年度“金废话奖”创出新高度

Every January for the past decade I have handed out awards for horrible use of language in business. Usually the task amuses me. This year I have found the sheer weight of euphemism, grammatical infelicity, disingenuity and downright ugliness so lowering I have decided to start the 2016 Golden Flannel Awards with something more uplifting: a prize for clarity.

十年来，每年年初我都会从上一年企业界惊现的胡说八道中评选出个中翘楚。我常常乐此不疲。今年我发现那些委婉语、拧巴话、不知所谓的表达还有赤裸裸的恶心话在水准上普遍很不给力，所以我决定2016年度“金废话奖”(Golden Flannel Awards)要从一个比较来劲的奖项——大白话奖——讲起。

I am calling this the Wan Long prize, after the Chinese meat magnate who once uttered the clearest sentence ever spoken by a CEO: “What I do is kill pigs and sell meat.” Mr Wan will surely approve of my winner, a BNSF railway executive who told a conference: “We move stuff from one place to another.”

我叫它“万隆奖”，该奖得名于一位中国肉业大亨，人家身为CEO却无比坦诚地宣称：“我就是个杀猪卖肉的。”万隆先生一定会同意我把这个奖颁给北伯林顿铁路公司(BNSF)的一位高管，这位仁兄在一次会议上说：“我们把东西从一个地方运到另一个地方。”

This elegant, informative and borderline beautiful sentence is a reminder that despite the horrific nature of the entries below, clarity remains attainable.

这句简练、言之有物、几乎可称之为妙语的话提醒我们，即便接下来的奖项都相当雷人，还是有人能够做到直白的。

I used to think guff was a product of failure and mediocrity — it existed because the truth was too painful, or because executives had not bothered to ascertain what the truth was.

我原以为胡扯是失败与庸俗的产物——它的存在是因为真相往往太伤人，或者高管们懒得弄明原委。

Indeed, last year produced the usual crop of new euphemisms for firing people. Infosys announced an “orderly ramp-down of about 3,000 persons”. Upworthy, a small media company, had the nerve to call sacking 14 people an “investment lay-off”. Otherwise, 2016 proved that the most egregious jargon is a sign not of failure, but of overexcitement.

实际上，去年新出炉的炒鱿鱼委婉用语(euphemisms for firing people)跟往年的产量差不多。Infosys宣称“井然有序地实现了一次3000人的人员递减”。Upworthy，一家规模不大的媒体公司，在解雇了14名员工后竟然大言不惭地称这是一次“投资性裁员”。反言之，2016年最极品的行话体现出的不是失败，而是兴奋过头。

People promoting driverless cars, the most hyped industry segment of the moment, became world leaders in verbiage. Elon Musk claimed to be “laser-focused on achieving full self-driving capability on one integrated platform with an order of magnitude greater safety than the average manually driven car” (ie Tesla cars must stop crashing).

无人驾驶汽车是当下炒作得最火的行业，这类汽车的倡导者已成为冗词赘语的世界级领军人物。埃隆?马斯克(Elon Musk)自称“要在一个安全系数超出人工驾驶数量级倍数的一体化平台上专注于全自动驾驶的实现”。（就是说特斯拉肯定能防止车祸的发生）。

Better still was Iain Roberts, global managing director of the design company Ideo, who asked a question to which I hope never to hear the answer: “How to activate insights around latent mobility or multimodal needs?”

更强的是设计公司Ideo的全球董事总经理伊恩?罗伯茨(Iain Roberts)，他问了一个我一点都不感兴趣的问题：“怎样激发人们去洞察潜在机动性或多模式需求？”

But the runaway winner was Ford CEO Mark Fields, who began the year with the depressing news that his company was “transitioning from an auto company to an auto company and a mobility company”. He then went on to declare: “Heritage is history with a future.” He was so chuffed with this, he said it more than once. On hearing it repeated, I’ve concluded it is less gnomic than downright moronic. Mr Fields is thus my new Chief Obfuscation Champion.

而最终取得压倒性胜利的是福特公司(Ford)的CEO马克?菲尔茨(Mark Fields)，去年年初他曾令人沮丧地宣布他的公司正“从一家汽车公司向一家汽车公司兼出行公司转型”。他紧接着声称：“遗产是蕴藏着前景的历史。”他超爱这句话，说了不止一次。这句话被他翻来覆去地说，让我觉得它不像格言反倒更像废话。因此本年度新晋“首席蒙人冠军”(Chief Obfuscation Champion)非菲尔茨先生莫属。

The PR industry excelled itself with increasingly fancy descriptions for the basic activities of emailing, talking and meeting. Entrants included: “I want to jump on your radar” (a bad idea, as if you jump on radars they break) and “let’s find a time to connect to mutually update”. My favourite came from a PR man named Michael who wrote: “I hope you don’t mind the outreach.” Alas, I do mind. To reach out has always been hateful, but making it a noun, and reversing the word order, does not help. Michael, you’ve won the Communications cup.

公关行业胜在连基本的发邮件、说话和开会都能玩出无穷的花样。入围作品有：“我想跳上你的雷达”（别，你要跳上来雷达就完了）还有“我们找时间联系，相互更新一下情况”。我最喜欢的是这个，一位名叫迈克尔的这样写道：“希望你别介意这次广推(outreach)。”哎吗，我很介意。主动凑上去(reach out)已经够让人腻歪的了，就算你把它当名词使，还颠倒了词序，也并没啥用好吗。迈克尔，“沟通杯”(Communications cup)归你了。

Take the intriguing reintroduction of “unfeigned regards” — last big in the 18th century and now found on emails from Indian help centres. But the winning sign-off, at the bottom of a message sent one Friday, was: “weekend well”. I nearly awarded it second prize for the best noun pretending to be a verb, though at the last minute this award was snatched by a consultant overheard saying: “Can we cold towel that?”

有趣的是，“真诚的问候”(unfeigned regards)又重回我们的视野——人们现在可以在印度服务中心的邮件上见到这一18世纪末的流行语。而更胜一筹的是这个签名，一个周五我收到了一则消息，末尾处写到：“周末好”(weekend well)。我差点将最佳名词使动用法奖也颁给它，不料最后一刻却杀出一匹黑马，一位顾问无意中说了句：“我们能把那件事冷毛巾一下吗？”(Can we cold towel that?)

While he wins the Nerb prize, the sister prize, for the best verb masquerading as a noun, is won by another consultant who referred to a “global touch-base”.

他赢得了名动词奖，而其姐妹奖，最佳动词名词化奖，则由另一位顾问凭借这句“全球联络”(global touch-base)摘得。

Siemens broke records last year by winning two awards for renaming its healthcare business Healthineers. Not only does it land the Martin Lukes prize for the worst combination of two words, the accompanying video, featuring a singing CEO and writhing spandex-clad employees, wins a gold medal for most embarrassing company song of all time.

西门子(Siemens)去年破纪录了，通过将医疗部更名为Healthineers一举斩获两项大奖。该公司不仅因为将两个单词生拼硬造出另一个无比蹩脚的新词从而荣获“马丁?卢克斯奖”(Martin Lukes prize)，同时还凭借现场视频中一位倾情演唱的CEO和身着氨纶紧身衣卖力献舞的员工们，摘得史上最尴尬企业歌曲的金牌。

My favourite award every year is for a spurious renaming of a common noun. A couple of years ago, Speedo rechristened the swimming cap a “hair management system”. Last year, Falke went one better by renaming a line of socks “Life Performance Solutions”.

“常见物乱更名奖”，每年都是我的心头好。几年前，Speedo曾将泳帽改称为 “头发管理系统”(hair management system)。去年，Falke更绝，将一款袜子称作“生活问题解决方案”(Life Performance Solutions)。

Falke’s fall from grace is sad, but nothing compared with eBay. The company I thought I would love forever for supplying my entire wardrobe and the contents of my house told the New York Times: “We are passionate about harnessing our platform to empower millions of people by levelling the playing field for them.”

Falke的最终失利令人扼腕，但eBay的表现确实无可匹敌。我以为自己对eBay的爱将矢志不渝，因为鄙人全部的穿戴和家中物件均来自这家公司，而它却向《纽约时报》(the New York Times)表示：“我们热切希望利用我们的平台，通过营造公平的竞争环境来造福数百万人。”

Bingo! In fewer than 20 words it combined five previous years’ winners, only to say nothing at all. With a heavy heart, I award eBay my overall Golden Flannel Award for 2016.

干得漂亮！在不到20个词的一句话里，eBay集前五届冠军之长，做到了啥也没说。怀着沉重的心情，我将2016年度金废话奖总冠军授予eBay。