実践ビジネス英語ディクテーション (7/28,29)

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 8のテーマは、‘Heads Up!’（頭を上げて！）でした。Vignetteではいわゆる「歩きスマホ」のために世界中で人々が顔を上げずに歩いていること、その危険性などが話題になりました。ドイツではこうした人々を指すsmombie（スモンビ：smartphone+zombie）という新語が作られたそうです。
“Talk the Talk”ではHeatherさんが、スマートフォンで映画を見ながら歩く人であることが発覚します・・・。

Heads Up! （S: 杉田敏先生　H: Heather Howardさん）

S: Our current vignette talks about smombies; the people glued to their smartphones as they’re walking around.

H: Yes, and like Grace, I too must confess to being a smombie at times.
About four years ago, on this show, I said that I’d stopped looking at my smartphone while walking.
Well, since then, I have fallen back into bad habits, I have to admit it.
I don’t text while I’m walking―again like Grace, if I need to text someone I moved to the side of the street or wherever and stop.
But sometimes I’m so engrossed in an e-book I’m reading, or a movie I’m watching, that my eyes are glued to the phone even as I’m going along a station platform or a city street.
I am embarrassed to admit that I have nearly collided with people a few times.
I really must commit myself, once again, here and now, to stop doing that.
I don’t let my daughter do it.
Sometimes she watches movies or plays games on my phone in her stroller, but when she gets out to walk along the street or go up some stairs, I always take the phone away.
I tell her, “Don’t use the phone when you’re moving, honey. It’s dangerous,”―advice that I obviously need to give myself, too.

S: Yes. Smombies not only put themselves and others at the risk of accidents, they may miss out on interesting things around them.

H: Absolutely. I read an article the other day in which the author got a colleague to dress like a character from a very famous science fiction movie during the morning commute time in San Francisco.
Normally, that would draw a lot of people’s attention, but when the journalist asked a number of smombies whether they’d seen the character, many of them hadn’t.
This character is distinctive; it looks like a giant Yorkshire terrier.
Our vision has to be pretty compromised if we don’t notice that.

S: The vignette mentions that portable electronic gadgets are blamed for ten percent of pedestrian injuries.

H: I’m surprised it’s not more, actually.
And we should remember that cars on the road aren’t the only danger; a collision with a bicycle moving along the sidewalk or tripping because we fell off a curb, those could cause very serious injuries as well.
I know a woman who broke her ankle going off a curb.

S: What about the “text neck” the vignette mentions?
Do you get that?

H: I do, especially the base of my neck in the back.
It often feels very tight on both sides.
Nearly every day I find myself kneading that area.
I went for acupuncture recently and felt much better afterward.
But obviously it’s better to ease the strain on that area in the first place: treat the cause, not the symptoms.
Especially since there is some scary information out there about what bad posture can do to us.
I read that it can lower lung capacity by up to 30 percent and has been connected to problems like depression and heart disease.
And endlessly staring at our smartphones can’t be good for our eyes, either.
Given how much time modern people also tend to spend looking at computer screens, we really should make a conscious effort to rest our eyes when we can.

本日もお読みくださり、ありがとうございました♪