After the applause, he used the quotations book to make a more subtle point, about his reality distortion field.
掌声过后,他用《牛津引语词典》展示了更巧妙的一点,关于他的现实扭曲力场观点。
The quote he chose was from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass.
他选用的引语来自刘易斯·卡洛尔的《爱丽丝镜中奇遇记》。
After Alice laments that no matter how hard she tries she can't believe impossible things,
当爱丽丝感叹,不管自己多么努力尝试,都无法相信不可能的事情。
the White Queen retorts, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."
白皇后反驳道:“为什么,有时我都来得及在早餐前想通六件不可能的事。”
Especially from the front rows, there was a roar of knowing laughter.
又是一阵会意的笑声,尤其是前排的观众。
All of the good cheer served to sugarcoat, or distract attention from, the bad news.
这些欢呼声都是糖衣炮弹,为了转移观众对于坏消息的注意力。
When it came time to announce the price of the new machine,
当宣布新机器的价格时,
Jobs did what he would often do in product demonstrations:
乔布斯采用了自己在产品演示中的常用伎俩:
reel off the features, describe them as being "worth thousands and thousands of dollars,"
一口气说出产品众多的特点,将它们描述成“价值成千上万美元”的东西,
and get the audience to imagine how expensive it really should be.
让观众想象这个产品真的该有多贵。
Then he announced what he hoped would seem like a low price:
随后他就开始宣布定好的价格,让产品的真实价格看起来比较低。
"We're going to be charging higher education a single price of $6,500."
“我们打算以每台6500美元的价格卖给髙等教育人士。”
From the faithful, there was scattered applause.
大厅里晌起了稀稀拉拉的掌声,来自忠实的追随者。
But his panel of academic advisors had long pushed to keep the price to between $2,000 and $3,000,
但是,他的学术顾问小组一直在努力将价格维持在2000~3000美元;
and they thought that Jobs had promised to do so. Some of them were appalled.
而且他们认为乔布斯也承诺过。他们中有些人震惊了。
This was especially true once they discovered that the optional printer would cost another $2,000,
一旦他们发现可供选购的打印机又得花2000美元,
and the slowness of the optical disk would make the purchase of a $2,500 external hard disk advisable.
并且,由于光驱速度缓慢,最好再配一个外部硬盘,这又需要2500美元时,大家会更吃惊的。