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Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk unveiled a “master plan” for his Tesla electric car company this month.
本月，亿万富翁企业家埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)公布了一份其电动汽车公司特斯拉(Tesla)的“宏伟蓝图”(master plan)。
The reviews, it would be fair to say, were far from delivering a verdict of mastery. Investors harrumphed over his desire to branch out into solar energy. Analysts complained about scant details. Tesla’s stock sagged. It seemed that the man who is often said to be the inspiration for Tony Stark, the brash tycoon in the Iron Man movies, might finally have lost his knack for vision.
可以这么说，外界对此项规划的反响欠佳，认为它算不得高明。投资者对马斯克将公司业务拓展至太阳能领域的计划嗤之以鼻。分析师抱怨该规划缺乏细节。特斯拉股价下跌。人们常说，《钢铁侠》系列电影中傲慢自负的企业大亨托尼•斯塔克(Tony Stark)就是以马斯克为原型创作出来的，但马斯克本人似乎最终失去了展望未来的才能。
Yet in one respect at least, namely the clarity of the master plan itself, Mr Musk retained his power to impress — giving a masterclass in jargon-free business communication that others would do well to copy.
不过，至少在一个方面——即这份规划本身的清晰性上——马斯克仍然有让人耳目一新的能力——在不用专业术语进行商业沟通方面为人们呈现了大师级一课，其他人最好也模仿这一点。
From self-driving cars to space rockets, Mr Musk’s ambitions veer towards the madcap. A few days ago he bounded on to a stage in Nevada, at the site of what will become the world’s largest industrial building: the Tesla “gigafactory”.
从自动驾驶汽车到航天火箭，马斯克的雄心开始变得狂妄。几天前，他跳上内华达州的一个舞台上，那里将建起全世界最大的工业建筑——特斯拉“超级工厂”(gigafactory)。
This giant $5bn factorysite will eventually churn out batteries designed to power many of the company’s products, helping to fuel its broader expansion. Yet while Mr Musk’s growth strategy is often grandiose, his ability to explain it is not.
这个计划投资50亿美元的巨型工厂将生产该公司很多产品会用到的电池，帮助推动特斯拉的总体扩张。不过，尽管马斯克的发展战略往往华而不实，但他解释的能力并非如此。
Start with length. His master plan was brief: a crisp 1,500 words or so, covering about two sides of A4. It used short words and sentences, and contained little in the way of jargon, meaning just about anyone who read it would be able to understand what it said.
先说长度。他的宏图简明扼要：短短1500个单词左右，长度大概占满了A4纸的正反两面。用的是简短的单词和句子，几乎不用术语，这意味着基本上所有阅读该规划的人都能理解。
There was no PowerPoint, no fancy diagrams, and no accompanying pictures of smiling children. Instead, it laid out what Mr Musk planned to donamely: make cheaper cars and trucks under the Tesla brand, branch out into solar energy, and press on with plans to make cars that drive themselves.
没有PPT，没有花哨的图表，也没有面带微笑的孩子的配图。相反，可以说它罗列了马斯克计划要做的事情：制造更便宜的特斯拉品牌的汽车和卡车，业务拓展至太阳能领域，继续推进自动驾驶汽车的生产计划。
This didn’t please everyone. Investors are wary in particular of Mr Musk’s $2.6bn move to buy SolarCity, a solar power company, which wrapped up on Monday. Some question the financial logic of that deal. Others worry about conflicts of interest: the South African-born entrepreneur is SolarCity’s chairman, while the chief executive is his cousin.
这并不能让所有人满意。投资者尤其担心马斯克斥资26亿美元收购太阳能公司SolarCity的举动（周一刚刚完成收购）。一些人质疑该交易背后的财务逻辑。其他人则担心其中的利益冲突：这位出生在南非的企业家是SolarCity的董事长，而首席执行官是他的表弟。
But either way, Mr Musk at least made the case for the acquisition in straightforward terms, arguing that he had always wanted to build a sustainable energy company, rather than one that made only cars.
但是，不管怎样，马斯克至少以直截了当的方式阐释了收购理由，他表示自己一直希望成立一家可持续能源公司，而不是一家只制造汽车的公司。
“We can’t do this well if Tesla and SolarCity are different companies, which is why we need to combine [them],” he wrote.
“如果特斯拉和SolarCity是两家独立的公司，这一目的则很难实现。因此，我们必须通过整合来消除作为两家独立公司所固有的障碍。”他写道。
Not everything in the plan was perfect. The title, “Master Plan, Part Deux”, referring to a plan produced a decade ago, is more than a little hubristic.
在该规划中，并非一切都是完美的。标题《特斯拉宏图之第二篇章》(Master Plan, Part Deux)（第一篇章制定于10年前），不是一般的傲慢。
Jargon is not entirely absent: at one point Mr Musk talks about “highly differentiated solar”, a concept that left me scratching my head. Perhaps his biggest mistake was talking up the safety of his self-driving cars without mentioning directly why people were worried about this issue — namely the death in May of a Tesla driver, who had been using the car’s autopilot system.
整篇中也并非全然没有术语：马斯克在某处谈到了“高度差异化的太阳能”——这个概念令我百思不得其解。或许他最大的问题是，他对自己公司的自动驾驶汽车的安全性大谈特谈，却不绝口不提人们为何会担心安全问题——今年5月一名使用自动驾驶系统的特斯拉驾驶员身亡。
Even so, the clear, concise writing style Mr Musk deployed remains both unusual and welcome, not least for the way it makes the company’s plans comprehensible to those who might buy his cars, or work in his factories.
即便如此，马斯克简洁明了的写作风格不同寻常且受人欢迎，特别是因为，通过这种方式，无论是特斯拉汽车的潜在买家还是在其工厂工作的员工，都能够理解该公司的发展计划。
Yet few corporate leaders copy it. Many persist in pretending that their businesses are more complex than they really are. Others pick up bad habits in business schools, listening to management experts who are rewarded for dreaming up convoluted ways of describing simple problems.
不过，没有多少企业领导人能做到这一点。很多人常故弄玄虚，把企业说得比实际情况更复杂。其他人则习得了商学院的坏习惯，听取那些以把简单问题变复杂而获得报酬的管理学专家的教诲。
The entrepreneurial titans of Silicon Valley are far from guilt-free in all this. The tech sector, especially in areas such as business software or IT outsourcing, is often among the worst offenders for speaking in a linguistic code of its own creation.
硅谷的商业巨头也未能免俗。科技行业，特别是商业软件或IT外包等领域，往往是使用自己创造的语言代码的重灾区。
Yet every now and then, people like Apple’s Steve Jobs or Mr Musk come along, who seem to have the self-confidence to cut out much of the blah that otherwise dogs their professions. When they do, they should be congratulated. Plain English alone is not going help Mr Musk make good on his vision for electric cars and sustainable energy. But it can’t hurt.
不过，时常会有像苹果(Apple)的史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)或马斯克这样的人物出现。他们似乎有自信抛弃大部分的废话，否则会影响他们的专业性。当他们这么做时，应该得到称赞。只靠简单明了的语言，无法帮助马斯克实现他对电动汽车和可持续能源的愿景。但这也不会有损他的宏伟蓝图。
