実践ビジネス英語ディクテーション (aired 4/24,25)

こんにちは。実践ビジネス英語Talk the Talkコーナーのディクテーションです。
番組の4月後半のテーマは、‘A Quiet Environment’（静かな環境）でした。Vignetteでは、製品騒音コンサルタントという方が登場し、身近な騒音が話題になりました。最近のニュースでも「子どもの声は騒音？」という特集があったばかりで、タイムリーな内容でした。
”Talk the Talk”では、Heatherさんが美容師さんやタクシードライバーさんに話しかけられる憂うつについて、また、身近な騒音にまつわるエピソードを語られます。

A Quiet Environment（S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Our current vignette talks about the difficulty of finding peace and quiet in modern life. Bill Nissen and visiting product noise consultant Sandra Graham talk about their noisy experiences in a barber shop and a taxi, for example.
Now, Heather, have you had similar experiences?

H: Certainly. The hardest times are when we are tired or stressed, aren’t they?
We just want to veg out in our seat. But the driver or the hairdresser insists on keeping up a conversation.
And we don’t want to be rude, so we force ourselves to respond when we’re actually thinking, “Oh, please, I just need a few moments of peace.”
I’ve often thought how nice it would be if hairdressers and taxi drivers and such had a set practice of asking at the start, “Do you feel like talking today?”
If that could be a standard question, like “How much should I trim today?” or “Do you want me to take the freeway?” then we could say with no guilt, “I think I’d like some quiet time today.”
Or maybe they could copy supermarkets and their “I don’t need a plastic bag today” cards. Have a “I’d like to be quiet” card that customers could pass over when they sit down or get in.

S: That might work. Now are there any other times where the noise gets to you?

H: Music in beauty salons and such doesn’t really bother me, especially if they are playing 80’s hits that take me back to my teenage days.
One type of piped-in sound I’m not a fan of is nature sounds, like birds chirping in train stations. It doesn’t mentally transport me to some sylvan dale.
It just makes me even more aware that I’m smack in the middle of an urban jungle and usually on my way to or from work.
Oh, and of course the sound blaring out of some people’s earphones in train cars and elevators sometimes.
Way to force me into your world.

S: And risk their own hearing.

H: Right. A British research organization on deafness has found that one-third of people aged under 35 have experienced ringing in the ears after listening to loud music.
That’s a sign of hearing damage.
I have to admit I’ve never understood why it’s necessary to have the volume that loud.
The earphones are exactly that. They’re in your ears!
People could hear perfectly well at half that volume.

S: Sandra Graham also mentions how computer printers have become quieter with introduction of laser beams and ink-jet drops.

H: They certainly have. Remember those old printers, the ones that printed on paper with holes along the edges?
They were LOUD.
Years ago I bought a new printer for my mother specifically for that reason.
Like me, she’s often slow to adopt new technologies and so she was still using one of those old bam-bam-bam-bam print-head printers.
It was so loud and she was doing so much work in the evenings, the woman in the apartment next door apparently came over to complain.
So, that was my mother’s, I think, early birthday present that year.
An up-to-date ink-jet printer that was quiet as a mouse in comparison.

最後までお読みくださり、ありがとうございました♪