ランチ&ショッピング母の夏休みの宿題

2010年07月17日

英会話の宿題

英会話教室では時々宿題が出る。
先週の宿題は英字新聞の記事を皆に説明するというものだった。
「新聞を読みたい人!?」と言われて、気軽に手を挙げた私…

手渡されたJapan Timesの記事は次のようなものだった。

Japan should erase more barriers for working women,experts say.


Japanese society needs to be more enthusiastic about women talking a prominent role in the workplace if the country is ever to achieve equality between the sexes,a panel of British experts on Japan recently concluded.
They said during a recent seminar at the Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation that while much progress has been made in terms of legislation, a cultural change is needed in both men and women to raise the status of women at work.
Helen MacNaughtan of London University said the number of non-regular workers - mainly part-timers - has soared in the last 25 years,and more than half of all working women now fall into this category.
Like Britain,many of these part-time workers have returned to work after having children. however,the Japanese part-timer is more restricted in terms of the hours she can work and mobility in the company,McNaughtan said.
The seminar participants agreed that despite the introduction of equal opportunity legislation, women face an uphill struggle.
MacNaughtan said employers are still“wedded”to the idea of men being the “breadwinners,”and women are often seen as occupying part-time jobs, often in clerical and customer service roles.
And perhaps symbolizing the root of the problem,the "gender segmentation"of jobs is quite popular in opinion surveys.
Socilal attitudes on child care are quite traditional and provisions for working mothers are patchy,and only a minuscule number of men take paternity leave,she said.
There was also concern at the seminar about the fact that women who attend more academically rigorous four-year universities are less likely to work than those who attend two-year colleges.
MacNaughtan said, it is "questionable"how much has changed since the 1960s,given the way part-time work has become almost an institution for women."You have to change people's attitudes.Unless you do this,nothing is going to happen,"she said.
Geroge Olcott of Cambridge University said Japanese women are often reluctant to push themselves in their careers and sometimes feel held back by other women,who may hold traditional views on a woman's place in a company.
Both agreed that the recent increase in female participation in the workforce was driven more by economic need than any feminist movements.
MacNaughtan believes that change will happen as more baby boomers retire and the demand for workers increases.
But she also thinks the governing Democratic Party of Japan should reform the tax system for working women,as it has previously indicated.
In Japan,a married man's tax allowance can be offset against his annual income tax,provided his wife's income does not exceed a specific limit.If her income goes above that level,then she has to pay income tax and make other contributions.
Therefore,the tax system encourages firms to pay part-time women less,MacNaughtan said.
Olcott,who helped run several Japanese companies,told the seminar that female managers and board members are "conspicuously absent"in Japan compared with the United States and Britain.
But he said equal opportunity legislation has increased the number of women in managerial posts, or"sogoshoku" in Japanese.
However,he described how many of there career-oriented,full-time employees fee obliged to act in a nonthreatening and feminine way due to pressure from women in clerical positions, or "ippanshoku,"who have limited prospects for promotion.
By contrast,male managers do not have to show the same level of caution and restraint.
He said foreign takeovers of Japanese firms normally result in a dramatic increase in the number of female managers and improved working conditions for women.
As part of his research,Olcott studied how new foreign owners brought in senior women to try to redress the gender imbalance.
They provided day care centers,scrapped company uniforms and attempted to end the sogoshoku-ippnashoku division. There firms also encouraged some of the ippanshoku to move into the management tier.
However,despite the radical surgery, he found that some Japanese staff still retained traditional views on the role of women. Indeed,some women left the company after they were promoted because they felt uncomfortable in their new role.
Olcott said that despite positive signals coming from the DPJ,he is "slightly pessimistic"about the prospects of redressing the gender imbalance in the medium-term.
David Coats, a British employment expert and a fellow of the Smith Institute, an independent center-left think tank,said that in many ways Japan resembles Britain of a few decades ago.
He said pay disparities had narrowed thanks to the introduction of minimum wage,but large differences still persist in the financial sector.
While women are entering into many all-male bastions,it is largely women who are doing the"four Cs" ―caring,cleaning,cooking and being a cashier.



この文章を、まずは訳して内容をまとめて英語で説明…

まるでMission:Impossibleやん!

とりあえず入力してネットの翻訳ソフトに放り込む。

出てきた『よくわからない日本語』の結果をまとめて、翻訳ソフトで今度は英語に翻訳するとこんな英語に…


Japan has to change in order to attain the equal opportunity between man and woman.
There are the following problems.
A part-timer has restriction in time to work.
When it works exceeding a limit, it is because a husband's tax becomes high.
A woman cannot take a child-care leave easily.
Although Equal Employment Opportunity Act made the management's woman and "career-track positions" increase, since the view of predominance of men over women is not lost, it does not work.

For correction of gender imbalance, Mr. Olcott in connection with the management of the company of some Japan offered the day care center, he lost the uniform of the company, and lost the classification of "career-track positions" and "regular service." The problem still was not solve

The great portion of female work is 4c.
Caring 
Cleaning 
Cooking
Being a Cachier 

Democratic Party should improve the taxation system for the woman who works.


これを皆の前で発表…

発表のやり方はこういう感じ。

?は〜い!みなさん、私は腹痛です。
?今日は◯×▲について説明します。

「〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜〜」

?何か質問はありませんか?(Do you have any questions?)

「はい!〜〜〜〜とは何ですか?」

「それは〜〜〜〜〜です。」

?他に質問はありませんか?(Any other questions?)

皆の顔を見て質問がなさそうなら…

?今日は◯×▲について説明しました。
ありがとうございました。


という感じで終わるのだが、私は?と?を忘れたので、先生には「5点満点中の3.5点」と言われた。


脳みそを使い果たした1週間でした…(´;ω;`)

rumichan2525 at 06:53│Comments(2)TrackBack(0)趣味 

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この記事へのコメント

1. Posted by hisakom   2010年07月18日 06:31
おはよう!腹痛さんはすごい!PCの機能をつかいこなしてますね。英語の宿題、難しすぎますね。でも私にはよく分からないのが、翻訳ソフトのことです。英文を全部入力するのも時間かかりそう。根気もない。どうするんですかね。でも語学を勉強するのは楽しい。今、私たちのあいだで英語で俳句がブームです。ではがんばって!
2. Posted by 腹痛!   2010年07月18日 21:01
hisakomさん、こんばんは。

翻訳ソフトというより翻訳サイトというんですかね…

打ち込む手間はかかりますが、いちいち辞書で調べるよりは早いかなぁと思って…
でも結果は散々です…

若い頃、翻訳ソフトの会社に勤めていたことがあります。
日本語を英語にするシステムを、確か40万円ぐらいで販売していました。

今は無料ですもんねぇ…(会社がつぶれるはずです…)

英語で俳句…?
それこそ難解です〜っ!!!

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ランチ&ショッピング母の夏休みの宿題