Billionaire’s Late Bid Upends Sale of Chelsea F.C.

亿万富翁晚出价为出售切尔西划上休止符

体育翻译案例

The offer by Jim Ratcliffe, worth $5.3 billion, would be the highest price ever paid for a sports team. But his chances of success are unclear.

吉姆·拉特克里夫（Jim Ratcliffe）53亿美元的出价将是这个球队的最高出售价格。但是他的成功机会仍然不明。

The sale of the Premier League soccer team Chelsea, triggered when the British government sanctioned its Russian owner for his ties to the Kremlin, had already been the most peculiar team sale in recent sports history. On Friday, it suddenly became the most confusing, after one of Britain’s richest men entered the fray with a bold bid that upended a process that had appeared to be nearing its end.

英超切尔西足球队因老板受到英国政府怀疑与克里姆林宫的关系而遭到制裁而不得不出售，这已然成为体育圈最近最昂贵的球队交易。周五，形势突然变得极为混乱——英国首富勇敢地闯入这场竞价，看起来可能会终结此进程。

The offer put forward by Jim Ratcliffe, the billionaire chief executive of the chemicals giant Ineos, was worth $5.3 billion, and would represent the highest price ever paid for a sports team. Its arrival disrupted a sales process that had been weeks in the making; cast doubt on the prospect of a speedy, and clean, transfer of ownership; and inserted new drama into the future of one of the world’s richest and most successful soccer clubs.

身为化工巨头英力士（Ineos）首席执行官的首富吉姆·拉特克里夫的出价为53亿美元，这将是体育运动队最高的出价。此出价为数周来的出售进程划上了休止符，为球队所有权未来快速而彻底转移打上了一个个问号，并且为世界最富有、最成功的足球俱乐部之一的未来添加了新的故事。

By day’s end, in fact, it was not clear if Ratcliffe’s bid would succeed, or if it was even welcome.

事实上，拉特克里夫是会赢得此笔交易，此交易是否受人欢迎，在当天结束前都不明了。

According to multiple published reports on Friday citing anonymous sources, a different bid led by a part-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Todd Boehly, had been granted exclusive rights to negotiate its purchase of the team. The New York Times was unable to confirm that status, even as at least one other ownership group confirmed that it had been told it was out of the running.

多家出版的报告周五援引匿名人士的话称，洛杉矶道奇队的老板之一拓德·波利（Todd Boehly）领头另外出价，赢得了对球队购买进行排他性谈判的权利。虽然至少有一家其它的潜在买家已经被告知已经出局，但是《纽约时报》无法确认此出价的状态。

Ratcliffe, meanwhile, had suddenly emerged from the shadows. He framed his 11th-hour offer as a “British bid, for a British club” — a clear effort to differentiate him from three rival U.S. suitors in the eyes of the British government, which must give its blessing to any sale because of the sanctions.

同时，拉特克里夫突然从幕后直到前台。他将其11个小时的出价称作为“英国人对一家英国俱乐部的出价”——在英国政府眼里，这个表述将他与其他三个美国投标商明确地区分开来，也是对制裁原因引起的出售表示认可。

The timing of Ratcliffe’s proposal and the highly public nature of how it was announced — through a public statement released weeks after a deadline for offers — may hint at difficulties in gaining traction with the Raine Group, the New York-based advisory firm that is handling the sale on behalf of Chelsea’s Russian owner, Roman Abramovich.

拉特克里夫出价的时机以及高调宣布出价——在出价截止日数周后通过公众声明发布——可能暗示难以获得雷恩集团（Raine Group）的认可。作为一家纽约的咨询公司，雷恩集团正代表切尔西的俄罗斯老板罗曼·阿布拉莫维奇处理球队的出售事宜。

Ratcliffe’s late intervention also raises the possibility of an ugly denouement to a process that has from its outset been shrouded in confusion and chaos, all of its playing out against the fallout of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and Abramovich’s ties to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin.

此交易自开始就处于混乱的状态，所有程序都是针对俄罗斯对乌克兰的军事行动，以及阿布拉莫维奇与俄罗斯总统普京的关系，而拉特克里夫甚晚介入也越来越将此进程带入尴尬的结局。

（英文原文摘自《纽约时报》英文版）