2020年翻译资格考试（cattti）三级笔译练习题一

Klarna: Getting More Ambitious(节选)

Klarna：雄心愈壮(节选)

A payments unicorn seeks to become a dray-horse bank

独角兽支付公司欲成传统零售银行

There is a through-the-looking-glass quality to the blue-lit tunnel that leads into the headquarters of Klarna, a Swedish online-payments firm. And there is something back-to-front about the company itself. It is a startup firm that grew up in Europe, and is now seeking to expand into America – the reverse of the usual pattern. Unlike most tech unicorns galloping to expand their market share, it already makes a profit. Even more strikingly, it plans to move from an area of financial ferment – mobile payments – into the sterile old business of retail banking. Investors are giddy about its plans, however unusual: a funding round last year valued the firm, whose name is Swedish for “getting clearer”, at $2.25 billion, up by almost a billion on the year before.考生如果怕自己错过考试成绩查询的话，可以 免费预约短信提醒，届时会以短信的方式提醒大家报名和考试时间。

Klarna’s business “is quite basic”, says Sebastian Siemiatkowski, its founder and boss. Some 65,000 online merchants have so far hired it to run their checkouts. Its main appeal, for both retailers and their customers, is the simplicity of its system. Shoppers do not have to dole out credit-card details or remember a new password. Instead, they can simply give an e-mail and a delivery address, and leave the payment to be sorted out later. (Klarna pays the retailer in the meantime, and bears the risk that shoppers will not stump up in the end – something few other payment firms do.) Customers who have previously used one Klarna-run checkout are recognised when they visit another, further reducing the need to fill out online forms. All this hugely increases the “conversion” rate – the proportion of customers who actually make a purchase after putting an item into their online “basket”.

Like many fintech firms, Klarna believes that its algorithms do a better job of identifying creditworthy customers than the arthritic systems used by conventional financial firms. It relies on the e-mail and delivery addresses supplied, as well as the size and type of purchase, the device used, time of day and other variables. This not only allows it to bear the risk that customers fail to pay when Klarna bills them, but also to offer them extended payment plans, for a fee. These loans have higher margins than the cut-throat online-payment business – although the giants of the industry, such as PayPal, are experimenting with similar offerings.

Klarna handled sales of roughly $10 billion in 2014 (compared with PayPal’s $235 billion), generating $300m in revenue, all in Europe. (It has not yet made public figures for last year.) It handles 40% of online payments in Sweden. In 2014 it bought a German firm, Sofort, expanding its presence there. It thinks it can continue to grow in Europe, but its main focus now is America, where it launched in September.

通过那蓝光照亮的隧道进入瑞典网络支付公司Klarna的总部时，颇有走进《艾丽斯镜中奇遇》的感觉。这家公司还有几分颠倒行事的味道。作为在欧洲成长的创业公司，Klarna正努力扩展至美国——与通常的模式相反。有别于一心扩展市场份额的大多数高科技独角兽，Klarna已实现盈利。更引人注目的是，该公司计划从移动支付这一金融热土转移至零售银行这项贫瘠的传统业务。无论该计划有多么不同寻常，投资者却为之兴奋若狂：这家在瑞典语中名为“愈加清晰”的公司去年一轮融资的估值为22.5亿美元，较前年上升近十亿。

Klarna的业务“相当简单”，其创始人及总裁塞巴斯蒂安·西米亚特科夫斯基(Sebastian Siemiatkowski)表示。迄今已有约6.5万网上商户利用Klarna收款。对于零售商及其顾客而言，该平台的引人之处主要是系统简便。购物者无需输入信用卡的详细信息或记住新密码，而仅需提供电子邮箱和送货地址，余下的支付过程平台会自行处理。(Klarna会立即向零售商支付货款，承担购物者不一定最终付款的风险——其他支付公司很少这么做。)曾使用Klarna支付的顾客在光顾利用此平台的其他商户时会被识别出来，进一步减免填写在线表格的手续。所有这一切大大提升了“转化率”——顾客把商品放入网上“购物车”后实际购买的比率。

跟许多金融科技公司一样，Klarna认为其算法比传统金融机构采用的僵硬体系更能辨别信誉良好的客户。除了客户提供的电邮及收货地址，该算法还运用顾客购物的金额和种类、所用设备、时段及其他变量作分析。因此，Klarna不但能承担风险，无惧寄送账单时顾客赖账，还可向顾客收取一定费用以提供延期付款的服务。相比竞争激烈的网上支付业务，这类贷款的利润率更高，但该行业的各巨头，如PayPal，也正尝试提供同类产品。

2014年，Klarna处理的交易额约为100亿美元(PayPal的数字为2350亿美元)，创造了三亿美元的收入，全部来自欧洲。(公司去年的数据尚未公开。)Klarna处理瑞典40%的在线支付。在2014年购入德国公司Sofort后，Klarna把业务扩展至德国。该公司认为可继续在欧洲拓展，但目前的主要焦点是美国。它已于去年9月登陆美国市场。

环球网校友情提示：以上内容是英语翻译资格频道为您整理的2020年翻译资格考试（cattti）三级笔译练习题一，点击下面按钮免费下载更多精品备考资料。