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Recording Three
录音三
Welcome to the third lecture in our series on the future of small businesses in Europe.
欢迎来到关于欧洲小企业未来的系列讲座。
The purpose of today's lecture, as you have seen from the title and the abstract, is to examine in more detail the problems facing small- and medium-sized enterprises which arise at least in part from having to adapt to rapid advances in technology.
正如你从标题和摘要中看到的，今天讲座的目的是更详细地研究中小型企业面临的问题，至少部分原因是不得不适应技术的快速发展。
And I want to look at these both from a financial and from a personnel point of view and to offer a few hopefully effective solutions.
我想从财务和人事方面来看，并提供一些但愿有效的解决方案。
Here we have three of the most important problems facing small businesses that I want to look at today.
今天我们要看的是小企业面临的三个最重要的问题。
First, keeping up with the pace of technological change, recruiting high quality staff in a time of skills shortages in IT as a whole and in a highly competitive market, and the issue of retaining staff once they've been recruited and trained.
首先是跟上技术变革的步伐，在IT整体技能短缺，市场竞争激烈的时候招聘高素质的员工，而后招聘培训人员的问题。
Now, all of these problems involve significant costs for all businesses.
现在，所有这些问题都涉及所有企业的重大成本。
But there are particularly challenging issues for small- and medium-sized enterprises.
但中小企业还面临着特别具有挑战性的问题。
And those costs would vary depending on the size and scale of the businesses.
这些费用将因企业规模和规模而异。
So let's come to the first issue on our list which is keeping pace with developments in technology.
所以我们来看看我们的列表中的第一个问题：跟上技术的发展。
Now we all know that the technology industry is intensely competitive with new products being launched all year round as the various companies strive to compete with each other, rather than, say once a year or every couple of years.
现在我们都知道，技术行业全年都在推出的新产品竞争激烈，各家公司力争相互角逐，而不是每年或每几年一次。
And this is a real headache for smaller businesses.
这对小企业来说真是一个头痛的地方。
So, let's imagine we have a small company which is doing OK.
所以，我们想象一下有一家运行不错的小公司。
It's just about making a profit and it spends most of its income on overheads.
这只是赚取利润，它的大部分收入花费在一般费用上。
So for a company in this situation, keeping up to date with the latest technology, even if it's only for the benefit of key staff, this can be hugely expensive.
所以对于这种情况下的公司来说，保持最新的技术，即使只是为了关键人员的利益，都可能是非常昂贵的。
So in my view, some creative thinking needs to come in here to find ways to help companies in this situation to stay ahead in the game, but at the same time, to remain technologically competitive.
所以在我看来，为了帮助企业在这种情况下保持领先这里需要有一些创造性思维，但与此同时还要保持技术竞争力。
Well, there's a possibility that small groups of companies with similar requirements but not directly competing with each other— they could share the cost of upgrading in much the same way as, let's say, an intranet operates within large organizations.
那么，有可能要求类似的小公司并不直接相互竞争——他们可以以大致相同的方式分享升级成本，就像内联网在大型组织中运行一样。
In fact, cost-sharing could be a very practical solution, especially in times of financial difficulty.
事实上，费用分摊可能是一个非常实际的解决方案，特别是在经济困难时期。
If there's downward pressure on costs, because of a need for investment in other areas, I would argue that this is a perfectly feasible solution.
如果成本压力下降，由于需要投资于其他领域，我认为这是一个完全可行的解决方案。
Questions 23 to 25 are based on the recording you have just heard.
问题23至25基于你刚刚听到的录音。
Question 23. What does the speaker say about the problems facing small- and medium-sized enterprises?
问题23. 讲话者说中小企业面对的问题是什么？
Question 24. What does the speaker say about the technology industry?
问题24. 讲话者说了关于科技产业的什么？
Question 25. What is a practical solution to the problems of small- and medium-sized businesses?
问题25. 中小企业解决问题的实际解决办法是什么？
