中文導讀
無論是抖音，還是TikTok，一上線就捕獲了當下年輕人的心，TikTok的活躍用戶更是高達10億。
TikTok在海外的火爆將其母公司字節跳動推到了聚光燈之下，一家還未上市的科創獨角獸，一家廣告收入超百度、騰訊，緊追阿里巴巴的中國科技潛力股。
字節跳動的發展勢頭比起當年的臉書更是有過之而無不及，成為一家家喻戶曉的公司或許只是時間問題。但字節跳動目前所面臨的最大攔路虎卻是美國政府。
雙語閱讀：
1
As covid-19 has forced the world’s teenagers out of school and into their rooms, they have turned to a familiar digital companion, TikTok. The short-video app was downloaded 115m times in March. Its nearly 1bn regular users enjoy silly clips of dog antics alongside pandemic advice from the World Health Organisation. Collectively, TikTok videos tagged with #coronavirus have been watched 53bn times.
新冠疫情蔓延全球致使學校停學，年輕人只能紛紛待在家，於是TikTok(抖音國際版）就順理成章成為了他們的電子密友。三月份，這個短視頻軟件的下載量高達1.15億次。將近10億TikTok日常活躍用戶喜歡在軟件上觀看狗狗的搞笑視頻，同時他們還能得到世界衛生組織的一些疫情建議。在TikTok上，所有帶有新冠病毒標籤的視頻加起來的播放量達到了530億次。
companion 伴侶；夥伴
2
TikTok’s popularity over the past two years has shone the spotlight on ByteDance, its Beijing-based developer. Founded by a Chinese computer scientist, Zhang Yiming, in 2011, it is now the world’s biggest unlisted technology “unicorn”, recently valued at between $90bn and $100bn. It is also the only technology firm bar Apple with more than 100m users in both China and America, where TikTok has taken on the likes of YouTube and Instagram.
近兩年TikTok的火爆將字節跳動推到了聚光燈之下。字節跳動總部位於北京，是開發TikTok的母公司，由中國的計算機程序員張一鳴於2011創立。字節跳動是現在世界上最大的未上市科創“獨角獸”，近期估值約在900億至1000億美元之間。它也是蘋果公司之外唯一一家在中國和美國都擁有1億用戶的科技公司，TikTok也在美國與Youtube和Instagram等社交平臺扳手腕。
shine the spotlight on.../ put..under the spotlight 將..置於聚光燈下
bar 除了...之外
take on 與...較量
3
And ByteDance isn’t done. The 60,000 people in its buzzy offices—“We are like flies,” says one former employee—crank out one app after another. In the past year it has launched a worldwide corporate-software service (Lark), a music-streaming app in India and Indonesia (Resso) and, in China, a messaging rival to WeChat. As other firms sack workers amid covid-19, ByteDance is hiring 10,000 globally. It plans to employ 30,000 on top of that this year.
然而字節跳動還遠不滿足於此。6萬名員工在字節跳動喧鬧的辦公室裡——“我們就像蒼蠅一樣”，一個前員工說，——一個接一個地在開發應用程序。去年，字節跳動推出了一款全球企業辦公套件（飛書），並在印度和印度尼西亞推出了一款音樂流媒體軟件Resso,還在中國推出了一個用於匹敵微信的即時通訊軟件。新冠大流行期間，各個公司都在裁員，字節跳動卻在全球範圍內招聘1萬名員工，計劃今年在此基礎之上新招3萬名員工。
4
ByteDance is not the first Chinese firm with foreign ambitions. Commodity giants such as CNOOC, an oil firm, have been buying foreign reserves, and rivals, since the 1990s. In the past decade industrial giants have pursued Western competitors from carmaking (as with Geely’s purchase of Volvo) to chemicals (ChemChina’s of Syngenta). More haphazardly, conglomerates like Fosun and Anbang splurged ontrophy assets (including Club Med and the Waldorf Astoria hotel, respectively).
字節跳動並非是首家擁有進軍海外野心的中國公司。自上世紀90年代開始，像中海油這樣的大宗商品巨頭，就一直在購買海外及其競爭對手的儲備。在過去的十年裡，從汽車製造行業(如吉利收購沃爾沃)到化工行業(中國化工收購先正達)，行業巨頭一直在追趕西方的競爭對手。更隨意的是，復星(Fosun)和安邦(Anbang)等企業集團在奢侈性資產上的一擲千金(分別投資了地中海俱樂部(Club Med)和華爾道夫酒店(Waldorf Astoria hotel))。
haphazardly 偶然地；隨意地
splurged on 大肆花費；一擲千金
trophy assets 奢侈性資產
5
Unlike most of its peripatetic predecessors, though, ByteDance has built its empire by making products that appeal beyond China. It is China’s first global software giant. It has also courted foreign investors. Filings in Hong Kong show that it has used an arrangement called the “Sina structure”, which allows it to accept money from abroad, since its founding (many Chinese tech firms turn to this structure only when eyeing a stockmarket listing in America). Around 80% of ByteDance’s investors are non-Chinese. So are four of its five board members. The other is Mr Zhang.
不過與大多數瀟灑的前輩不一樣，字節跳動是通過打造在海外擁有吸引力的產品來建立自己的帝國的。字節跳動是中國第一個全球軟件巨頭，吸引了外國投資者的目光。根據香港的文件顯示，自字節跳動創立以來就一直在採用“新浪架構”，這種架構能夠讓公司接受外國資本（許多中國科技公司只有在考慮在美國上市的時候才會採用這種架構）。字節跳動大約8成的投資者都不是中國人，5名董事成員中只有張一鳴1名中國人。
peripatetic 逍遙的；不固定的
court 討好；設法獲得
6
All this helps ensure ByteDance is not, in contrast to many Chinese tech upstarts,in hock to Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent—which is handy, for Bytedance competes with China’s tech titans for ad revenue. It makes most of its money selling ads in its two main Chinese apps: Douyin, a Chinese TikTok, and Toutiao, a multimedia-and-news app akin to Facebook’s newsfeed (its WeChat rival, Duoshan, disappointed).
這些舉措都讓字節跳動沒有步上許多中國科創企業的後塵——把自己典當給阿里巴巴，百度和騰訊——這很有用，因為字節跳動是要跟中國科技巨頭爭奪廣告收入的。字節跳動的主要收入都來源於自己的兩款中文應用程序：抖音和今日頭條（類似於臉書新聞推送的多媒體新聞應用程序）。字節跳動旨在匹敵微信的多閃表現令人失望。
in hock to 典當；向..借款；（向..融資）
7
How much money it makes, exactly, is unclear: as a private company Bytedance does not publish its accounts. But leaks and statements from investors put last year’s revenue at between 104bn yuan and 140bn yuan ($15bn-20bn), more than Uber, Snapchat and Twitter combined. Its ad revenues in China surpassed Tencent’s and Baidu’s and now trail only those of Alibaba. It reportedly turned a profit in June 2019, a feat in the world of loss-making unicorns.
字節跳動具體多少營收並不清楚：作為一傢俬營公司，字節跳動不公佈賬目。但據洩露的消息和投資者的聲明，字節跳動去年的營收在人民幣1040億元至1400億元(合150億至200億美元)之間，超過了優步、Snapchat和推特的總和。它在中國的廣告收入超過了騰訊和百度，現在僅次於阿里巴巴。據報道，字節跳動在2019年6月實現盈利，這在一直處於虧損的獨角獸世界裡是一項壯舉。
trail 落後於
8
If the firm generates $25bn in sales this year, as it is expected to despite covid-19, it will have done so three years faster than Facebook. It is the only big Chinese firm whose share of the domestic advertising market is growing fast, from 9% to 17% in 2019, according to Bernstein, a research firm. A recently launched advertising network, Pangle, which lets advertisers reach consumers across any of its non-Chinese apps, may at last help it monetise TikTok.
如果字節跳動今年營收達到250億美元（儘管受疫情影響，也預計會達到），字節跳動將會比當時的臉書還早3年達成這個目標。據研究公司伯恩斯坦(Bernstein)稱，字節跳動是中國唯一一家在國內廣告市場份額快速增長的大公司，從9%增長到2019年的17%。最近推出的廣告網絡平臺Pangle可以讓廣告商通過它的任何非中文應用接觸到消費者，這可能最終會幫助它TikTok的流量轉化為收入。
9
No wonder American rivals are trying to clip its wings. Facebook’s TikTok clone, Lasso, has flopped. YouTube is said to be developing another (called Shorts). But the biggest threat has emerged in the form of America’s government, wary of China’s rise in any sphere.
也難怪美國的競爭對手都想要剪斷字節跳動的翅膀。臉書的TikTok克隆版Lasso已經失敗了。據說YouTube正在開發另一款名為Shorts的視頻應用程序。但字節跳動面臨最大的威脅來自美國政府，因為它對中國在任何領域的崛起都保持警惕。
10
Politicians in Washington fear that data on American users is being handed to Beijing; that Chinese algorithm designers are infecting impressionable Western youngsters with communist propaganda; and that ByteDance content is censored in line with party whims. In March two Republican senators introduced a bill that would ban TikTok from all government devices. The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is reviewing ByteDance’s acquisition in 2018 of Musical.ly, another app, which had 60m users in America and Europe.
美國的政客有三大擔憂：一、擔心字節跳動會把美國用戶的數據會傳給中國;二、擔心中國的算法設計師用共產主義宣傳感染易受影響的西方年輕人；三、擔心字節跳動的內容是按照黨的意願進行審查的。今年3月，兩名共和黨參議員提出了一項法案，禁止所有政府設備使用TikTok。美國外國投資委員會(CFIUS)正在審查字節跳動一筆在2018年收購Musical.ly的交易，這款應用程序當時在美國和歐洲擁有6000萬用戶。
11
In statements, TikTok has said that it stores all American “user data in the United States” and that its American operations are “not influenced by any foreign government, including the Chinese government”. The firm is trying to mollifycritics and has hired prominent security and legal experts in America to help it. Last month it opened a “transparency centre” in Los Angeles, where it promises to share information about its content-moderation, privacy and security controls, and said it would stop using moderators in China to handle content from users outside the country.
TikTok在聲明中表示，所有美國用戶數據都是存儲在美國的，其美國業務“不受包括中國政府在內的任何外國政府的影響”。字節跳動為了平息批評者的聲音，還請了美國一些傑出的安全和法律專家來幫助它。上個月，它在洛杉磯開設了一個“透明中心”，承諾分享有關內容審核、隱私和安全控制的信息，並表示將停止用中國的審核員來處理來自國外用戶的內容。
mollify 平息；緩和
12
That, most lawyers and technologists reckon, may help get CFIUS off its back. Listing ByteDance in Hong Kong, which is under consideration, may also foster trust. So would anointing a non-Chinese successor—though, at 37, Mr Zhang may not be ready to retire. As a last resort, he is said to be willing to contemplate spinning TikTok off. That would cement the digital divide between China and the West—until another hit ByteDance app tries to bridge it.
大多數律師和技術專家認為，這可能會幫助字節跳動擺脫美國外國投資委員會。字節跳動正在考慮在香港上市，這也可能促進信任。任命一位非中國籍的繼任者也是如此——儘管37歲的張先生可能還沒有準備好退休。據說，作為最後的手段，他願意考慮分拆TikTok。在另一個熱門的字節跳動應用程序能彌閤中國和西方之間的數字鴻溝之前，這將是一個有效的方法。
anointing 任命
contemplate 考慮
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