英美报刊节选翻译练习(二十一)

China is way behind India in the business of outsourced services, but it has now started to catch up Imaginechina

The sheer size of this undertaking² betrays China's ambition to become a global power in software and services to match its pre-eminence in manufacturing. Attracting outsourced business is central to this. ①The worldwide market for offshore³ spending on IT services for (predominantly) Western companies will reach $50 billion by 2007, according to Gartner, a consultancy, and is growing in double digits⁴. The market for BPO, which encompasses⁵ processing bills and credit-card applications to managing entire human-resources operations, should be worth another $24 billion by next year, and is expanding even faster.

Meanwhile fears about piracy⁶ of intellectual property—more rampant⁷ in China than India—will constrain⁸ growth. Though foreign companies in China say that copying sophisticated IT processes is difficult and can be thwarted⁹ by relatively¹⁰ simple safeguards, the perception that sensitive business information is at risk is likely to slow development.

②All this suggests that, for the moment, China is likely to capture an increasing share of low-level BPO tasks, such as data entry, form processing and software testing, while India continues to dominate higher-value functions, such as research and design, which require greater creativity and language skills.However, this will change as more western firms demand support in China and domestic opportunities grow. And it isn't just pure competition between the two countries: last year, TCS signed a deal with the Chinese government and Microsoft to build China's first big software company, which aims to provide IT services for the Olympics.

翻译提示：①spending on IT services，这个分词短语应该怎么处理？ ②capture一词译成什么合适呢？

背景知识：

1.什么是外包（outsourcing）?

外包就是企业做自己最能干的事情（扬已所长），把其它的工作外包给能做好这些事情的专业组织（避已之短）。外包业是新近兴起的一个行业，它给企业带来了新的活力。

2.外包分境内外包和离岸外包

外包根据供应商的地理分布状况划分为两种类型：境内外包和离岸外包。境内外包是指外包商与其外包供应商来自同一个国家，因而外包工作在国内完成。离岸外包则指外包商与其供应商来自不同国家，外包工作跨国完成。由于劳动力成本的差异，外包商通常来自劳动力成本较高的国家，如美国、西欧和日本，外包供应商则来自劳动力成本较低的国家，如印度、菲律宾和中国。

虽然境内和离岸外包具有许多类似的属性，但它们差别很大。境内外包更强调核心业务战略、技术和专门知识、从固定成本转移至可变成本、规模经济、重价值增值甚于成本减少；离岸外包则主要强调成本节省、技术熟练的劳动力的可用性，利用较低的生产成本来抵消较高的交易成本。在考虑是否进行离岸外包时，成本是决定性的因素，技术能力、服务质量和服务供应商等因素次之。

3.哪些业务适合外包？

通常外包的业务内容，主要包括信息技术，其次是人力资源、财务和会计。

4.谁被全球发包商青睐？

印度目前是IT离岸外包市场的中心，据称至少80％的全球外包业务都去了印度。其它外包目的地则遍及亚洲、欧洲、非洲和南美洲，包括中国、菲律宾、俄罗斯、墨西哥、新加坡、爱尔兰、北爱尔兰、以色列、南非、东欧和巴基斯坦等。这些国家的排序比较模糊，因为每个国家都有其自身的优势和缺陷。

根据McKinsey的调查，印度是迄今为止最受离岸外包业务青睐的地区，这主要得益于其在成本和质量上的综合优势。爱尔兰和以色列可以提供良好的基础设施和多语言人才，但费用过高。有些国家则是质量和成本之外的因素较为突出。例如，中国可以提供较低成本和有特殊技能的软件专业人才，以完成那些文档已丢失的项目。与印度相比，中国的竞争优势在于劳动力成本，但在质量上远远落后。