《经济学人》双语：少年成名的神童后来都泯然众人了吗？Part 1

原文标题：

Lament of the Tiger Mother

Why child prodigies rarely become elite performers

Hot-housing promising youngsters works—but not as well as you might think

虎妈哀歌

为什么神童很少能成为行业精英？

提前培养有前途的年轻人确实有效——但效果可能不如你想象的那么好

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NOVAK DJOKOVIC first picked up a tennis racket when he was four years old. At the age of 12 he left his native Serbia for a tennis academy in Germany.

诺瓦克·德约科维奇4岁时第一次拿起网球拍。12岁那年，他离开家乡塞尔维亚，前往德国的一所网球学院学球。

He won his first major title—the 2008 Australian Open—when he was 20. Today he has another 23 majors under his belt, and has spent more time ranked number one in the world than any other player.

20岁时，他斩获个人首个大满贯冠军——2008年澳大利亚网球公开赛。如今，他已手握另外23座大满贯奖杯，位居世界第一的时间也远超其他任何球员。

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Mr Djokovic’s illustrious career fits a common idea of human excellence: a child prodigy, schooled intensively in his early years, goes on to conquer his chosen field.

德约科维奇的辉煌职业生涯，完美印证了人们对“何为极致卓越”的固有想象：一个年少成名的神童，在幼年阶段接受高强度专业训练，继而在自己选定的领域里所向披靡。

But a paper published in Science at the end of last year suggests he may be something of an exception, rather than the rule.

但去年年底发表于《科学》期刊的一篇论文却指出，他的成功或许只是特例，而不是普遍规律。

It concludes that the very best performers, in all sorts of fields beyond just sport, tend to follow a rather different path.

这篇研究得出结论，无论在体育赛场还是其他各行各业，真正的顶尖人才，大多有着截然不同的成长轨迹。

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This study, led by Arne Güllich, a sports scientist at the RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, in Germany, crunched data covering more than 34,000 elite performers in several areas, including sport, chess, classical music and academia.

这项研究由德国凯泽斯劳滕-兰道工业大学的体育科学家阿恩·居利希主导，汇总分析了体育、象棋、古典音乐、学术等多个领域里3.4万多位精英人士的相关数据。

It concluded that, although they often reach a high level, the best-performing, most intensely drilled teenagers tend not to become true superstars as adults.

研究得出结论：尽管年少时接受高强度训练的佼佼者往往能达到较高水平，但他们成年后大多难以成长为真正的巨星。

Those who do make that grade, by contrast, tend not to stand out early on. They take longer to reach their peaks and seem to keep their interests wider for longer.

相比之下，那些最终功成名就的顶尖人物，在早年阶段往往并不出众。他们需要更长的时间才能抵达事业巅峰，而且在人生很长一段时间里，始终保持着更广泛的兴趣爱好。

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It is no accident that both Dr Güllich and one of his co-authors are sports scientists (the other two are psychologists).

居利希博士与一位合著者都是体育科学家（另外两位是心理学家），这绝非偶然。

Sport makes a good laboratory in which to study how excellence develops. There is no shortage of volunteers, in the form of talented youngsters dreaming of making it big.

体育之所以能成为研究卓越成长路径的优质试验田，原因有三：一是怀揣成名梦想的天赋少年比比皆是，从不缺乏研究对象。

Performance is easy to measure. And, since spotting future stars is vital for professional teams, there are many well-funded youth academies.

二是运动员的竞技表现可以量化统计；三是职业战队为了发掘未来之星，纷纷建立起资金雄厚的青年训练营。

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The received wisdom—and the logic on which the academies are based—is that the best way to nurture talented youngsters is to identify them early and drill them relentlessly.

大众公认的看法，也是各家青训机构赖以运行的底层逻辑：想要培育好有天赋的少年，就要趁早发掘他们的天赋，并对他们展开高强度的持续训练。

But a lot of the research backing that approach had looked only at school or university-level athletes, says Dr Güllich. It had not followed its subjects into their professional, adult careers.

但居利希博士指出，此前许多支撑这一培养模式的研究，研究对象仅局限于中学或大学阶段的运动员，并没有追踪观察这些人成年后进入职业赛场的发展情况。

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Some more recent studies have, however, done this.

不过，近年来已有部分研究开展了这类追踪研究。

Dr Güllich and his colleagues collected them and found the beginning of their new hypothesis—for all these studies agreed the received wisdom was wrong, and that early performance was not a reliable predictor of adult outcomes.

居利希博士与同事搜集整合了这些研究数据，由此萌生了全新假说的雏形——所有研究都证实，传统观点并不成立，年少时的成绩并不能作为预测一个人成年后成就高度的可靠依据。

Thus jolted into action, they extended the analysis beyond the sports field and came to similar conclusions.

基于这一发现，研究人员将研究视野延伸到体育圈之外，最终得出了相近的结论。

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Gathering data for other fields of endeavour took them two years.

他们花了整整两年时间，才完成其他领域的数据搜集工作。

Chess was fairly straightforward. Both national and international chess outfits maintain so-called Elo ratings of players.These give a numerical assessment of those players’ strengths.

国际象棋的数据获取相对简单。无论是国家层面还是国际层面的象棋组织，都对棋手设定了埃洛等级分，用具体数值来界定棋手的水平高低。

Academics can similarly be ranked via databases that use citations of their work as a proxy for how influential it is, as well as by the award of prizes such as the Nobels or the Fields medal.

学术界的排名方式与之类似，一方面可以通过数据库，依据论文引用量来评判学者的影响力；另一方面，诺贝尔奖、菲尔兹奖这类权威奖项的获得情况，也能成为排名的重要参考。

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Music was the trickiest, says Dr Güllich.

居利希博士称，音乐领域的数据收集难度最大。

For this, he and his colleagues relied in part on a study carried out at the University of California, Davis, which tried to rank classical composers using expert consensus, mentions in musical encyclopaedias and (for those who wrote such things) how often their operas have been performed in the world’s best opera houses.

在这方面，他和同事们部分借鉴了加州大学戴维斯分校的一项研究成果。这项研究试图为古典作曲家进行排名，评判依据包含三方面：一是业内专家的一致意见；二是作曲家在音乐百科中的收录情况；三是对有歌剧作品的作曲家而言，他们的作品在世界顶级歌剧院的演出频率。

（恭喜读完，本篇英语词汇552/1078左右）

原文出自：2026年1月17日《TE》Science & technology版块

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本文翻译整理: Irene
本文编辑校对: Irene
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【重点句子】（3个）

It concluded that, although they often reach a high level, the best-performing, most intensely drilled teenagers tend not to become true superstars as adults.

研究得出结论：尽管年少时接受高强度训练的佼佼者往往能达到较高水平，但他们成年后大多难以成长为真正的巨星。

Sport makes a good laboratory in which to study how excellence develops. There is no shortage of volunteers, in the form of talented youngsters dreaming of making it big.

体育之所以能成为研究卓越成长路径的优质试验田，原因有三：一是怀揣成名梦想的天赋少年比比皆是，从不缺乏研究对象。

Early performance was not a reliable predictor of adult outcomes.

年少时的成绩并不能作为预测一个人成年后成就高度的可靠依据。

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