好英语网谷歌选择美国制造
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Etched into the base of Google’s new wireless home media player that was introduced on Wednesday is its most intriguing feature. On the underside of the Nexus Q is a simple inscription: “Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A.”
加利福尼亚州，圣何塞——谷歌周三发布了一款最新无线家庭媒体播放器，它最有意思的地方是刻在底板上的东西。在Nexus Q下方，刻着简短的一句话，“美国设计与制造。”
The Google executives and engineers who decided to build the player here are engaged in an experiment in American manufacturing. “We’ve been absent for so long, we decided, ‘Why don’t we try it and see what happens?’ ” said Andy Rubin, the Google executive who leads the company’s Android mobile business.
决定在美国制造这款播放器的谷歌高管和工程师们正在进行一场美国制造的实验。“我们已经缺席很久了，‘为什么不试试，看看结果如何？’”谷歌安卓手机业务的主管安迪·鲁宾（Andy Rubin）说。
Google is not saying a lot about its domestic manufacturing, declining even to disclose publicly where the factory is in Silicon Valley. It also is not saying much about the source of many of its parts in the United States. And Mr. Rubin said the company was not engaged in a crusade.
对于在美国国内制造产品，谷歌没有发布太多消息，甚至拒绝公开位于硅谷的工厂位置。它也没有透露其在美国众多零部件的来源。鲁宾称谷歌并不是要去参加一场圣战。
Still, the project will be closely watched by other electronics companies. It has become accepted wisdom that consumer electronics products can no longer be made in the United States. During the last decade, abundant low-cost Chinese labor and looser environmental regulations have virtually erased what was once a vibrant American industry.
这个项目依然将受到其他电子产品公司的密切关注。似乎消费类电子产品不在美国生产已经成为常理。过去十年中，中国充足的廉价劳动力和较为宽松的环保政策已经基本上抹杀了这个曾在美国兴旺一时的行业。
Since the 1990s, one American company after another, including Hewlett-Packard, Dell and Apple, has become a design and marketing shell, with production shifted to contract manufacturers in Shenzhen and elsewhere in China.
从20世纪90年代开始，一个接一个的美国公司，例如惠普、戴尔和苹果，都变成了只剩下设计部门和市场部门的空壳。它们的产品生产都转给了深圳和中国的其他地区的外包厂家。
Now that trend may be showing early signs of reversing.
现在这股潮流似乎出现了逆转的征兆。
It’s a trickle, but some American companies are again making products in the United States. While many of those companies have been small, like ET Water Systems, there have also been some highly visible moves by America’s largest consumer and industrial manufacturers. General Electric and Caterpillar, for example, have moved assembly operations back to the United States in the last year. (Airbus, a European company, is said to be near a deal to build jets in Alabama.)
虽然只是一股细流，但一些美国公司已经开始重新在美国生产产品。其中很多是一些小公司，比如ET水系统；但美国大型消费品和工业品的生产商们也有一些高调举措。例如，通用电气和卡特彼勒去年已经把组装业务转回美国。（据说，欧洲的空客公司正就在阿拉巴马州制造飞机进行谈判，并接近成功。）
There is no single reason for the change. Rising labor and energy costs have made manufacturing in China significantly more expensive; transportation costs have risen; companies have become increasingly aware of the risks of the theft of intellectual property when products are made in China; and in a business where time-to-market is a competitive advantage, it is easier for engineers to drive 10 minutes on the freeway to the factory than to fly for 16 hours.
导致这种变化的原因是多重的。劳动力和能源成本不断上涨导致在中国的生产成本大幅提升；运输成本也在上涨；各家公司也越来越警惕在中国生产产品时知识产权被盗的问题；而成品投入市场的速度也是企业的一项竞争优势，对工程师来说在高速公路上开车10分钟去工厂要比坐16个小时飞机更方便一点。
That was true for ET Water Systems, a California company. “You need a collaboration that is real time,” said Pat McIntyre, chief executive of the maker of irrigation management systems, which recently moved its manufacturing operation from Dalian, China, to Silicon Valley. “We prefer local, frankly, because sending one of our people to China for two weeks at a time is challenging.”
对于加州的ET水系统公司来说就是这样。“你需要在实时情况下进行合作，”这家灌溉管理系统制造商的首席执行官帕特·麦金太尔（Pat Mclntyre）说。该公司最近将自己的生产车间从中国大连搬回了硅谷。“坦率地讲，我们更希望在本土生产，因为一次派人去中国待两个星期实在太困难了。”
Harold L. Sirkin, a managing director at Boston Consulting Group, said, “At 58 cents an hour, bringing manufacturing back was impossible, but at $3 to $6 an hour, where wages are today in coastal China, all of a sudden the equation changes.”
波士顿咨询集团公司的总经理哈罗德·西尔肯（Harold L.Sirkin）说，“在每小时58美分时，把车间搬回美国是不可能的，但是现在中国沿海地区的工资是每小时3美元到6美元。于是，这个等式瞬间就被改变了。”
The firm reported in April that one-third of American companies with revenue greater than $1 billion were either planning or considering to move manufacturing back to the United States. Boston Consulting predicted that the reversal could bring two million to three million jobs back to this country.
该公司四月份的一份报告称，三分之一收入在10亿美元以上的美国公司都在计划或考虑把生产车间搬回美国。波士顿咨询公司预言这股回流将给美国带来200万到300万个工作岗位。
“The companies who are investing in technology in the U.S.A. are more nimble and agile,” said Drew Greenblatt, president and owner of Marlin Steel Wire Products in Baltimore, which continues to manufacture in the United States by relying on automation technologies. “Parts are made quicker, and the quality is better.”
“在美国进行技术投资的公司更加灵活，更加敏捷，”马林钢丝产品公司（Marlin Steel Wire products）的总裁兼老板德鲁·格林布拉特（DrewGreenblatt）称，这家位于巴尔的摩的公司一直在美国通过自动化技术进行生产。“零部件加工的更快，质量也更可靠。”
Other factors are playing a role as well, said Mitch Free, chief executive and founder of Mfg.com, an electronic marketplace for manufacturing firms. He pointed to trends including distributed manufacturing and customization as playing an important role in the “reshoring” of manufacturing to the United States.
Mfg.com是一家为制造商服务的电子产品交易网站，其首席执行官和创立者米奇·弗里（Mitch Free）认为，这其中还有其他因素的作用。他提出，在这次制造业“回流”到美国的过程中,一些趋势起到主要作用，它们包括分布式制造和用户定制服务。
The biggest challenge in bringing manufacturing home has been finding component suppliers nearby. Industry executives note that the decision to stay in China is often determined by a ready labor pool and the web of parts suppliers that surround giant assembly operations, like the one that Foxconn, the manufacturing partner of Apple and many other big electronics companies, operates in Shenzhen.
把制造业搬回美国面临的最大挑战一直是就近找到零部件供应商。行业主管们指出，决定留在中国通常是因为那里有现成的劳动力资源和围绕着大型加工厂商的零部件供应商网络。这些为零部件网络所环绕的厂商包括苹果的制造合作伙伴富士康，以及很多在深圳的大型电子公司。
The Nexus Q, which links a TV or home sound system to the Internet cloud to play video and audio content, contains almost all American-made parts. The engineers who led the effort to build the device, which is based on the same microprocessor used in Android smartphones and contains seven printed circuit boards, found the maker of the zinc metal base in the Midwest and a supplier for the molded plastic components in Southern California.
Nexus Q可以把电视或家庭音响连接到互联网的云服务上，并能播放其中的视频和音频内容，几乎所有部件都在美国生产。它基于和安卓智能手机一样的微处理系统，含有7张印刷电路板。研制这个设备的工程师在美国中西部地区联系到了镀锌板生产商，又在南加州找到了塑料元件模塑供应商。
Semiconductor chips are more of a challenge. In some cases, the chips are made in the United States and shipped to Asia to be packaged with other electronic components.
半导体芯片更是一大挑战。有时候这些芯片要先在美国制造好，再运到亚洲与其他电子元件整合。
Google did not take the easy route and encase the Q in a black box. The dome of the Magic-8-ball-shaped case is the volume control — the user twists it — a feature that required painstaking engineering and a prolonged hunt for just the right bearing, said Matt Hershenson, an engineer who helped design the Q.
谷歌没有选择把Nexus Q装在黑盒子里的便捷方式。产品上面部分的球形外壳是音量控制装置，用户可以通过扭转它来调节音量。参与设计Nexus Q的工程师马特·赫什森（Matt Hershenson）说，在经过了苦心的工程设计，并花费了大量时间寻找合适的轴承之后，这个特色才得以实现。
At $299, the device costs significantly more than competing systems from companies like Apple and Roku. Google says this is in part because of the higher costs of manufacturing in the United States, but the company expects to bring the price down as it increases volume. The company is hoping that consumers will be willing to pay more, though it is unlikely that the “Made in America” lineage will be part of any marketing campaign.
这款播放器售价299美元，比苹果和Roku的同类产品贵很多。谷歌称部分原因是由于在美国的生产成本较高，但谷歌希望通过扩大销量来降低价格。虽然“美国制造”的血统并不可能成为一种市场策略，但该公司还是希望消费者愿意付更多钱去购买。
Google uses a contract manufacturer to make the Q. Last week it was being assembled in a large factory 15 minutes from Google headquarters. The company declined to say how many people were employed at the plant, which can run as many as three shifts each day. However, during a brief tour, made with the understanding that the exact location would not be disclosed, it was clear that hundreds of workers were involved in making the Q.
谷歌通过一家合同制造商来生产这款Q播放器。上周，它在距离谷歌总部15分钟的大型工厂进行组装。这家工厂最多可以进行三班轮岗的作业，但谷歌拒绝透露这家工厂的规模。在同意不透露车间具体地址的情况下，记者对工厂进行了简短访问，发现有几百个工人明显是在参与Q播放器的制造。
It is the kind of building that was once common across Silicon Valley during the 1980s and even the 1990s. More recently, former semiconductor fabrication and assembly factories have given way to large office campuses that house the programmers who design software and support Web sites.
制造车间是20世纪80年代，乃至90年代在硅谷很普遍的那种建筑。最近以来，从前生产和组装半导体的工厂逐渐被大型办公园区所取代，在里面办公的是设计软件和为网站提供支持服务的编程师。