China is striving to increase the average Chinese wages by 15 percent annually in a bid to achieve a two-fold increase in pay by the end of 2015, the Ministry of Human Resource and Social Security (MHRSS) said according to a report in the Beijing Times Tuesday。
这一目标是为了缓解widening income gap between the wealthy and the poor(日益扩大的贫富差距)。而且,新修订的刑法将增加malicious arrears of wage crime(恶意欠薪罪),对wage arrears(拖欠工资)行为进行处罚。
在上面的报道中,two-fold increase in pay指的就是工资“翻番”。翻番就是比原来多了一倍,也就是说2015年的工资会是目前工资的两倍。英语的倍数表达中n-fold increase应译为“增加n-1倍(或增至n倍)”,例如:Productivity is increased three fold这句话既可以译为“生产效率提高了两倍”,也可以说成“生产效率是原来的三倍。”由此类推,增加了两倍就是tripled,即增加到原来的三倍,也可以用three-fold increase来表示。增加到原来的四倍就是quadrupled。例如:The efficiency of the machines has been more than quadrupled。(这些机器的效率已提高了3倍多。)