Xếp được bàn ăn là cả một nghệ thuật. Photo by mali maeder from Pexels
"Set/lay the table" nghĩa là chuẩn bị, bày biện lên bàn ăn [thìa, nĩa, đĩa, bát...]. Nghĩa bóng là khiến kết quả mong muốn xảy ra.
Ví dụ
Since I spend much of my time in the part of our house near the kitchen these days, I often earn at least part of my meals by setting the table according [theo] to the likely menu of the day.
Bill Gates steered [lèo lái] the company through a period of massive growth [tăng trưởng lớn] but also set the table for his successor [người kế nhiệm], Steve Ballmer, to deal with antitrust [chống độc quyền] issues.
It was supposed to be the day to imagine the possibilities [khả năng]: all the tantalizing [trêu ngươi] matchups, the favorites, and, of course, the underdogs [kẻ thua] so many underdogs that would pop up on the 68 lines to set the table for America over the next three weeks.
A PUnS-based robot only made six mistakes [lỗi] in 20,000 attempts [lần thử] at setting the table, even when the researchers [nhà nghiên cứu] threw in complications [phức tạp] like hiding a fork -- the automaton [máy tự động] just finished the rest of the tasks and came back to the fork when it popped up.
Thu Phương
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