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汉英译文如下：
A successful importer or exporter has to understand the skills of negotiation. Trade negotiation is actually a kind of conversation, during which both sides talk about their own cases, present their ideas, listen to each other's proposal and offer, make counter proposal and counter offer and then reach an agreement on the basis of mutual concessions. Mastery of negotiation skills allows one to be strong in a negotiation and achieve a satisfying result. The following important skills are to be obtained:First, listen more and talk less. Often, inexperienced negotiators are not able to listen attentively, assuming their job is to tell their own stories, to say what they want to say and to rebut the other side's objections. So instead of paying full attention to what the other party has said they are always thinking about what they are to say next during a negotiation and thus have a lot of valuable information lost. They mistakenly think that excellent negotiators have the initiative in negotiation because they talk a lot. The fact is that successful negotiators spend half the time listening. They are thinking and analyzing while listening and constantly asking questions to make sure their understandings are correct. They listen carefully to every sentence the other side utters rather than just what they think are important or what they want to hear. So they get a lot of valuable information from listening and increase the odds for a successful deal. Effective listening allows us to understand the demands of importers, to find new solutions to problems and to modify our offer or counter offer. It is a task to "talk" while it is a kind of ability or even gift to "listen". "Being able to listen effectively" is a must for every successful negotiator. During talks we should try to encourage the other side to talk more and we should say "yes", "please go on". And we should pose questions for the other side so that they can say more about themselves and we can understand their interests more.
The second important skill is asking the right questions. Through asking the right type of questions we can not only get information that we don't normally have access to, but also confirm our former judgments. In order to understand the interests of importers, exporters should try to use open-ended questions, i.e., questions that cannot be answered by "yes" or "no" but specific explanation, because open-ended questions allow importers to express their needs freely. For example, one can ask: "Can you tell me more about your company? " "What do you think of our proposal? "And one should note down the key answers and questions for further reference.
After an offer is made to them, importers often ask: "Can't you do better than that?" We don't have to make concessions but should ask instead: "What is meant by better? " or "Better than what?" Such questions give importers an opportunity to say what they are not happy about. For example, an importer might say: "Your competitor is offering better terms." Then we can follow up and ask more questions until we fully understand our competitor's offer. And then we can say that our offer is different and better than our competitor's. If we are given an unspecified answer like "no problem", we should not take it and stop but should ask them to give more details. Additionally, before asking questions, especially at the beginning of talks, we should ask for approval from the other side and it offers us two benefits. On the one hand, when the other party agrees, they will be more cooperative; and on the other hand, if the answer is "yes" to our questions, the confirmative answer can make the talks more positive and it makes a good beginning.
