The workplace is a fascinating place for anyone who loves language. There’s something about the office environment that seems to encourage the inventive use of language. For better or worse, the English language is often toyed with in the office space, creating whole new words and phrases that you’ll seldom hear outside of an office environment。

對于喜愛語言的人來說，工作場所是一個極其具有吸引力的地方。辦公環(huán)境看起來似乎是鼓勵人們嘗試創(chuàng)造性的使用語言。不管怎樣，英語經常被玩弄于辦公場所，人們經常創(chuàng)造出全新的單詞和短語，你可能很少在辦公環(huán)境外的地方聽到過這些短語。

Here are some of the most common words, phrases and idioms that you’ll come across if you’re working in an English-speaking office today。

如果你現(xiàn)在在一個說英語的公司工作的話，下面是一些你可能會遇到的使用最普遍的單詞，短語和習語。

Water-cooler chat茶水吧閑聊

This is an Americanism that has crossed over into British English too. Most offices these days have a water cooler, and this phrase has come to mean anything that people talk about when they happen to meet at the water cooler. This tends to refer to gossip or trivial things like discussing what happened in the soap opera that was on last night。

這是一個美式短語，它同樣也存在于英式英語中。現(xiàn)在許多公司都有飲水機，這個短語的意思是，大家在喝水的時候碰到會談論一些事情。這會涉及到一些閑聊或者瑣碎的事情，像討論前天晚上肥皂劇的劇情是怎么發(fā)展的。

Close of play下班臨近

Often shortened to COP in emails and text messages, and also as end of play or EOP, this simply means by the end of the working day. Why do bosses ask if they can have this work done by close of play rather than just asking if they can have it done today? Perhaps they are trying to make work sound more fun, as close of play is a sporting term, particularly used when it comes to cricket, where it means when the game ends for the day。

在郵件和短信里通常會被縮寫為COP，也同樣可以寫作EOP,end of play，它的意思僅僅是下班前。為什么老板會問他們是否能在下班前把這個工作做完而不是問今天他們能不能把它做完?也許他們在嘗試讓工作聽起來更有趣，結束是當做一個體育術語，特別是用于板球的結尾，在這里它的意思是一天板球運動的結尾。

Annual leave休假

In the days before office-speak took over, people would simply say that they were going on holiday. But that doesn’t sound quite corporate, serious and professional enough. So you’ll often find people referring to their summer holiday as their ‘period of annual leave,’ for example, in their out-of-office auto reply email。

這些天，在辦公室閑聊接手之前，人們會簡單的說他們要去度假。但是這聽起來相當不合群體，不嚴謹和不專業(yè)。因此你會經常發(fā)現(xiàn)人們會提到他們的暑假作為他們的‘休假’，例如，在他們不在辦公室的時候回復郵件。

Hard copy打印稿

More and more of our work documents are created and shared online without the need for printing, which is better for the environment as well as saving us time and effort. But sometimes real, physical documents are required. When someone wants a physical print out of a document rather than an electronic copy, they will ask for a hard copy。

我們越來越多的工作文件沒有必要打印，在網(wǎng)上直接寫出來同大家一起分享，這種環(huán)境會更好，也會節(jié)約我們的時間和努力。但是有些時候真的，一些物理文檔是需要紙質版的。當有人想要紙質文件而不是電子版的文時件，他們會要一個打印稿。

Think outside the box打開思維

No one knows what the box is, or what’s inside it, but bosses seem to like it when workers are outside it. If someone at your work asks you to think outside the box it means they don’t want you to limit your thinking. They want creativity, and ideas, and thinking outside the mainstream. This term is used to try and encourage new ideas and a fresh approach to problems。

沒有人知道這個盒子的范圍是什么，或者里面裝有什么，但是老板們似乎喜歡員工們都在外面。如果有人在你的工作范圍要求你去打開思維想想外在的方面，這意味著他們不想限制你的思維想讓你開發(fā)空間。他們想要的是創(chuàng)新，好點子和想到市場的主流。這個術語被用作試圖激勵員工想出新辦法和一個新方法來解決問題。

Brainstorming頭腦風暴

Brainstorming is another way to encourage workers to think outside the box. It’s a technique by which a group discussion is held to produce ideas. Ideas are spontaneously bounced around the group, often as a way of trying to solve a problem. Brainstorming actually goes back a long way, all the way back to 1939 when it was first devised by advertising executive Alex F. Osborn. He began developing methods for creative problem solving, as he was frustrated by employees’ inability to develop creative ideas individually for ad campaigns. In response, he began hosting group-thinking sessions and discovered a significant improvement in the quality and quantity of ideas produced by employees。

頭腦風暴是另外一種激勵員工打開思維的方式。這是一種技術，一個團隊一起討論問題提出方法。團隊里面，大家的辦法都是突然想出來，經常用來解決問題。頭腦風暴事實上回顧到了一種很長久的方式，回溯到了1939年，當廣告執(zhí)行總監(jiān)亞歷克斯F第一次設計出來。當他被員工們無能為廣告活動想出有創(chuàng)新性的主意而備受挫敗時，他開始為具有創(chuàng)造性的問題想出好的辦法。作為回應，他開始舉辦集思廣益期，發(fā)現(xiàn)員工們的想法的質量和數(shù)量，在很大程度上完善了很多。

Desk jockey辦公室工作

This is a pun on the term disc jockey, and the chances are you’re being a desk jockey right now. Instead of spinning lots of records, you might be on your laptop checking emails, reading this article, while you’re eating a pasta salad or drinking a coffee from your work’s canteen. Ringing phones, beeping pagers, overflowing inboxes – they’re all the tools of the desk jockey。

這是舞曲唱片播放員這個術語的雙關用法，現(xiàn)在有機會讓你成為坐辦公室的人。而不是旋轉很多的唱片，你可能在用筆記本電腦查看郵件，閱讀文檔，與此同時你在工作餐廳里面在吃通心粉沙拉或者喝咖啡。手機響，電話響，郵箱郵件滿----他們都是在辦公室工作的工具。

USP獨特賣點

This stands for Unique Selling Point or Unique Selling Proposition. It’s used a lot in the marketing sector and was introduced as office-speak way back in the 1940s. It refers to those successful products that have unique, specific attractions to consumers – so much so that they were willing to switch to it from their brand of choice。

USP代表的是獨特的賣點或者獨特的銷售主張。在市場部分用的很多，被引用到辦公室會話還要回溯到1940年。它指代那些成功的，對于客戶而言有特點、有獨特的吸引力的產品----如此以至于客戶希望改變他們的品牌選擇。