前阵子上海的维密店打折，我的朋友圈里有人发了这张照片，还蛮搞笑的。
其实维密创始人罗伊·雷蒙1977年创办“维密”时，他的想法是开一家男人们可以为妻子和女朋友舒服地购买内衣的商店。但很显然，最终维密还是开成了女人的闺房。
这篇文章选自经济学人商论本月推送，评论区置顶有全文双语及音频下载链接，立等可取。别忘了文末右下角让我“好看”哦~~
SEX SELLS, and it sells few things better than lingerie. Nowhere is that more evident than the Victoria’s Secret fashion show. Befeathered models, known as “angels”, shimmy down a runway to promote America’s biggest underwear retailer. In 2011 more than 10m people watched it on television. But on December 2nd just 3.3m viewers tuned in.
很喜欢第一句，性本身就是个卖点。sell这里的意思是“有销路，能卖得出去”，要表达畅销还是滞销，只要在后面跟副词well, badly就可以了。比如现在经济寒冬，前阵子除了个口红效应，大概是说经济不景气的时候，口红往往卖得特别好：Lipsticks sell well during recession. 卖得特别好也可以是sell like hot cakes，也挺形象的，去替换well妥妥的。
lingerie是underwear的一种，专门指女性用的内衣。
Nowhere is that more... than... 否定词放句首的倒装，表强调，掌握了这个句式，就可以用它替换最高级了，比如之前翻译群遇到的一次练习：
至于这意味着什么，美国的讨论最为激烈。
不想用the fiercest，妥妥换成nowhere的倒装没压力：
Nowhere does debate rage more fiercely about what this means than in America.
shimmy还蛮有画面感的，一扭一摆地走。
最后两句，注意收集观看的替换词，watch，可以替换的是tune in (to some program)，收看，收听。比如我五岁的女儿每天都要收看“芝麻街”，My five-year-old daughter tunes in to Sesame Street every day.
Victoria’s Secret has around a tenth of a global lingerie market worth $78bn, according to Euromonitor International, a research firm. It shows all the signs of a tired brand struggling to keep up with customer tastes. In America its market share has plunged from almost 33% two years ago to around 24% today, as social media and e-commerce make it easier for new brands to enter the market. Shares in L Brands, its parent company, were worth $100 three years ago; today they go for $30. Newcomers are disrupting every part of retail, but Victoria’s Secret has made its woes worse.
又看到plunge了，表示暴跌的词，再来汇总一次：
plummet: hardware sales plummeted硬件销售量陡然下跌。
dive: profits before tax dived by 61 per cent.税前利润剧降了61%。
an 11 per cent dive in profits11%的利润下跌
slump: land prices slumped地价大幅走低
a slump in annual profits年利润下跌
tumble: property prices tumbled房地产价格暴跌。
a tumble in share prices股价大跌
Nosedive: The pound took a nosedive on the foreign exchange market today.英镑今天在外汇交易市场上出现暴跌。
The economy went into a nosedive. 经济形势急转直下。
Meltdown: The stock market crash might lead to financial meltdown. 证券市场狂跌可能会引发金融灾难。
go for这个词组在这里的用法可能有人还不太熟悉，后面直接跟金额，表示以多少的价格被售出，比如：
Some old machines go for as much as 35,000 dollars. 一些旧机器以多达3.5万美元的价格出售。
make one's woes worse雪上加霜，火上浇油。主要是要记住woe这个词可以表示困境，而且用的是复数，比如经济危机除了用crisis，也可以是economic woes。雪上加霜如果想用完整句的句子，还可以是disasters/troubles pile up on one another. 很有祸不单行的赶脚有没有~
A slew of competitors, promoting comfort and inclusivity, have taken that message to heart. Aerie, the underwear arm（部门，分支机构） of American Eagle Outfitters, commands just 3% of the American market but has increased its sales by an average of 11% each year since 2016, compared with an average 9% annual decline for Victoria’s Secret over the same period, according to Euromonitor. ThirdLove, an online brand which has sold over 3m bras since its launch in 2013, is growing at around 300% a year.
开头第一句get到a lot of, a large number of的替换词a slew of sth.大量的某事物。
中文里常说，把什么事情放在心上，表示认真对待，铭记于心，take sth. to heart了解一下。牢记教训，take the lesson to heart.
commond，对……有支配权，宾语可以是市场份额，同样可以表达“占多少份额”的动词还有occupy, take up。
The newcomers have tweaked the old formula. Michelle Cordeiro Grant left Victoria’s Secret, where she was a senior merchant, and went on to found LIVELY, an online underwear brand. She argues that what makes women sexy is confidence, meaning an emphasis on comfort: 70% of the bras sold by LIVELY are wireless.
前两段中有一个表达：newcomers are disrupting every part of...颠覆每一个环节，这里也出现了一个类似的词tweak，但程度有所不同。disrupt是非常大的颠覆性的改变，而tweak一般只是小改动。
这句话深得我心：What makes women sexy is confidence. 女人自信，方能性感。
They are eager to emphasise inclusivity, too. According to Mintel, a research firm, over half of consumers in Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Spain reckon fashion retailers should use more realistic models. ThirdLove’s ads feature models in their 60s, or who are breastfeeding. Since 2014 Aerie has eschewed digital retouching for photos. The response has been overwhelmingly positive, says Stacey McCormick, an executive at Aerie. When Rihanna, a pop star, launched her Savage x Fenty line of underwear in May, the models were every size and shape. People queued for hours online to buy the products.
我们常说的给相片P一下，英文里用的是这个词retouch:
V-T If someone retouches something such as a picture or a photograph, they improve it, for example by painting over parts of it. 润色; 修整(图画或照片)
还有女生时不时要去lady's room补个妆，也可以用这个动词retouch her makeup。
Thirdlove的广告了解一下~
Victoria’s Secret looks out of touch by comparison. In November Ed Razek, a company executive, dismissed suggestions that its show should have transgender and plus-size models, insisting it was meant to be a “fantasy” (he had to apologise). The show does the brand a disservice, reckons Randy Konik, an analyst at Jefferies, an investment bank, and one of Victoria’s Secret’s knockers.
out of touch除了表示“失去联系”之外，还有“不了解”的意思。比如我们常说党员不要脱离人民群众，这个“脱离人民群众”其实就是“不了解”人民群众的需求，get out of touch with the people。
在这句话中，说的就是维密不了解女性消费者的真实需求，显得不接地气，没有跟上消费者的脚步。
do sb. a disservice，损害某人的形象或声誉，在这句话中，可以直译，损害了维密的形象，也可以放开一点，给维密帮了倒忙。
说这句话的人是knocker，knock作动词时有批评之意，那么加上-er后缀，则是批评者、黑子……但是悄咪咪说一句，knockers在这里应该也有点一语双关的赶脚，因为knockers其实是不太正式而且还有点offensive的表示女性胸部的说法……
Victoria’s Secret is not about to go bust. The firm’s scale is such that with the right rebranding, it could bounce back. In November it replaced its chief executive, Jan Singer, with John Mehas, formerly of Tory Burch, a fashion retailer. Following that rejig Victoria’s Secret has held off on big announcements. “Everything is on the table,” said one executive on an earnings call last month. But in the wake of the #MeToo movement, it will have to tread carefully.
有必要总结一下“破产”的相关说法：
go bust是一例，还有大家耳熟能详的be insolvent, go broke, go bankrupt, bankrupt还能是动词哦，把公司败光了，bankrupt a company, 这个“败”就是花很多很多钱break the bank。
步步小心，言行谨慎，谨小慎微，tread carefully，可以替换carefully的副词还有cautiously, warily，都可以表示小心谨慎。
