经济学人：TikTok的子标签BookTok为什么火了？

Books and social media书与社媒

BookTok has passion—and enormous marketing power BookTok(TikTok上的子标签)彰显热情，也有营销

Old-fashioned critics might not approve. But why should BookTok’s stars care?老派的批评家可能并不看好，但BookTokers为什么要在意呢?

提一下这个简单的passion，不可数名词时意思为热情；激情；强烈的感情；Passion is a very strong feeling about something or a strong belief in something. 例句：He spoke with great passion.他发表了热情洋溢的讲话。作可数名词的时候意思为强烈爱好；酷爱；If you have a passion for something, you have a very strong interest in it and like it very much. 这个意思口语中非常高频，完全可以替换like，比如：She had a passion for gardening.她酷爱园艺。再看个经济学人例句：Part of the answer is that, as with the Mittelstand, many firms in the Midwest are owned by families with a passion for their home towns. 答案一部分在于，和德国的中小企业一样，中西部的许多企业都是由对故乡充满深情的家庭拥有的。以后想说I like xx，也可以换成I have a passion for xx，情感更深。

 

02

A young woman holds up a book and smiles. “This is day one of me reading ‘The Song of Achilles’,” she says. The video jumps forward. “And this”, she moans, her face stained with tears, “is me finishing it.” Another clip, entitled “Books that will make you SOB”, offers written notes on how assorted stories got readers to cry, such as “I can’t think about it without bawling” and “ended up crying sm [so much] i had to change my shirt”. This is BookTok, as the literary wing of the app TikTok is known. Imagine the emotional pitch of a Victorian melodrama, add music, and you have the general idea.

参考译文：一位年轻女子拿着一本书对镜头微笑说：“这是我读《阿喀琉斯之歌》的第一天”，然后镜头突然切换：“而这，”她哽咽着，满脸的泪水，“是我看完的时候。”另一个视频片段，名为“那些让你哭惨了的书”，用文字记录了读者们看书看哭的故事，比如“我一想到那本书就蚌埠住了”和“最后我哭得跟个泪人似的不得不换了新的干衬衫”。这就是BookTok, TikTok下的文学之翼。想象一下维多利亚时代情节剧的情感基调，加上音乐，概念就有了。

moan可以表示呜咽，呻吟，也可以表示抱怨，发牢骚；怎么舒服怎么译，重点在于人是unhappy的，或者受伤了很痛苦。比如：The gardener was moaning that he had another garden to do later that morning.园丁当时抱怨说，上午晚些时候他还要到另一个花园干活。我们可以和后面的face stained with tears一起场景记忆，顿时脑中就有抖音戏j的画面了。

stain名词表示污迹，动词就表示在…上留下污迹;玷污;染污；If a liquid stains something, the thing becomes coloured or marked by the liquid. 例句：Some foods can stain the teeth, as of course can smoking.某些食物会在牙齿上留下污渍，吸烟当然也会。沾上什么东西了，通常用be stained with：His clothing was stained with mud.他的衣服沾上了泥。我们还可以把它变成后缀用，比如ink-stained fingers染上墨水的手指；同理，原文就可以说是tear-stained face。

不知道大家有没有发现，它其实可以表达出“满/多”的意思，比如眼泪布满脸颊，形容眼泪多~不过stain偏向形容脏的东西，再看个TE例句：It has long been less than discerning about the provenance of money flowing in. Its property market is heavily stained with laundered loot. 长期以来，迪拜一直没有严格甄别流入资金的来源。它的房地产市场脏钱汇聚。不过它还有层“染色”的意思，所以如果看到stained glass肯定不是脏玻璃了，是那种彩绘过的玻璃。

 assorted各式各样的;五颜六色的;混杂的；A group of assorted things is a group of similar things that are of different sizes or colours or have different qualities. 例句：It should be a great week, with overnight stops in assorted hotels in the West Highlands.那一周会过得很开心，晚上可以在西部高地上的各式旅馆里过夜。学习一下这个词，可以和different/various/varying替换。之前一篇远程医疗的文章也用过它：And smartphones and the assorted digital kit that connects to them remain expensive—which means telemedicine may not be viable for the poor or less tech-sophisticated elderly, who need these sorts of novel health-care solutions all the more. 此外，智能手机和与之相连的各种数字设备仍然很昂贵，这意味着远程医疗对穷人或搞不懂高科技的老年人来说可能不可行。而正是他们，更需要这些新颖的医疗解决方案。

bawl动词：号哭，号啕大哭；If you say that a child is bawling, you are annoyed because it is crying loudly. 例句：One of the toddlers was bawling, and the other had a runny nose.其中一个学步的小孩在大哭，另外一个流着鼻涕。我看到I can’t think about it without bawling的时候，心想这不就像我们说的“蚌埠住了/破防了”吗？家人们，直接记下来！还可以记一个搞笑版：哭到衣服湿透得换新的 – I ended up crying so much that I had to change my shirt.甚至可以再来个文艺版：I was there, my face stained with tears.

pitch有很多意思，在这里要和emotional一起看，the emotional pitch的意思就是能够调动观众情感的那种微妙的东西：the various non-verbal aspects of language that allow people to convey or understand emotion.举一个俗气的栗子，就是我们说的“有那味儿了”，比如土味视频里面的“伸舌头”这个动作就可以说是emotional pitch，让人一看到就觉得很“土”，有那味儿了！

我们可以把pitch理解为“程度、强度、极点”，而到达emotion的程度，共鸣是不是得有了？再看个例句：His imagination works at a higher emotional pitch, his interpretation of the actual touches deeper levels of our feeling. 他的想象力在更高的情感层次上发挥作用，他对实际的诠释触及了我们更深层次的情感。我们也可以把pitch理解为“宣传”，从情感上做做宣传，必须得走心吧？不然谁买你的账。

BookTok is passionate. It is also profitable—at least for publishers. Bloomsbury, a publishing house based in Britain, recently reported record sales and a 220% rise in profits, which Nigel Newton, its boss, put down partly to the “absolute phenomenon” of BookTok. On Amazon, BookTok is so influential that it has leapt into the titles of books themselves. The novel “It Ends With Us”, for instance, is now listed as “It Ends With Us: TikTok made me buy it!” Evidently TikTok did a good job: the romance is riding high in the top 100 in both Britain and America.

参考译文：BookTok充满激情，却也有利可图——至少对出版商来说是这样。总部位于英国的布卢姆斯伯里出版社(Bloomsbury)最近公布了创纪录的销售额和220%的利润增长，其老板奈杰尔·纽顿（Nigel Newton）将其部分归因于人们对BookTok的狂热。在亚马逊上，它的影响力如此之大，以至于已经跃入了在售书籍的标题中。例如，小说《莉莉的选择》现在被列为“《莉莉的选择》:来自Tiktok的安利!”显然，TikTok超会营销：这本浪漫爱情小说在英国和美国的前100名中都很受欢迎。

这段很简单，没有生词，注意几个点：

1） 我们前面说用have a passion表达喜欢，也可以用passionate：I’m passionate about xx.

2） record在这里是形容词，直接表示创纪录的：Profits were at record levels.利润创下新高。经济学人例句：China’s share of world merchandise exports hit a record high of more than 13% in the second quarter, according to data from CPB World Trade Monitor. 据荷兰经济政策分析局世界贸易监测（CPB World Trade Monitor）的数据，今年第二季度，中国占全球商品出口的比例创下新高，超过了13％。

3） be riding high表示春风得意，人气高涨。可以表示出popular / successful的意思。经济学人例句：Kimberly Clark and other peddlers of toilet paper, which many people are frantically stockpiling, are riding high, too. 人们正疯狂囤积卫生纸，金佰利（Kimberly Clark）和其他供应卫生纸的公司也在这波行情中意气风发。

本段中出现的书《莉莉的选择》就是下面这本：

The medium is not quite as gushy as it might seem. Much of the overdone emotion is ironic, and some of the videos are very funny—particularly those with the hashtag #writtenbymen, which poke fun at the male gaze. Nonetheless, many would make mainstream book reviewers tut. But why should the young women who are BookTok’s stars care what fogeyish literary types think of them? Until fairly recently, their perspective was marginalised in both fiction and criticism. White men dominated both—even though most novel-readers are female.

参考译文：这种媒体并不像它看起来那么煽情做作。很多过度的情感都是讽刺的，有些视频非常有趣，尤其是那些在‘#男人写的’标签下的视频，尽情嘲讽所谓的男性视角。尽管如此，许多视频还是会让主流书评家咂嘴。但作为BookTok的网红，这些年轻女性为什么要在意那些墨守成风的文学老古董对她们的看法呢？直到最近，他们的观点在小说和批评中都被边缘化了。尽管大多数小说读者都是女性，白人男性还是占主导地位。

先看一下gushy和fogeyish这两个形容词。gushy：marked by effusive sentimentality. 多愁伤感的，甚至有些做作的，展现出过分情感的。来看一个接地气的例句：This isn't the first time the pair have been gushy about each other on social media.他两在社交媒体上腻腻歪歪秀恩爱也不是第一次了。fogeyish来源于fogey：守旧者;抱残守缺的人；If you describe someone as a fogey or an old fogey, you mean that they are boring and old-fashioned. 比如：I don't want to sound like I'm some old fogy.我不想让自己听上去像一个老古董。

male gaze就是 男 性 视 角，具体是什么，大家可以参考一下：

tut (表示反对、厌烦、同情等时)发啧啧声，咂嘴。我们说“啧啧啧”就是tut tut tut…

type种类这个单词，在这里做可数名词，意思为具有…特点的人；…类型的人；If you refer to a person as a particular type, you mean that they have that particular appearance, character, or way of behaving. 比如：I was rather an outdoor type. 我是那种特别喜欢户外运动的人。原文的literary types指的就是前面的mainstream book reviewers。

marginalize使边缘化；使显得不重要;排斥；To marginalize a group of people means to make them feel isolated and unimportant. 看个例句：The effect of this has been to increasingly marginalize the local authority sector.这件事的影响是使地方当局越来越受到排斥。经济学人例句：But this shift raises more questions: Are women making a purely independent choice to leave the workforce? Or are they being marginalized and pushed out? 但这种转变引发了更多问题：女性离开职场是他们自己的选择吗?还是因为他们感到被边缘化，被排挤？

05

BookTok has helped upend that hierarchy. Selene Velez (pictured), a 19-year-old American student, is behind @moongirlreads_ (an account with 185,000 followers). She focuses on authors who aren’t typically “taken as seriously” as others. “I’m a woman of colour,” she says. “I try to promote authors of colour.”

参考译文：BookTok开始让这种等级制度颠覆。19岁的美国学生Selene Velez(如图)（账号是@moongirlreads_），现在已经拥有18.5万粉丝。她关注的是那些小众的，被忽视掉的高质量作家。“我是有色人种，”她说。“我想让大家看到有色人种作家也值得喝彩。”

这段提到的图就是封面的这张图：

 

hierarchy就是等级制度的意思，照应上段末尾的White men dominated both…

upend: to turn sb/sth upside down; 本义是指将...倒立，颠倒，抽象来说也就是指对某人某事引起颠覆性影响，彻底改变的意思。非常高频，比如教科文组织总干事奥德蕾·阿祖莱在体育促进发展与和平国际日致辞中讲到：The world of sport is going through an unprecedented experience on account of the coronavirus pandemic, which has upended our daily lives. 再看个TE例句：Indeed, some suspect the government is playing down the scope of the pandemic to avoid upending the Olympics, which are supposed to start in July.事实上，一些人怀疑政府在有意淡化疫情的影响范围，以避免影响原定于7月开幕的奥运会的正常举办。我们可以用这个词和disrupt/reshape等词替换。

06

BookTok is resurrecting backlists. One reason publishers noticed it, says Philip Gwyn Jones of Picador, a British imprint, was that, under its influence, old titles were creeping back into the bestseller charts. It offers such books “a second lease on life”, and he applauds it. “Eventually, a great book finds its readers,” Mr Gwyn Jones says. “You just have to hope that, unlike Kafka, [authors] don’t have to die before that happens.” Start trending on BookTok, and they won’t.

参考译文：BookTok正在复兴以往的存书列表。英国Picador出版社的菲利普·格温·琼斯说，出版商注意到这一点的一个原因是，在它的影响下，旧书重新爬回了畅销书排行榜。它为这类书籍提供了“书生的第二次租约”，他对此表示赞赏。格温•琼斯表示:“一部伟大的著作最终都会找到属于自己的读者。”“你只需要希望，不要像卡夫卡那样，生前没有机会发表大部分的作品。”现在开始在BookTok上流行起来，他们就不需要。

最后一段也不难，这里的resurrecting backlists和creeping back into the bestseller charts其实讲的是一个东西。resurrect表示使复兴，重新出现；creep back表示不知不觉地又爬回来了，又出现了，看个例句：Now his other major works are creeping back into concert programmes.现在他的其他主要作品又悄然出现在音乐会节目单上。backlist表示出版商之前出版过的书籍，且现在仍然还可以看的旧书，称为存书目录。

再复习一下trend这个词，注意我们常说的热门话题，热搜榜都可以用trending topics来表示。或者trending charts也就是热门排行榜的意思~一旦微博热搜都离不开这个词，看个例句：The hashtag for Yang's routine rose to No.2 on Sina Weibo's trending charts, earning more than 120 million views as of Wednesday.在新浪微博的热门排行榜上，杨笠的标签升至第二位，截至周三，获得了超过1.2亿的浏览量。

本期总结

⭐️替换I like sth：I have a passion for sth; I’m passionate about sth.

⭐️stain在..留下污迹；be stained with沾上了xx；xx-stained 满是xx的；stained glass彩绘玻璃

⭐️替换different/various/varying：assorted各式各样的，混杂的。

⭐️哭惨了！蚌埠住了/破防了家人们（哭）：I can’t think about it without bawling/crying. / I ended up crying so much that I had to change my shirt. / I was there, my face stained with tears.

⭐️替换disrupt/reshape：upend颠覆性的改变/影响。

⭐️短语表示popular / successful：be riding high

⭐️热门话题/热门排行榜：trending topics/charts

⭐️考考你们：男性视角怎么说？有那味儿了怎么说？啧啧啧怎么说？

由于篇幅有限，今天的精读就到这里。

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分享活动有效期至：2021年11月10日 12:00

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