bustiers up to size 24, fake-silk suspenders, popping candy choco willies, Kama Sutra position cards and almost anything else in that line. She leapt quickly on trends. After the Rampant Rabbit vibrator featured in “Sex and the City” on tv, vibrator sales reached 2.5m a year, and during the “Fifty Shades of Grey” craze she brought in bondage starter kits. Three-quarters of her customers were women and 70%, she reckoned, were ABC1s, upper-middle-class professionals who found it daring, in a good way, to go through those doors.

面对反对意见，她首先就是做好自己。她并不是一个画着浓妆、令人生畏的贵妇，她小巧玲珑，面容姣好，留着一头棕色长发，笑容满面，平易近人。面对挫折，她愈挫愈勇。派对的氛围从郊区的客厅蔓延到了商店，橱窗里摆满了穿着迷你内衣的人体模特，店里随处可见最大尺寸为24号的脱衣舞女郎胸衣、仿真丝吊带、阴茎形状的跳跳糖巧克力、爱经姿势卡等等，几乎无所不有。她还紧跟潮流。自“狂野兔子”振动器现身美剧《欲望都市》后，振动器的年销量达到250万。电影《五十度灰》大火之后，她顺势推出了捆绑性爱入门级装备。她的顾客中有四分之三是女性。她估计其中有70%是中上阶层的专业人士，她们认为在这样的店里消费是一种前卫大胆的体验。

Ambition and enjoyment drove her, but there was another motive. To sell sex as fun was a way of reclaiming the worst years of her life, when sex had meant only misery. Her upbringing had been comfortable, but she was a funny little child, fussy about food and not much loved. Her stifling mother kept her away from the street and from friends. When she was 12, her mother began an affair with David’s best friend John. It was carried on in John’s house after her mother had picked her and her sister up from school; they would be dumped in the garden to wait, often in the cold, while the couple cavorted inside. When her mother got divorced John became her stepfather, a terrifying figure who would watch her in the shower and as she slept, and did everything he could to her short of penetration. At 15 she managed to tell him to stop and, surprisingly, he did. But sex for her had become what the shops of the time offered: a furtive, sordid thing. Marriage, at 20, improved her view of it, but by then she was beginning to pour her energies into the lacy, thrilling empire she was building.

支持她的除了野心和对成功的享受，还有另一个动机。把闺房之乐作为卖点性作为一件快乐的事情推销出去，也是一种对生命中最糟糕的岁月的弥补，那时性一度只意味着痛苦。她的成长环境优渥，小时候的她是个古怪的女孩，挑食，缺乏关爱。母亲非常强势，不许她上街也不许和朋友玩。12岁的时候，她的母亲与父亲大卫最好的朋友约翰发生婚外情。接她和妹妹放学后，母亲就把她们丢在约翰家的院子里，而自己则和约翰在房子里寻欢作乐，小姐俩为此还常常挨冻。父母离婚后，约翰成了她的继父。他是个很可怕的人，会偷看她洗澡和睡觉，还对她做了一切除了插入之外不堪的事。15岁的时候，她让约翰住手。令人惊讶的是，约翰真的就停止了。不过对她来说，性已经和当时情趣商店所提供的商品无异了：都见不得光、肮脏不堪。她20岁时结婚，婚姻让她的性观念有了改观，但那时她已经开始将精力投入到她正在建立的充满情欲和刺激的商业帝国中。

She had not nearly finished the job when breast cancer first attacked her, in 2016. In that very year she was awarded the CBE for services to enterprise and women in business, but there was plenty left to do. Empowering women in both bedroom and boardroom was her aim, but though the bedroom was now a gloriously open playing field, the boardroom lagged behind. Again, she drew on her own experience to explain it. Girls, she said, were brought up to be perfect, and boys to be brave. Most men therefore believed they could do anything; women too often felt they fell short. It would take time to change the attitudes laid down over millennia. But she had given them a satisfying push in the right direction.

2016年，她罹患乳腺癌，但是事业还远远没有完成。但就在那一年，她凭借对企业和商界妇女的服务获得了大英帝国司令勋章，但仍有许多未竟之业。她的目标是在卧室和会议室赋予妇女权力，虽然卧室现在光荣开放，但会议室却落后了。她又一次用自己的经历来解释这一问题。她说，我们总是教育女孩要完美，而男孩要勇敢。因此，大多数男性相信自己可以做成任何事情；女性则常常觉得自己不够好。要改变这一几千年来形成的观念需要时间。但她已经在正确的方向上推了一把。

翻译组：

Xenia，想寻找热情，还有一些答案

Lee，爱骑行的妇女之友+Timberland粉

Benjiamin，MTI to be, 初学翻译的翻译小学生

校对组：

Alison，女，翻译路上的小蜗牛

Francis，达人观之，生死一耳；何必生之为乐，死之为悲

Rachel，学理工科，爱跳芭蕾，热爱文艺的非典型翻译（年年备战一口）

观点|评论|思考

本次感想

Alfredo，今日翻五段，明日翻十段，然后得一夕安寝

安·萨默斯帝国缔造者杰奎琳·戈尔德于2023年3月16日去世，享年62岁。她是一位富有创意且极具企业家精神的杰出商业女性，备受尊敬，甚至令人敬畏。杰奎琳的想法在当时社会极其前卫，因为那时人们购买情趣用品往往比较隐秘，且性方面的话题是一大禁忌。然而，她坚信这种新的商业模式具备一定可行性，并在英国成功推广了这一新型购物方式。安·萨默斯最终成为了一个能让女性放心购买情趣用品的品牌，还建起了实体店和网店，变成了业内的佼佼者。

由此我们能够看出，杰奎琳·戈尔德是位有远见、格局大的女性商业家，其创立公司不仅仅是为了创造财富，更是为了让女性能够自由地掌握自己的性生活与情感生活。她的公司为女性提供了一个安全、隐秘、互动的购物体验，并推广了女性自主的性文化。随着公司不断开发新产品、不断为女性提供更好的选择，当今社会的女性可以更加自信而独立地迈向崭新的生活。

而且值得一提的是，杰奎琳在生前还常关注社会问题，比如通过公司的基金会来支持教育、健康和文化项目，并减少公司的碳足迹，为其帝国的可持续发展作出了贡献，并实现了一些于她个人而言的重要目标。

杰奎琳的成功经验与勇气胆识值得我们学习并敬仰，她的创新精神和企业家精神也向我们展现了无畏和决心这两大品质在商业创新中的重要意义。她的去世对于整个安·萨默斯公司和英国的情趣用品市场来说都是一个巨大损失，不过人们将永远铭记她的付出与贡献。她的事业不仅仅是个人的事业，更是英国乃至全球情趣用品产业发展的缩影和女性独立的性文化在当今时代不断积极传播的一大例证。杰奎琳虽已离开人世，但她所象征的女性生命力和自主精神将不断延续。