What to Call 2021 Olympics? Just One of Many Challenges for Japan
东京奥运会延期，日本面临哪些挑战？

TOKYO — The unprecedented decision to postpone the Tokyo Olympics until next summer because of the coronavirus pandemic brought relief to the athletes and national teams that had pushed for a suspension of the Games even as its organizers appeared to defy the inevitable.

东京——由于新冠病毒疫情，东京奥运会史无前例地推迟到明年夏天举行，尽管组织者似乎很抗拒这个不可避免的结果，却令要求暂停赛事的运动员和国家队松了一口气。

But for Japan, delaying the world’s largest sporting event will pose economic, political and logistical challenges no other nation has faced — including where to store the Olympic flame for a year, how to manage thousands of ticket holders who no longer know what dates they have committed to, and whether the country can hope to recoup its $10 billion investment.

但是对于日本来说，推迟世界上最大的体育盛会将在经济、政治和后勤方面带来没有其他国家面临过的挑战——包括奥运圣火在哪里存储一年、如何应对成千上万不知何时兑现的购票者、以及这个国家是否能收回100亿美元的投资。

The Tokyo organizing committee has to persuade a staff of 3,500 — many of whom were seconded from corporate sponsors and were scheduled to return to work at those companies in the fall — to stay on for 12 more months.

东京奥组委必须说服3500名员工再留任12个月，其中许多人是从企业赞助商那里借调过来的，原本计划今年秋天回原单位工作。


Hotels will need to rebook thousands of visitors. The real estate company that is converting the Olympic Village into condominiums now has to push its renovation schedule out another year and potentially redo thousands of contracts with buyers.

酒店需要为成千上万的游客重新安排预定。正在将奥运村改造成公寓的房地产公司，不得不把改造计划再推迟一年，与买家的数千份合同可能都需要重新签订。

There is even the question of how to refer to the delayed Games. Although both the governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, and the chairman of the Tokyo organizing committee, Yoshiro Mori, said that the Olympics would continue, however awkwardly, to be known as Tokyo 2020, social media lit up with dozens of suggestions like Tokyo 2020: 2.0 or Tokyo 2020 R2, as well as playfully altered Olympic logos.

甚至还有一个问题：如何称呼这场推迟的比赛。虽然东京都知事小池百合子和东京奥组委主席森喜朗都说，它还将被称为2020东京奥运会，但是感觉很尴尬。社交媒体上提出了几十个建议，比如2020东京奥运会2.0、2020东京奥运会R2，还有人对奥林匹克标识进行了恶搞。

As Japan extends its multibillion-dollar Olympic effort by a year, its prime minister, Shinzo Abe, will have to convince the country that he can keep control of an unwieldy mix of tasks and hurdles, even as he tries to steer the nation clear of a global viral outbreak that has so far remained contained within Japan but has the potential to explode at any moment.

日本已为奥运斥资数十亿美元，做了一年的努力，首相安倍晋三必须让国家相信他可以控制种种复杂的任务和障碍，尽管他努力让日本避免遭受一场全球病毒疫情，但到目前为止，疫情在日本国内虽受到控制，但随时都有暴发的可能。

At least for now, the delay in declaring a postponement, which Mr. Abe relented to on Tuesday after seemingly every other major sporting event had been canceled or pushed back, has allowed him time to recover from earlier missteps.

至少就目前而言，推迟宣布奥运延期的消息让安倍晋三有时间从早些时候的失误中恢复过来。周二，在其他重大体育赛事似乎都被取消或推迟之后，安倍晋三才松了口。

Last month, Japan was accused of bungling its response to the coronavirus outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess, which spent two weeks quarantined in Yokohama.

上个月，日本被指责在“钻石公主号”邮轮问题上对冠状病毒暴发应对不力，这艘邮轮在横滨被隔离了两周。

“I think that the prime minister would have been infinitely more bruised if the decision happened in the context of where Japan was just a few weeks ago,” said Mireya Solís, co-director of the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “There would have been questions about whether those responses would have cost Japan the Olympics or put people at risk.”

“我认为，如果这个决定发生在几周前的日本，会令首相受到更大伤害。”华盛顿布鲁金斯学会(Brookings Institution)东亚政策研究中心联席主任米雷娅·索利斯(Mireya Solis)表示。“人们会质疑，他的应对措施是否会让日本失去奥运会的主办权，还是会让民众面临风险。”

Now, Ms. Solís said, the fact that Mr. Abe was able to avoid an outright cancellation of the Games “will be seen as a skillful management.”

索利斯说，现在，安倍晋三的做法能够避免彻底取消奥运会， “将被视为一种巧妙的管理”。

If the world can bring the coronavirus to heel in the next year, the postponed Games could serve as a “grand farewell a few months before Abe’s set to leave office,” said Tobias Harris, an expert on Japanese politics at Teneo Intelligence in Washington.

华盛顿Teneo Intelligence公司的日本政治专家托拜厄斯·哈里斯(Tobias Harris)表示，如果全世界能在明年控制住这种冠状病毒，那么推迟的奥运会可能会成为“安倍离任前几个月的盛大告别”。

“It’s a big symbolic moment for Japan if the world is actually able to convene,” Mr. Harris said. “It becomes the ‘we’ve overcome the pandemic Games,’ and Japan gets to kind of be the orchestrator for that.”

“如果世界真的能够召开奥运，这对日本来说是一个具有象征意义的重大时刻。”哈里斯说，“它变成了‘我们战胜大流行的奥运’，而日本在某种程度上成为了这场盛事的指挥者。”

Yet with the fast-moving coronavirus, what is true today could easily change tomorrow, and the fortunes of Mr. Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, could swing with it. For now, Japan has managed to limit outbreaks and has not reported high numbers of deaths or overburdened intensive-care units.

然而，随着这种冠状病毒的快速传播，今天的情况可能会在明天轻易改变，而日本在位时间最长的首相安倍晋三的命运也可能随之变化。到目前为止，日本已经设法控制住了疫情的暴发，没有出现死亡人数高企或重症监护病房不堪重负的情况。

Skeptics warn that Japan may be vastly underreporting infection rates because it is not testing people nearly as much as other countries. They worry that the number of severe illnesses and deaths could rise drastically, particularly among Japan’s disproportionately older population.

持怀疑态度的人警告，日本可能没有充分报告感染率，因为它检测的人数没有其他国家多。他们担心重症和死亡人数可能急剧增加，尤其是在日本高比例的老年人口中。

“The big unknown is whether his luck will hold out with regard to Covid-19,” said Gerald L. Curtis, a professor emeritus of political science at Columbia University.

哥伦比亚大学政治学荣休教授杰拉尔德·L·柯蒂斯(Gerald L. Curtis)说：“最大的未知数是，他在新冠肺炎上的运气是否会一直持续下去。”

Mr. Abe, Mr. Curtis said, “has been playing a kind of Russian roulette, betting that the virus won’t suddenly spike and giving the public a false sense of security by not testing large numbers of people. If his luck runs out and the virus spreads, he won’t be prime minister when the Olympics come to Tokyo next year.”

柯蒂斯说：“安倍晋三一直在玩俄罗斯轮盘赌，押注该病毒不会突然暴发，并通过不对大量人员进行测试而给公众一种虚假的安全感。如果他的运气用光，并且病毒传开，明年奥运会在东京举办时他将不再是首相。”

Another challenge for Japan’s leader is the economy, the relative strength of which had fueled his longevity in power but which now is on the brink of a deep recession.

日本领导人面临的另一项挑战是经济，经济的相对强劲帮助延长了他的执政时间，但现在的经济正处于严重衰退的边缘。

Starting late last year, even before tourism evaporated as the coronavirus spread, Japan’s economy had been shrinking because of a slump in Chinese demand for Japanese exports and reduced consumer spending after Mr. Abe increased taxes last fall to cope with Japan’s rapidly aging population.

从去年年底开始，甚至在旅游业因冠状病毒疫情而停摆之前，日本经济就已经一直在萎缩，原因是中国对日本出口的需求大幅下降，以及安倍晋三去年秋天为了应对日本迅速老龄化而增税，导致消费者支出减少。

The Olympics were supposed to help revive the economy. Now, that boost must wait a year, and it will follow what most likely will be a disastrous global recession.

奥运会本应有助于振兴经济。现在不得不再等待一年，而且还将紧随灾难性的全球衰退之后。

It is not clear who will bear the possible additional costs of extended leases on facilities or continued maintenance of venues. The delayed Games “could be a political burden because the government must make additional expenditures for the preparation of the Olympic Games during an economic crisis,” said Jiro Yamaguchi, a professor of political science at Hosei University in Tokyo.

尚不清楚谁将承担设施的长期租赁或场地的持续维护可能产生的额外费用。东京法政大学(Hosei University)政治学教授山口二郎(Jiro Yamaguchi)说，推迟奥运会“可能造成政治负担，因为政府必须在经济危机期间为奥运会的筹备工作增加开支。”

“The Olympic Games might be a liability rather than a political opportunity for Prime Minister Abe,” Mr. Yamaguchi said.

山口说：“对安倍首相而言，奥运会可能是负担而不是政治机会。”

For the public, which overwhelmingly indicated in opinion polls that the Games should not be staged this year, the extension could lead to fatigue.

对于在民意测验中压倒性地表示今年不应该举办奥运会的公众来说，延期可能会导致疲劳。

Ichiro Masaki, 50, who works at a building maintenance company in Tokyo and bought tickets for the pentathlon and soccer, said he wasn’t sure if he could use the tickets next year. “Well, honestly, I’m not as excited as I was when I first got the tickets,” Mr. Masaki said. “If my work schedule allows, I will probably go to see the Games, but I might just get a refund.”

在东京的一家建筑维护公司工作、现年50岁的真崎一郎（Ichiro Masaki，音）购买了五项全能和足球比赛的门票。他说他不确定明年是否还能使用这些票。“说实话，与第一次买票时比起来，我没有那么兴奋了，”真崎说。“如果我的工作日程允许，我可能会去看奥运，但也可能就退票了。”

The postponement came just in time for the Tokyo organizers to cancel the torch relay, which was scheduled to start Thursday in Fukushima, the site of a nuclear disaster in 2011.

推迟决定的来临，让东京的组织者刚好来得及取消火炬传递。火炬传递原定于周四在福岛举行，那里是2011年发生核灾难的地方。

Fukushima had hoped to benefit from an Olympic narrative pitching the prefecture’s recovery from the deadly earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown nine years ago. Delaying the relay defers these hopes for another year, but it may have helped avert another disaster.

福岛曾希望借奥运会之际，叙述该县从九年前的致命地震、海啸和核灾难中恢复过来的故事。火炬传递的推迟将这些希望也推迟了一年，但这可能有助于避免另一个灾难的发生。

With the Olympic flame on display in various prefectures last week, thousands of spectators gathered to see it. Jun Suzuki, an Olympics official in charge of promoting Fukushima Prefecture, said that 3,000 people gathered for two hours on Tuesday in front of Fukushima’s main railway station to view the flame in its caldron.

上周，在各县举办的奥运圣火巡回展示聚集了成千上万的观众观看。负责宣传福岛县的一位奥运会官员铃木润（Jun Suzuki，音）说，周二有3000人为了看圣火，聚集在福岛中央火车站前两个小时。

Public health officials have warned that such crowds can be breeding grounds for infection, and since late last month Mr. Abe had requested that large sports and cultural events be postponed or canceled.

公共卫生官员警告说，这样的人群可能成为传染病的温床，自上个月底以来，安倍晋三已经要求推迟或取消大型体育和文化活动。

One young torch runner who was at first chagrined to hear that the relay had been suspended had come around by Wednesday.

一位年轻的火炬手起初得知火炬传递被暂停时感到非常沮丧，但到了周三，他想通了。

“I thought I had to accept the postponement as the coronavirus is spreading in the world,” said the runner, Atsuki Watanabe, 12, whose grandfather was a torch runner for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics.

12岁的火炬手渡边厚喜（Atsuki Watanabe，音）的祖父曾是1964年东京奥运会的火炬手。他说：“当冠状病毒正在世界范围内传播，我认为我不得不接受推迟的决定。”

Atsuki, who lives in Iwade City, in Wakayama Prefecture in western Japan, said he had bought a new pair of red and white sneakers for the run, and had been practicing for the relay near his house while his school had been closed to prevent the spread of the virus.

渡边住在日本西部和歌山县岩手市，他说他为火炬传递买了一双红白色的新运动鞋，在学校因疫情关闭期间在家附近训练。

The boy said he was relieved to hear that he would be allowed to carry the torch in 2021. “Next year, I would like to run,” he said, “when I have grown a little.”

这个男孩说，得知自己得到在2021年传递火炬的机会，他感到欣慰。他说：“明年，我还想传递火炬，那时候我就长大一点了。”

来源：好英语网