每年年初，我都要向上一年度在糟蹋英语或扯淡方面最富有才华的企业和个人颁奖。
每年我都觉得行话的质量已经达到了历来最高水准，但2010年的新术语尤其出类拔萃，简直颠覆了书上的所有范式。
真的是连书本都颠覆了。因此，“2010年度管理废话奖”的首个奖项是一个崭新的奖项：“冠以普通名词愚蠢的新名奖”。亚马逊(Amazon)Kindle部门副总裁伊恩•弗里德(Ian Freed)把书称作“阅读匣子”，荣获银奖；丰田(Toyota)把汽车叫做“可持续移动解决方案”，夺得金奖。
另一个新奖项是“含糊其词最佳混搭奖”。“交付”和“窗口”只有用来指可用货车运送的东西，或者透过它可以望出去的东西时，才让人觉得可以接受，但荷兰皇家壳牌(Royal Dutch Shell)将这两个被滥用的词合二为一，缔造出一个莫名其妙的词。该公司最近宣称，其正处于“新增长的交付窗口(delivery window)”——他们肯定恨不得为此敲锣打鼓。
往年我评出了众多表彰委婉措辞的奖项，但本年度“金遮羞布奖”的得主有点特殊。证券经纪公司JM Finn在向客户说明提高收费计划时是这么解释的：“我们决定进一步改进一项费用成分。”不仅把不好的说成好的，还在动词不定式中无端插入一个副词，制造出一个“分裂不定式”。
2010年出现了大量用于解雇员工的新委婉说辞。最妙的一条来自一家美国银行，该行轻飘飘地说“这是银行发起的离职”。但我决定把奖颁给富乐公司(HB Fuller)，这家英国涂料公司宣布：“我们投资增加了一些关键人才。”在解雇员工时用行话说虽然不地道，但情有可原。可在雇人时也用行话就毫无意义了。
隐喻从来都是行话的一个主要支柱，既可卖弄才华，又语焉不明。上月有个年轻的MBA跟我说：“我们就应该揪着铁圈不放。”我不确定他是什么意思，但我认为他应该得到这个奖。
含糊其词隐喻奖由一个同样出色的词条获得。英国《公司治理准则》中有一个包含四层含义的含混隐喻：“在攻击‘锅炉钢板’(boiler-plate)真菌方面的转折点”，这大概是全文中最醒目的句子。
另一方面，行话的真菌往往始于微不足道的词语，譬如介词up。最近在安永(Ernst & Young)的一篇报告中看到“员工的技能提升(up-skilling)”一词，我都在考虑往上扔(up-chucking)我的午餐了，但想想还是决定颁给这个词条两个奖项。一个是“最让人火大的up用法”，另一个是“名词用作动词奖”。“skilling”这个动名词让人想到一个毫无必要的新动词：“to skill”。
最具争议性的奖项永远都是“最无聊头衔奖”。我本想推荐咨询公司Frost & Sullivan的“客户价值提升经理”，以及一家“大型跨国银行”诚招“客户旅程再造经理”。不过，这个奖项最终还是给了FBM consulting的安迪•罗奇(Andy Roach)，他自称是“Prosultant”——既让人厌恶，又无聊。可我有种不好的预感，这个词没准会流行起来。
虽然去年的新词条都很出色，但我毫不迟疑地评出了备受垂涎的“金废话奖”，颁给胡话连篇的人。2010年度的得主是投资者查克•戴维斯(Chuck Davies)。据英国《金融时报》报道，戴维斯曾说：“他是个做事投入、细致、注重研究的人，他确实了解企业内部运行方式，也正是一位着眼于自由现金流和硬资产的投资者。”这是在讲有望接替沃伦•巴菲特(Warren Buffett)的一位人选。看到这番说词，倒是会让人产生这样的想法：还是找其他人吧。
最后是“国际废话奖”，颁给讲这种非母语很不利索的废话制造者。这个奖项由中华人民共和国获得。中国在讲废话方面取得了飞跃性的进展。在新“五年计划”的底部有个黄色的文本框，写着“面向未来，我们站在新的历史起点上。”凭着这类毫无意义的废话，这个新兴经济大国与盎格鲁撒克逊世界的商业巨擘们将会很合得来。
http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001036818
At the beginning of every year I hand out prizes to companies and individuals who have shown the greatest flair in butchering the English language or in talking through their hats during the previous 12 months.
Every year I observe that the quality of the jargon has been the best yet, but in 2010 it was so outstandingly good it has shifted every paradigm in the book.
Indeed it has even shifted the book itself. Thus my first award in the 2010 Management Guff Awards is a brand new category for Daft New Names for Common Nouns. Ian Freed, vice-president of Amazon Kindle, gets a silver medal for renaming books “reading containers”, but Toyota, which has rebranded the car as a “sustainable mobility solution”, scoops the gold.
Another new award is for the Best Combination of Weasel Words. The overused “deliver” and “window” – which are only acceptable when referring to something that can be transported in a van or to something you can see through – are combined by Royal Dutch Shell to create something entirely opaque. The company recently declared that it was “in a delivery window for new growth” – a statement that was surely gagging for a gong.
In previous years, I have handed out numerous awards for euphemisms, but the winner of this year’s Golden Fig Leaf is rather special. Stockbroker JM Finn explained to customers that it was charging more: “We have decided to further progress a fee element.” Not only was a negative masquerading as a positive, but a split infinitive was thrown in for nothing.
In 2010 there was a stack of new euphemisms for firing people, the best of which came from a US bank that spoke airily of “bank-initiated departures”. But I have decided to subvert the award and give it to HB Fuller, the UK coatings company, for the announcement: “We invested in several key talent additions.” To use jargon for firings is wrong but understandable. To use it for hirings makes no sense at all.
One of the main pillars of jargon has always been metaphor, both sporting and mixed. Last month, a young man with an MBA said to me: “We should just hang round the hoop.” I wasn’t sure what he meant; I was sure he deserved the prize.
The mixed metaphor award goes to an equally outstanding entry. The UK Corporate Governance Code contains a heroic quadruple mixed metaphor: “a turning point in attacking the fungus of ‘boiler-plate’”, which is perhaps the most arresting thing in the whole document.
The fungus of jargon, meanwhile, starts with the little things – like the preposition “up”. When I read in a recent report from Ernst & Young the phrase “the up-skilling of the workforce”, I considered up-chucking my lunch but decided instead to give the entry two awards. Not only does it win the prize for Most Annoying Use of “Up”, it also wins the Nerb Award, handed out for nouns pretending to be verbs. The gerund “skilling” introduces us to the new and unneeded verb: to skill.
The most hotly contested award is always for the silliest job title. I would like to commend consultants Frost & Sullivan for its Client Value Enhancement Executive, and the “major international bank” that advertised for a Customer Journey Re-engineering Manager. But the prize goes to Andy Roach of FBM consulting, who calls himself a “Prosultant”. This is as simple as it is gruesome, and I have a nasty feeling it might catch on.
In spite of the outstanding quality of the entries for the last year, I had no difficulty in deciding who should win the much-coveted Golden Flannel Award for talking utter jibberish. The 2010 winner is the investor Chuck Davies who was quoted in the FT saying: “He is a deep-dive, granular, research-oriented person who really understands the inner workings of companies and is just a very free-cash flow, hard-asset-based investor.” He was speaking of one of the men who may take over from Warren Buffett; on the basis of this testimony one rather hopes someone else can be found instead.
Finally, the Global Guff Award, given to purveyors of nonsense struggling in a tongue that is not their mothers’. This prize goes to the People’s Republic of China, which has taken a great leap forward in guff. In a yellow box at the bottom of its new Five Year Plan it declares: “Facing the future we are standing at a new historic starting point.” Which is just the sort of meaningless drivel that will make this new economic power fit right in with the business supremos of the Anglo-Saxon world.
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