可以想象霍夫斯泰德的研究结果将对飞行领域的人们产生怎样重大的影响。

　　What was their great battle over mitigated speech and teamwork all about after all?

　　我们究竟需要在舒缓语气或团队协作方面做出怎样的努力？

　　It was an attempt to reduce power distance in the cockpit.

　　这意味着我们需要降低驾驶舱内的权利距离指数。

　　Hofstede's questions about power distance-"How frequently, in your experience, does the following problem occur: employees being afraid to express the disagreement with their managers?"

　　霍夫斯泰德关于权利距离的提问——“在你的经历中，你遇到过多少次‘雇员因害怕权威而不敢对管理人员表达不同意见’的事情？”

　　It was the very question aviation experts were asking first officers in their dealings with captains.

　　对于飞行专家来说，在问到副驾如何同机长进行沟通时，这是个非常合适的问题。

　　And Hofstede's work suggested something that had not occured to anyone in the aviation world:

　　并且霍夫斯泰德的研究工作提出了任何一位飞行专家从未提出的问题，那就是：

　　that the task of convincing first officers to assert themselves was going to depend an awful lot on their culture's power distance rating.

　　文化的权利距离指数决定了飞行员是否能够说服自己去发表见解。

　　That's what Ratwatte meant when he said that no American would have been so fatally intimidated by the controllers at Kennedy Airport.怀特瓦特也提到了这一点，肯尼迪机场空管员的威慑无法影响任何一位美国人，

　　America is a classic low power-distance culture.

　　因为美国是个低权利距离指数国家。

　　When push comes to shove, Americans fall back on their American-ness,and that American-ness means that you think of the air traffic controller as you're equal.

　　当他们感到有压力时，他们就会对抗。在美国人看来，他们同空管员同样重要。

　　But what country do you find at the other end of the power distance scale? Colombia.

　　但是哪个国家的权利距离指数最高呢？哥伦比亚。

　　In the wake of the Avianca crash, the psychologist Robert Helmreich, who has done more than anyone to argue for the role of culture in explaining pilot behavior,

　　鉴于阿维安卡事件，心理学家罗伯特·荷蒙比任何人都更加强调文化因素在飞机失事原因中的重要性。

　　wrote a brilliant analysis of the accident in which he argued that you couldn't understand Klotz's without first taking into account his nationality,

　　在研究对比了一系列事故后，他写下了大量的分析资料。霍夫斯泰德指出，每种文化都对阶层表现出不同的态度。如果不考虑克鲁兹国籍对此事件的影响，你就无法理解他的行为。

　　that his predicament that day was uniquely the predicament of someone who had a deep and abiding respect for authority. Helmreich wrote:

　　那天他所处的困境，也是所有敬畏权威的人士将会面临的困境。荷蒙写道：