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| SAVANNAH, Ga. — Like toy blocks hurled from the heavens, nearly 80,000 shipping containers are stacked in various configurations at the Port of Savannah — 50 percent more than usual. | 佐治亚州萨凡纳——就像从天而降的玩具积木一样，在萨凡纳港，将近8万个集装箱以各种不同形式堆叠在一起——比平时多50%。 |
| The steel boxes are waiting for ships to carry them to their final destination, or for trucks to haul them to warehouses that are themselves stuffed to the rafters. Some 700 containers have been left at the port, on the banks of the Savannah River, by their owners for a month or more. | 这些钢制集装箱正在等待船只将它们运送到最终目的地，或者等待卡车将它们运到仓库，但这些仓库里的货物已经堆到屋顶了。大约700个集装箱被其所有者留在萨凡纳河畔港口已达一个月或更长时间。 |
| “They’re not coming to get their freight,” complained Griff Lynch, the executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority. “We’ve never had the yard as full as this.” | “他们不来取货，”佐治亚州港务局(Georgia Ports Authority)执行董事格里夫·林奇(Griff Lynch)抱怨道。“我们从来没有像这样把堆场塞满的时候。” |
| As he speaks, another vessel glides silently toward an open berth — the 1,207-foot-long Yang Ming Witness, its decks jammed with containers full of clothing, shoes, electronics and other stuff made in factories in Asia. Towering cranes soon pluck the thousands of boxes off the ship — more cargo that must be stashed somewhere. | 就在他说话的时候，另一艘船悄无声息地滑向一个开阔的泊位——368米长的“视明”(Yang Ming Witness)货柜船，它的甲板上塞满了装满衣服、鞋子、电子产品和其他亚洲工厂制造的货物的集装箱。高耸的起重机很快就从船上卸下了数千个箱子——越来越多的货柜，需要找地方放置。 |
| “Certainly,” Mr. Lynch said, “the stress level has never been higher.” | 林奇说：“压力水平从未如此之高，这是肯定的。” |
| It has come to this in the Great Supply Chain Disruption: They are running out of places to put things at one of the largest ports in the United States. As major ports contend with a staggering pileup of cargo, what once seemed like a temporary phenomenon — a traffic jam that would eventually dissipate — is increasingly viewed as a new reality that could require a substantial refashioning of the world’s shipping infrastructure. | “供应链大混乱”(Great Supply Chain Disruption)已发展到了这一步：美国最大的港口之一已经没有地方可以放东西了。随着主要港口应对惊人的货物堆积，这种原本只是暂时现象的堵塞——就像交通堵塞一样最终会消失——越来越被视为一种新的现实，可能需要对世界航运基础设施进行大量改造。 |
| As the Savannah port works through the backlog, Mr. Lynch has reluctantly forced ships to wait at sea for more than nine days. On a recent afternoon, more than 20 ships were stuck in the queue, anchored up to 17 miles off the coast in the Atlantic. | 在萨凡纳港处理积压的工作时，林奇无奈之下只能迫使船只在海上等待超过九天。最近的一个下午，有20多艘船被困在队列中，停泊在大西洋海岸外17英里处。 |
| Such lines have become common around the globe, from the more than 50 ships marooned last week in the Pacific near Los Angeles to smaller numbers bobbing off terminals in the New York area, to hundreds waylaid off ports in China. | 这样的队列在全球范围内变得普遍，从上周困在洛杉矶附近太平洋的50多艘船只，到在纽约地区停靠的相对少量的船只，再到数百艘在中国港口停靠的船只。 |
| The turmoil in the shipping industry and the broader crisis in supply chains is showing no signs of relenting. It stands as a gnawing source of worry throughout the global economy, challenging once-hopeful assumptions of a vigorous return to growth as vaccines limit the spread of the pandemic. | 航运业的动荡和更广泛的供应链危机没有减弱的迹象。它是使人担忧全球经济的一个原因，挑战了因疫苗限制大流行蔓延而做出的经济增长强劲恢复的假设。 |
| The disruption helps explain why Germany’s industrial fortunes are sagging, why inflation has become a cause for concern among central bankers, and why American manufacturers are now waiting a record 92 days on average to assemble the parts and raw materials they need to make their goods, according to the Institute of Supply Management. | 这种混乱有助于解释为什么德国的工业财富正在下滑，为什么通货膨胀已成为央行官员担忧的一个原因，以及——根据供应管理协会(Institute of Supply Management)的说法——为什么美国制造商现在平均要等待创纪录的92天才能凑齐制造产品所需的零件和原材料。 |
| On the surface, the upheaval appears to be a series of intertwined product shortages. Because shipping containers are in short supply in China, factories that depend on Chinese-made parts and chemicals in the rest of the world have had to limit production. | 从表面上看，这种剧变似乎源于一系列相关联的产品的短缺。由于中国的集装箱短缺，世界其他地区依赖中国制造的零部件和化学品的工厂不得不限制生产。 |
| But the situation at the port of Savannah attests to a more complicated and insidious series of overlapping problems. It is not merely that goods are scarce. It is that products are stuck in the wrong places, and separated from where they are supposed to be by stubborn and constantly shifting barriers. | 但萨凡纳港的情况证明了一系列更复杂、更隐蔽的重叠问题。不仅仅是商品稀缺。而是产品被搁置在错误的地方，并因顽固且不断变化的障碍而无法到达它们该去的地方。 |
| The shortage of finished goods at retailers represents the flip side of the containers stacked on ships marooned at sea and massed on the riverbanks. The pileup in warehouses is itself a reflection of shortages of truck drivers needed to carry goods to their next destinations. | 零售商的成品短缺代表了集装箱堆积在被困的船上和岸上所产生的影响的另一面。仓库的堆积本身就说明没有足够的卡车司机能将货物运送到下一个目的地。 |
| For Mr. Lynch, the man in charge in Savannah, frustrations are enhanced by a sense of powerlessness in the face of circumstances beyond his control. Whatever he does to manage his docks alongside the murky Savannah River, he cannot tame the bedlam playing out on the highways, at the warehouses, at ports across the ocean and in factory towns around the world. | 对于萨凡纳港的负责人林奇来说，面对无法控制的情况时，他感到无能为力，这加剧了挫败感。无论他如何管理浑浊的萨凡纳河沿岸的码头，他都无法控制在高速公路、仓库、大洋彼岸的港口和世界各地的工厂城镇上演的混乱局面。 |
| “The supply chain is overwhelmed and inundated,” Mr. Lynch said. “It’s not sustainable at this point. Everything is out of whack.” | “供应链不堪重负，被货物淹没，”林奇说。“目前的情况是不可持续的。一切都不正常了。” |
| Born and raised in Queens with the no-nonsense demeanor to prove it, Mr. Lynch, 55, has spent his professional life tending to the logistical complexities of sea cargo. (“I actually wanted to be a tugboat captain,” he said. “There was only one problem. I get seasick.”) | 现年55岁的林奇在皇后区出生和长大，这一点从他的直截了当就能看出来。他的职业生涯一直致力于处理复杂的海运物流。（“我其实想做一名拖船船长，”他说。“唯一的问题是，我晕船。”） |
| Now, he is contending with a storm whose intensity and contours are unparalleled, a tempest that has effectively extended the breadth of oceans and added risk to sea journeys. | 现在，他正在与一场强度和范围前所未见的的风暴作斗争，这场暴风骤雨相当于扩大了航行的宽度，并增加了海上旅行的风险。 |
| Last month, his yard held 4,500 containers that had been stuck on the docks for at least three weeks. “That’s bordering on ridiculous,” he said. | 上个月，他的堆场里放了4500个集装箱，这些集装箱已经在码头上停留了至少三周。“这近乎荒谬，”他说。 |
| That these tensions are playing out even in Savannah attests to the magnitude of the disarray. The third-largest container port in the United States after Los Angeles-Long Beach and New York-New Jersey, Savannah boasts nine berths for container ships and abundant land for expansion. | 即使萨凡纳港都在遭受这样的紧张压力，这证明了混乱的严重程度。萨凡纳港是美国第三大集装箱港口——仅次于洛杉矶–长滩和纽约–新泽西，萨凡纳港拥有九个集装箱船泊位和宽裕的扩建用地。 |
| To relieve the congestion, Mr. Lynch is overseeing a $600 million expansion. He is swapping out one berth for a bigger one to accommodate the largest container ships. He is extending the storage yard across another 80 acres, adding room for 6,000 more containers. He is enlarging his rail yard to 18 tracks from five to allow more trains to pull in, building out an alternative to trucking. | 为了缓解拥堵，林奇正在监督一项6亿美元的扩张计划。他正在将一个泊位扩大，以容纳最大的集装箱船。他正在对存放堆场进行约32公顷的扩充，增加可容纳6000个集装箱的空间。他正在将他的铁路站场从五条轨道扩大到18条轨道，以允许更多的火车驶入，为卡车运输寻找替代方案。 |
| But even as Mr. Lynch sees development as imperative, he knows that expanded facilities alone will not solve his problems. | 但是，即使林奇认为扩张势在必行，他也知道，仅仅扩大设施并不能解决他的问题。 |
| “If there’s no space out here,” he said, looking out at the stacks of containers, “it doesn’t matter if I have 50 berths.” | “如果这里没有空间，”他看着一堆堆的集装箱说，“就算我有50个泊位也没用。” |
| Many of the containers are piled five high, making it harder for cranes to sort through the towers to lift the needed boxes when trucks arrive to take them away. | 许多集装箱堆积了五层楼高，使起重机更难在卡车到达时分拣出所需的箱子，并将其运走。 |
| On this afternoon, under a merciless sun, the port is on track to break its record for activity in a single day — more than 15,000 trucks coming and going. Still, the pressure builds. A tugboat escorts another ship to the dock — the MSC AGADIR, fresh from the Panama Canal — bearing more cargo that must be parked somewhere. | 这个下午，冒着烈日，港口有望打破其单日活动记录——超过1.5万辆卡车进出。尽管如此，压力还是在增加。一艘拖船护送着刚从巴拿马运河驶来的MSC AGADIR号来到码头，船上装载着更多的货物，必须停在某个地方。 |
| In recent weeks, the shutdown of a giant container terminal off the Chinese city of Ningbo has added to delays. Vietnam, a hub for the apparel industry, was locked down for several months in the face of a harrowing outbreak of Covid. Diminished cargo leaving Asia should provide respite to clogged ports in the United States, but Mr. Lynch dismisses that line. | 最近几周，中国宁波市附近一个大型集装箱码头的关闭加剧了延误。在可怕的新冠疫情暴发后，服装行业的中心之一越南被封锁了几个月。从亚洲运出的货物减少，应该会为美国拥堵的港口提供喘息的机会，但林奇否定了这个观点。 |
| “Six or seven weeks later, the ships come in all at once,” Mr. Lynch said. “That doesn’t help.” | “六七周后，所有船都一起来了，”林奇说。“这并没有什么帮助。” |
| Early this year, as shipping prices spiked and containers became scarce, the trouble was widely viewed as the momentary result of pandemic lockdowns. With schools and offices shut, Americans were stocking up on home office gear and equipment for basement gyms, drawing heavily on factories in Asia. Once life reopened, global shipping was supposed to return to normal. | 今年早些时候，航运价格飙升和集装箱稀缺，人们普遍认为这种麻烦是大流行封锁的暂时结果。随着学校和办公室关闭，美国人开始囤积家庭办公设备和地下室健身房设备，这些都严重依赖亚洲的工厂。一旦生活重新开放，全球航运理应恢复正常。 |
| But half a year later, the congestion is worse, with nearly 13 percent of the world’s cargo shipping capacity tied up by delays, according to data compiled by Sea-Intelligence, an industry research firm in Denmark. | 但半年后，拥堵情况更加严重，根据丹麦行业研究公司海洋–智慧(Sea-Intelligence)汇编的数据，全球近13%的货物运输能力因延误而受阻。 |
| Many businesses now assume that the pandemic has fundamentally altered commercial life in permanent ways. Those who might never have shopped for groceries or clothing online — especially older people — have gotten a taste of the convenience, forced to adjust to a lethal virus. Many are likely to retain the habit, maintaining pressure on the supply chain. | 许多企业现在认为，疫情已从根本上永久性地改变了商业生活。那些以前可能从来没有在网上买过杂货或衣服的人——尤其是老年人——如今尝到了这种便利的滋味，他们被迫适应一种致命的病毒。许多人可能会保留这种习惯，这给供应链带来了压力。 |
| “Before the pandemic, could we have imagined mom and dad pointing and clicking to buy a piece of furniture?” said Ruel Joyner, owner of 24E Design Co., a boutique furniture outlet that occupies a brick storefront in Savannah’s graceful historic district. His online sales have tripled over the past year. | “在疫情之前，我们能想象父母点击鼠标购买一件家具吗？”24E设计公司(24E Design Co.)的老板鲁埃尔·乔伊纳(Ruel Joyner)说。该公司是一家精品家具专卖店，在萨凡纳优雅的历史街区有一家砖砌店面。他的网上销售额在过去一年里增长了两倍。 |
| On top of those changes in behavior, the supply chain disruption has imposed new frictions. | 除了这些行为上的变化之外，供应链中断还带来了新的摩擦。 |
| Mr. Joyner, 46, designs his furniture in Savannah while relying on factories from China and India to manufacture many of his wares. The upheaval on the seas has slowed deliveries, limiting his sales. | 46岁的乔伊纳在萨凡纳设计家具，他的很多产品都依靠中国和印度的工厂生产。海上的动荡减缓了交货速度，限制了他的销售。 |
| He pointed to a brown leather recliner made for him in Dallas. The factory is struggling to secure the reclining mechanism from its supplier in China. | 他指了指他的一张在达拉斯生产的棕色皮革躺椅。这家工厂正在努力从中国供应商那里获得斜靠装置。 |
| “Where we were getting stuff in 30 days, they are now telling us six months,” Mr. Joyner said. Customers are calling to complain. | “以前我们30天就能拿到东西，现在他们告诉我们要六个月，”乔伊纳说。顾客纷纷打来电话投诉。 |
| His experience also underscores how the shortages and delays have become a source of concern about fair competition. Giant retailers like Target and Home Depot have responded by stockpiling goods in warehouses and, in some cases, chartering their own ships. These options are not available to the average small business. | 他的经历也凸显出，短缺和延误令人们对公平竞争产生担忧。塔吉特(Target)和家得宝(Home Depot)等大型零售商的应对措施是在仓库里囤积货物，在某些情况下还租用自己的船只。对于一般的小企业来说，这样的做法是不可能的。 |
| Bottlenecks have a way of causing more bottlenecks. As many companies have ordered extra and earlier, especially as they prepare for the all-consuming holiday season, warehouses have become jammed. So containers have piled up at the Port of Savannah. | 瓶颈导致了更多的瓶颈。由于许多公司提前多下了订单，尤其是在为消费旺盛的假日季做准备的时候，仓库变得拥挤不堪。所以集装箱在萨凡纳港堆积如山。 |
| Mr. Lynch’s team — normally focused on its own facilities — has devoted time to scouring unused warehouse spaces inland, seeking to provide customers with alternative channels for their cargo. | 林奇的团队通常专注于自己的设施，如今他们已经在花时间寻找内陆闲置的仓库空间，试图为客户的货物提供替代渠道。 |
| Recently, a major retailer completely filled its 3 million square feet of local warehouse space. With its containers piling up in the yard, port staff worked to ship the cargo by rail to Charlotte, N.C., where the retailer had more space. | 最近，一家大型零售商完全填满了当地28公顷的仓库空间。随着集装箱堆积在码头，港口工作人员开始用火车将货物运到北卡罗来纳州夏洛特市，那里有更多的空间。 |
| Such creativity may provide a modicum of relief, but the demands on the port are only intensifying. | 这样的创意可能会提供一点缓解，但对港口的需求只会加剧。 |
| On a muggy afternoon in late September, Christmas suddenly felt close at hand. The containers stacked on the riverbanks were surely full of holiday decorations, baking sheets, gifts and other material for the greatest wave of consumption on earth. | 9月下旬一个闷热的下午，圣诞节突然感觉近在眼前。堆放在河岸上的集装箱肯定装满了节日装饰品、烤盘、礼物和其他东西，准备迎接地球上最大的消费潮。 |
| Will they get to stores in time? | 它们能及时到达商店吗？ |
| “That’s the question everyone is asking,” Mr. Lynch said. “I think that’s a very tough question.” | “这是每个人都在问的问题，”林奇说。“我认为这非常棘手。” |
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