fc2ブログ

Uncharted Territory

自分が読んで興味深く感じた英文記事を中心に取り上げる予定です

RSS     Archives
 

中国タラレバ娘

 

(この動画は英語字幕や日本語字幕で見ることができます)

先日メアリームーアさんの訃報に接した際、彼女は1970年代のアメリカで「女性はこうあるべきだ」という根強い偏見に対して女性の自立はどうあるべきかを示したロールモデルだったことを知りました。そのような社会的プレッシャーに対してどのように自分らしい人生を模索できるかは、いつの時代でも重要なことでしょう。

Bloombergの記事で中国では女性が20代で結婚できないと「売れ残り」というレッテルを貼られてしまう現状があるようですが、そのような社会的タブーに挑戦した広告が昨年話題を集めたようです。

A Skin-Care Ad Tackles Social Taboos in China
P&G’s facial cream campaign targets single women past their mid-20s.

by Carol Hymowitz and Lauren Coleman-Lochner
2017年2月3日 2:00 GMT+3

In the four-minute advertorial, a young Chinese woman, her long hair pulled into a ponytail, weeps as her parents discuss her single status. “She’s just average-looking, not too pretty,” her mother says. “That’s why she’s a leftover.” In China the phrase sheng nu, or “leftover woman,” is a derogatory term referring to those in their late 20s who are unmarried.

A Procter & Gamble marketing campaign aims to remove this stigma while promoting products such as its $179 Facial Treatment Essence and $225 GenOptics drops for age spots, both included in its pricey SK-II skin-care line. The campaign features women who’ve chosen to pursue their dreams instead of being pressured into marrying for the sake of it. It’s helped increase sales of SK-II in China more than 50 percent over the past nine months, says Markus Strobel, global president of SK-II. “This campaign has put us on the map in China and generated extremely positive sentiment among consumers and retailers,” he says. “It’s helping us win with young professional and executive women.”


advertorialという単語は英和辞典にも載っていました。

(ウィズダム)
advertorial
(新聞雑誌の)記事形式の広告, PR記事.


(ケンブリッジ・ビジネス)
advertorial
an advertisement that is designed to look like a written article and seems to be giving information rather than advertising a product:
Learn more about advertorials and how they can be an effective advertising medium for the products you sell online.






この広告自体は昨年の4月に流されアメリカのニュースでも取り上げられるほど話題になっていたようです。ニュースのコメンテーターはアメリカにもこのようなプレッシャーはあると語っていますね。今回の記事は経済ニュースなので売り上げ増に貢献したことを要点にしています。。。

The bottom line: A marketing campaign in China for SK-II products has boosted sales growth more than 50 percent over the past nine months.

記事で It encourages women to overcome barriers and work and live as they want.と書かれているようにそのような女性たちを応援するために広告が作成されたのでしょうが、容姿を強調しすぎだという批判やこの広告一つで問題が解決されるわけではないというもっともな指摘もあります。

Gilhool is no fan of P&G’s campaign, saying it emphasizes women’s appearance and not their accomplishments. “I think the impact of the ad isn’t aligned with the intention,” she says. P&G spokesman Damon Jones says the campaign “celebrates women who are independent and creating their own definition of happiness, regardless of societal expectations.”

Chinese women who want to delay marriage or stay single say it will take more than an ad to alter prejudices. “The commercial just spells out the problems we have. It doesn’t really give a solution,” says Tong Lei, a 36-year-old executive who works in the tourism industry in Shanghai. She’s seen the video but hasn’t used SK-II products. “My parents can understand that society has changed,” she says, “but their values, in terms of prizing marriage, won’t change.” She says her relationship with her parents improved only after she moved from their home into her own apartment two years ago, an option not economically possible for many single women. “This mindset of looking down on single women will only change when my generation becomes parents,” she says.


日本にいると「中国けしからん!愛国日本!!」という雰囲気が強く中国人を煙たく思いがちですが、自分らしい人生を模索している点では我々と何ら変わりはないですよね。広告の最後にあったDon't pressure dictate your futureという言葉が印象的です。(それこそ広告の思う壺だという人もいるかもしれませんが。。。)
スポンサーサイト



 

Elizabeth Strikes Back!

 
血液検査に革命を起こすともてはやされたエリザベス・ホルムズを昨年このブログでも取り上げましたが、10月のウォールストリートジャーナルの調査報道で自社開発技術を使っていない現状が暴かれ、それ以降は「ほらやっぱり」と一転して批判されるようになっていました。

Hot Startup Theranos Has Struggled With Its Blood-Test Technology
Silicon Valley lab, led by Elizabeth Holmes, is valued at $9 billion but isn’t using its technology for all the tests it offers
By JOHN CARREYROU
Updated Oct. 16, 2015 3:20 p.m. ET

日本ではオボちゃんに見立てて批判する記事もありました。

2015年10月31日 03:26
アメリカ版「小保方モーメント」 ジョブズの再来と呼ばれるスタンフォードを中退した女性起業家、エリザベス・ホルムズに漂う胡散臭さ

先週のBusinessWeekでは彼女がカバーストーリーとなっていました。あれだけの批判の後なので慎重な書き方をしていますが、将来性のある技術であるとしています。

Can Elizabeth Holmes Save Her Unicorn?
Theranos wants to convince the world it’s for real.

by Sheelah Kolhatkar, Caroline Chen
from Bloomberg Businessweek

Morite2さんのブログでfeasibilityが紹介されていましたが、記事ではhe’s “encouraged” that the technology is feasible.という表現がありました。ビジネスでfeasibleとあれば事業として実行可能であることを指すことが多いのでまったくのデタラメとは言えないようです。といってもhe’s encouraged thatとあるので断言したというよりも保留した態度でありますが。。。

Of all the advisers Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed, Concepcion was the most candid in saying the tests’ accuracy isn’t yet guaranteed. Based on the data he’s seen, though, he says he’s “encouraged” that the technology is feasible. The first step is, “Does it work?” he says. “And if it does not work, can we tweak it until it does work?”
He’s working with the company to set up a real-world academic study, comparing finger-prick tests against traditional venous draws in hospitals, to prove “once and for all” that the technology fulfills its promises. If it isn’t perfect, he says, the solution isn’t to pile on Theranos. It just means the company needs to work harder. He adds: “There are millions of people out there who need this to work.”


先月にも雑誌Fortuneのイベントに出て弁明していました。FDAの認可は受けたのは1つしかないけど、それは技術がまったくないことを意味するのではなく、認可を受けていないたくさんの技術があるので将来性はあると主張していますが歯切れはよくないですね。



Fortuneでカバーストーリーを書いた記者がこのhype(誇大宣伝)に肩入れしてしまった反省の弁を述べていました。

How Theranos Misled Me
And how I screwed up, too.

by Roger Parloff @rparloff DECEMBER 17, 2015, 10:44 AM EST

In a June 2014 cover story for Fortune, I helped raise to prominence the inventor-entrepreneur Elizabeth Holmes and her remarkable—I think everyone will still go along with that adjective—diagnostics company Theranos.
Fairly high up in my story there is a whopping false statement. After explaining that Theranos’s tests could be performed with a finger-stick, rather than using traditional venipuncture (a syringe in the crook of the arm), I wrote that the company “currently offers 200—and is ramping up to offer more than 1000—of the most commonly ordered blood diagnostic tests, all without the need of a syringe.”


この記事では自社開発技術をたくさん提供していると見せかけているだけなのを見抜けなかったことを後悔しています。動画でも歯切れのいい返事はしていませんが、同じような目に会っていたようです。

I remember coming back to this point again later: How exactly would venipuncture help them cope with volume?
I was told that my question was getting into the realm of trade secret.
A secret, for sure. But maybe a different kind of secret.
So I blew it. And I should have included all these colloquies in the original story. I regret the error.


このあたりのことはわかりませんが、BusinessWeekの記事同様、今回の批判を乗り切れば本物であることが明らかになるでしょう。確かに思わせぶりな宣伝をした会社は大いに批判されるべきとは思いますが、開発している技術の将来性がゼロだと言い切っていいのかはわかりません。競合会社による足の引っ張りである可能性だってありますから。
 

用賀はヨガから

 
ネット検索していて見つけたニュース。こういう小話は嫌いじゃないです。

亀有は亀ナシだった!三軒茶屋は実在する!都内の地名トリビア
2015年7月26日 10時50分 マイナビスチューデント

用賀(ようが/世田谷区)
東名高速道路の起点の地としても知られる用賀。その名はズバリ「ヨガ」がからきているといわれています。
平安末期から鎌倉初期、この地には僧が修行するための瑜伽道場(ゆがどうじょう)があったそうです。近年になりこの地を所有したお寺の山号が瑜伽山だったことで、それが地名になったようです。瑜伽とはサンスクリット語で、ヨガの語源にもなった言葉です。


ヨガ絡みの話をひとつ。今週のBusinessweekのカバーストーリーはリーバイスが特集されています。女性に人気のYoga Pantsへの対抗策についてです。



American Booty
They’ve survived the Civil War, The San Francisco quake, The Titanic.
But can Levi’s beat back yoga pants?

アメリカンヒップ
南北戦争も、サンフランシスコ地震も、タイタニックも切り抜けてきた。
リーバイスは果たしてヨガパンツを巻き返せるか。

American Beautyに絡めたタイトルなんでしょうが、言葉遊びを訳すのは難しいです。。。あと、今回のタイトルで使われている歴史的出来事はリーバイスが古くからある企業であることを示す例であって特にそれ以上の意味はないと思います。

英辞郎は反応がいいですね。見出語がたっていました。載せている辞書は少なかったのですがオックスフォードのネイティヴ向け辞書にはありました。

(英辞郎)
yoga pants
ヨガ・パンツ◆ヨガのみならず部屋着としても用いられる肌触りのいいやわらかなズボン


(オックスフォード)
yoga pants
Stretchy knit pants designed to be worn for yoga or other exercise.
EXAMPLE SENTENCES
There are no pom-poms in sight; girls wear yoga pants and bra tops and are drenched in sweat after an hour spent learning and relearning a 90-second routine.
There was the 60-something Pilates instructor in front of me, shoulder-length gray hair and dressy yoga pants, telling her 40-something horn-rimmed glasses-wearing friend about how the switch from Astanga yoga to Pilates had changed her whole life.
50 winners will receive a deluxe holistic gift basket to help you relax, soothe and renew, including yoga pants, an aromatherapy candle, massage oil, a relaxing CD and Ohm products.




Distressed Denim: Levi’s Tries to Adapt to the Yoga Pants Era
Levi Strauss may have invented jeans, but it never saw yoga pants coming. Inside the effort to win back the hearts, and butts, of shoppers
By Tim Higgins | July 23, 2015
Photographs by Justin Kaneps for Bloomberg Businessweek

The bigger problem with the line was that Levi’s misread stretchy pants as a trend when they were more like a clothing revolution. Yoga pants’ rise is nearly synonymous with that of Lululemon, a Vancouver company that got its start in 1998 and whose market capitalization is now $9 billion. Women have long since worn yoga pants out of the vinyasa studio, finding them perfectly suited for a run to the grocery store, hanging out at the park, and attending a lecture. Yoga pants aren’t merely soft, or tight in the right places. They feature advanced materials that boost women’s figures; they last a long time; and they manage to be both stylish and casual.

Levi’s missed the appeal. “As we saw ‘casualization’ continue even further, the customer basically told us that they had enough denim until something really unique and innovative came along,” says Marshal Cohen, an analyst at NPD. “We really saw the denim industry and denim retailers basically turn their nose up on the customer and say, ‘We don’t care what you really want, we’re going to tell you what you want.’ ”




Yoga pants’ rise is nearly synonymous with that of Lululemon, a Vancouver companyとあるのようにYoga pantsというとLululemonというイメージになっているようで、コメディ番組にもとりあげられていました。



Elle ShowもYoga Pantsの流行を取り上げていて、Businessweekと同じような内容=yoga pantsが売れてジーンズが売れていないという状況に触れています。EllenもLulelemonというブランドをあげていますね。



Yogaもしないのに履いている人がいる、Yoga pants=高価なものといったイメージがあるようです。今のところ、カジュアルすぎるので学校や会社などに着ていくものではないそうですが、Tシャツやジーンズのように市民権を得る日が来るのかもしれません。TOEICはフィットネス関連トピックが頻出ですから、yoga pantsの登場は早いかもです。

ざっくり見ただけでも「Yoga pants=ヨガをするときのズボン」という狭義の理解では収まらないことがわかってもらえたと思います。英単語の勉強の出発点は英語と日本語の語義の一対一対応で覚えてもいいですが、その後は、その言葉が使われている場面やニュアンスもつかんでいくのが理想ですね。
 

The Man Hotter Than the Sun

 
日本電産の株価が新高値をつけて注目を集めているからか、ブルームバーグが日本電産の紹介記事を書いていました。

At Japan’s Nidec, the CEO as Comic Book Hero
Eating contests. Shouting matches. Cleaning toilets. Just another day under the leadership of the country’s “best CEO”

by Jason Clenfield and Masatsugu Horie
July 17, 2015 — 3:51 AM JST

Ambition matters more than brains in Shigenobu Nagamori’s world. As chief executive officer of Japanese motor maker Nidec, Nagamori is known for his eccentric management style. Prospective employees have faced off against each other in eating and shouting competitions; new hires at headquarters in Kyoto have had to clean toilets. “Motivated people can do anything if they work hard,” Nagamori says in his autobiographical comic book, The Man Hotter Than the Sun. “It’s not people’s talents that matter,” the CEO tells his acolytes in one strip. Passion matters, and enthusiasm, and tenacity. And, if Nagamori is a role model, something else matters as well: a sizable ego.

たたき上げの経歴をrags-to-riches riseとしています。

He boasts of a rags-to-riches rise: Starting with three employees, he made small motors in a prefabricated hut next to his mother’s Kyoto farmhouse. Japanese companies, questioning the upstart’s abilities, refused to place orders with him. So Nagamori went to the U.S. and landed a contract with 3M to make a smaller motor for a tape recorder. “With this, Nidec Corporation’s reputation grew both inside and outside Japan,” according to the comic book.

Nidec employs about 128,000 people globally. Corporate executives such as SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son seek Nagamori’s advice about acquisitions and management. The CEO has met with such leaders as Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, where Nidec recently built a factory and has four more under way. Executives polled last fall by Nikkei BP, an influential Japanese business publication, voted Nagamori the country’s best CEO.


基本的にはほめている記事ですが、無給の休日出勤などを述べている従業員の不満を紹介しています。

Not everyone finds working at Nidec so magical. Setsuo Matsui, who retired in 2010 after 42 years at a Sankyo factory in Nagano, says that after Nidec bought the company, Nagamori demanded that workers come in early every day to clean the facility; vacation was discouraged, and a chill came over the place. Matsui still remembers the unpaid Sunday he spent at a training session on office manners. Nagamori ordered that everyone learn how to bow properly. “I didn’t feel comfortable claiming overtime or taking time off,” Matsui says. “Neither did anyone else.”

記事のキャッチに漫画が紹介されていたのですが、これは会社のサイトで紹介されているものでした。しっかり英語版も用意してくれています。日本語のコミックは右から左に読み進めることは日本人にとっては常識ですが、英語のコミックは左から右ですから、以下のような注意書きがついています。

A page from a Nidec comic book (read right to left).

左から右のコミックの例(インターステラー

何度もこのブログで書いていることですが、日本人が当たり前に思っていることは他の国では当たり前でないことはいろいろあるわけです。ただ当たり前に思っていることだけに意識化することは非常に難しいわけです。こういうところにも気配りができるのが理想ですね。

「太陽よりも熱い男」

日本電産の英語版コミックでも最初に右から左に読むように断りがありました。

"The Man Hotter Than the Sun"
The Story of Shigenobu Nagamori, the founder of Nidec Corporation
"I will be a president in the future!"
Mr. Nagamori continuously entertained his big dream of creating a leading business. He founded Nidec Corporation in 1973 in order to create a large business involving motors, devices that he had so ardently devoted his passion to from early childhood.
Within his lifetime, he has transformed Nidec into a global enterprise with business bases located all around the world.
How did Mr. Nagamori engineer this rapid growth?
His dramatic half lifetime of effort will be introduced in cartoon format.

 

Elon Muskの伝記、BWで抜粋が読める

 


今やアメリカを代表する起業家となったイーロンマスクの伝記が発売されたようで、NYTも書評を出しています。マスク公認の伝記ではないものの彼もインタビューに応じたりして協力している現時点での決定版ともいえる内容のようです。

ビジネスウィークの記者が書いたためか、抜粋を今週号のビジネスウィークで読むことができます。9千語近くの長い記事で、スペースXの立ち上げ時の一番大変な時期を描いています。テスラとの両立が難しくなっている中、なんとかやりくりをする様子は読んでる方も息詰まる感じでした。マスクでなければこんな修羅場を乗り越えられなかっただろうと書いている部分です。

Elon Musk’s Space Dream Almost Killed Tesla
By Ashlee Vance | May 14, 2015
Illustrations by The Red Dress
SpaceX started with a plan to send mice to Mars. It got crazier from there.

Antonio Gracias, a Tesla and SpaceX investor and one of Musk’s closest friends, had watched all of this transpire; 2008 told him everything he would ever need to know about Musk’s character. “He has the ability to work harder and endure more stress than anyone I’ve ever met,” Gracias said. “What he went through in 2008 would have broken anyone else. Most people who are under that sort of pressure fray. Their decisions go bad. Elon gets hyperrational. He’s still able to make very clear, long-term decisions. The harder it gets, the better he gets.”

ニューヨークタイムズの書評はどちらもジョブズとの比較をキャッチとしています。スペースXやテスラの部分は太鼓持ちじゃないかと評価は厳しく、むしろ彼の生い立ちに詳しく触れた部分を褒めています。

‘Elon Musk,’ by Ashlee Vance
By JON GERTNER MAY 12, 2015

Since the death of Steve Jobs in 2011, only one Silicon Valley titan seems to carry a similar air of dark mystique. This would be Elon Musk, currently the C.E.O. of the rocket company SpaceX as well as the electric-car company Tesla Motors. The 43-year-old Musk is also chairman of SolarCity, the largest American solar power installation company. His wealth at the moment is estimated by Forbes to be around $13 billion, yet Musk emigrated from South Africa to Canada at age 17 with barely enough money to feed himself, living off the kindness of Canadian relatives and working odd jobs — cleaning boilers, cutting wood — before ultimately signing up for undergraduate classes at Queen’s University in Ontario. Not long after, Musk switched to the University of Pennsylvania to study economics and physics. Then he moved west to Silicon Valley and began to build and sell companies. He is now, quite arguably, the most successful and important entrepreneur in the world.

‘Elon Musk,’ a Biography by Ashlee Vance, Paints a Driven Portrait
MAY 12, 2015
By DWIGHT GARNER

“We’ve become a nation of indoor cats,” Dave Eggers wrote in “A Hologram for the King” (2012), his existential novel about an American doing IT work in the Saudi Arabian desert. “A nation of doubters, worriers, overthinkers.”

Ashlee Vance, in his new biography of the celebrity industrialist Elon Musk, delivers a similar notion of the deflating American soul. An early Facebook engineer tells Mr. Vance, “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads.” The author quotes the venture capitalist Peter Thiel: “We wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters.”

If Silicon Valley was holding out for a hero after Steve Jobs’s death, a disrupter in chief, it has found a brawny one in Mr. Musk. This South African-born entrepreneur, inventor and engineer is the animating force behind companies (Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity) that have made startling advances in non-indoor-cat arenas: electric cars, space exploration and solar energy. He is all of 43.

ビジネスウィークの抜粋を読んでも、ほとんど何もないところから作り上げたエネルギーを感じますが、猛烈に働いていたところはどちらの評者も触れています。1日23時間働いていたというのは誇張でしょうが、文字通り休みなく働いていたのでしょう。動画でも1日20時間働いていたと語っていましたね。

(By DWIGHT GARNER)
The best thing Mr. Vance does in this book, though, is tell Mr. Musk’s story simply and well. It’s the story of an intelligent man, for sure. But more so it is the story of a determined one. Mr. Musk’s work ethic has always been intense. One observer says about him early on, “We all worked 20 hour days, and he worked 23 hours.”


(By JON GERTNER)
Vance traces the chaotic early years of these two firms — SpaceX and Tesla, respectively — with a compelling ticktock of events. We see that Musk is brutal on himself, routinely working 100-hour weeks. He is brutal as a boss, too, often berating or summarily firing colleagues while hogging credit for ­others’ accomplishments. Yet he is without question a leader who pushes risky ideas forward through a ­combination of long-range vision and deep technical intelligence. He knows how to hire good people and how to motivate them. Most important, he never, ever gives up.

どちらの評者も最後にはジョブズの比較ではなく、マスク自身がすごい存在であることを認めて終わりにしています。JON GERTNERの締めの部分です。

These faults hardly make Vance’s book unreadable, however. And until we see how things finish up many years from now — Will Tesla crash? Will SpaceX take us to Mars before NASA? Will Musk become the richest person in the world? — this work will likely serve as the definitive account of a man whom so far we’ve seen mostly through caricature. By the final pages, too, any reader will sense the need to put comparisons to Steve Jobs aside. Give Musk credit. There is no one like him.
プロフィール

Yuta

Author:Yuta
FC2ブログへようこそ!




最新トラックバック

月別アーカイブ


FC2カウンター

検索フォーム



ブロとも申請フォーム

QRコード
QR