Subject : Every company has a turkey farm.
第一,迷你对话
A: Why doesn’t the boss fire her? She is so lazy.
为什么老板不解雇她呢?她太懒惰了。
B: Every company has a turkey farm.
每个公司都有低能但有不能解雇的人。
第二,地道表达
a turkey farm
1. 解词释义
Turkey farm中的turkey是指“火鸡”,farm是指“农场”,但是作为习惯用语跟火鸡或农场毫无关系。每个政府机构或者私营公司总会有一些工作能力低或者是不愿勤恳工作的人。但是,由于种种原因,领导又没办法解雇这些人。为了使工作不受影响,这些机构的领导往往把他们调入到另外一个地方,就像将他们打入冷宫一言。这种对于他们来说像冷宫一样的地方就叫做turkey farm。
2. 拓展范例
e.g. The man is so incompetent we'd like to fire him. But he has good political connections so we sent him to our turkey farm out in Denver where he can't cause much damage.
那个人实在无能,我们很想解雇他。但是他和一些政界人物关系很好,所以我们就把他送到丹佛那个机构里去,那样他就不能再起多大破坏作用了。
There is a secretary in my office who tries to do as little as possible. I have warned her several times. If she continues to behave that way, one day I am going to send her to the turkey farm.
我办公室里的一个秘书总是设法干得越少越好。我已经警告她好几回了。 要是她继续这样下去的话,总有一天我要把她送到那个全是废物的部门去。