【句子】Ed's been after me to trim the fat.   【Desperate Housewives S02E09】

【发音】/edz/ /biːn/ /ˈɑːf.tə/ /ˈæf.tər/ /miː/ /tʊ/ /trɪm/ /ðə/ /fæt/

【发音技巧】been after连读；

【翻译】埃德一直催着我精简冗员。

【适用场合】

今天我们学习一下trim the fat的用法，本来trim有“修剪、整理”这样的含义，这个短语字面的意思是“切掉肥肉”，稍微引申一下，可以理解成“削减开支；优化裁员；精简机构”这样的意思；对应的英文解释是to excise or discard elements that are seen as unnecessary；

eg: Trim the fat off the meat before cooking it.

烹饪前先把肉上的肥油剔掉。

eg: The new CEO is trimming the fat by cutting unnecessary travel.

新上任的CEO正在通过削减不必要的差旅来精简开支。

eg: After the merger, the company had to trim the fat and let go of redundant staff.

在合并之后，公司不得不精简人员，裁掉了冗余的员工。

eg: We need to trim the fat from our reporting process. It's taking too long.

我们需要优化报告流程，去掉那些繁琐的环节，太耗时了。

eg: We need to trim the fat from our household budget - no more eating out.

我们需要削减家庭预算中的不必要开支，不能再下馆子了。

【尝试翻译以下句子，并留言在文章留言区】

Your story is good and your writing is solid, but you need to trim the fat a bit. There are just so many characters and plot points that aren't meaningful.