Useful terms and expressions
vendor – продавец, торговец, компания-поставщик
flamboyant - яркий (о личности)
predecessor - предшественник
Written translation
TEXT 10
Translate the text in writing. Provide the gist of the article. Identify the unique trends in each of the mentioned markets for each of the said car producers. Has anything changed in the proportions of the market shares and market leaders today? What would be your projections like as to further expansion of the mentioned global motor companies?
The New Champions
Emerging markets are the car industry’s big hope. But it won’t be an easy ride
No wonder that all the big carmakers are fighting like rats in a sack to win the largest piece of the action. Already, emerging markets have made the difference between life and death for some of the most famous names in the industry. GM’s survival would be in even greater doubt without the meteoric growth it is seeing in China. Thanks in large part to the BRICs, a record 65% of GM’s sales in the first quarter were outside America.
Emerging markets still may see a huge growth: they account for more than a third of the world’s rich but only about 15% of luxury-car sales. When Italy’s Fiat was in danger of going out of business a few years ago, its Brazilian operation came to the rescue. Emerging markets accounted for 65% of its net income last year, by Morgan Stanley estimates. Volkswagen, the market leader in China, believes it will soon be able to challenge Toyota as the world’s biggest carmaker. In Russia Renault has taken a 25% stake in the country’s biggest local carmaker, AvtoVAZ, and its Logan is the first of a new wave of global low-cost cars.
These markets have much in common, but each is also remarkably different. In China buyers turn up their noses at small cars. The market is still dominated by joint ventures with foreign firms, but the strongest local manufacturers are rapidly expanding production. Russia still has a sizeable indigenous industry, but many of its products hark back to the old Soviet Union. Like the Chinese, Russians like high and wide SUVs. By contrast Brazilians prefer their cars small. India has established itself as an exponent of what car-industry executives call “frugal engineering”—innovation in the cause of ultra-low cost. Given a rapidly growing world car population and dwindling oil supplies, fuel prices are bound to rise in the long term.
Despite the social and economic benefits that widespread car ownership brings, its expansion in developing countries has raised fears both about environmental and economic consequences. Infrastructure is another big worry. In megacities of the developing world cars often move at less than walking speed, stuck in traffic jams. For the world’s carmakers the road ahead is full of opportunities, but also many risks.
The Economist
Useful terms and expressions
SUV (sports utility vehicle) – полноприводной внедорожник
to take a stake in a company – приобрести долю в компании
to turn up one’s nose at – воротить нос при виде, выражать презрение к
indigenous – местный
to hark back to – восходить к (периоду в прошлом), относиться к (периоду в прошлом)
exponent – выразитель, представитель
frugal – бережливый, экономный
TEXT 11
Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer. Before translating, scan the text to find the significance of these figures:
$4bn……………………………………………………………………………………………
31………………………………………………………………………………………………
60% ……………………………………………………………………………………………
£6.7bn …………………………………………………………………………………………
17% ……………………………………………………………………………………………
nine ……………………………………………………………………………………………
40………………………………………………………………………………………………
2000……………………………………………………………………………………………
9.3bn…………………………………………………………………………………………...
11%.............................................................................................................................................
Translate the text in writing.
WAL-MART: Wal around the world
The world's largest retailer still thinks of itself as a small-town outfit. That may be its greatest strength
In less than four decades Wal-Mart has come to account for 60% of America’s retail sales and 7-8% of total consumer spending (excluding cars and white goods). Its pre-tax profits have grown by 15% over the last decade to $9.3bn in 2000. No other global retailer comes close when measured by sales. Its future growth will come from aggressive new store openings, plus a move into food and into such services as banking, says H. Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's CEO. “Is there some reason we couldn’t be three times this size?” he asks.
However, analysts worry about saturation in America and expect domestic growth to slow. Wall Street is pinning its hopes instead on Wal-Mart's overseas efforts. Founded only a decade ago, the international division already accounts for 17% of sales and 11% of profits.
Wal-Mart is already the biggest retailer in Canada and Mexico. It bought itself the number three position in Britain with its £6.7bn acquisition of Asda and is now pushing into China. But its ventures in Argentina, Indonesia, and Germany have been flops, accompanied by heavy losses. With a presence in nine countries, Wal-Mart is in fact less international than other aspiring global retailers such as France's Carrefour, which has stores in 31 countries.
Wal-Mart is at least learning from its experience. Unlike its small, nervous steps into some foreign markets, the acquisition of Asda was bold, providing crucial experience in selling food. Wal-Mart is also becoming more culturally astute, even importing good ideas from overseas into its domestic business.
But Wal-Mart's biggest problem is its lack of 'human capital', says Coleman Peterson, head of personnel. The group has been at pains to replace expatriates with locals, and every overseas country team except China's is now led by a non-American. Yet it is expanding faster than it can train people internally, and has lost high quality local managers to rivals.
This leads to another problem: that the international division still lacks scale. To exploit savings from sourcing globally, Wal-Mart needs to make more acquisitions. Buying Carrefour would be its boldest move. However, Wal-Mart is more likely to buy the hypernarket businesses of Germany's Metro, worth $4bn. Buying even part of Metro would bring Wal-Mart huge clout with European suppliers, and also some more experienced European managers.
The Economist
Answer the questions:
What testifies to the fact that Wal-Mart is the world's largest retailer?
Why don't analysts share Mr Scott's optimism about Wal-Mart's US growth?
Where does Wan Street think that Wal-Mart's future growth will come from?
How did Wal-Mart become number three in Britain?
What mistakes did it make in Indonesia?
What useful expertise has Wal-Mart obtained from Asda?
Why does Wal-Mart need to achieve greater scale internationally?
How could the acquisition of a European competitor help Wal-Mart's personnel problems?
Who are Wal-Mart’s major international competitors?
Which of the mentioned steps may help Wal-Mart to strengthen its European clout and a global foot-print?
TEXT 12
Translate the article in writing. Sum up the major merits and shortcomings of the US rail companies. Who benefits from the rivalry?
Back On Track
The quiet success of America’s freight railways
EUROPEANS have long pitied Americans for their rotten passenger trains. But when it comes to moving goods America has a well-kept freight network that is the most cost-effective in the world. It is, however, a capital-intensive business. The downturn has actually helped propel capital spending on everything from tracks to IT. Last year $23 billion was spent, a record in real terms. The plan has been to modernize the network while business is relatively quiet. Railway firms thereby hope to find themselves in a better position to handle rising traffic in future.
This strategy is already paying off, with returns on capital averaging 11%. In 2012 the seven largest freight railways had operating revenues of $67 bn (up from $47 bn in 2009). By 2035 the demand for rail freight is expected to double, with a great deal of new business coming from shifting consumer goods. Containers are lifted off ships and trucks, loaded onto trains and whizzed to their destination. This business pays well and is growing fast.
Although railways cannot deliver to your door as lorries can, big-box retailers are making more use of them because it is the cheapest way to move bulky things long distances over land. Using rail means accepting slightly higher inventories, but it is often worth it, since moving goods by rail is 4 times more fuel efficient than by road, and railways can increase their capacity in the future.
With improvements in scheduling and timekeeping, America’s trains are now winning more business and may soon nibble at trucks’ market share - particularly for journeys that take longer than a day by road. Truckers are battling high fuel and labor costs, shortages of drivers, congestion, tighter rules on how drivers must operate and chronic underinvestment in roads.
Today coal accounts for some 43% (by weight) of what is moved on American freight trains. But with stricter environmental laws for power stations, this could dwindle. The US could build more pipelines to move domestic oil, but the rail network is already there. Whatever loads America needs to shift in the future, railways are well placed to do the job.
The Economist
TEXT 13
Translate the article in writing. Read the article again and answer the questions that follow:
|
“When I’m 18, I’ll buy champagne” |
Online media You’ll never work at home Yahoo buys a teenager’s start-up BIG companies swallow little ones every day. So the purchase on March 25th by Yahoo (annual revenue, $5 billion) of Summly, a British start-up (annual revenue, nil), for a reported $30m would normally merit merely a shrug of the shoulders and some muttering about the curious economics of the internet. |
The deal is worth noting, though, for two reasons. One is that Summly’s founder, Nick d’Aloisio, is only 17: this summer he will be sitting his exams like other teenagers. He created an iPhone app to summarise articles in 300-400 characters, ideal for the smartphone-user wondering what he should bother reading.
Li Ka-shing, a Hong Kong telecoms tycoon, invested money in the venture, having got wind of an early version of the app after tech blogs wrote about it, Mr d’Aloisio says. Actors (Ashton Kutcher, Stephen Fry), artists (Yoko Ono) and entrepreneurs (Mark Pincus, co-founder and boss of Zynga, a maker of games) have also chipped in, taking the sum outsiders invested in Summly to $1.5m. Mr d’Aloisio says that he remained the largest shareholder.
The second reason is that Summly is just the latest of half a dozen start-ups snapped up by Yahoo in as many months. The internet company has also bought Stamped, Alike and Jybe, which built apps for personalised recommendations of, among other things, books, food and music; OnTheAir, a video-chat company; and Snip.it, which created an app for curating and sharing articles.
Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s boss since July, says she is determined to make the company a stronger force on smartphones and tablets. Yahoo was born on the desktop, but unlike Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook, points out Thomas Husson of Forrester, a research firm, it lacks a mobile platform, such as an operating system or social network, through which to provide its content. Yahoo, says Mr Husson, “will have to go through the various platforms to maximise reach”.
On mobile devices, thinks Mr Husson, personalised content will be especially attractive. The companies bought by Yahoo have all been trying to provide exactly that. Ms Mayer, who has also spruced up Yahoo’s news and e-mail apps in recent months, has neither time nor money to spare. Had she waited until Mr d’Aloisio left school, it might have been too late.
The Economist, 2013