実践ビジネス英語ディクテーション(aired 5/15,16)

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。
5月前半のテーマは”Sizing Up the Millennials”でした。2000年世代の人たちは、ほかのどの年齢層の人たちよりも悪く言われているようで、そうした誤解を解くための検証（？）がvignetteの中心になりました。

Sizing Up the Millennials
（S: 杉田敏先生 H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Now our current vignette talks about Millennials and how they’re often unfairly criticized. Carmen Garcia, for example, says she’s tired of hearing how she and her contemporaries are self-absorbed and lazy.
Do you know any Millennilas who feel the same way, Heather?

H: Yes, I was just talking about this issue with a twenty-something woman I know in New York.
I asked her if she felt that Millennials get a bum rap, and if so, how, and she immediately leapt onto the topic.
She talked about how Millennials are often criticized for being lazy and living at home, but how are we supposed to do otherwise, she said, when students are graduating from college with enormous amounts of debt and the bad job market forces many of them to work for low wages or take unpaid internships so they can gain experience?
Many of the people she knows in their twenties are living paycheck to paycheck.
She also pointed to the fact that gentrification has made city life very expensive.

S: Does she live at home herself?

H: She does. Primarily to save money from what she told me.
I also asked her about Millennials’ particular strengths; what things they don’t get enough credit for.
In addition to gay rights, she felt that her generation was much more tolerant and socially conscious about things like women’s rights and environmental issues.
She also said they care a great deal about where they work, and about being fulfilled in their jobs.

S: So what qualities have you admired in the Millennials you’ve worked with?

H: I’ve always been impressed by their digital fluency.
They’re often a great help when something goes wrong with our computers, or we don’t know how to perform some function―they get us old fogeys out of trouble as easily as we’d dial a phone number.
And they do seem very well-educated, as Umemura points out.
The Millennials I’ve known read an extensive amount of information on the Internet and are well acquainted with world events and issues.

S: What about things like the constant use of social media that Steve Lyons mentions?
Have you come across that?

H: I have, sometimes.
But I wonder if they see it like chatting with the person next to them in the office.
As the vignette points out, Millennials have grown up with the Internet and social media, it’s been an integral part of their life since they were children.
So perhaps they don’t view it as being really distracted, or non-present.
And I haven’t seen Millennials using social media when we’re truly busy or deadline’s bearing down.
Our staff from that generation are always focused and diligent when the pressure’s on.

S: Umemura wonders what the next generation would be like. Any predictions?

H: More hopes than predictions. I hope that a college education doesn’t become a privilege only for the rich, taking us backward from the highly educated Millennials.
And I hope that our existing technology and whatever comes next encourage initiative and creative application among young people, not just passive absorption.

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