熱心な生徒さんの中から、英作文に自分でチャレンジしてみたいので宿題を出してほしいというリクエストがありました。（感心！）
それでは遠慮なくいきますよー。
先日遠出をして、人気の飲食店に出かけました。日曜の昼過ぎで超満員でした。4歳ぐらいのお子さんを連れた若いご夫婦にあぜんとしました。子どもが店内で騒いでもまったく注意しようとしないのです。（北海道新聞 2010/11/11）
がんばってみてください。
英作文チャレンジコーナー（はいはい道新） Hokkaido Newspaper “Readers’ voice column”
朝の通勤電車での出来事です。優先席の前で、つり革につかまっていたら、そこにいたおばあさんが「だんなさん、すわればいいしょ」と言って席を詰めてくれるのです。 優先席にはすでに３人いて余裕は無し。無理をして２０センチほど空けてくれたのですが、大柄な私にはとても座れるスペースではありません。「ご厚意は感謝します」と丁重にお断りしました。 よほどくたびれた顔をしていたのでしょうね。お年寄りに気を使わせてしまって、反省です。（１２月３日）
This is what happened one morning when I was on my way to work by train.
I was clutching my strap in front of the seats marked for the elderly and/or disabled.
A senior lady sitting there spoke to me “Sir, why not sit down with us?” and tried to make extra room for me.
There were already three people sitting there including her, so apparently no seat was available for me to sit in.
She managed to squeeze me in by positioning herself on the seat. But the space thus made was only twenty centimeters wide – not enough for my big body to get in. So I declined politely. I must have looked very tired.
I regret that I let her worry about me so much.
札幌の娘宅を訪ねた帰途、地下鉄駅のホームで手袋をはめるためベンチに置いたショルダーバッグを忘れたまま電車に乗ってしまいました。財布や保険証など貴重品が入っており、車内で気づいた時は頭の中が真っ白。慌てて次の駅で降り、事務室で乗車駅に問い合わせてもらうと、届いているとのこと。 引き返して無事受け取った時は、安ど感から座り込むほどでした。どなたかわかりませんが届けていただきありがとうございました。(12月６日）
I was on my way home after visiting my daughter’s in Sapporo.
While in the subway station, I put on my gloves with my shoulder bag on the bench.
It was not until I got on the train that I realized I left the bag behind.
I was stupefied because it contained some precious items such as my wallet, my health insurance card, and so on.
I soon got off at the next station, dashed to the office and asked for their lost and found service.
The staff contacted my starting station and told me that the bag had been recovered!
When I had it back in my hands, I felt so relieved that I nearly fell on the floor.
Whoever it was that found it, I want to say thank you.
Hokkaido Newspaper’s “Reader’s Voice column”
欧米に住む旧友から「英訳した新聞記事が面白い」とのメールをいただきました。
いままで主に訳してきたのは北海道新聞の「はいはい道新」、身近なネタの宝庫です。これからも調子に乗って翻訳し、掲載していきたいと思います。
それでは今日は11月25日の記事をご紹介します。
やや離れたスーパーまで自転車で出かけ、漬物用野菜などをどっさり買いました。荷物で自転車が重くなったので帰りは近道をしようと通りなれない道に入ったところで迷ってしまいました。ジョギング中の男性に道を尋ねたら、親切にも道案内に付いてきてくれ、上り坂では自転車を押してくれました。見覚えのある道まで来たのでお礼を言うと、男性は走り去りました。お名前は聞けませんでしたが、たすかりました。
I went to a grocery store with my bicycle. The store was a little far away from home. There I bought a lot of vegetables to make pickles. On my way back home, I found my bike harder to pedal due to the heavy purchases in the basket.
So I took a shortcut but lost my way unfortunately.
Then I asked a guy jogging by to help me find my way home.
He was kind enough to guide me along and push my bike uphill.
When we finally reached my familiar street, I thanked him.
He soon ran away and I couldn’t even ask his name.
I want to tell him once again that I appreciate his help.
祝 生徒３名が英検合格!!!
名もない弱小塾ですが、このたびの英検で生徒３人が晴れの栄冠を手にしましたのでお知らせします。
小学３年生・・・３級
中学３年生・・・準２級
４０代主婦・・・３級
悪徳業者と手を組んでいたバンクオブアメリカ
被害者の一人、アレンジョーンズさん。BANK OF AMERICA系列のクレジットカードで８１ドル（６５００円前後）の返済が遅れ、自宅に催促の電話が来るようになった。留守電に残されたメッセージは、おもわず耳をふさぎたくなるような、差別・侮辱そして卑猥用語だらけ。とても由緒ある銀行とは思えないものだった。返済を迫る電話は早朝から深夜に及び、完済後も続いた。
もう一人の被害者、バージニア州のジェフバーグさんは、まったくお金を借りていないのに返済催促の電話に悩まされ続けた。またしてもBANK OF AMERICAの系列だった。相手の勘違いが判明するまで約一か月もの間、いやがらせが続いた。
ずさんな顧客管理と不快な電話応対。BANK OF AMERICAともあろうものがなんという醜態！ 銀行の生命線であるクリーンなイメージが侵されてもかまわないのか？ TV局はさらに極秘調査を続けた。
その結果BANK OF AMERICAは、取り立て専門の会社と契約を結び回収に当たらせていたことが判明。 またその会社は、出所直後の前科者を中心に採用し、いやがらせ電話をさせていたこともわかった。
TV局はすぐに銀行側に対し釈明を求めたがノーコメント。そこで次に頭取を街頭で待ち伏せ、直接話しかける手段をとる。 頭取は、問題になっている留守電メッセージについて、素直に非を認め善処を約束。
それからわずか二日後、同行は取り立て会社との契約を解除した。
しかしこれで問題がすべて解決したわけでない。BANK OF AMERICAはなぜこのような低俗な回収屋と手を組んでいたのか？ 銀行としてのイメージ低下リスクを危惧しなかったのか？
最後にTV局はこう結んでいる。 「今回の事件は、債権回収の即効性を最優先させたが故の結末である。」
「お客様、ご返済が滞っております。お早めにお支払いくださいませ」と上品にやるよりも、「おいっ、てめえ、早く払えこの野郎」とやった方が能率よく回収できるのだ。
動画は下記をクリックしてください。
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOxJMsqVTRs
英文は下記の通りです。
The phone calls were ugly and harrowing. They came early in the morning late at night over and over again.
At least tough times, there may be no surprise that debt collector calls are at the country’s top consumer complaints, but these ones crossed all boundaries of decency – racist, pornographic, even targeting someone who owed nothing. Tonight our exclusive investigation has found that the callers behind these vile shakedowns were hired by a company working for one of the America’s banking giants.
Chief investigators correspondent, Brian Ross is here to break the story. And Brian this evidence is truly stunning. It really is George. The tactics of American debt collectors have reached an all time low – including racist and obscene phone calls used in some cases on behalf of major American corporations.
RECEIVED AUGUST 7th AT 0810 p.m. An overdue payment of 81 dollars on a Bank of America credit card led to the following messages from a debt collector.
Go mother xxxxx back to mother xxxxx Africa.
The recipient Allen Jones of Dallas says the calls came even after he told them his bank of America account had been paid.
The representative acted like we could call you as many times as we want. And the racist obscene calls continued late at night and early in the morning.
This is your mother xxxx wake up call, man.
In Lynchburg Virginia, in the case of mistaken identity, another Bank of America customer Jeff Burg was hounded with a similar rough phone tactics.
Yeah I have you scared you don’t want to pick up the phone now? Is it because you are now in bed with your sister, or with your mom or with your cousin? Huh or what? Little punk.
Burg said he received call like that for months till they finally realized they had the wrong Bank of America customer. “I had no way to put an end to the phone call.
The calls to the Bank of America’s customer all came from a debt collection agency ACT in Harlingen Texas.
“That sounds like to me a whole lot.” one of the debt collectors who made the offensive calls, Calros Oliva , a company supervisor, testify in a lawsuit that he was hired there just seven months after leaving prison.
“They have a prison mentality. These are the people ACT chose to hire to collect debt from Bank of America.” The company says the callers were rogue operators and that it has since improved oversight.
What happened did not represent the policies and the work that our employees do.
But jury held both the callers and ACT responsible in a verdict of more than 1.5 million dollars. Yet bank of America continued to use the same debt collecting agency. Even after we sent them tapes for the phone calls,
Get your mother ******, **** :*** up and go pick some mother ****
cotton fields.
The bank refused to provide anyone to talk to us on camera. So we went looking for its CEO Brian Moynahan.
“can a story for ABC” to ask him why his bank still use the agency and gave him a copy of the phone call.
That kind of language , is that acceptable in your effort.?
No that would not be acceptable. I’ll find out.
You let me know? Yep. Thank you very much.
Two days later, Bank of America essentially fired the collection agency as a result of what we raised in our investigation according to the debt collection agency chairman. Bank of America says the decision has nothing to do with our story.
They say that there’s one action I got to believe regulators will take a look at this.
Absolutely the Federal Trade Commission says their jurisdiction is preparing a major crackdown.
And one official there said the problem is the abusive phone calls work, and the bottom line has too often trumped common decency and the law.
、
さっぱり聴き取れねえ・・・オレはまだまだだな～
ウィリアム王子の婚約発表の冒頭部分、リスニングに挑戦してみたところ、さっぱりできなかった。（悲）
かろうじて聞き取れたのは、friends, for a while, surpriseのみ。 今までオレはなにをやってきたのだろう？ と自責の念に駆られてしまう。
Kenya の部分など Canyon に聞こえてしまった。
米語ばかりやっていると、イギリスの英語はまったく異なものに聴こえてくるから不思議です。 英語学習者のみなさん、気をつけましょう。
参考までに、動画と文章を記しておきます。
It was about three weeks ago on holiday in Kenya.
We had a little private time away together with some friends and I just decided that it was the right time really.
We had been talking about marriage for a while so it wasn’t a massively big surprise.
I took her up somewhere nice in Kenya and I proposed.
英作文チャレンジコーナー
「ダムは必要悪だと思っていました」と、今本博健氏は告白する。 河川工学などを専門に、京大教授として約３０年。 定年退官し名誉教授となった２００１年、近畿を流れる淀川水系のダムの必要性を検証する委員会に加わったときも、「必要なダムはつくらせてくれ」と主張した。 だが個別のダムの功罪を吟味するうち考えを改めた。 今は「ダムの時代は終わる」と断言する。 （北海道新聞 ２０１０年１１月１４日朝刊）
‘I thought that dams were necessary evils”, he confesses.
Mr.Hirotake Imamoto served as a professor at the University of Kyoto for about thirty years, specializing mainly in river engineering.
Following his retirement in 2001, he became a professor emeritus and joined a committee whose mission was to verify the necessity of dams built across the Yodogawa riveｒ and its tributaries in Kinki district.
During all these years, Imamoto used to advocate “Let us build dams if they are needed.”
But then he altered his idea after examining merits and demerits of each dam already built.
Now he asserts “The era of Dams will be over”.
160m 上空から落下！ 九死に一生を得たパイロット PILOT’S PLUNGE CAUGHT ON CAMERA
遊覧飛行が大好きなパットンさん、パラシュートにエンジンを付けて飛んでいたとき、まさかの悲劇が・・・160m上空から落ちて軽傷ですんだのは幸運だった、と言いつつ「退院したらまた飛びたい」のコメントに奥さんはあきれ顔・・・・
偶然撮られた墜落の動画、僕は直視できません。
怖い物好きの人だけどうぞ。
動画は下記をクリック。
An Idaho pilot is lucky to be alive this morning after a harrowing accident. His engine-powered parachute malfunctioned, sending him plummeting 100 feet to the ground.
And it was all caught on camera. Neal Karlinsky has his incredible story of survival.
Hoyt Patton loves to fly. He really is in an authorized aircraft known as PPC or powered parachute. And here‘s what it looked like from his point of view last week in footage licensed by ABC news. Taking off, rising up about a hundred feet, and then… disaster.
His parachute tangled and Patton plummets straight into the ground.
Can you help me? As he calls out for help, eye witnesses rush over to him.
“WE’VE GOT TO GET HIM OUT OF THE ****”
From his hospital bed, Patton says he knew he was going to crash.
He has a broken pelvis, ribs, and elbow. Watching the video is hard to even imagine how he survived. It’s like falling off a ten-story building.
“I’ve seen him do some pretty crazy take-off and landing. It’s scary to me but he’s not scared” Patton knows he very lucky. “Lucky guy. This could have been a wheelchair.”
Pilots like to say that any landing that you can walk away from is a good 4one. Patton couldn’t exactly walk away from this one but he had quite a story to tell. And he says this flight won’t be his last. For good morning America, Neil Karlinsky, ABC News, Seattle.
今日の料理は白菜づくしッ!!!
農村地帯に住んでいると、都会では信じられないことが起こります。
たとえば隣近所で家庭菜園を営む人たちから野菜をたくさんいただけること。
トマト、キュウリ、ゴーヤ、白菜、キャベツ、かぼちゃ、ピーマン、春菊、ねぎ・・・いやはやこんなにもらっていいのかしらん、と恐縮の連続・・・
そして昨日は何と、斜め前と裏のお宅から、白菜を２玉ずついただきました。計４玉！
こりゃ大変だ、腐らせる前にいただかなくては・・・
早速妻と相談し、手分けして料理することに・・・
料理本やインターネットをたよりに妻がつくったのは
「白菜、鶏肉の重ね蒸し」
そして白菜、生ハムのマリネ
それに対して白組の私は
誰でもできる野菜炒め（野菜はもちろん白菜）
そして白菜オンリーの味噌汁
以上４種類、家族４人分つくったものの、使った白菜は半玉分だけでした。
さあ、明日はなにをつくろうか・・・
ジョンレノンの誕生日に各地で集会
今年はジョンレノン生誕７０周年、逝去３０周年、ビートルズ結成５０周年、解散４０周年にあたる年。（なぜこんなに区切れいいのだろう？）
ニューヨークの暗殺現場には今年も大勢のファンが訪れて追悼したそうです。いつか僕も参加して、一緒にイマジンを歌いたいと考えています。
動画は下記をクリック。
| Tomorrow would have been John Lennon’s seventieth birthday. His widow Yoko Ono said that he dreaded turning forty, but thinking of seventy made him smile. So would the celebration that’s coming. |
| Peaceful, musical, all over the world. |
| Our top rock fan Dan Harris will be right in the thick of it. |
| So many of us find it so hard to believe that this global icon of youthful rebellion and idealism would now be turning seventy. |
| A birthday that’s being marked in a big way. |
| All of John Lennon s solo albums are being rereleased in a box. There’s |
| There’s a new movie coming out that examines the teenage years of the future Beatle. |
| I’m John |
| Paul. |
| And this new PBS documentary takes a look at the last decade of Lennon’s life. |
| So, I had to contribute something. |
| The documentary also contains rare home movies of the five years that Lennon took off from music to raise his son, Sean. |
| I looked after the baby and I made the bread and I was a househusband and I’m proud of it. |
| Even this active domesticity was radical. |
| For a father to be as involved in raising his family and making that a priority. |
| That wasn’t – in the ’70s, you know that wasn’t a really thing that you saw so much. |
| Yoko Ono has said she is surprised by all the activity around her husband’s birthday. |
| But it is a testament to his enduring appeal. |
| Life and career of John Lennon, singer song writer, symbol of an era, dead at forty. |
| Nearly thirty years after he was shot and killed outside of his apartment building in New York City . Today, right across the street in the part of central park named strawberry fields in honor of John Lennon and his music. |
| So many of the songs are now , part of, you know, singalongs in nursery schools and lullabies and just the music that you grow up with when you live on this planet. |
| And the world will live as one. |
| And here we are at strawberry fields as the sun goes down. |
| And George, it’s worth noting that people visit this place pretty much every day of the year, rain or shine, and tomorrow on Lennon’s actual birthday, the crowd is expected to be huge. |
| More evidence that 30 years after he died, John Lennon still matters |