From the Land of Ichiro, A Relay Throw to Africa
一朗領風潮 日本把棒球傳非洲
By Ken Maguire
Babacar Ndiaye, 12, doesn’t know Babe Ruth from Bryce Harper. The boy’s favorite baseball player is Ryoma Ogawa, who teaches Senegalese children to catch, throw, field and hit.
12歲的巴巴卡爾．恩迪亞耶不知道誰是貝比．魯斯，誰是布萊斯．哈波。這個男孩最喜歡的棒球選手是小川龍馬，他教塞內加爾的孩童接球、投球，守內外野和打擊。
Baseball is called America’s pastime, but Japan has been cultivating the sport in soccer-crazed Africa for years. Ogawa, 24, is the latest in a long line of Japanese baseball missionaries.
棒球被稱為美國的國球，但多年來日本一直在瘋足球的非洲推展這種運動。24歲的小川是一長串日本棒球傳教士中最新的一位。
They have helped create leagues in Burkina Faso and Tanzania, and the Japanese government paid for new fields in Ghana and Uganda. African coaches and top players visit Japan for training. A few Africans have earned spots on teams in Japan’s independent leagues.
他們協助在布吉納法索和坦尚尼亞創立棒球聯盟，日本政府並且出錢在迦納和烏干達建新球場。非洲的教練和頂尖選手到日本受訓。幾位非洲選手已在日本獨立聯盟的球隊獲得一個位置。
Volunteers are sent around the world by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, or JICA, which runs a program similar to the Peace Corps. They say baseball, which is one of Japan’s most-loved sports, is rewarding beyond the field.
工作性質類似美國和平工作團的日本國際協力機構（JICA），派志工到世界各地。他們說，棒球的回饋不只在球場內。棒球是日本人最喜愛的運動之一。
“Children can learn about team spirit and rules in sports, because there are rules in society,” said Megumi Chiba, a JICA volunteer coordinator in Dakar. “We can contribute also for their health. Especially in Dakar, schools don’t have sports grounds, so they don’t have a chance to practice sports at school.”
JICA在達卡（塞內加爾首都）的志工協調人千葉美惠說：「孩子可以學習團隊精神和運動規則，因為社會上也有規範。同時我們對他們的健康也有些貢獻。特別是在達卡，因為學校沒有運動場，他們沒有機會在學校練習運動。」
Ogawa’s weeknight practices are held on a sandlot next to a military base in Dakar’s Ouakam neighborhood. Volunteers and local baseball associations are often on their own because there is little government support.
小川平日晚上在達卡奧阿卡姆區軍事基地旁的兒童遊樂沙地練球。志工和當地的棒球協會通常得自力更生，因為幾乎得不到政府的支持。
There is no grass and no pitcher’s mound. Players wear jeans, sweatpants or shorts. A big tree sits in left center field, and aircraft engines hum beyond the concrete wall in deep center. The soccer game behind home plate sometimes spills over.
那裡沒有草地，也沒有投手丘。選手穿著牛仔褲、運動褲或短褲。左中外野有一顆大樹，而在最深的中外野水泥牆外，飛機引擎嗡嗡作響。本壘板後方的足球賽有時越界進到了棒球場。
“I’ve had to teach the basics very slowly,” said Ogawa, a former high school outfielder. “They’re very energetic, but it’s all new for them.”
曾在高中球隊擔任外野手的小川說：「我必須很慢地教一些基本的東西，他們很有活力，但這對他們來說是全新的東西。」
During one informal game, a tall boy in yellow rounded third base, pushed aside his slower teammate, and scored before him, an act that would be normal for taxis on Dakar’s hectic roads, but is against the rules in baseball.
在一場非正式比賽中，一個穿黃衣服的高個子男孩繞過三壘，把前面一個跑得比他慢的隊友推開，搶在隊友之前得分，這種行為對達卡忙亂馬路上的計程車而言很常見，但違反棒球規則。
Along with smiles, there is discipline. The boys must retrieve their errant throws. Before each practice, they remove rocks and trash from the field.
面帶微笑，也要求紀律。這些男孩必須撿回他們暴傳的球。每次練習前，他們得把場內的石頭和垃圾清除。
“If you don’t pick up, you can’t play,” said Mamadou Bassirou, 13.
13歲的馬馬多．巴西魯說：「不撿，就不准打球。」
At times, it’s a hot mess of linguistic and cultural misunderstandings. Ogawa speaks some French, but the players prefer Wolof, a local language. He calls out “strike one,” “strike two,” in accented English, and the boys mimic him. They ask him if Japan is the same as China, and if everyone knows karate.
有時，語言和文化上的誤解搞得一團亂。小川會說一點法語，但選手喜歡說當地的沃洛夫語。他用帶有口音的英語喊出「一個好球」、「兩個好球」，男孩們模仿他。他們問他日本是不是和中國一樣，是不是人人都會空手道。
原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/10/sports/international/japan-baseball-teach-africa.html
2016-06-26/聯合報/D2版/紐約時報賞析 田思怡譯
文解字看新聞 田思怡
隨著王建民、陳偉殷等台灣選手到美國職棒打球，台灣球迷對一些英文的棒球術語也耳熟能詳。
本文標題「From the Land of Ichiro, A Relay Throw to Africa」，a relay throw（轉傳）指的是外野手把球傳到壘包，有時因距離太遠，必須先傳給內野手，再轉傳到壘包。鈴木一朗是外野手（an outfielder），而且是右外野手（a right fielder），有一說指傳球臂力最強的外野手通常會守右外野，能夠直接把球長傳到三壘。（Right fielders tend to have the best throwing arms of the outfield so they can make the long throw to third base.）
但是當球被打到很深遠，連鈴木一朗的臂力也無法傳回壘包，可以說When a ball is batted deep into the outfield, Ichiro must throw the ball to the relay man（usually the second baseman or the shortstop），and the relay man must make a relay throw to the correct base.（當球被打到很深遠，鈴木一朗必須把球傳給轉傳人（通常是二壘手或游擊手），轉傳人再把球轉傳到正確壘包）。
第3段提到一些非洲選手在日本球隊獲得一個位置（earn spots），earn a spot通常指在球隊中獲得一個位置，例如王建民獲得皇家隊牛棚的位置，可以說Chien-ming Wang has earned a spot in the Kansas City Royals’ bullpen.
Why the Economic Payoff From Technology Is So Elusive
科技日異月新 為何對經濟沒幫助
By Steve Lohr
Your smartphone allows you to get almost instantaneous answers to the most obscure questions. It also allows you to waste hours scrolling through Facebook or looking for the latest deals on Amazon.
你的智慧型手機讓你幾乎能立刻得到最難解問題的答案。它也讓你浪費幾小時滑臉書，或在亞馬遜上尋找最新交易。
More powerful computing systems can predict the weather better than any meteorologist or beat human champions in complex board games such as chess.
功能更強大的運算系統能比任何氣象學家更準確地預測天氣，或在複雜的棋賽打敗人類棋王，例如西洋棋。
But for several years, economists have asked why all that technical wizardry seems to be having so little effect on the economy. The issue surfaced again recently, when the government reported disappointingly slow growth and continuing stagnation in productivity. The rate of productivity growth from 2011 to 2015 was the slowest since the five-year period ending in 1982.
但這幾年，經濟學家問道，為何這一切科技魔術對經濟的影響顯得如此之小。這個議題最近又隨政府公布令人失望的緩慢成長和生產力持續停滯而浮上檯面。從2011到2015年的生產力成長率，是自1982年為止的那5年以來最低的。
One place to look at this disconnect is in the doctor’s office. Dr. Peter Sutherland, a family physician in Tennessee, made the shift to computerized patient records from paper in the last few years. There are benefits to using electronic health records, Sutherland says, but grappling with the software and new reporting requirements has slowed him down. He sees fewer patients, and his income has slipped.
醫師的診所是檢視這種不相關性的一個場所。田納西州的家庭醫師彼得．蘇德蘭醫師這幾年把紙本病歷電腦化。蘇德蘭說，用電子病歷有好處，但努力應付軟體和新的報告要求使他工作速度變慢。他看的病人少了，收入也下滑。
“I’m working harder and getting a little less,” he said.
他說：「我工作更努力，收入卻少了一點。」
The productivity puzzle has given rise to a number of explanations in recent years – and divided economists into technology pessimists and optimists.
這個生產力謎團近年引發了一些解釋，並把經濟學家分成科技悲觀派和樂觀派。
The most prominent pessimist is Robert J. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University. His latest entry in the debate is his new book, “The Rise and Fall of American Growth.” Gordon contends that the current crop of digital innovations does not yield the big economic gains of breakthrough inventions of the past, like electricity, cars, planes and antibiotics.
最有名望的悲觀派是西北大學經濟學者羅伯特．戈登。他的新書「美國成長的起落」最近加入辯論。戈登主張，目前的數位創新發明成果，不會產生過去的突破性發明所帶來的龐大經濟利益，例如電力、汽車、飛機和抗生素。
The optimists are led by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, co-directors of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. They argue that there have always been lags between when technology arrives and when people and institutions learn to use it effectively. That has been true for a range of technologies, including the electric motor and the internet, which contributed to the last stretch of healthy productivity growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
樂觀派由麻省理工學院數位經濟計畫的共同主持人艾瑞克．布倫喬爾森和安德魯．麥克菲領銜。他們主張，在科技到來與人們和機構學習有效運用之間，一直有時間落差。很多科技確實如此，包括電動馬達和網際網路，後者在1990年代末和2000年代初對上一段的生產力健康成長頗有貢獻。
The gains from current tech trends like big-data analysis, artificial intelligence and robotics, they say, will come. Just wait.
他們說，目前的科技趨勢，像是大數據分析、人工智慧和機器人的經濟利益將會到來。等著吧。
原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/06/business/why-the-economic-payoff-from-technology-is-so-elusive.html
2016-06-26/聯合報/D2版/紐約時報賞析 田思怡譯
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