日本创业者面临的独特挑战：妻子的阻拦 [美国媒体]

-------------译者：水 古 月-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------



TOKYO — Entrepreneurs everywhere face challenges like persuading investors to believe in them enough to give them a pile of cash or working out the practical steps of turning their great idea into reality.

东京——企业家面临各种挑战，比如去说服投资者足够相信他们并给他们投资，再比如如何把他们的想法变成实际。

But in Japan budding entrepreneurs face two additional challenges known here as “wife block” and “parent block.”

但是在日本刚开始创业的企业家还面临着两个传统的挑战：妻子和父母。

The idea of being an entrepreneur is completely at odds with the “Japanese dream” of the security and benefits of lifelong employment at a big company. So if you suggest starting out on your own to pursue some great idea it is likely to be blocked by either your wife (given that budding entrepreneurs in Japan are overwhelmingly male) or your parents.

在日本成为企业家完全与在一家大企业获得终身职位的安全感和利益的“日本梦”相违背。所以如果你想要创业追求自己的理想，那么很可能受到你的妻子（考虑到在日本大部分刚开始创业的企业家都是男性）和父母的阻碍。

 -------------译者：水 古 月-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

“In the United States children make lemonade and earn money so they experience entrepreneurship at an early age” said Yoshiaki Ishii the bureaucrat at the ministry of economy trade and industry who is in charge of encouraging entrepreneurship.

鼓励创业的经济贸易与工业部部长Yoshiaki Ishii 说道：美国小孩自己通过做柠檬水自己赚零花钱，所以他们在小时候就获得创业的经验。

“But in Japan we don’t have start-up role models or a good understanding about what a start-up is so people don’t have much confidence about starting their own business” he said.

但是在日本，我们没有创业榜样，对于什么是创业公司也没有很好的了解，所以人们没有信心去创业，”他说

 -------------译者：feihu2000-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

There’s no Japanese Silicon Valley no Japanese Mark Zuckerberg. Almost all Japanese innovation — from the Walkman to the Game Boy — has happened inside the safe cocoon of corporate behemoths such as Sony and Nintendo.  

这里没有日本的硅谷没有日本的马克·扎克伯格。几乎所有日本创新——从随身听到掌上游戏机--都发生在安全的茧内的企业巨头比如索尼和任天堂。

But slowly very slowly the environment for entrepreneurs here is improving.

但是慢慢地慢慢地企业家的环境正在改善。

“It’s slow but the culture is definitely changing for sure” said Allan Watanabe who has started Fileable a data-storage system that can read patents and other legal documents and then offer feedback.

“虽然很缓慢，但是这种文化无疑正在改变中，”Allan Watanabe如是说，他创立了一个叫做Fileable的数据存储系统，这种系统可以读取专利和其他法律文件并提供反馈。


-------------译者：feihu2000-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

WebDragon
10:58 AM GMT+0800
This article faces a special challenge: sexist clickbait title having little to do with the article's actual content.

 本文中面临着特殊的挑战:性别歧视的点击诱饵标题与文章的实际内容没什么联系.

xdiplomat
9:58 AM GMT+0800 [Edited]
RJC US and other non-Japanese funds are available almost as easily as Japanese funds but the Japanese entrepreneurs aren't. Most of their new ideas these days are disruptive to the Japanese market usually in services but are rarely aimed at world markets. The ones that try to become international products like Mikitani's Rakuten or Son's Softbank have not caught on much outside Japan. Nothing like the days of Sony or Honda or even Hello Kitty or Instant Ramen. So long as the new products are services (Nintendo being the exception that proves the rule) their limitation to Japanese markets is likely to continue.

 美国和其它外国基金几乎和日本基金一样容易可用但日本企业家不是。如今他们的大部分新想法对日本市场的确造成骚动，通常是在服务行业，但很少针对全球市场。努力想成为国际的产品像谷浩史的乐天或软银的子公司还没有没有在日本以外看到。没有像索尼和本田的的时代甚至Hello Kitty或即时拉面。新产品的服务局限于日本市场看样子会一直持续下去(任天堂是例外)。

As a result Japanese startup capital tends to flow toward China or the US places most Japanese see as both the largest markets today and the largest opportunities for the future. Japanese bankers have not been very entrepreneurial - - they do not try like British bankers do to make up in entrepreneurship for the shrinking proportion of their national market - - so they tend to bankroll Japanese corporations' investments overseas instead of looking for overseas or Japanese entrepreneurs.

所以日本的创业资本一般会流向中国或者美国，如今大部分日本人视两国为最大的市场和拥有最多机会的地方。日本银行家都不具有企业家精神——他们不像英国银行家那样因为本国市场的萎缩而不断创业——所以日本银行家倾向于给日本企业的海外投资提供资金，而不是给海外的或者日本的创业者提供资金。

Japanese innovate alright but you are unlikely to see the innovations outside Japan.

日本人确实在创新，但是你无法在日本以外的地方看到日本人的创新。

 -------------译者：feihu2000-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

Kelpie13
9:58 AM GMT+0800
The article mentions a laundry list of obstacles facing the the Japanese entrepreneur the biggest of which is the risk-adverse Japanese corporate culture yet the headline calls out the "wife block" for special opprobrium. Good job on making those pesky women the biggest problem for these heroic entrepreneurs!

这篇文章提到了一箩筐的日本企业家面临的障碍，其中最大的障碍当属规避风险的日本企业文化，但标题引出“妻子的阻碍”作为特别的谴责。好让那些讨厌的女人成为这些英勇的企业家最大的问题!
 
[email protected]
9:28 AM GMT+0800
Everyone on the planet knows that Japan is one of the greatest manufacturing giants because of its people's commitment to quality. Everyone knows that educated Japanese people are among the smartest people on earth. Here we see a failure in Japanese economic culture: why shouldn't some of the smartest people on the planet be innovating? Because Japanese corporate culture is too conservative? In that case there should be American and German and British start-up funds helping Japanese entrepreneurs. This story explains in many ways why the Japanese economic slump has lasted so long. It didn't have to. Japanese people are ready and able to make a huge improvement in their economy. If their society is not ready for it the rest of us definitely are!

地球上的每个人都知道日本是最大的制造业巨头之一因为其人民对质量的承诺。每个人都知道受过教育的日本人是地球上最聪明的人之一。在这里我们看到日本经济文化的失败:为什么不能是一些地球上最聪明的人在创新?因为日本企业文化太保守?在这种情况下应该有美国德国和英国启动资金帮助日本企业家。这个故事在很多方面解释为什么日本的经济衰退已经持续了这么长时间。日本经济本来是可以不用衰弱的。日本人已经做好准备能够带来巨大的改善他们的经济。如果社会没有准备好，我们其余的人绝对是准备好了!

-------------译者：feihu2000-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------
 
Guacamole6
9:34 AM GMT+0800
er Madame or Sir: you seem to disregard the tidal power of Japan's custom and societal networks. You can't just turn a switch. It will take a series of wrenching crises or many years to change in the way you suggest. Meanwhile the average Japanese lives more comfortably and in more social and national security than the average Amurican.

 女士或先生：你看起来不认可日本习俗和社交网络的巨大能量。你不能一下子就改变社会传统力量。这将需要一系列或多年痛苦的危机才能产生你建议的那种改变。同时
 普通水准的日本人生活比普通的美国人更加舒适、更具社会和国家安全感。

[email protected]
9:38 AM GMT+0800
I am not saying you can "turn a switch" nor do I deny that Japan has an excellent social system. However if what this article says is true that system is holding back entrepreneurship in a very well educated and technologically savvy country. I am advocating other ways from outside sources of funding imaginative change if Japanese institutions are too conservative to do so on their own.

我没有你说的瞬间转变日本社会传统习俗，也没有否认日本有个优秀的社会系统，如果正如文章所说，日本的社会系统正对日本这个受教育程度高和技术发达的国家的创业精神造成束缚的话，那么在日本机构过于保守而无法支持国内创业的情况下，那么我觉得可以利用其他国家的资金来帮助日本创业者实现自己的梦想。

 -------------译者：偏爱-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------
 
xdiplomat
5:25 AM GMT+0800
There is much to this article Japanese worrying whether Japan can make it in entrepreneurship. But the author needs to catch up on modern Japanese reality not the Japan in books for foreigners that in some ways never was.

这篇文章描述了太多日本人对在日本创业的担忧。但是作者需要认识现代日本的现实，而不是面向外国人的书中的描绘的，虚拟的日本。

The lifetime employment/pension model at its height decades ago was less than 40% of working Japanese. Seasonal floating family-business and part-time always have been the majority. In recent decades floating has dramatically grown. The wife's problem is not that you are sacrificing a phantom security of lifetime employment but rather your and thus her status. And this is the least of most people's worries about the huge number of floating employees especially younger workers with a freeter mentality. But they don't get married much so often there is no wife anyway. Parents have long since given up on the ubiquitous freeters.

在日本几十年前 终生雇佣/养老模式 占工作者中不到40%。季节性浮动的家族企业和兼职占主流。近几十年来流动性显着增长。妻子的问题不是你因此牺牲了一个终生雇佣的虚幻的安全感，而是你和她的地位。而如今飞特族（追寻人生目的的自由派，代表的就是一种自由的工作方式）普遍存在，所以地位问题已经成了人们最不关心的问题了。但是他们中很多没有结婚，所有就没有妻子的问题。父母们早已放弃了飞特族人了。

Japan has a fine culture of entrepreneurship including Momofuku Ando's instant ramen Soichiro Honda's motorcycles/cars and Morita/Ibuka's Sony through Yanai's Uniqlo Son's Softbank and Mikitani's Rakuten. As the article noted all had to overcome Japanese society's longstanding preference for longstanding institutions - - in the process becoming such longstanding institutions. But the problem Japanese have with their model is that it mostly works in disrupting markets. For obvious reasons most Japanese would prefer that existing Japanese institutions become entrepreneurial too that Japanese equivalents of longstanding US companies like GE 3M DuPont and Citibank become able to lead in the modern world by harnessing entrepreneurs. Hence the quotes from Japanese in the article.

日本有很好的创业文化，包括安藤百福的方便面、本田宗一郎的摩托车、汽车和森田/井深大的索尼、柳井正的优衣库、孙正义的软银、三木谷浩史的乐天。就像文章指出的那样，所有人都要克服日本社会长期以来对长寿企业的偏爱--在成为长寿企业的过程中。但是日本人的模式中的问题在于，他们只有在扰乱市场份额中起作用。由于显而易见的原因，大多数日本人希望现在的日本企业成为美国长寿企业的日本版，如通用电器，花旗银行，3M杜邦那样能够通过企业家引领现代世界。这是文章中对日本的引用。

Getting capital for new ideas is hard everywhere but it has always been available as Japan's entrepreneurial history shows - - even if venture capitalist/angel investor are foreign terms. It is harder to swim against the flow of Japanese to Tokyo. Entrepreneurs start elsewhere (Sony excepted) but capital is now only in the capital.

从新想法中获取资金在任何地方都很难，但是日本的创业历史告诉我们，这总是有可能的 -- 尽管风险投资/天使投资人是外来术语。日本人向东京的流动是很难抗拒的。创业哪里都有（索尼除外），但是资金只存在首都。

-------------译者：feihu2000-审核者：龙腾翻译总管------------

Regorski
4:47 AM GMT+0800 [Edited]
Not just Japan. Women are generally risk-averse. Color me sexist
I own and manage a small real estate portfolio - a risky business at times. And I've lost properties during a couple of downturns.
Every time I closed a deal I had to battle my wife's aversion to risk and basically do it without her consent. I sometime lost out out on a few good deals over the years on account of that.

 不仅仅是日本。女人都喜欢规避风险。你可以说我是性别歧视者。
我拥有和管理一个小的房地产投资组合——一个有风险的业务。在过去的2次衰退中我已经失去了部分资产。
每次我进行次交易时，我不得不和我厌恶风险的妻子争吵，我的投资基本上她都没有同意。多年来正因为如此我错过了几个很好的交易。
 
ac12
9:02 AM GMT+0800 [Edited]
Ok I will. How can you generalize about an entire class of persons based on your experience with one woman whom you chose as a partner? 

我会称你为性别歧视者的。你怎么可以因为和自己妻子的相处经验就得出结论说所有女人都是喜欢规避风险的呢？

And if Japan truly is experiencing a problem with women's concern about their spouses' risk taking could this possibly be related to the wives' lack of career opportunities (influenced by cultural roles) which makes them and families dependent on the husband's income?

如果日本女人真的对自己丈夫的风险行为存在普遍的担忧，这是否是因为日本女人缺乏就业机会（受到文化角色的影响）造成的呢，导致她们和子女不得不依靠丈夫的收入生活。