Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. -- which is preparing to launch perhaps the largest U.S. stock listing ever of a Chinese company -- dominates China's e-commerce market. But not everybody in the U.S. has a grasp of its scope.
阿里巴巴集团(Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.)准备赴美国上市，有望成为有史以来美国市场上规模最大的一桩中资公司首次公开募股(IPO)。阿里巴巴主导着中国的电子商务市场，但并非所有美国人都清楚阿里巴巴的业务范围。
Perhaps the best way to understand Alibaba is as a mix of Amazon, eBay and PayPal, with a dash of Google thrown in, all with some uniquely Chinese characteristics.
了解阿里巴巴的最佳方法也许是把它看成亚马逊(Amazon)、eBay和贝宝(PayPal)的混合体，再加入一点谷歌(Google)成份。每块业务都具有独特的中国特色。
Unlike Amazon.com Inc., which buys goods from suppliers and sells them to customers, Alibaba has always acted as a middleman, connecting buyers and sellers and facilitating transactions between them. While it isn't an auction company, its middleman role is similar to the one played by eBay Inc.
不同于亚马逊从供应商进货再销售给客户的经营模式，阿里巴巴扮演的是中间人的角色，它把买家和卖家联系到一起，为他们之间的交易提供便利。阿里巴巴并非拍卖公司，但其中间人角色与eBay Inc.扮演的角色相似。
Taobao, Alibaba's biggest website, is like a gigantic Chinese bazaar, with about 760 million product listings from seven million sellers. Merchants don't pay to sell products on Taobao. Instead, they pay Alibaba for advertising and other services to allow them to stand out from the crowd.
阿里巴巴旗下的最大网站淘宝(Taobao)像一个庞大的中国集市，约有7.6亿条商品信息，注册卖家多达700万家。卖家在淘宝上销售产品无需支付手续费。不过，如果想让自己的商品在淘宝上脱颍而出，卖家就要向阿里巴巴支付广告费以及其他服务费用。
That no-fee model is part of Taobao's appeal in China. Much as with Google Inc., the ads from merchants appear with Taobao's product-search results.
在中国，这种免费模式构成了淘宝的吸引力之一。买家在淘宝上搜索商品时，卖家的广告会出现在搜索结果页面上，这与谷歌的广告模式相似。
While Taobao is mostly for small merchants, Tmall, another shopping site run by Alibaba, is designed for bigger merchants, including well-known brands such as Nike Inc. and Gap Inc. Apple Inc. this year opened a store on Tmall. Unlike Taobao, Tmall, which has about 70,000 merchants, charges each seller a deposit and an annual fee, as well as a commission on each transaction.
淘宝上的卖家大多是小商户。阿里巴巴旗下另一个购物网站天猫(Tmall)是专门为大商户设计的，已进驻天猫的知名品牌包括耐克(Nike Inc.)、Gap Inc.等。苹果公司(Apple Inc.)今年也在天猫开设了一家官方旗舰店。天猫目前拥有约7万家商户。与淘宝不同，天猫向所有商户收取保证金和年费，并向每单交易收取佣金。
What sets Alibaba apart is size. The company has said that Taobao and Tmall account for more than half of all parcel deliveries in China. In 2012, the combined transaction volume of Taobao and Tmall topped one trillion yuan ($163 billion), more than Amazon and eBay combined.
庞大的业务规模令阿里巴巴显得与众不同。该公司称，淘宝和天猫产生的快递包裹已占到中国整个快递业务量的一半以上。2012年，淘宝和天猫平台综合在一起的交易额突破人民币1万亿元（约合1,630亿美元），超过了亚马逊和eBay的交易总额。
Alibaba's revenue is about one-tenth of Amazon's because the Chinese company doesn't sell products on its site. But Alibaba is far more profitable. Alibaba's third-quarter revenue rose 51% from a year earlier to $1.78 billion. Net profit was $792 million, giving the company a profit margin of 44.6%, according to shareholder Yahoo Inc., which owns a 24% stake in Alibaba. Amazon posted revenue of $17.09 billion and a loss of $41 million in the same quarter.
由于阿里巴巴本身并不在其网站上销售产品，该集团的收入仅相当于亚马逊的十分之一左右，但利润率却高得多。据阿里巴巴股东雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)披露的数据，去年第三季度，阿里巴巴收入为17.8亿美元，同比增长51%； 利润为7.92亿美元，利润率达到44.6%。雅虎持有阿里巴巴24%的股权。相比之下，亚马逊当季收入为170.9亿美元，但同期亏损4,100万美元。
Alibaba, which could raise about $15 billion from its U.S. IPO, also has emerged as a huge player in China's creaky financial system. To solve the problem of buyers trusting merchants on its site, Alibaba created Alipay, a payment system that protects buyers if sellers don't deliver. Alipay has become so ingrained in China that when the company created a money-market fund, it became one of the world's largest in just eight months.
阿里巴巴赴美上市可能筹资约150亿美元，该公司同时还成为中国脆弱的金融系统中的一个重要力量。为了解决其网站买家与商户之间的信任问题，阿里巴巴打造了支付系统支付宝(Alipay)，以便在卖家不发货的情况下保护买家的利益。支付宝在中国已经根深蒂固，以至于阿里巴巴设立一个货币市场基金时，该基金在短短八个月内就成为世界最大的同类基金之一。
Alibaba also makes microloans and is taking part in a Chinese government program to set up five private banks on a trial basis in some big cities. Run by an affiliate of Alibaba, the payment system has allowed the company to accumulate a vast amount of information on Chinese small businesses, consumers and their online transactions.
阿里巴巴还发放小额贷款，并参与了中国政府在一些大城市设立五家民营银行的试点计划。由阿里巴巴旗下公司运营的支付系统让该公司积累了大量有关中国中小企业、消费者以及他们在线交易的信息。
Even though Alibaba remains by far the biggest player in China's fast-growing e-commerce market, the company faces stiff competition as more Chinese consumers use smartphones. Social-media and online-games company Tencent Holdings Ltd. is emerging as a powerful competitor because of its ability to use its popular WeChat mobile-messaging application as a platform to offer services such as e-commerce.
虽然阿里巴巴仍然是中国快速增长的电子商务市场的龙头老大，但随着更多的中国消费者使用智能手机，阿里巴巴开始面临激烈的竞争。社交媒体和在线游戏公司腾讯控股(Tencent Holdings Ltd.)就是阿里巴巴的一大竞争对手。腾讯将该公司备受欢迎的移动短消息应用微信(WeChat)作为一个平台，向用户提供电子商务等服务。
To further bolster its e-commerce capabilities, Tencent this month announced a deal to buy a 15% stake in JD.com Inc., China's second-largest e-commerce firm.
为进一步增强电子商务方面的能力，腾讯本月宣布了收购中国第二大电子商务公司京东商城(JD.com Inc.) 15%股权的交易。
Alibaba has fought back with a string of deals, including its offer last month to pay $1.13 billion for the 72% stake in Chinese online map company AutoNavi Holdings Ltd. that it didn't already own. Last year Alibaba invested $585.8 million for a 18% stake in Sina Weibo, the popular microblogging site controlled by Sina Corp.
阿里巴巴也不甘示弱，该公司也进行了一系列收购，包括上个月提出以11.3亿美元收购其尚未持有的中国在线地图公司高德(AutoNavi Holdings Ltd.)剩余72%股权的的交易。去年阿里巴巴斥资5.858亿美元收购了新浪微博(Sina Weibo)的18%股权，新浪微博是新浪(Sina Corp.)旗下的高人气微博客网站。
Weibo unveiled plans Friday to sell $500 million of stock in the U.S.
新浪微博上周五公布了在美国上市的计划，拟发行5亿美元股票。
Alibaba was founded in 1999 by Jack Ma, an English teacher in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou. Though the dot-com bubble was expanding in the U.S., the Internet was still a foreign concept to many Chinese businesses.
阿里巴巴是马云在1999年创立的，他原本是华东城市杭州的一名英语老师。当时虽然美国的互联网泡沫正在扩大，但对许多中国企业来说，互联网仍然是个陌生的概念。
Mr. Ma and 17 other founding members created Alibaba.com, a trading website that connected Chinese manufacturers with overseas clients. Shortly after, eBay entered China by buying a stake in a domestic e-commerce company. Alibaba created Taobao in 2003 to enter a consumer e-commerce business, as China's Internet-user population was growing rapidly.
马云和另外17位创始团队的成员创建了阿里巴巴网络有限公司(Alibaba.com)，该交易网站将中国的制造商与海外客户联系了起来。不久之后，eBay通过收购一家中国本土电子商务公司的股权进入中国市场。阿里巴巴于2003年创建淘宝网(Taobao)，进入消费者电商业务，当时正值中国互联网用户人数迅速增长之际。