実践ビジネス英語 2017年6月 The Writers’ Workshop

6月は音楽解説で、モーツァルトの音楽についてです。

私もあまりクラシックは詳しくないのですが、改めて聞いてみるとモーツァルトの音楽は優しくてスッと馴染める心地よさがありました。

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Mozart’s music is so miracle. For example, cows produce more milk when they hear it, wine becomes mellow when it is played in a wine cellar, and as a way of psychotherapy, his music is used in almost every hospital and works pretty fine. It lifts us up when we are in love, and it relieves our pain when we lose an important person. Beginners of classic music often start with his music and easily understand it, but most of players and scholars who have spent their lives with music finally choose his works. Eine kleine Nachtmusik and Requiem would echo today around the world.

More than two hundred years have passed since Mozart was born. The genius in the heaven would tell us not to get excited about such a thing and smile with an ironic look above the clouds. As human history lasts, his music continues existing. People who were cold to him while he was alive, now have admitted the value of his works. His talent was too state-of-the-art at that time, but now may enjoy the most affluent times.

Classic music is often shunned because people think it is difficult, corny, or formal… but it is just a prejudice. Mozart’s music doesn’t have such barriers.

実践ビジネス英語 2017年5月 The Writers’ Workshop

4月に引き続き、科学解説です。

重力の歴史のような話で、昔の話が多く「そもそも」「はじめから」などの単語が多かったです。「そもそも」は “in the first place” と訳せるようですが、日本語と同じ文頭だと収まりが悪いなぁと位置を変えたり・・・ そもそも（笑）ニュアンスが同じかどうかも分からないので解答を確認しようと思います。

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When did humans notice the mystery of gravity, and regarded it as an object of scientific research in the first place? It is said that “gravity was found by Newton when he saw an apple falling from a tree”, but it is not the fact. From long ago, humans have been holding a mysterious question why an object fell to a ground, and tried to find the reason.

However, we didn’t think from the beginning that some “power” was there. Aristotle, a philosopher in the ancient Greece, thought an object itself has a property to go back to its original place. As a bird leaving for food returns to its nest, a stone thrown up returns to the original place of the ground.

実践ビジネス英語 2017年4月 The Writers’ Workshop

ちょっと久しぶりです。2月3月は体調面でいろいろあって、そこで週間が途切れてしまいました。課題が溜まってしまっているので英文の細かいところまで気を配れませんが、当面は仕上げることを目標に、また少しずつ再開していきます。

4月は科学解説ということで、astronomer（天文学者）、universer などの単語が出てきました。astronomer は宇宙飛行士の astronaut と似てますね。

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In 1912, Slipher, an astronomer in the US, found some galaxies were moving away from the earth. People didn’t understand what it meant at that time, but later, it was found that every single galaxy in every direction was moving away from the earth. In addition, it was observed that the farer a galaxy was, the faster it was moving away; which means obviously, the universe is expanding. Lemaître, a Belgian astronomer proposed this theory in 1927, and Hubble, an American astronomer also proposed the same one in 1929.

In the American movie “Annie Hall” directed by Woody Allen in 1977, a boy of the main character, Alvy, seemed to have read a book of the Hubble’s theory. Alvy got strongly reluctant because of depression, and said “The universe, actually everything is expanding! Everything will be scattered and terminated. It makes no sense to do homework…”

His mother heard it and cried “What does the universe matter!? You live in Brooklyn, it is never swelling!”

His feeling of “My mon doesn’t understand it at all…” appeared on his face, but he said nothing.

実践ビジネス英語 2017年1月 The Writers’ Workshop

2017年になりました。2016年は無事 The Writers' Workshop を完走できたので、2017年も引き続き頑張りたいと思います。

今月は現代小説がテーマでした。

奇数月は短めの文章が題材で、淡々とした口調でもあったので英訳はしやすかったのですが、「火照る」「燃えさかる」「たくましい」「強烈な」など似たような単語が多く出てくるので、類似語を調べてなるべく同じ単語を使わないようにしました。

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In the night of Bombing of Sendai during World War II, Michiyo was holding Kozo's back desperately, who was running in blazing fire to save her. Warmth from his body, his robustness and smell of his sweat were deeply carved in young Michiyo's heart.

Since then, Kozo has become a significant person for her.

When she thought of him, she always felt a strong heat burning her heart and body.

She was ten and didn't know anything about the relationships between men and women, but that unreasonable feeling governed her at that time.

She forgot him after a while when he had left for Tokyo to study in university.

実践ビジネス英語 2016年12月 The Writers’ Workshop

12月の題材は現代小説でした。原田マハさんの「翼をください」です：

気鋭のストーリーテラー『カフーを待ちわびて』の著者が放つ、強くてせつない、空のロード・ノベル。

ほんとうの自由を求めて飛び立った女性飛行士と、前人未到の世界一周飛行に挑んだ男たちの勇気と友情の物語。長編小説。

歴史の闇に葬られた国産飛行機「ニッポン号」に関する謎の写真を見つけた新聞記者の翔子は、カンザス州アチソンを訪ねる。この辺鄙な町で生まれ、世界へと羽ばたいていったある女性パイロットの軌跡をたどるために。 1939年、史上初めて世界一周飛行を果たしたニッポン号には信じ難い真実が秘められていた――。

翼をください | 原田 マハ |本 | 通販 | Amazon

Amazon のレビューを見ると、読み終えて放心してしまうほどの感動というか、そういうレビューが多くて読んでみたくなります。年末年始に読んでみようかな…

この小説に限らないのですが、翻訳していると、日本語の文章は時制が曖昧だと気づきます。過去形で文章が始まり、気づいたら現在形になっていて、読者が主人公の視点に立って物語を進めていく感覚があります。主語さえ省略されて、読者なのか主人公なのか、そこの線引きすら曖昧になっていく感覚が日本語の素敵なところではないでしょうか。

これが英語だと過去形は過去形で変わらず、過去に思った未来のことは would を使ったりするんですが、助詞の使い方一つで文章がグッと引き締まるのが英語の面白さだと感じます。

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The long, straight road was like an airport runway.

Shoko Aoyama was seeing a reddish-brown vast field in the both sides of the road, with thinking how long this road would continue. She kept pressing on the accelerator and even didn't remember if she turned the wheel, since she left Kansas City's airport by renting a car. The speedometer had been indicating 80 miles an hour. While driving on such an endless road, she felt a strange feeling of floating that she would soon begin to fly in the sky.

It was such a clear and sunny day that she could find the sky so blue even through shades. Shoko was extremely worried about not being able to find any cars passing, but she felt a relief after finding a goods train running on a railroad parallel to her. The train was long; it was running with carrying much over 30 goods cars. Such a train can only run on an area without sharp curves like here.

As she was coming to the junction of Route 59 and Route 45, she carefully turned the wheel. She would soon enter the center of Acheson after 5 miles or so.

She crossed a river on a big bridge, and saw a chimney of a plant over the river which stood giving out gray smoke into the crisp winter sky.

実践ビジネス英語 2016年11月 The Writers’ Workshop

11月号は評論…ということでしたが、スティーヴン・ミルハウザー氏の中編小説「魔法の夜」（英題: Enchanted Night）についてイメージを想起させる評論でした。

文章自体は平易なのですが、物静かな文章で、裏通り、光の束、月明かりなど、光に関する言葉が多く、幻想的な情景が目に浮かびます。英語でもその感覚を出したいなと思い、"sneak into", "gleam", "chase" など動詞を含みのあるものを使ってみました。

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During a night in midsummer when it's hard to sleep well, I can't feel anybody's presence around when I sneak into a street behind an entertainment district. There, I feel an illusion that everybody is sleeping. The separation is big between people in sleep and people keeping the night going on. I take out my mobile phone to see an indication that somebody is awake. I opened PokemonGO even though I cannot play it well, but I get a relief to see a bunch of lights that show people's geolocation, which means they are awake. I was just looking at the lights coming from the mobile phone, and they are continuously gleaming for now.

However, when I can't fall asleep, it may be better to go under the moonlight to chase a strong, bright and universal light without any destination or reason.

I didn't think so until I read "Enchanted Night" by Steven Millhauser, a novelist who won the Pulitzer Prize, and translated by Motoyuki Shibata.

This book is a short novel that describes an ensemble cast who can't fall asleep in a night in August.

DMM Eikaiwa：Advanced Lesson 15 "Cameras"

I used an advanced lesson material for discussing today, and that was about cameras. It has some questions and here are my answers to them. I'll show them to my teacher in the next lesson.

1. Do you have a camera?

Yes, I have two cameras. The one is a distial single-lens reflex camera, and the other is a point-and-shoot digital camera.

2. How often and what for do you use a camera?

I used to take photos as one of my hobbies, but recently I use a camera only when traveling.

3. What is your favorite camera?

I like Canon's cameras, because my father gave me one when I was 15.

4. Do you like taking photographs using a digital camera or film camera?

I like both. I think photographs of a film camera have more sensitiveness than ones of a digital camera. However, I seldom use a film camera recently because using a disital camera is by far easier.

5. Can you imagine your life without a camera?

I cannot, but I imagine such a life would be also wonderful. People who lived in such time would draw pictures to tell the scenary they see to the others, or make a poem to express what they feel at that moment. I guess the people would listen to the others more carefully than today to know what they feel.

6. What do you think about selfies?

I'm not sure, I think it's okay as long as it is used safely.

7. How have cameras changed the world? Do you think the discovery of the camera has improved our lives?

Definitely. We can deliver information much more precisely with cameras. Just a picture can tell us what was happening then and there.

8. Has anyone ever encroached on your privacy using a camera? How often do you let others take photographs of you?

I have never been encroached, but I am sometimes taken photographs of and they are uploaded on the web, like Twitter.

9. The surveillance camera plays a significant role in preventing crimes. But, it can also be seen as an invasion of privacy. What is your opinion about it?

I think the benefit of preventing crimes is important. I heard that some people say installing surveillance cameras on a public street can invade our privacy, but usually the movie of the cameras are strictly restricted to priviledged persons, so they are relatively safe, I think.

10. Do you think photographs can deceive people? Elaborate.

Disguising photographs is not easy, but skilled people can do that with an image processing software (like PhotoShop). It is what some mean mass media sometimes does to make a fuss over celebrities.