実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (11/17,18)
こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 15のテーマは、‘Networking Conversations’（ネットワーキングの会話）でした。Vignetteのはじめ3回分では、人脈作りのイベントなどでどのような話をするのがふさわしいか、また、フォローアップの大切さなどが話題になり、後の2回分では図書館の役割が話題になりました。
“Talk the Talk”では、Heatherさんのnetworking eventでの体験や心がけていることなどについて話されています。
Networking Conversations
（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）
S: Our current vignette is about networking including how to get the conversational ball rolling at networking events.
What do you do in those situations, Heather?
H: Well, if I’m talking to a fellow expat, I usually start out with questions like “What brought you to Japan?” or “Where are you from originally?”
These always allow for an endless stream of follow-up questions: “Did you study Japanese before you came here?”, for example, or “Do you think you’ll be here long-term?” and so on.
I have to confess, I agree with Salmans about the weather.
That’s not only dull; it’s a bit of a dead end, conversation-wise.
You can exchange statements like “The weather’s finally cooling down, isn’t it?” and “Yes, it is. It feels nice,” but where do you go from there?
Cue the awkward silence.
S: Alvarez recommends opening up about oneself but not getting too personal.
H: And that should go for the questions we ask, as well as the things we reveal about ourselves.
I was at a reception once and was abruptly asked if I was happy being married to a Japanese man.
By a person I’d literally known for about 15 minutes.
I’m pretty sure I said yes, but I was so stunned at the question, it’s hard to remember.
I’d also avoid jokes and one-liners.
Jokes can be difficult, especially in a cross-cultural situation, and quipping can feel artificial, like we’re putting on a performance.
I also had to deal with that, at a party once.
I was essentially chased around the room by a guy who turned every single sentence into a one-liner.
It was very annoying and I kept trying to move away to get in the conversations with other people, but he kept following me.
S: That sounds aggravating. Any other things you do or don’t do at such events?
H: I try to focus on questions that don’t bring yes or no answers.
Something like “Do you study any traditional Japanese arts?” might be a dead end―that thread is over if the other person just says no.
I think it’s better to ask something more open-ended, such as “What do you like to do in your spare time?”
S: How can we avoid being a wallflower?
H: I’d say remind ourselves not to be afraid of failure, language-wise or otherwise-wise.
Even if our English or Japanese isn’t perfect, the other person will probably understand, and certainly appreciate the effort we’re making.
And even if the conversation doesn’t flourish in terms of subject, that can teach us what to avoid.
We learn what kind of approaches tend to wither on the vine.
S: The vignette also talks about the importance of following up on initial encounters.
H: Definitely. We should follow up quickly and well in advance of possibly needing their help in some way.
Not only is a person likely to forget us if we don’t get in touch soon, we’ll come across as mercenary and selfish if we only contact them when we want something.
I like to contact people and set up lunch together.
It’s cheaper than meeting for dinner for one thing and much less time-consuming.
お読み下さり、ありがとうございます♪
実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (10/27,28ほか)
こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 14のテーマは、‘Making Friends After 30’（30歳からの友達づくり）でした。Vignetteでは、友人を交通事故で亡くしたという主人公へのさまざまなお悔みの表現や、友情に関する賢人の言葉もポイントだったように思います。親しい友達をつくるための3つの要因も話題になりました。
“Talk the Talk”では後半でHeatherさんの友人関係について話されています。
Making Friends After 30（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）
S: Now, our current vignette starts with Ueda talking about a personal tragedy: the loss of his good friend, Shuzo, in a traffic accident.
Have you ever lost someone close to you, Heather?
H: No, I haven’t. I’ve known people who passed away, but they’ve almost all been friends of friends or relatives of friends or just acquaintances―no one that I’ve personally been close to.
Must be terrible. I suppose no one can really know until it happens to them.
S: One source of Ueda’s grief is his belief that people don’t really make close friends after thirty.
And therefore, Shuzo was one of his last true friends.
Would you agree with that?
H: Well, there are so many factors involved in making friends, it’s hard to say.
Two of my closest friends are people I met in college: a Japanese woman who I did a language exchange with, and the younger sister of my college boyfriend.
We’ve kept in touch all these years, about 25 years now.
But I have made a few close friends here in Japan, and some of them I met from my 30s on.
That may be partly due to the atmosphere conducive to confiding in each other that Salmans talks about.
They’re also foreigners living in Japan, which supports a bond between us.
We understand and can share the various benefits and concerns of living in a foreign country.
S: Are there any factors that work against friendships in the expat community?
H: There is the tendency for people to leave after a certain while.
I’ve heard it said that foreigners in Japan tend to stay here five years, 10 years or forever.
I’ve had to say goodbye to a number of people over the years, and though we keep up somewhat through social media, it’s just not the same as regularly going shopping together or meeting for lunch or drinks….
S: Nurturing a friendship is very important, isn’t it?
H: Yes. I will confess to losing a couple of friends because I didn’t take the time to nurture our relationship.
It wasn’t their fault, it was mine; I let emails go unanswered too long, or didn’t return phone calls promptly, and they moved on.
We’re all busy, but if we value a friendship, we have to devote some time to it.
It’s what we do not what we say that matters and I didn’t walk the walk.
S: The group also talks about how friendship can benefit your health.
H: Absolutely true. No doubt about it.
I just had evidence of this a few days before our recording this conversation.
A work friend of mine and I went out shopping together during our lunch hour.
We visited some baking goods stores and had a great time, looking at different cookie cutters, cake pans…
By the time we finished and returned to the office, we both felt wonderfully refreshed and happy despite the blazing heat of the day.
Now, baking itself was surly part of that; I really enjoy baking and it was fun to look at all the different items in the stores.
But I think what really made the day was spending it with each other―sharing the joy of finding new things and showing them to each other, talking about the different cakes and cookies we wanted to make.
お疲れさまでした♪
記憶の文学
こんにちは。ノーベル文学賞を受賞されたカズオ・イシグロ氏をめぐっては、幼稚園の担任の先生までコメントを求められるという熱狂ぶりでございました。残念ながら作品を読んだことがありませんので、何も語れずほんとうに残念な私・・・。
去年、映画「日の名残り」を観始めて30分ほどで、気軽に観てはいけない気がして、後で観ようと思いつつそのままになっていました。この機会に原作を読みたいと思うのですが、「世界とつながっているという幻想的な感覚にひそむ深淵（the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world）をあらわにした」がちらついて、本当の深淵が見えないんじゃないかと（笑）。ゆっくり、読みます。
受賞報道の前、2015年3月の米誌The New Yorkerのインタビュー記事”Lost Toys and Flying Machines: A Talk with Kazuo Ishiguro”の中で、カズオ・イシグロ氏が記憶と喪失について話されている所が興味深かったので引用（と試訳）します。
15歳までは日本に帰国する可能性があったこと、子供時代や自身についての概念は、離れて長い年月を経た後も日本とつながっていたことに触れ、
“It was loss in a melancholy sense, not a traumatic sense," he said. "I looked away for a moment and then it wasn’t there.”
（「メランコリーな意味での喪失であって、トラウマ的なものではなかった。ほんの少しよそ見をしていたら、もうなくなっていた」）
こうした喪失の体験が、記憶と悲しみに特別な関心を持つ土台になったという見方について、イシグロ氏はよくわからないとしています。
“I think big-headline things like ‘This guy came from this country to this country at this age,’ they may have an effect. But it’s just as likely to be that I had a toy given to me at a certain age, and I was really longing to play with it, and then I lost it or something.”
「『こいつはこの国からこの国へこの年齢の時に来た』というような、マスコミが取り上げやすい話には効果があるかもしれない。だが、こういうようなことだと思う―ある年齢でおもちゃを与えられ、それで遊びたいと強く思い続けていて、そしてそれを失くしてしまったというような」
そして、喪失は誰にでも起こることだと言います。
“We all have to lose,” he added. “You’ve found yourself in a certain position in the world, you build a career—all these things are going to go. There’s a whole world that you perhaps don’t even realize that you love until you’ve lost it.”
「誰も喪失を免れることはできない。世の中でそれなりの地位を得、キャリアを形成する、こういったことのすべてをいずれは失う。失ってしまって初めて、好きだったと気付く世界がある」
2つの作品についても、語り手と記憶の関係に言及されています。まず「日の名残り」について、
“I assumed that the good thing was to finally face up to even your darkest memories, and so the book kind of resolves when the narrator finally comes to terms with the things that he’s suppressed or chooses to misremember.”
「最終的には自分の最も暗い記憶さえ直視することが良いと思ったので、語り手が封印したこと、故意に記憶違いをしていたことに最終的に折り合いをつけた時に、作品はいわば決着する」
「わたしを離さないで」の語り手であるキャシーには次のように語らせています。
“Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly,” she says in the novel. “But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading.”
（彼女は小説の中で「記憶は、それが最も大切なものであっても、驚くほど速く色あせてしまう」と言う。（注：ある臓器提供者が語り手に告げた内容）「でも、私はそうは思わない。私が一番大切にしている記憶は少しも色あせていない」）
この語り手は、記憶を持たない人間はアイデンティティーを持たないも同然（a person without memories is a person without an identity）と考えているのだそうです。
キーワードは、やっぱり「記憶」なんですね。そして、誰もが避けられないという喪失がどのように書かれているのか、それを味わいたいです。美しい英語だと聞きますので、ぜひ原文で読んでみたいと思っています。
本日もお読みくださりありがとうございます♪
May something wonderful happen to you today!
実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (10/13,14)
こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 13のテーマは、‘Ugly Produce’（不ぞろいな農産物）でした。Vignetteでは、大量の食べ物が見た目の悪さで廃棄処分になっていること、そうした「規格外」品を積極的に活用する動きがあることや、食べ物を無駄にしない方法などが話題になりました。”fashionably frugal foodies”（おしゃれに倹約したい食通）という言葉が印象的でした。
“Talk the Talk”では、Heatherさんが、日本で農産物の外観が重視されることについて、また、食べ物の無駄を減らす工夫について具体的に話されています。
Ugly Produce（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）
S: Now our current vignette talks about efforts to sell imperfect foods and vegetables.
How about you, Heather?
Are you O.K. with blemished produce?
H: Sure. Especially since we’re going to peel, cut up and/or cook most of it, anyway.
Even if blemishes do bother us aesthetically, aren’t they going to disappear pretty quick?
It’s understandable to prefer “pretty” foods, I suppose.
The nicer food looks, the more likely we are to assume it’s safe to eat.
And in this day and age, we’ve gotten used to fruits and vegetables looking prefect, so a lot of people would probably feel reluctant to settle for what instinctively feels inferior.
But once they’d gotten over that hump, sampled such produce and realized it was safe, their fundamental attitude would probably change.
Though it must be said, the physical appearance of fruits and vegetables in Japan is lovely.
Especially at the swanky shops that sell gift items.
I remember my mother during one of her first visits, gaping at a pair of perfectly round melons nestled in a beautiful box.
And, of course, gaping at the enormous price they were selling for.
S: Salmans says the handling of uneaten food accounts for about a quarter of America’s water use and that every year forty percent of the food in US isn’t eaten.
H: I’m with Ueda. Those numbers are obscene that they’re hard to believe.
I’ve read some articles about this subject and wasting water isn’t the only environmental issue connected to this problem.
Apparently uneven food also generates methane gas when it decomposes in landfills.
S: Do you take any steps to reduce food waste?
H: Well, in the past, I’ve had a bad habit of buying fruits and vegetables―wanting to eat more healthily―and then forgetting about them until they’re no longer edible.
But a friend of mine recently told me that she cuts up five days’ worth of vegetable snacks every Sunday, stores them in individual containers, and takes one out every workday to munch on at the office.
So I’ve started doing that too.
Not only does it reduce food waste, it keeps me from heading down to the convenience store for a snack in the afternoon.
If I go to the convenience store, more often than not I end up choosing something fattening.
S: Ueda says his mother told him to store leftovers in clear, plastic containers.
H: An excellent idea.
I think I’ll get a few more of those for my house.
We tend to put things in non-transparent bowls and it does make it easy to forget what’s in there until it’s too late to eat it.
I’d also recommend cleaning the fridge regularly, maybe once a week, to make sure things aren’t hiding from us.
How often have we found old items in the back of the fridge so shriveled up it’s hard to even identify what they were in the first place.
S: Anything else?
H: We should work to reduce non-food kitchen waste as well.
If nothing else, by getting reusable shopping bags to cut down on our enormous use of plastic bags.
That too must yield some crazy numbers.
If I got three plastic bags a day five days a week, which seems very easy to do, times 52 weeks, that’s 780 plastic bags a year.
And that’s just for me.
Multiply that by all the people living in Tokyo and ....yikes!
お疲れさまでしたー。
実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (9/29,30)
こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 12のテーマは、‘Staying Sharp’（脳をシャープに）でした。Vignetteでは、物忘れと老化、さらには認知症の予防が話題になりました。物忘れの理由の1つは脳の記憶領域の不足―情報の詰め込み過ぎだということです。何をunloadしましょうか・・・。
“Talk the Talk”では後半でHeatherさんがsuperager（スーパーエイジャー）について興味深いお話をされています。スーパーエイジャーを対象にした研究で、「若い脳」を得る方法の1つが判明したということです。
Staying Sharp
（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）
S: Well, our current vignette starts with Ueda Shota noticing a string on Steve Lyons’ finger, which Lyons says is a memory jogger.
Do you ever do anything like that, Heather?
H: That sounded so sweetly analogue to me, took me back to the days before our smartphone calendars and alarms and such.
Long ago, before I was married, I used to put a ring on my left-hand ring finger when I needed to remember something.
I usually didn’t wear a ring on that finger then, so it felt unnatural and I would think to myself, “Why have I got this on…oh right, I need to do X.”
It was pretty effective, I found.
After I got married, and before I got my smartphone, I would put a ring on one of my index fingers.
S: Ueda and Lyons say that forgetfulness is often the result of information overload, not just aging.
We have so much to do and think about something’s bound to give.
H: That is proved true every day, I think, by every mother and father on earth.
I’ve had so many things to remember and do since my daughter came along, that I seem to forget things every single day.
I get out the door with her in the morning thinking, “I’m on fire today, I got everything and we’re on time…and oh dang it, I forgot the blanket and her apple slices and my own purse!”
If we can’t reduce the number of things on our plate―and sometimes we just can’t―then we should be good to ourselves and remember, ha ha, that nobody’s perfect and ultimately everything important will get done at some point.
S: The vignette also talks about the brain fitness classes being take by Collins’ aunt.
H: I read a fascinating article late last year about a group of people dubbed “superagers.”
They were elderly people whose memory and attention were said to be on par with those of healthy, active 25-year-olds.
The author of the article said she and her fellow researchers were still examining what kind of activities might improve people’s chances of staying mentally sharp in their golden years, but that working hard at something was the best answer they had at the moment.
Apparently, activity has been seen to increase in critical brain regions when people do difficult tasks, physical or mental.
S: Like learning a new language?
H: Exactly. The researchers said that when there was more activity in the brain regions in question, people tended to feel bad, as in tired or frustrated.
The superagers soldier on past those bad feelings, and according to studies, get a more youthful brain as a reward.
So, "work hard enough to feel some ‘yuck’", she said.
S: What would involve some yuck for you?
H: Learning a musical instrument, probably.
I’ve only tried that briefly a few times in my life, and it didn’t come easily at all.
So, maybe if I tried again to learn piano or the violin, that would help keep me sharp mentally.
I’ve always admired people who can play the violin especially.
お読みくださり、ありがとうございました♪
猫は方円の器に従う
こんにちは。お久しぶりです。先日発表されたイグノーベル賞、面白かったですね。ニュースでは日本人受賞者（生物学賞）の虫の話ばかりが報道されていたようですが、私は断然、イグノーベル物理学賞にはまりました。（本日長文です）
「ネコは固体であると同時に液体であることが可能か」というexcitingなテーマでフランスのマーク・アントワン・ファルダン氏が受賞。なぜはまったかというと、以前このような記事を書いていたからです。やっぱり！
イグノーベル賞セレモニーの様子はこちらです。物理学賞は14分後あたりから。
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yNwLfRpNHhI
（プレゼン持ち時間が終了すると、Miss Sweetie Pooちゃんに”Please stop, I’m bored.”（もうやめて、退屈だわー）を連呼されるお約束です。）
そして、Guardian紙に9月14日掲載の”Solid and liquid cats, didgeridoos and cheese disgust scoop Ig Nobel awards”（固体と液体のネコ、ディジュリドゥおよびチーズ嫌いがイグノーベル賞を獲得）から関連部分を拾い読み（訳してみました）。
"The theoretical treatise, entitled On the Rheology of Cats, argues that cats can technically be regarded as simultaneously solid and liquid due to their uncanny ability to adopt the shape of their container."
（「ネコのレオロジー（流動学）について」と題された論文では、ネコは容器の形状に沿う不可解な能力を持つことから、固体であり同時に液体であるとみなすことが理論的には可能だとしている）
写真は論文掲載のRheology Bulletinより。
'Marc-Antoine Fardin, of the Université Paris Diderot and sole author of the cat paper, was inspired by an internet thread featuring absurd photos of cat-filled containers, ranging from sweet jars to sinks. "This actually raised some interesting questions about what it means to be a fluid and so I thought it could be used to highlight actually serious topics at the centre of the field of rheology, the study of flows," he said.'
（このネコ論文の単著者である、パリ・ディドロ大学のマーク・アントワン・ファルダン氏は、お菓子のビンからシンクにいたるまで、ネコがなみなみと入ったさまざまな容器のくだらない写真をまとめたインターネットのスレッドに着想を得た。ファルダン氏は「実にこれがきっかけとなって流体であることはどういうことかという興味深い問いが生まれ、レオロジー分野の中心にある実に重いテーマを浮き彫りにするのに使えそうだと考えた」と述べた）
レオロジーなんて知りませんでした・・・。物質の変化と流動を扱う学問分野だそうです。
'Fardin’s subsequent paper, published in the Rheology Bulletin in 2014, explores how to calculate a cat’s "Deborah number", a special term used to describe fluidity, and speculated on how cats might behave if subjected to the 'tilted jar experiment."'
（その後2014年にRheology Bulletinで発表されたファルダン氏の論文では、ネコの「デボラ数」―流動性を示す専門用語―の計算法を探求し、「傾斜ビン実験」の被験者となったネコたちがどのようにふるまうかを推測した）
だんだん物理学的になってきました。ここで「傾斜ビン」と訳した”tilted jar”ですが、画像検索すると
このような写真が出ます。日本にも似たものがありますが、何と呼ぶんだろうと調べてみると、その名も猫瓶！猫のような形状だからというのが由来だそうです。日本人、すごくない？
'“If you take a timelapse of a glacier on several years you will unmistakably see it flow down the mountain,” he said. “For cats, the same principle holds. If you are observing a cat on a time larger than its relaxation time, it will be soft and adapt to its container, like a liquid would.”'
（「氷河を数年にわたって低速度撮影すれば、それが山を流れ落ちる様子を確実に目にすることができる。ネコにも同じ原理が当てはまる。ネコを緩和時間以上の長時間にわたって観察していると、やがてネコは軟化し、液体と同様に容器の形状に沿う」と同氏は語った）
後半のrelaxation timeは、科学の用語である「緩和時間」ですが、ネコが「くつろいでいる時間」と掛けてありますよね。ここは原文ならではの面白さ。
さて、器に入ったネコたちは幸せそうな上、見ている私たちまで和やかな気持ちにしてくれます。「水は方円の器に従う」と言いますが、「器に沿う」ことは幸せに生きるコツかも・・・ネコが身をもって教えてくれているような気がします。
よろしければ（笑）
Bormioli Rocco パンドラ ジャー 3.87770.MC8
posted with amazlet at 17.09.22
May something wonderful happen to you today!
追伸：英国ファンの読者さま、応援下さりありがとうございます♪
実践ビジネス英語 ディクテーション (9/15,16)
こんにちは。NHKラジオ「実践ビジネス英語」”Talk the Talk”のディクテーションです。
Lesson 11のテーマは、‘Doctors on Board’（機内の医師）でした。Vignetteでは、フライト中に医療を要する事態の例や、機内での呼びかけに医師が名乗り出ない理由、テロ攻撃の可能性などが話題になりました。やや身近な話題でした。
“Talk the Talk”では、Heatherさんが体験された機内でのemergencyなどについて話されています。
Doctors on Board（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）
S: In our current vignette, Salmans describes a medical emergency he witnessed on a plane.
Have you ever seen anything like that, Heather?
H: I have, actually, and it was one of the most frightening incidents of my life.
It happened way back in 1992, when my mother and I were flying home after my college graduation.
There was a baby several rows ahead of us who had been crying, but very abruptly, the crying stopped.
They were serving an in-flight meal at the time, as I recall, and all of a sudden one of the cabin attendants grabbed the baby and started whacking it on the back.
That was when we all realized, to our horror, that the baby couldn’t breathe.
S: Was the cabin attendant able to help?
H: I couldn’t see clearly―her back was to me, but it didn’t seem to be working.
I remember I had my hands clasped in front of me and I was literally praying as hard as I could, “Please Lord, save the baby.”
I remember the entire cabin was completely silent; there wasn’t a sound apart from what the cabin attendant was doing.
And then, an older woman who was sitting across the aisle from the baby and its family reached out her arms and said in a very commanding voice, “Give me the baby.”
It was the voice of authority―I thought later she must have been a doctor or a nurse―and the cabin attendant gave her the baby without a moment’s hesitation.
The older lady whacked the baby on the back two or three times, and praise be, out popped a little piece of bread.
The baby started crying again, very loudly, and it was the most wonderful sound I’d ever heard.
S: Thank goodness. The parents must have been in agony.
I hope you yourself have never suddenly been taken ill on a plane.
H: Luckily, no. One time I had a searing pain in my ears from the air pressure, but that went away almost immediately.
No airsickness has been the worst ailment I’ve suffered from planes.
I eventually grew out of it, but I used to get nauseous every time I flew in a plane.
When I was a child, I traveled quite a lot with my parents, and every time we boarded a plane, my mother would ask the cabin attendant for extra sick bags in advance.
Sometimes the attendant would say, “Oh, no, don’t worry. We’re expecting a very smooth ride today.”
But my mother would just grimace and say, “Unfortunately, that doesn’t make a difference. We really do need those bags.”
S: Have you ever rendered the first aid yourself in an emergency?
H: Not, really. I’ve been present at a few emergencies on trains―once I helped the staff move a man off a train and onto a stretcher, for example.
He was very dizzy and couldn’t stand on his own.
But I’ve never really been the one providing the key aid.
I did take a class once at my company; I learned things like how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and use a defibrillator, but I’ve never been in a position to apply those skills.
And it’s been quite a few years now since I took the course, so I probably should take a refresher.
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