新词新译：O一代/呛声/垄奴/砖家/剩斗士/裁员滚滚/云娱乐/僵尸企业

O一代
generation O
This term refers to people in the United States who are approximately 18 to 35 years old and voted for, or supported, Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election.

呛声
vociferous challenge, protest
The term is derived from the dialect of southern China's Fujian Province. It means making public challenges or demonstrating one's anger against certain decisions, proposals or public figures by speaking out loudly.

垄奴
monopoly slave
The term refers to consumers of services or products from monopoly companies who have to accept the service providers' clauses no matter how unfair they may be.

砖家
charlatan
The term, popular on the Internet and with a negative connotation, generally refers to those people who like to brag about their limited knowledge and promote themselves as "experts." The pronunciation of the phrase in Chinese is exactly the same as "expert" and the first character means "brick" in Chinese, which implies these "experts" are so shameless that their faces are tough enough to withstand the force of a brick.

剩斗士
leftover love seeker
The term shares the same pronunciation as that for popular Japanese cartoon character "Saint Saiya" in Chinese and refers to men and women who, for whatever reason, have not found their right marriage partners at an age traditionally believed way past their prime. But they still keep looking.

裁员滚滚
continuous layoff
This concocted phrase sounds similar to a popular term meaning "having fortune flooding to you" in Chinese. However, the first two characters have changed from "fortune" in the popular saying to "laying off." So, in the face of economic downturn, Chinese jokingly used this new phrase to replace the popular one as a greeting during the recent Chinese New Year holidays.

云娱乐
cloud entertainment
Based on the idea of "cloud computing," an Internet-based use of computer technology, the term refers to home entertainment such as Web-infused television environments in which customized services and programs are prepared on Web servers and delivered to consumer electronic devices, saving users a lot of money on in-home entertainment systems. Cloud here means the Internet.

僵尸企业
zombie companies
The term, first used by Business Week magazine in a recent issue, refers to companies that receive government bailout funding and continue to operate even though they are nearly defunct. The debtors lean on support from lenders or the government to stay in business. Zombie companies can drag healthier rivals into insolvency.

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