実践ビジネス英語 2016年10月 The Writers’ Workshop

少し遅れましたが10月号です。10月は評論がテーマで長めの文章でした。

文章自体はとても素直なものでしたが、どこかもの悲しげです。「カネと名声に寄生する、恋人や父親。」といったような体言止めの余韻、「同情できない。共感できない。」といった繰り返しで強調されるメッセージの強さが随所にありました。日本語自体は平易なので英語も平易なものを使うようにしましたが、"come apart" でボロボロ崩れるようなニュアンスがあるようで、Amy Warehouse 氏の心が壊れていく様が平易な英熟語にしたことで動きが感じられるような気がして、訳していてすごく悲しい気持ちになりました。

ジャズは全く知識がないので、これを機に Amy Winehouse, Ella Jane Fitzgerald などの歌を聴きながら取り組みました。7月号は翻訳をテーマにした題材でしたが、いろいろな世界を知れるのも翻訳の面白さだと書いてあって、その通りだと感じます。

（更新）

今月も DMM 英会話の先生に見てもらいました。いくつか単語を直してもらいましたが文法は完璧だと言ってもらえました。

日本語が全く分からない先生なので、「こういうことを書き表したい」と言う感じで文章についてコミュニケーションをするのですが、これもまた面白いです。素晴らしいエッセーだねと言っていたので、元の文章の良さも伝えられたと思います。

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There is a movie we can neither take our eyes away from, nor continue watching. It is the documentary that depicts the whole life of Amy Winehouse.

She was a talented jazz singer and promised for success in the future, but she deceased at the age of 27 due to taking excessive amount of drugs and alcohol. People said that "She is nearly as good a singer as Ella Jane Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday". It was not an exaggeration at all.

She got renowned for the big hit of "Rehab", but that was ironically the beginning of her tragedy. Singing in front of hundreds of thousands of people, acquiring tremendous wealth and being stalked even during private time. Although some celebrities can enjoy such freaks, Amy was just a genuine jazz singer who had nothing but music talent. Another tragedy was that her nearest people had hopelessly bad influence on her: her boyfriends and her father, who lived of her wealth and fame...

Under the pressure of the success, she gradually started addicting herself to drugs and alcohol. The way she was coming apart was so weak and foolish that we couldn't feel sympathy or compassion with such a woman.

Generally it is right. However, what do you think if the charm of her songs derives deeply from the human foolishness? What do you think if her songs come from the experience of looking into the bottom of the human weakness?

実践ビジネス英語 2016年9月 The Writers’ Workshop

1ヶ月経つのが早いですね。もう9月号が手元に届きました。

9月号の題材も、8月に引き続き時事解説文章でした。といっても「生涯未婚」という、より身近なテーマで、文体も語り口調なのでだいぶ柔らかい文章でした。理想の自分・将来と現状とのギャップ…未婚問題に限らず、多くの人がその苦しさを抱えていると思います。そんな一種の諦観をうまく英訳できたらいいなと思って取り組みました。

「生活費を稼ぐ」を慣用句の "bring home the bacon" にしましたが、後ろに breadwinner（大黒柱）が来るので食べ物ばかりでしつこかったかもしれません。earn a living の方がスッキリするでしょうか。。 "I would bring home the bacon..." の would に、Yuta-san が理想の結婚生活を思い描く様を込めました。

（追記）

DMM 英会話の先生に聞いて少し修正しました。英語らしくするには、1つのセンテンスをもう少し長くした方がいいということで、日本語でぶつ切りだった文をカンマで繋ぎました。あといくつか言い回しを修正。

DMM 英会話の先生は日本語が話せない方がほとんどなので、英語として意味が取れるかを聞くにはよいですね。勉強になります。

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Lifelong singles

Ten thousand yen a month for a sport gym, three cans of alcohol every day such as shochu soda or happoshu(low-malt beer-like beverage). Yuta-san, who is 39 years old and lives in Kanagawa prefecture, treats himself with them a bit.

Speaking of 39 years old, 60% of people in this age are married. However, Yuta-san does not have a partner, not to mention, he is not married. He says "I would bring home the bacon as a breadwinner, and my wife would save our home as a homemaker. It's my ideal marriage. And I definitely want my children too. But I think it's impossible, as long as I stay at the current job."

His annual income is 2.8 million yen. He has been working as a caregiver since graduation of a vocational college, and now he is a veteran. His workplaces have changed for multiple times every a few years. "We caregivers can hardly get raised even if we're in the same workplace for a long time." As a result, several times of job changing did not help him raise his salary a lot. His current workplace does not offer him a bonus or retirement allowance, so he thinks it's time to quit again.

実践ビジネス英語 2016年8月 The Writers’ Workshop

すっかり夏ですね。雨も多くて、遅れてきた梅雨と夏が同時に来ているような感覚です。

8月号の題材は時事解説文章でした。しばらく The Writers' Workshop に取り組んでいますが、時事問題については初めてな気がします。固めの文章なので動詞も適切なものを選ぶようにしましたが、exploit, expose が頻出してしまいました。expose は disclose や unveil と取り変えられるかなと思いつつ、ニュアンスがどう違うのかが分かりません。解答を見て語彙を増やそうと思います。

粉飾決済は window-dressing と言うそうですね。和訳していると単語の勉強にもなって良いです。

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The Panama Papers are shaking the whole world. It exposed the suspicion that renowned people and major companies around the world concealed their asset and escaped from the imposition of taxes.

Some countries and areas impose no tax, or their tax rate is extremely low. They are called tax havens.

The Panama Papers have disclosed the names of politicians exploiting tax havens and made them answerable for political ethics. Gunnlangsson, who has already resigned the premier of Iceland, and Cameron, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom have admitted that they had exploited it through their relatives, etc. China's president Xi Jinping and Russia's president Putin are also being accused.

It is not illegal itself to manage asset and deal with finance through tax havens. However, OECD calculated that an amount of corporate tax that is lost by exploiting tax havens would be at least $240 billions a year, if it is paid appropriately. This amount is as much as one tenth of the corporate tax all over the world.

Corporate information of tax havens is hardly open to public, so tax bureaus cannot easily investigate it. This raises criticism that tax havens are exploited for tax evasion, window–dressing, money laundering and fund pool for terrorism, and it has been a big problem to strengthen the restriction.

実践ビジネス英語 2016年7月 The Writers’ Workshop

7月号はエッセイです。

音楽雑誌「ユリイカ」が題材だと日本語の文章がとても情緒的な分、英訳しづらいです。久しぶりに取り組みたくない文章でしたがw なるべく続けていきたいので適当でもいいかと思って訳してみました。

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Let's think about tiny happiness of people who work as a translator. They, especially on literature, seem to be in such a lucky place to have an privilege. They can stand by a writer most closely aside, behind or whatever. They look as if they were a couple or two siblings alone. If a translator spends all his or her time on the work for years, they as good as take each other for better or for worse. They are doing a three-legged race, well, more than that! They are one person together and the person plays two roles.

During this time, the translator can undergo funny "metamorphosis". It's a reward that sustains the work which doesn't pay off considering its hardship. For myself, I translated some novels of the writer of "The Metamorphosis" . In those days, there were a lot of scenes of Kafka: he was writing smoothly, agonizing, pondering with his pen down on his desk... On every scene, I stood by, witnessed and even became Kafka himself.

If I was asked for my name during the work at that time, I would possibly answer in a whisper, "I am Franz Kafka".

実践ビジネス英語 2016年6月 The Writers’ Workshop

6月はエッセーです。やや長めでしたが平易な文章で取り組みやすかったです。

兼高さんの、「世界の旅」というテレビ番組を中心とした人生の振り返りのエッセーです。元の日本語自体も淡々としていますが、どこか哀愁漂う素敵な文章です。過去の出来事が今の兼高さんを成しているようなニュアンスが出ればよいなと思い、現在完了を意識して使いました。

列挙が多いので、and ばかりになってしまいました。こればかりは元の文章がそうなので、仕方ないでしょうか…。

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Traveling around the world makes me feel as if I were watching an endless movie.

Countries and humans are changing all the time along the waves of the times. The speed of the changes is not the same, but they never stop. That's why traveling never bores us and I'd like to keep watching the endless movie.

I was born in Kobe in 1928 (Showa 3).

There were the war and the defeat, and I experienced the tectonic shift of the values around the world. Then I studied in the U.S., came back to Japan because of illness, began working as a journalist, etc...

My life over 80 years has a variety of changes and I have encountered a lot of events, but when I review it, I still feel the heaviness of the TV program "KAORU KANETAKA in Hopping Around The World" (abbr. "Hopping Around The World" below). This TV program had continued for indeed 31 years from 1959 to 1990.

I played many roles in the program. For example, an interviewer on the spots, a coordinator, a producer and a director at the same time and a narrator. So I spent a half of each year abroad and 99% of my life then in this program. Through "Hopping Around The World", I've learned how to live and work, and the way to interview and understand the world. It was definitely a school of human life for me.

I was 31 years old when the program started, and it ended when I was 62.

実践ビジネス英語 2016年5月 The Writers’ Workshop

今月は短めの紀行文です。凝った表現が少なめで取り組みやすかったです。

日本語を訳す時、which の継続用法が便利で多用してしまう癖があることに気がつきました。時間の流れが表せて便利なのですが、使い過ぎな気もしていて… 回答と見比べて、より自然な訳になるようにしたいです。

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Everyone would think Italians as bright Latin people who eat pasta, take some wine and talk a lot with full of gestures.

In fact, when we walk in towns in Italy, we can see them chat cheerfully and some people come to talk to us travelers with friendly smile (actually, some of them are merchants), which makes us realize that Italian people are cheerful and talkative.

However, when we say "Italian people", it covers a lot. Some of them are reticent and others are thoughtful.

The land of Italy is 75% of that of Japan, which is composed of a boot-shaped peninsula thrusting from the European continent into Mediterranean Sea, and some islands.

The peninsula of Italy has 1,300 kilometers from north to south, which causes differences between the north and the south in the climate, the geography and their personalities. Economic disparity is also big and has been a pain in the neck in Italy.

実践ビジネス英語 2016年4月 The Writers’ Workshop

2016年4月号は「紀行文」が題材でした。

「若い夫婦が、おそろいの帽子に…自動車よりも楽しそうに見えます」という文章が非常に長く、and がいくつあっても足らなそうだったので、Imagine ... で始めて、最後に問いかける形にしてみました。

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Countrysides in Paris are very beautiful. The color of green there is so vivid.

Every farmhouse, even if it's small, has flower pots with red flowers beside windows and rambling roses creep their walls.

It's like a fairyland. Many people from Paris rush to such a bright countryside by car, bicycle and motorcycle on Saturday and Sunday. Because most of them live in an apartment and they cannot see the sun, when husbands leave for work, wives hurriedly do the things, prepare something like a buggy, woolen yarn, cloths for knitting and some books and then go out to a nearby park.

They bask in the sunshine in the afternoon until the early evening, with letting their children play outside there.

A car is so expensive, but motorcycle is easy to acquire. Imagine a young couple drives speedily on a countryside's road by a motorcycle, with wearing matching hats, sweaters and short pants. The husband holds the handgrips tightly and the wife sits behind him with acting big. Don't you think it's much more fun than by a car?

Because most Parisians think transportation expenses seriously, they usually have a bicycle.