「Eva读报」Tomato catch-up 番茄大战（5-5）

选自the Economist12月刊

Alibaba’s high-tech Hema supermarkets in China are more cutting-edge still. They use QR codes on fish to validate freshness, enable app-based shopping, have robots aplenty (naturally) and offer 30-minute delivery within a small radius. Yet it is unclear if Hema’s technology will succeed where armies of cheap labour, ready to sort, pick and deliver groceries, have mostly failed.

阿里巴巴在中国的高科技超市盒马鲜生还要更前沿。它们用贴在鱼身上的二维码来确认其新鲜度、实现了基于应用的购物、拥有大量机器人（这是自然），并提供一个较小的区域范围内30分钟送达的服务。然而盒马的技术能否成功还不好说，毕竟在推进食品杂货线上销售的过程中，时刻准备着去分理、拣货和运送的廉价劳动力大军大多已经告败。

• cutting-edge：very modern and with all the newest features 前沿的
• validate:to prove that something is correct 证实

No one has as yet quite cracked the problem. More wizardry, perhaps virtual-reality headsets, may be required to make internet grocery shopping as intuitive for people as it is offline. But the incentives for grocers to press ahead are huge. No relationship in retail is as intense as that of shoppers with their supermarket. Few firms have as many eggs in the online-shopping basket as Ocado. If things do not work out, at least the Kroger deal has made Mr Steiner a rich man. If they do, he may be a rare example of a British entrepreneur with global ambitions who is not off his trolley.

目前还没有哪一方真正解决了这个难题。要让人们觉得网购食品杂货和在线下购买一样直观，或许还需要更多高明的招数——可能会是虚拟现实头戴设备。但食品杂货商奋勇向前的动力是巨大的。在零售业里，没有哪种关系比购物者与其光顾的超市之间的关系更浓烈。很少有公司像Ocado那样把那么多鸡蛋都放进了网上购物篮。如果事情进展不顺遂，施泰纳至少还凭借与克罗格的订单成了有钱人。如果进展顺利，他可能就是罕有的有着全球野心却没有丧失理智的英国企业家。

• cracked the problem：solve the problems 解决问题
• wizardry：clever or surprising ways of doing things, especially with special machines招数
• intuitive： based on feelings rather than facts or proof直觉的
• offline：not connected to the internet or to a central computer system 线下的
• incentive： something that encourages a person to do something:动力
• press ahead： to start or continue doing something in a determined way, although it is difficult勇往直前
• off your trolley：behaving in an extremely unusual way or doing something very silly失去理智