大数据：创新、竞争和生产力的下一个前沿（原文翻译）（1）
麦肯锡在2011年5月发布了一个关于大数据方面的报告：《Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity》，虽然是6年前的报告，但是今天读来，还是非常用指导意义。
报告分为两个版本，一个是概要版20页，一个是完整版156页。
正好最近看了一遍概要版，觉得收益甚大。所以试着翻译一下，仅供参考。
标题：Big data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity
译文：大数据：创新、竞争和生产力的下一个前沿
第二页是关于MGI（麦肯锡全球研究院）的介绍，就不翻译了。
略。
Data have become a torrent flowing into every area of the global economy. 1 Companies churn out a burgeoning volume of transactional data, capturing trillions of bytes of information about their customers, suppliers, and operations. millions of networked sensors are being embedded in the physical world in devices such as mobile phones, smart energy meters, automobiles, and industrial machines that sense, create, and communicate data in the age of the Internet of Things. 2 Indeed, as companies and organizations go about their business and interact with individuals, they are generating a tremendous amount of digital “exhaust data,” i.e., data that are created as a by-product of other activities. Social media sites, smartphones, and other consumer devices including PCs and laptops have allowed billions of individuals around the world to contribute to the amount of big data available. And the growing volume of multimedia content has played a major role in the exponential growth in the amount of big data (see Box 1, “What do we mean by ‘big data’?”). Each second of high-definition video, for example, generates more than 2,000 times as many bytes as required to store a single page of text. In a digitized world, consumers going about their day—communicating, browsing, buying, sharing, searching— create their own enormous trails of data.
译文：数据已成为流入全球经济各个领域的激流。公司制造了数量庞大的交易数据，捕获了数万亿字节的有关其客户、供应商和公司运营的信息。数百万的网络传感器被嵌入在诸如移动电话、智能电表、汽车和工业机器等实体设备中，它们在物联网时代感知、创建和传送着数据。事实上，随着公司和组织开展他们的业务并与个人进行互动，他们正在产生大量的“排放数据”，即作为其他活动的副产品而产生的数据。社交媒体、智能手机和其他消费设备，包括PC和笔记本电脑，使世界上数十亿的个人能够贡献大量数据。而且越来越多的多媒体内容在大数据的指数增长中发挥了重要作用（见插文1，“大数据”是什么？）。例如，每秒的高清视频生成的字节数量是存储单页文本所需的2000倍。在数字世界中，消费者每天都在进行通信、浏览、购买、共享和搜索——创建自己巨大的数据流。
Box 1. What do we mean by "big data"?
“Big data” refers to datasets whose size is beyond the ability of typical database software tools to capture, store, manage, and analyze. This definition is intentionally subjective and incorporates a moving definition of how big a dataset needs to be in order to be considered big data—i.e., we don’t define big data in terms of being larger than a certain number of terabytes (thousands of gigabytes). We assume that, as technology advances over time, the size of datasets that qualify as big data will also increase. Also note that the definition can vary by sector, depending on what kinds of software tools are commonly available and what sizes of datasets are common in a particular industry. With those caveats, big data in many sectors today will range from a few dozen terabytes to multiple petabytes (thousands of terabytes).
译文：插文1.“大数据”是什么？
“大数据”是指数据量级超过传统数据库软件工具捕获、存储、管理和分析能力的数据集。 这个定义是主观的，并且包含了一个数据集量级的动态定义（超过这个大小才会被认为是大数据）——也就是说，我们没有定义一个确定的值（比如多少TB）。我们认为随着技术的进步，被认定为“大数据”的数据集的大小数量级也将增加。还要注意，这个数据集大小的定义会因行业而异，它取决于这些行业中普遍使用的软件工具不同以及通常的数据集的大小。基于这些认知，今天许多行业的大数据的数据集大小范围将从几十TB到几PB（几千TB）。
In itself, the sheer volume of data is a global phenomenon—but what does it mean? Many citizens around the world regard this collection of information with deep suspicion, seeing the data flood as nothing more than an intrusion of their privacy. But there is strong evidence that big data can play a significant economic role to the benefit not only of private commerce but also of national economies and their citizens. Our research finds that data can create significant value for the world economy, enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of companies and the public sector and creating substantial economic surplus for consumers. For instance, if US health care could use big data creatively and effectively to drive efficiency and quality, we estimate that the potential value from data in the sector could be more than $300 billion in value every year, two-thirds of which would be in the form of reducing national health care expenditures by about 8 percent. In the private sector, we estimate, for example, that a retailer using big data to the full has the potential to increase its operating margin by more than 60 percent. In the developed economies of Europe, we estimate that government administration could save more than €100 billion ($149 billion) in operational efficiency improvements alone by using big data. This estimate does not include big data levers that could reduce fraud, errors, and tax gaps (i.e., the gap between potential and actual tax revenue).
译文：数据量激增本身是一个全球现象，但它是意味着什么呢？全球范围内有许多人对这种信息收集持深深的怀疑态度，认为数据泛滥只不过是对他们隐私的侵犯。但有证据表明，大数据不仅惠及商业，而且在国民经济及民生方面，都会发挥重要的经济价值。我们的研究发现，数据可以为世界经济创造巨大的价值、提高公司和公共部门的生产力和竞争力，并为消费者创造显著的经济附加值。例如，如果美国医疗保健行业能够创造性地、有效地使用大数据来提高效率和质量，我们估计，该行业从数据获取的潜在价值可能超过每年3000亿美元，其中三分之二将体现在减少了国民医疗保健约8％的支出。在商业世界里，我们估计，例如，充分使用大数据的零售商有可以将其营业利润率增加60％以上。在欧洲发达经济体，我们预计政府行政部门可以通过使用大数据，在运营效率提升上节省1000亿欧元以上（1 940亿美元）。这个估计不包括大数据杠杆带来的收益，比如减少欺诈、错误和税收差距（即潜在税收和实际税收收入之间的差距）。
注：这样的速度，差不多要15篇才能翻译完，英语不好没办法，慢慢来吧。其实大部分是Google翻译的，只是我让它说的机器话变成了人话。
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