Clerk: Good evening, Mr. Lee and thank you for choosing our airline. We have just discovered that this flight is overbooked. Would you like to volunteer to give up your seat? 晚上好, Lee 先生。欢迎乘坐本公司航班。我们发现航班已经超额预定。您能自愿放弃自已的座位吗?
Mr. Lee: Overbooked? Give up my seat? I don't understand. 超额预定?放弃自已的座位?我不明白。
Clerk: From time to time we have a situation in which there are more passengers than there are seats on the aircraft. That's overbooked. 有时我们会出现乘客比座位多的情况。这就是超额预定。
Mr. Lee: I know what overbooked is, I just don't understand how that could happen? 我知道什么是“超额预定”。我只是不明白怎么会发生这样的事。
Clerk: Actually it's a common practice to overbook, as passengers often don't take their flight as scheduled. Most of the time there is no problem but today, more passengers arrived than we have seats, so we really are overbooked. 其实超额预定是航空公司普遍的做法,因乘客并不一定按计划乘坐航班。多数情况下不会出现问题,但是今天来的乘客比座位多,我们真的超额预定了。
Mr. Lee: So who has to stay behind? 那么谁会走不了而留下呢?
Clerk: Well, first we ask for volunteers. If someone like yourself volunteers, they receive a free round trip ticket to be used within one year. If no one volunteers we just have to select someone. 我们先看看有没有自愿的。自愿的人可以得到一张一年内有效的免费往返票。如果没有人自愿,我们只好指定了。
Mr. Lee: Ok. I'll volunteer. I could use a free ticket! 那好,我自愿放弃。我愿意得到一张免费机票。