Text A Is Volvo Swedish, American or Chinese?
In 1924, Assar Gabrielsson, a sales manager and Gustav Larson, an engineer, had the idea to build cars that people could drive on Sweden’s rough roads and during Sweden’s severe winters. Three years later, the first V olvo car was manufactured. This Swedish company quickly became a well-known producer of cars and commercial vehicles, including buses, trucks and heavy construction machinery.
By 1945 V olvo had become well-known outside Sweden, but they were too expensive for most people. 54 years later, in 1999, V olvo sold the car manufacturing part of its company to Ford Motor Company, America, for $6.45 billion. Ford thought it would make a big profit from this deal, but it did not. So only 11 years later it sold V olvo Cars to the Chinese motor manufacturer, Geely Automobile.
For V olvo, manufacturing cars in China seemed essential as it wanted to increase its global yearly sales to 800,000 cars by 2020. However, under China’s regulations, foreign car manufacturers can only produce cars in China when the company is jointly owned and run by a Chinese company. Thus the deal was made with Geely.
The Hangzhou-based company not only paid Ford $1.8 billion, but also invested another $900 million i
n the production of Volvo. It promised to change V olvo from a company that was making a loss to a company that would make a profit.
According to their plan, Geely will use V olvo’s technology in its vehicles and build a factory that can produce 300,000 cars per year. However, there are some difficulties. Firstly, Geely does not have the know-how to manage a large company like V olvo. Last year Geely only had a turnover of $2.4 billion, whereas V olvo’s turnover was $12.4 billion.
Secondly, Geely only exports a small number of cars to other developing countries, so it is not known as a global player. Thirdly, reducing costs and keeping the standards will not be easy.
China is the world’s largest automobile market with sales of 16 million in 2010. Geely plans to sell between 200,000 and 300,000 V olvo cars per year. This is a very optimistic plan as only 30,000 V olvos were sold in China in 2009.
译文：
明星的座驾沃尔沃是瑞典的，美国的还是中国的？
路虎discovery31924年，一位名叫阿萨尔·加比利尔森的销售经理和一位名叫古斯塔夫·拉尔森的工程师起意制造一种
到1945年，沃尔沃的名声已传播到瑞典，但是对大多数人来说，沃尔沃汽车太贵了。54年后，在1999年，沃尔沃以64.5亿美元的价格将汽车制造部门卖给了美国福特汽车公司。福特以为能通过这笔交易大赚一笔，但是没有。所以，仅仅11年后，他们把沃尔沃汽车公司卖给了中国汽车制造商吉利汽车公司。
对于沃尔沃来说，在中国生产汽车似乎是有必要的，因为他们想在2020年把全球年销售量增加到80万辆。然而，中国法规规定，外国汽车制造商必须与中国公司合营才能在中国生产汽车。所以他们才和吉利达成这笔交易。
这家总部位于杭州的公司不仅向福特支付了18亿美元，还另外投资了9亿用于沃尔沃的生产。他们承诺将沃尔沃扭亏为盈。
按照他们的计划，吉利将把沃尔沃的技术用于其车辆的制造，并建造一个年产30万辆汽车的工厂。然而这并不容易。首先，吉利并不具备管理像沃尔沃这样的大公司的技能。去年吉利的营业额只有24亿，而沃尔沃的营业额有124亿。其次，吉利仅出口少量的汽车到其他发展中国家，也就是说它还不能被称为全球汽车行业的重要参与者。再次，降低成本和保持标准会很困难。
中国是世界上最大的汽车市场，2010年拥有1600万的销售量。吉利计划每年销售20万到30万辆沃尔沃汽车。这是一个非常乐观的计划，因为2009年全中国仅售出了3万辆沃尔沃汽车。
Text B Steve Jobs, the Apple tech titan
Steve Jobs was born on 24th February, 1955, in the city of San Francisco, and grew up in a farming area that was already turning into the world centre of computer
technology, Silicon Valley.
As a teenager, Steve was interested in computers. Once he phoned William Hewlett, president of Hewlett-Packard, to ask for some computer parts he needed for a school project. He got them, along with an offer of a summer job at HP.
In 1971, he met and quickly became friends with Stephen Wozniak, also known as Woz. Woz got the idea of designing his own computer, which was really only a circuit board. Steve saw that many people were interested in his friend’s work, so he suggested they sell the board to them. Apple Computer was born.
Steve and Woz spent their first year in business assembling the boards in Steve’s garage and drivin
g to local computer stores to try and sell them. Meanwhile, Woz worked on a new computer, the Apple II, which he finished in 1977. The Apple II was much more advanced than anything the market had ever seen.
蒙迪欧-致胜Thousands of people bought the Apple II. The company grew very fast and went public three years later, on 12th December 1980. That day Steve Jobs, only 25 years old, was worth more than $200 million.
There are quite a few interesting facts about this “tech titan”:
Steve bought his Woodside house in 1984 and lived there throughout the 1990s. The house was famous for its enormous size and for its total lack of furniture. Steve was such a perfectionist that he could never make a decision on what to buy and so bought nothing. As a bachelor he only had a mattress, some pictures on the walls and a very expensive stereo system, but no furniture. He did not sleep on a bed for years even though he was a multi-millionaire. At Woodside the kitchen was the only room that was fully furnished.
In 2010, the year before he died, Jobs gave himself a salary of $1 per year. He had about 5.5 million shares of Apple’s stock, but he never sold a share.
When he died the front page of the website of Apple displayed a picture of the late Steve Jobs, and the second page contained this tribute to the industry leader: Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius, and the world has lost an amazing human being. Those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to know and work with Steve lost a dear friend and inspiring mentor. Steve leaves behind a company that only he
could have built, and his spirit will forever be the foundation of Apple.
译文：
史蒂夫·乔布斯——苹果的科技巨人
1955年2月24日，史蒂夫·乔布斯出生于旧金山。他在一个农业地区长大，当时这个地区已经开始发展成为计算机技术的世界中心——硅谷。
十几岁的时候，史蒂夫对计算机产生了兴趣。有一次他给惠普公司的总裁威廉·休利特打电话，索要他为完成学校项目所需要的零件。他得到了这些零件，随之而来的还有一份在惠普公司暑期实习的机会。
1971年，他遇到了斯蒂芬·沃兹尼亚克，绰号沃兹。两人迅速成为朋友。沃兹想设计一台自己的电脑—雨刮
—其实只是一块集成电路板。史蒂夫发现有许多人对他的朋友这项工作感兴趣，于是他建议将主板卖给这些人。由此，苹果电脑公司诞生了。
第一年，史蒂夫和沃兹在车库中装配主板，然后驾车到当地的电脑商店尝试着推销这些主板。同时，沃兹开发了一台新的电脑，即苹果二代。沃兹于1977年基本完成。苹果二代比市场上有过的任何一台电脑都先进的多。
成千上万的人买了苹果二代。公司迅速成长，并在三年之后的1980年12月12日上市。那一天，年仅25岁的史蒂夫·乔布斯身家超过2亿美元。
关于这位“技术巨人”有相当多有趣的事情：
史蒂夫在1984年购买了伍德赛德的房子。整个20世纪90年代他都住在这里。这幢房子因规模巨大但完全没有家具而闻名。史蒂夫太过追求完美，以至于他一直无法决定买什么，于是什么也没买。当他还是单身汉时，他只有一个床垫，墙上挂了一些画，还有一套极为昂贵的音响系统，但没有家具。虽然是千万富翁，但他好多年都没在床上睡过。在伍德赛德的家里，厨房是唯一一间配套齐全的房间。
f430spider2010年，在他去世前一年，乔布斯付给自己一美元的年薪。他持有苹果约550万股的股票，但从未卖出过一股。16380
他去世后，苹果网站的首页放了已故的史蒂夫·乔布斯的照片，第二页包含了
对这位行业的领导者的致敬：
苹果失去了一个有远见和创造性的天才，世界也从此失去了一位了不起的人。而有幸与史蒂夫相识并共事的我们，则失去了一位亲爱的朋友，一位启发灵感的导师。史蒂夫留下一个只有他自己才能创造的公司，而他的精神将永远是苹果的根基。
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