Three people have left Chen Hao's department and none replaced. He now proofreads what a machine writes, and is no better off for it.
Chen Hao
我们部门上个月走了三个人，一个也没补，活儿倒是一点没少。
Wǒmen bùmén shàng gè yuè zǒu le sān gè rén, yī gè yě méi bǔ, huór dǎo shì yī diǎn méi shǎo.
Three people left our department last month, not one was replaced, and the work has not shrunk an inch.
Xiaoyu
让机器干了？
Ràng jīqì gān le ?
Is the machine doing it?
Chen Hao
一半吧。文案、翻译、配图，现在都是先让它出一版。
Yībàn ba. Wén'àn, fānyì, pèi tú, xiànzài dōu shì xiān ràng tā chū yī bǎn.
Half of it. Copy, translation, illustrations: we now have it produce a first version.
Xiaoyu
那你干什么？
Nà nǐ gān shénme ?
And what do you do?
Chen Hao
我负责把它胡说八道的地方挑出来。说好听点儿，叫审核。
Wǒ fùzé bǎ tā húshuōbādào de dìfang tiāo chūlái. Shuō hǎotīng diǎnr, jiào shěnhé.
I am the one who picks out the places where it talks nonsense. Put nicely, it is called review.
Zhang laoshi
这活儿可不轻松。错得离谱反而好抓，怕的是八分对、两分错。
Zhè huór kě bù qīngsōng. Cuò de lípǔ fǎn'ér hǎo zhuā, pà de shì bā fēn duì, liǎng fēn cuò.
That is no easy job. A wild error is easy to catch; what is dangerous is eight parts right and two parts wrong.
Xiaoyu
我同事就栽在这上面。一个数据没核，报告就发出去了。
Wǒ tóngshì jiù zāi zài zhè shàngmian. Yī gè shùjù méi hé, bàogào jiù fā chūqù le.
A colleague of mine came a cropper on that. One figure unchecked, and the report went out.
Chen Hao
所以我现在比以前还累，工资倒是一分没涨。
Suǒyǐ wǒ xiànzài bǐ yǐqián hái lèi, gōngzī dǎo shì yī fēn méi zhǎng.
So I am more tired than I was before, and my salary has not moved a penny.
Auntie Wang
你们说的这些，我听不太懂。可哪一代人没遇上过这种事？
Nǐmen shuō de zhèxiē, wǒ tīng bù tài dǒng. Kě nǎ yī dài rén méi yù shàng guò zhè zhǒng shì ?
All this you are talking about, I do not really follow. But which generation never met something of the sort?
Zhang laoshi
王阿姨说到点子上了。当年打字机、计算器、电脑，一样有人丢了饭碗。
Wáng āyí shuō dào diǎnzi shàng le. Dāngnián dǎzìjī, jìsuànqì, diànnǎo, yīyàng yǒu rén diū le fànwǎn.
Auntie Wang has put her finger on it. In their day the typewriter, the calculator and the computer cost people their living too.
Chen Hao
区别是这次太快。以前十年的变化，现在一年就完了。
Qūbié shì zhè cì tài kuài. Yǐqián shí nián de biànhuà, xiànzài yī nián jiù wán le.
The difference is that this time it is too fast. What used to take ten years is over in one.
Xiaoyu
而且以前被替掉的是手，这次是脑子。
Érqiě yǐqián bèi tì diào de shì shǒu, zhè cì shì nǎozi.
And what used to be replaced was hands, this time it is heads.
Zhang laoshi
那就把别人不愿意干的练成本事：判断、沟通、担责任。这三样，机器暂时还接不了。
Nà jiù bǎ biéren bù yuànyì gān de liàn chéng běnshi : pànduàn, gōutōng, dān zérèn. Zhè sān yàng, jīqì zànshí hái jiē bù le.
Then make a skill of what nobody else wants to do: judging, communicating, taking responsibility. Those three the machine cannot take over yet.
Chen Hao
听着像鸡汤。
Tīng zhe xiàng jītāng.
That sounds like self-help talk.
Zhang laoshi
是鸡汤。可你总不能坐着等别人来救你。
Shì jītāng. Kě nǐ zǒng bùnéng zuò zhe děng biéren lái jiù nǐ.
It is self-help talk. But you cannot sit and wait for someone to come and save you either.
Short for 心灵鸡汤, "chicken soup for the soul", the title of an American collection translated in the nineteen-nineties. The word now names any uplifting, warm and useless talk, and it is almost always mocking. Zhang takes it up as his own instead of disputing it, which is the only way to disarm a jibe.
To hit the sore spot, to say exactly what needed saying. The 点子 here is the knot of a question, not an idea. The expression is a plain compliment, and placing it after a remark by Auntie Wang, who has just said she understands nothing, is not politeness: she is the one who moved the discussion on.
工资倒是一分没涨: "the salary, on the other hand, has not moved". 倒是 sets the thing being discussed against what has just been said, with a shade of resigned irony. No fixed English word renders it; English uses "though", "on the other hand", or simply "and".
