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How much fun do you generally have at work?
你通常在工作中有多少乐趣？
I found myself asking this question the other day, when I came across a British academic named William Donald. He is an associate professor at the University of Southampton, where he works on career development and human resources management, and in 2022 he had a brainwave. What if he could publish a paper with another academic whose surname was Duck, so that anyone citing their research would have to say it was by Donald and Duck?
前几天，我遇到一位名叫威廉•唐纳德(William Donald)的英国学者时，我不禁开始思考一个问题。他是南安普顿大学(University of Southampton)的副教授，专注于职业发展和人力资源管理的研究。2022年，他突然有了一个灵感。如果他能与另一位姓达克(Duck)的学者一起发表一篇论文，那么任何引用他们研究的人都必须说这是唐老鸭(Donald and Duck)完成的，那会是怎样的情景呢？
I would like to say there was a serious rationale for this venture, but when I called Donald, he said he did it chiefly because, “I thought it would be mildly entertaining”.
我本想说这次冒险有其严肃的理由，但当我联系唐纳德时，他说他这样做主要是因为，“我觉得这会稍微有趣一些”。
Alas, finding a co-operative Duck proved arduous. Donald spent 18 months contacting potential co-authors via LinkedIn before he found Nicholas Duck, an organisational psychologist in Australia who runs a workplace productivity consultancy called Opposite.
唉，找到一位愿意合作的达克实在是困难重重。唐纳德花了18个月的时间通过领英(LinkedIn)联系潜在的合著者，最终找到了尼古拉斯•达克(Nicholas Duck)，他是澳大利亚的一位组织心理学家，经营着一家名为Opposite的工作场所生产力咨询公司。
Unlike some other candidates, Duck did not find Donald’s proposal offensive or ridiculous. “I like shaking things up and not taking things too seriously,” he told me last week. Donald’s idea was right up his alley, he said.
与其他一些候选人不同，达克并不认为唐纳德的提议冒犯或荒谬。“我喜欢打破常规，不把事情看得太严肃，”他上周告诉我。他说，唐纳德的想法正合他的意思。
Since the pair had a shared interest in the workplace, they decided to write a paper on what they called the Donald Duck phenomenon, or the unconventional reasons that propel academics to publish. These included revenge against a rival; collaboration with a hero; a desire to promote a cause and simple amusement.
由于两人在工作场所有共同的兴趣，他们决定撰写一篇论文，探讨他们所称之为的“唐老鸭现象”，即推动学者发表论文的非传统原因。这些原因包括对竞争对手的报复，与偶像的合作，推动某一事业的愿望，以及纯粹的娱乐。
The result was a slender work of just three pages — five including references and notes — which was, somewhat astonishingly, published last month in the GiLE Journal of Skills Development. This is a relatively new, open access publication that nonetheless claims to use a “robust” peer review process.
结果是一篇仅有三页的简短论文——如果算上参考文献和注释则共五页，令人惊讶的是，它在上个月的《GiLE技能发展期刊》(GiLE Journal)上发表。这是一份相对较新的开放获取刊物，尽管如此，它仍声称采用了“严格的”同行评审程序。
For all that, the paper does not add an enormous amount to the sum of human knowledge. It is arguably self-indulgent and childish. But it is also a delight and I wish there were more follies like it.
尽管如此，这篇论文并没有为人类知识的总和带来巨大的贡献。它或许显得自我放纵和幼稚。但它也带来了乐趣，我希望有更多这样的奇思妙想。
It’s not just that these things make the large slice of life spent at work more bearable. There are serious reasons for fun at work when governments across Europe are fretting about a post-pandemic drop in average working hours that is being blamed for making economies more feeble and uncompetitive.
Jokes alone are no answer, obviously. But it is telling to consider how rarely one hears about playfulness at work these days.
显然，仅仅依靠笑话是无法解决问题的。但值得深思的是，如今我们很少听到关于工作中的趣味性。
It is 17 years since Steve Jobs stood on a stage in San Francisco to unveil a new Apple gadget called the iPhone and dialled a nearby Starbucks to order “4,000 lattes to go, please”. He immediately said, “wrong number” and hung up. But the store was still getting orders for that many coffees from Apple fans years later, to the bafflement of managers.
17年前，史蒂夫•乔布斯(Steve Jobs)在旧金山(San Francisco)的一个舞台上揭幕了一款名为iPhone的新苹果(Apple)产品，并拨打电话到附近的星巴克(Starbucks)，要求“请带走4000杯拿铁”。他立即说，“打错了”，然后挂断了电话。然而，多年后，这家星巴克仍然收到苹果粉丝订购那么多咖啡的订单，让经理们感到困惑。
Chief executive capers, however, are thin on the ground. I was astonished to read recently that Jane Fraser, the chief executive of Citigroup, is a serial prankster with a long history of playing jokes on colleagues.
然而，首席执行官的恶作剧却寥寥无几。最近我惊讶地读到，花旗集团(Citigroup)的首席执行官简•弗雷泽(Jane Fraser)是一个连环恶作剧者，有着长期在同事间开玩笑的历史。
In 2022, she asked her senior team to sign a waiver to go skydiving, the Wall Street Journal reported, and left them to agonise about the prospect of the bank’s leaders all risking death together before emailing again to say: April Fools’.
据《华尔街日报》(Wall Street Journal)报道，2022年，她要求她的高级团队签署一份跳伞豁免协议，让他们为银行领导层一起冒险面临生死的可能性而痛苦挣扎，然后再次发邮件说：愚人节。
Another time, she reportedly kidnapped a teddy bear she had once given to an executive in charge of cost-cutting, duct-taped its paws and told the man to ease up on the cuts or the bear would get it.
据报道，另一次她绑架了一只曾经送给一个负责削减成本的高管的泰迪熊，用胶带把它的爪子绑起来，告诉那个人减少削减，否则泰迪熊就会遭殃。
News of this jolliness might jar in some quarters at Citi, where Fraser is overseeing sweeping job losses. Even academic citation jokes can misfire.
在花旗(Citi)，弗雷泽正在监督大规模的裁员工作，这种欢乐的消息可能在某些部门引起不适。即使是学术引用的笑话也可能会失误。
In the 1940s, a physicist named George Gamow decided it would be fun to add the name of an eminent friend, Hans Bethe, to a paper that Gamow and his student, Ralph Alpher, had written on the origins of the universe.
在20世纪40年代，一位名叫乔治•伽莫夫(George Gamow)的物理学家决定，将他的朋友、杰出的汉斯•贝特(Hans Bethe)的名字，加入到他和他的学生拉尔夫•阿尔弗(Ralph Alpher)关于宇宙起源的论文中，他认为这样做会很有趣。
This had the excellent effect of creating a paper by Alpher, Bethe and Gamow, a pun on the first three letters of the Greek alphabet, alpha beta gamma. But Alpher was reportedly miffed, fearing his contribution would be diminished by the addition of the eminent Bethe’s name.
这导致了阿尔弗、贝特和伽莫夫共同撰写的一篇论文，这篇论文巧妙地利用了希腊字母的前三个字母αβγ的双关。然而，据报道，阿尔弗对此感到不满，他担心贝特这位杰出人物的名字的加入会削弱他的贡献。
You can see his point. Jokes at work need to be deployed with skill and care. Yet the best are glorious and the working world would be a far better place if we had a great deal more of them.
你可以理解他的观点。在工作中开玩笑需要技巧和谨慎。然而，最好的笑话是令人愉快的，如果我们有更多这样的笑话，工作环境将会变得更加美好。