(Wikiquote) We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and to impress him takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Robert Oppenheimer, in an interview about the Trinity nuclear explosion, first broadcast as part of the television documentary The Decision to Drop the Bomb (1965), produced by Fred Freed, NBC White Paper; Oppenheimer is quoting from the 1944 Vivekananda-Isherwood translation of the Gita (ch. XI verse 32). The line is spoken to Arjuna by Krishna, who is revered in Hindu traditions as one of the major incarnations of Vishnu; some assert that the passage would be better translated "I am become Time, the destroyer of worlds."
英語学習的にはI am become Deathという表現が気になります。そのような質問をしている人がいました。Early Modern Englishではbe動詞ても現在完了形を作れたようです。
What is the significance of the grammatical error in "now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"? After witnessing the Trinity atomic bomb test, J. Robert Oppenheimer famously uttered this quote from the Sanskrit text the Bhagavad Gita. However, the construct "I am become" does not follow normal English grammar. Was this a stylistic choice by the translator? A reflection of an intentional strange grammar construct in the original Sanskrit? A mistake on Oppenheimer's part?
Marcus Geduld, Published author, lifelong reader. It's archaic but not ungrammatical. It's an example of an old style of present-perfect sense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre...
According to Wikipedia... Early Modern English used "to have" and "to be" as the auxiliaries for the present perfect, with a similar distinction to other modern European languages. This usage has practically disappeared from Modern English. Examples of this conjugation can still be found in older texts:
Madam, the Lady Valeria is come to visit you. -- The Tragedy of Coriolanus by William Shakespeare
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name; -- Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Pillars are fallen at thy feet, Fanes quiver in the air, A prostrate city is thy seat, And thou alone art there. -- Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage by Lydia Maria Child
I am come in sorrow. -- Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre...
More examples:
"I am become a fool in glorying; ye have compelled me: for I ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing." - 2 Corinithians 12:11
"I am become a stranger unto my brethren" - Psalm 69:8-9 Written 11 Jan 2012 • View Upvotes
death fell from the skyについてわかったことです。ロバート・オッペンハイマーはかつて"I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds"（今や我は死神なり、世界を破壊する者なり）と語ったようですね。Democracy Nowでちょうどその部分がでてきました。
AMY GOODMAN: And, Kai Bird, his famous quoting of the Bhagavad Gita, "I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds"? KAI BIRD: Yes, well, Oppie—that was his nickname—you know, he was a polymath. He studied quantum physics, but he also loved French poetry, and he also loved the Hindu Gita. He learned Sanskrit so that he could learn it—read it in the original. And so, a few weeks after Hiroshima, when a New York Times reporter asked him what he had thought—and I think they caught this on camera, too—the words popped into his head from the Gita: "I am Death, destroyer of worlds." And so, he will be forever remembered with that phrase from the Gita.
Seventy-one years ago on a bright, cloudless morning, death fell from the sky and the world was changed. A flash of light and a wall of fire destroyed a city, and demonstrated that mankind possessed the means to destroy itself. ７１年前、晴天の朝、空から死が降ってきて世界が変わりました。閃光（せんこう）と炎の壁がこの街を破壊し、人類が自分自身を破壊する手段を手に入れたことを示しました。
Why do we come to this place, to Hiroshima? We come to ponder a terrible force unleashed in the not-so-distant past. We come to mourn the dead, including over a hundred thousand Japanese men, women and children, thousands of Koreans, a dozen Americans held prisoner. Their souls speak to us, they ask us to look inward, to take stock of who we are and what we might become. 私たちはなぜここ広島に来るのでしょうか。それほど遠くない過去に恐ろしい力が解き放たれたことを考えるために来ます。また、１０万人を超える日本の男性、女性、子ども、多数の朝鮮半島出身者、１２人の米国人捕虜の死者を悼むために来ます。その魂がもっと心の内を見て私たちは何者なのか、私たちはどのようになれるのか、振り返るよう語りかけてきます。
We may not be able to eliminate man's capacity to do evil, so nations and the alliances that we formed must possess the means to defend ourselves. But among those nations like my own that hold nuclear stockpiles, we must have the courage to escape the logic of fear and pursue a world without them. 私たちは悪を行う人類の能力をなくすことはできないかもしれません。だから、私たちが築いた国家や同盟は、私たち自身を守る手段を持たなければなりません。しかし、我が国のように核兵器を持っている国は恐怖の論理から脱し、核兵器のない世界を目指す勇気を持たなくてはいけません。
We must change our mindset about war itself -- to prevent conflict through diplomacy, and strive to end conflicts after they've begun 私たちは戦争自体に対する考え方を変えなければいけません。外交を通じて紛争を防ぎ、始まってしまった紛争を終わらせる努力をする。
（ウィズダム） Death ｟文｠〖D-; 単数形で〗死神〘生命を滅ぼす力の擬人化; 大がまを持った骸骨老人として絵画文学で描かれている〙.
（オックスフォード） death (also Death) [uncountable] (literary) the power that destroys life, imagined as human in form Death is often shown in paintings as a human skeleton. Death marched in and took him away.
death fell from the skyとGoogle画像検索してもオバマの画像しかでてこないので、death fell from the skyという表現に「死神が空から舞い降りる」という固定イメージがあるとはいえないかもしれません。
On the 15th, at six in the morning, we bore away for the south point of the larger island, at which time we discovered another high island, bearing N. 3/4 W., the south island, being on the same rhomb line, and the south point of the island ahead, W. by N. At nine, we were abreast, and within a mile of the middle island, but Captain Gore, finding that a boat could not land without some danger from the great surf that broke on the shore, kept on his course to the westward. At noon, our latitude, by observation, was 24° 50', longitude 140° 56' E. This island is about five miles long, in a N.N.E., and S.S.W. direction. The south point is a high barren hill, flattish at the top, and, when seen from the W.S.W., presents an evident volcanic crater. The earth, rock, or sand, for it was not easy to distinguish of which its surface was composed, exhibited various colours, and a considerable part we conjectured to be sulphur, both from its appearance to the eye, and the strong sulphurous smell which we perceived as we approached the point. Some of the officers on board the Resolution, which passed nearer the land, thought they saw steams rising from the top of the hill. From these circumstances,
Captain Gore gave it the name of Sulphur Island. A low, narrow neck of land connects this hill with the south end of the island, which spreads out into a circumference of three or four leagues, and is of a moderate height. The part near the isthmus has some bushes on it, and has a green appearance, but those to the N.E. are very barren, and full of large detached rocks, many of which were exceedingly white. Very dangerous breakers extend two miles and a half to the east, and two miles to the west, off the middle part of the island, on which the sea broke with great violence. The north and south islands appeared to us as single mountains of a considerable height; the former peaked, and of a conical shape; the latter more square and flat at the top. Sulphur Island we place in latitude 24° 48', longitude 141° 12'. The north island in latitude 25° 14', longitude 141° 10'. The south island in latitude 24° 22', and longitude 141° 26'. The variation observed was 3° 30' E.
軍人に向けての激励スピーチですから当然盛り込むべき表現なのでしょうがI have no greater honor than serving as Commander-in-Chief to our men and women in uniform.と誇らしげに語っているところは「核なき世界」と「軍隊のない世界」は違うのだと認識させられます。
But let me just say that, as President of the United States, I have no greater honor than serving as Commander-in-Chief to our men and women in uniform. You serve and protect the American people. You promote peace and security around the world. And I especially welcome the chance to be with you as we enter into Memorial Day weekend, because it's a reminder of the risks and the sacrifices that are part of your job, and it's a reminder that we can never forget that we have to honor all of those who have given everything for our freedom.
（オックスフォード） Memorial Day a holiday in the US, usually the last Monday in May, in honour of members of the armed forces who have died in war
日米同盟の成果として人道支援や災害救助を強調して話しています。
We see the strength of our alliance on display right here. This base is a powerful example of the trust and the cooperation and the friendship between the United States and Japan. American Marines working side-by-side with Japanese Self-Defense Forces to protect the peace and engage with our partners throughout the region, and assist with humanitarian aid and disaster relief. You’ve responded to flooding in the Philippines and in Thailand. You've responded to devastating cyclones in Bangladesh. You played a critical role in relief efforts following the 2011 earthquake and the tsunami here in Japan. So, together, you have saved countless lives across the region. And we could not be prouder of that.
ジョークではないですが、セルフィーはダメだよと語っている部分です。
Now, I’m just going to give some very brief remarks, because I want to shake as many hands as possible. (Applause.) Although, I got to warn you in advance, no selfies, because then I'll be here all day. (Laughter.)
So I want to close with an incredible story that captures the essence of our alliance. Where is Captain Tessa Snow? Where is Tessa? You're out here somewhere, I know. There she is. Captain Snow is an Osprey pilot, and in the aftermath of the Kumamoto earthquakes last month, she and her squadron flew missions to bring humanitarian aid and supplies to those in need. And one Japanese family was so worried about their house collapsing that they spent several nights outside. Thanks to your efforts, that family and so many others received the food and water and the supplies that they needed. And now this family is expecting a baby -- a baby girl -- in June. When they heard that Tessa flew the mission that helped save them, they decided to name their baby after Tessa. They want their daughter to grow up with the same qualities that Tessa has -- honor and courage and commitment, and a willingness to help others. Aren’t those the core values of the Marine Corps? (Oorah!) Qualities that, for generations, have defined our men and women in uniform. They’re the qualities that represent the very best of our two nations.
謝罪しなくてよかったといっているDavid Brooks。その反応は予想できますがHe avoided mention of who actually started the war, which was diplomatic.とも語っていますね。
I was glad he didn’t apologize. I think, on balance, the decision was the right one. He elliptically avoided that. He avoided mention of who actually started the war, which was diplomatic. And then, you know, as we heard earlier, he held out the hope of getting rid of nuclear weapons. I’m glad, as a matter of policy, he hasn’t done much about it. He’s reduced nuclear stockpiles less than the two Bush administrations did. And I think that’s just reflecting of the dangerousness of the world.
（広島での所感抜粋） The wars of the modern age teach us this truth. Hiroshima teaches this truth. Technological progress without an equivalent progress in human institutions can doom us. The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well.
That is why we come to this place. We stand here in the middle of this city and force ourselves to imagine the moment the bomb fell. We force ourselves to feel the dread of children confused by what they see. We listen to a silent cry. We remember all the innocents killed across the arc of that terrible war and the wars that came before and the wars that would follow.
Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.
Some day, the voices of the hibakusha will no longer be with us to bear witness. But the memory of the morning of Aug. 6, 1945, must never fade. That memory allows us to fight complacency. It fuels our moral imagination. It allows us to change.
It is important that an Obama visit to Hiroshima send the right message, highlighting the beginning of a new chapter in U.S.-Japanese relations above all else. Therefore it is important that both sides craft a narrative that dispels as much partisanship as possible. To do so, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should attend memorial services for the 75th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attacks later this year as a show of goodwill in return for any similar U.S. gesture. For Abe, this would have a number of strategic benefits.
Attending the Pearl Harbor memorial services would also help Abe deflect attention from some of his more controversial actions, such as his December 2013 visit to Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine. Abe ignored stern warnings from the United States and touched off a historical row with China and South Korea by visiting the memorial to Japan’s war dead, which also honors convicted war criminals who committed atrocities against Chinese and Korean citizens. Beijing and Seoul lodged diplomatic protests, and officials in China summoned the country’s ambassador, Masato Kitera. It could also help silence the criticism that Abe encountered when he convened a government panel in 2014 that needlessly reexamined Japan’s landmark apology to comfort women in 1993. The official purpose was to take a thorough look at the research and diplomacy that led to its creation, but the action created the perception that Tokyo wanted to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the policy, even though Japan said it would not recall the statement.
There has been intense interest on both sides of the Pacific in the possibility of a presidential visit to Hiroshima — the first by a sitting U.S. President — so I wanted to share some details on what the purpose of the visit is, and what the President will do.
Given recent travel to Hiroshima by our Ambassador Caroline Kennedy and Secretary of State John Kerry, as well as the city’s role in hosting the G-7 Ministerial in April, we believe that this is the appropriate moment for the President to visit this city and shrine.
5月27日について具体的に書いているのは以下のところでしょうか。
So, on May 27, the President will visit the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, a site at the center of the city dedicated to the victims of the atomic bombing, where he will share his reflections on the significance of the site and the events that occurred there. He will not revisit the decision to use the atomic bomb at the end of World War II. Instead, he will offer a forward-looking vision focused on our shared future.
訪問目的の一つとして核兵器のない世界を追求するためだとしています。
The President’s time in Hiroshima also will reaffirm America’s longstanding commitment — and the President’s personal commitment — to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.
ちょうど3月に行われた核不拡散のサミットではワシントンポストに投稿していましたね。
Opinions Obama: How we can make our vision of a world without nuclear weapons a reality By Barack Obama March 30 Barack Obama is president of the United States. Of all the threats to global security and peace, the most dangerous is the proliferation and potential use of nuclear weapons. That’s why, seven years ago in Prague, I committed the United States to stopping the spread of nuclear weapons and to seeking a world without them. This vision builds on the policies of presidents before me, Democrat and Republican, including Ronald Reagan, who said “we seek the total elimination one day of nuclear weapons from the face of the Earth.”
Thursday in Washington, I’ll welcome more than 50 world leaders to our fourth Nuclear Security Summit to advance a central pillar of our Prague Agenda: preventing terrorists from obtaining and using a nuclear weapon.
We’ll review our progress, such as successfully ridding more than a dozen countries of highly enriched uranium and plutonium. Nations, including the United States, will make new commitments, and we’ll continue strengthening the international treaties and institutions that underpin nuclear security.
Given the continued threat posed by organizations such as the terrorist group we call ISIL, or ISIS, we’ll also join allies and partners in reviewing our counterterrorism efforts, to prevent the world’s most dangerous networks from obtaining the world’s most dangerous weapons.
Beyond preventing nuclear terrorism, we’ve made important progress toward the broader vision I outlined in Prague.
舛添都知事のような政治家を見ていると思い出すのは作家Robert CaroのWhat power always does is revealという言葉。権力は常に腐敗をするわけではなく、権力を握ることでcleanseすることもあると言っている点も興味深いです。まあ彼は単に威張りたかった、偉くなりたかっただけのようですね。そういう人は業者も扱いやすいでしょう。
（昔のブログ記事の再掲） 下記の動画は雑誌TIMEの著者に聞く10の質問と言うコーナーです。権力と言うと"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."という言葉が有名ですが、Power can cleanse as well as corruptやPower corrupts, but you say power also reveals.という側面についても語っていたのが興味深かったです。
（2分あたりから） One of my favorite lines in your book is that you say “Power corrupts, but you say power also reveals.” I wonder if you could explain what you mean by that. Sure. Power as you see in my books in the cases someone like Sam Rayburn or in Power Broker Alfred E. Smith. Power can cleanse as well as corrupt. Al Smith is a henchman, a rutheless for Tammany Hall. Till he becomes a governor, then he goes to Tammany Hall and he says “You must free me. What you must do now is to pay a social welfare legislation for our people”. That’s an example of cleansing.
What power always does is reveal. Because when a man or a woman has enough power to do eactly what they want. Then we know what it is that they really wanted all along.
And then Johnson who had voted against Civil Rights legislation so many times that he was the guy who put that through. So you are suggesting that’s what he had always wanted.
That’s a perfect example: Power always reveals. When he was in college, he took time offf to earn money teaching Mexican kids. In Congress he voted against civil rights legislation many times. But when he became President, he told an aide, "I'll tell you a secret. I swore to myself that if I ever had the power to help these kids, I would do it. Now I have the power, and I tell you something. I intend to use it."
インターネット時代にじっくりと書いていくことについて答えている部分もなかなか深い答えだったのでご紹介します。I always have to write stories on what I still had questions that I wanted to ask.やTo me, time equals truth. The more facts you manage to obtain, the closer you will come to whatever truth there is.という言葉は、30年以上もかけてジョンソンの伝記を書いている彼がいうからこそ重みがあります。
（4分45秒あたりから） I wonder what you think of the speed and brevity of the information age in which we now live?
Well, it’s very foreign to me. You know, to me, when you said why did you leave journalism, it’s because I always have to write stories on what I still had questions that I wanted to ask. To me, time is truth. To me, time equals truth. I mean, there is no one truth, but there are an awful lot of objective facts, and the more facts you manage to obtain, the closer you will come to whatever truth there is. That’s something you can do in writing books. It’s not really something you can do in daily journalism.
David Hume, who died in his native Edinburgh in 1776, has become something of a hero to academic philosophers. In 2009, he won first place in a large international poll of professors and graduate students who were asked to name the dead thinker with whom they most identified. The runners-up in this peculiar race were Aristotle and Kant. Hume beat them by a comfortable margin. Socrates only just made the top twenty.
This is quite a reversal of fortune for Hume, who failed in both of his attempts to get an academic job. In his own day, and into the nineteenth century, his philosophical writings were generally seen as perverse and destructive. Their goal was “to produce in the reader a complete distrust in his own faculties,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1815–1817. The best that could be said for Hume as a philosopher was that he provoked wiser thinkers to refute him in interesting ways. As a historian and essayist, though, Hume enjoyed almost immediate success. When James Boswell called him “the greatest Writer in Brittain”—this was in 1762, before Boswell transferred his allegiance to Dr. Johnson—he was thinking mainly of Hume’s History of England, which remained popular for much of the nineteenth century. “HUME (David), the Historian” is how the British Library rather conservatively still catalogued him in the 1980s.
As James Harris drily notes in his fine new biography, Hume’s private letters show that “he was not very good at being serious about religion.” His lack of piety and the decorously veiled attacks on theism in his published writings may play some part in his current academic popularity. Most professional philosophers today are atheists—73 percent of them, according to the 2009 survey. Perhaps Hume’s cheerful wit and enjoyment of life also help to make him a model for today’s philosophers, who do not like to think of themselves as unduly serious when off-duty. When he lived in Paris in his early fifties, the famously equable and entertaining Hume was celebrated in the salons as le bon David. A plausible report in a London newspaper quoted him as declining his publisher’s requests for further volumes of his profitable History on the grounds that he was now “too old, too fat, too lazy, and too rich.”
(Wikipedia) Attention to Hume's philosophical works grew after the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics (1783), credited Hume with awakening him from his "dogmatic slumber".[184]
“I freely admit that it was the remembrance of David Hume which, many years ago, first interrupted my dogmatic slumber and gave my investigations in the field of speculative philosophy a completely different direction.”
ちょくちょく書いていますが、本を読める英語力がない人は書評から始めてもいいのではないでしょうか。New York Review of Bookは書評も長いのでNew York Timesあたりから始めるといいかもしれません。
（ウィズダム） -enabled 接尾辞〖形容詞を作る〗 〘コンピュ〙(特定のソフトウェアに)対応の ▸ a Java-enabled browser Java対応ブラウザ.
（ケンブリッジ） -enabled provided with a particular type of equipment or technology, or having the necessary or correct system, device, or arrangement to use it: WAP-enabled mobile phones Their aim is to make sure that every home and business becomes internet-enabled in the next ten years. › operated or made possible by the use of a particular thing: voice-enabled software
（ケンブリッジ） secure safe and protected from the risk of an attack or crime: The latest technology allows customers to make secure online transactions. a secure line/network/site a secure area/building
Debate Erupts in California Over Curriculum on India’s History By JENNIFER MEDINA MAY 4, 2016 LOS ANGELES — Victors are said to write history. But in California, history is being written by a committee that is at the center of a raging debate over how to tell the story of South Asia as it tries to update textbooks and revise curriculums for Grades 6 and 7. The dispute centers on whether the region that includes modern-day India, Pakistan and Nepal should be referred to as India or as South Asia, to represent the plurality of cultures there — particularly because India was not a nation-state until 1947. It also touches on how the culture of the region is portrayed, including women’s role in society and the vestiges of the caste system. It might seem somewhat arcane. But it has prompted petition drives, as well as a #DontEraseIndia social media campaign and a battle of opinion pieces.
この運動の背景にはインド人コミュニティが特にカリフォルニア州で人数が増え力をつけていることがあります。言葉の背景にはさまざまな力が働いているんですね。教科書問題の例としてthe portrayal of so-called comfort women in World War IIと日本への言及もさりげなくありますが、インドのケースはもっと根強くあるようです。
State educators have also heard debates about the portrayal of so-called comfort women in World War II, the Armenian genocide and discrimination against Sikhs in the United States. But none of the arguments have persisted as strongly as the fight over the Indian subcontinent. That is a reflection of the transformation in California’s population, where Asians, including South Asians, are the fastest-growing demographic.
******** There are roughly 2.2 million immigrants from India living in the United States, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank. California, with its vibrant technology industry, has attracted the most in the nation, as many have settled in the Bay Area and in Southern California. According to the foundation, nearly half of the 2.5 million Hindus in the United States live in California.
The proposal has enraged academics on the right side of the debate who say attempts to delete references to India and replace it with the "geopolitically motivated Cold War-era phrase `South Asia".... is "misinformed and bizarre."
*****
"If this is indeed correct that `India' is not an accurate term for India before 1947, how is it possible that the word `India' has been in usage in some form or another from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans? Did Columbus go sear ching for `South Asia'? Are the islands of the Caribbean Sea called the `West South Asianes' instead of the `West Indies'? Was it the British East `South Asia' Company that led colonial trade and exploitation?
記事冒頭にあったVictors are said to write history.（勝者が歴史を書くと言われる）とありますが、先日取り上げたベトナムを舞台にした小説では“this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors,”と書かれているそうです。確かにアメリカはベトナムについて饒舌に語っています。
The great achievement of “The Sympathizer” is that it gives the Vietnamese a voice and demands that we pay attention. Until now, it’s been largely a one-sided conversation — or at least that’s how it seems in American popular culture. As the narrator explains, “this was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors,” and so it is that we’ve heard about the Vietnam War mostly from the point of view of American soldiers, American politicians and American journalists. We’ve never had a story quite like this one before.
Victors are said to write history.についてはHistory is written by the victors.と受動態で書かれることも多いようですね。
（オックスフォード） stress [intransitive, transitive] to become or make somebody become too anxious or tired to be able to relax stress out I try not to stress out when things go wrong. stress somebody (out) Driving in cities really stresses me (out).
So does it really matter that one of the guys in the photograph isn’t who we thought he was? For many veterans, like me, it does. John Bradley may very well have thought, as his son believed, that he was one of the six men in the photograph, but evidence to the contrary has existed since Day 1. The Marine Corps has stood firmly behind this story for nearly 70 years, and some amateur sleuths proved it wrong. That’s a problem. Ensuring these stories are as accurate as possible is an obligation of the United States military.
When young soldiers or Marines turn to these stories for inspiration and courage, they must have faith in their legitimacy. They must believe, as I did, that they are fact, not fiction. But, more important, they must know that the military will go to whatever lengths necessary to set the record straight in the event that they, too, find themselves at a crucial juncture in history. I’d like to believe that most soldiers don’t go to war in pursuit of glory, but glory is part of the deal.
By any standard, John Bradley was a hero: a combat veteran who raised the American flag over the black sands of Iwo Jima. His glory is not in dispute, but the facts are, and we owe it to his memory and to everyone who has ever put on the uniform to ensure that these pivotal moments in war history are true.
I think that giving voice to characters who have no other voice is the great worth of what we do. ほかに一切声を持たない役に声を与えるということ―それこそが、私たちの仕事の持つ素晴らしい値打ちだと思うんです。
同じようにMy role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless.と考えている報道レポーターがいました。Janine Di GiovanniさんはTEDでそのように語っています。
I'm not a U.N. conflict resolution person. I'm not even a humanitarian aid doctor, and I can't tell you the times of how helpless I've felt to have people dying in front of me, and I couldn't save them. All I am is a witness. My role is to bring a voice to people who are voiceless. 私は国連の紛争解決に 携わっているわけでなく 人道支援の医師でもない 目の前で亡くなる 人を救うことができず 何度 自分の無力さを 思い知ったかわかりません 私は傍観者に過ぎません 私の仕事は 声なき人に 声を与えることです
A colleague of mine described it as to shine a light in the darkest corners of the world. And that's what I try to do. I'm not always successful, and sometimes it's incredibly frustrating, because you feel like you're writing into a void, or you feel like no one cares. Who cares about Syria? Who cares about Bosnia? Who cares about the Congo, the Ivory Coast, Liberia, Sierra Leone, all of these strings of places that I will remember for the rest of my life? 同僚は この仕事を 世界でも最も暗い片隅を 光で照らすことに例えました 私は それを目指しています いつも成功するわけではなく 不満がつのる時もあります 記事を書くことが無意味で 誰もが無関心に思えてきます シリアやボスニアなど 誰が気にかけるでしょう？ コンゴやコートジボワール ― リベリアやシエラ・レオネなど 私にとって 生涯 忘れられない場所でも 誰が関心をもつと 言うのでしょう？
But my métier is to bear witness and that is the crux, the heart of the matter, for us reporters who do this. And all I can really do is hope, not to policymakers or politicians, because as much as I'd like to have faith that they read my words and do something, I don't delude myself. でも私の仕事は 証言することです それが私達 記者の仕事の 核心であり 本質です 私にできるのは 希望をもつことだけですが 政策立案者や政治家への 希望ではありません 彼らが私の記事を読んで 行動を起こすと思うのは 自分をごまかしています
But what I do hope is that if you remember anything I said or any of my stories tomorrow morning over breakfast, if you can remember the story of Sarajevo, or the story of Rwanda, then I've done my job. 本当に望んでいるのは 皆さんが 私の話を 明日の朝食の時に 思い出してくれること ― 皆さんがサラエボの話や ルワンダの話を 覚えていてくれたら 私の目標は達成です
my métier is to bear witness（私の仕事は 証言することです）のmétier自分の仕事をかっこよくいった感じでしょうか。日本でも「メチエ」みたいにカタカナで本のタイトルに入れ込んでいる人もいます。
（オックスフォード） métier a person’s work, especially when they have a natural skill or ability for it He followed many unsuccessful paths before finding his true métier.
（ロングマン） métier formal someone's metier is the type of work or activity that they enjoy doing because they have a natural ability to do it well: Acting is not my metier.
Jackson is also notorious for his ruthless treatment of Native Americans. In 1829, the first year of his two-term presidency, Jackson asked Congress to earmark land west of the Mississippi river for Indians. Less than six months later he signed the Indian Removal Act, a law that would eventually push the Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw and Seminole tribes out of their native lands in the American south-east.
In the winter of 1838-39 (Martin Van Buren finished the job Jackson started), a quarter of the 15,000 migrating Cherokee died on the 1,000-mile “trail of tears”, trekking in the cold from their lands in Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas to what would later become Oklahoma.
(Wikipedia) 涙の道（なみだのみち、英：Trail of Tears）とは、1838年にアメリカ合衆国のチェロキー族インディアンを、後にオクラホマ州となる地域のインディアン居留地に強制移動（Population transfer）させたときのことをいう。このとき、15,000名いたチェロキー族のうちおよそ4,000名が途上で亡くなった[1]。 チェロキー族の「涙の道」は、1830年の「インディアン移住法」の規定に基づいて署名されたニュー・エコタ条約の実践として起こった。条約は東部のインディアンの土地とミシシッピ川以西の土地との交換を取り決めたものであったが、インディアンの選ばれた指導者達にもチェロキー族の大多数の人々にも受け入れられてはいなかった。それにもかかわらず、条約は時のアメリカ合衆国大統領アンドリュー・ジャクソンによって実行に移され、西部に出発する前に合衆国軍が17,000名のチェロキー族インディアンを宿営地にかり集めた。死者の多くはこの宿営地での病気で倒れた。最初の集合の後は、合衆国軍の役目は限られたものになり、チェロキー族が移動の大半の監督を担当した。 チェロキー族の言語で、この出来事は、nvnadaulatsvyi 「我々が泣いた道」と呼ばれている。チェロキー族は、合衆国のインディアン移住の動きの結果として移動させられたインディアンでは唯一のものではなかった。「涙の道」という言葉は同じように移動させられた他の種族、特に「5つの文明化された部族が体験したときも使われた。元々この言葉は最初に5つの文明化された種族の一つ、チョクトー族が強制移住させられた時に生まれた。
（オックスフォード） the Trail of Tears the name given to the long journey from Georgia to Oklahoma made in 1838 by the Cherokee and other Native Americans. They were being forced by the US government to move to the Indian Territory, and thousands died on the way.
（ロングマン） Trail of Tears, the the path that the Cherokees travelled in the autumn and winter of 1838 to 1839 because the US government forced them to move away from their homes in the southeast US to reservations west of the Mississippi River. The journey was extremely long, cold, and difficult, and about 4000 Cherokees died.
April 28, 2016, New York, NY: Mystery Writers of America is proud to announce the winners of the 2016 Edgar Allan Poe Awards, honoring the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction and television published or produced in 2015. The Edgar® Awards were presented to the winners at our 70th Gala Banquet, April 28, 2016 at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, New York City.
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Sympathizer took home the Pulitzer prize for fiction this week. This will make him an author newly in demand. But in an interview, the artist tells the Guardian he is under no illusions about how books get sold.
“The literary industry and the entire social and cultural system of the United States work to tempt writers of color into writing for white people,” says Nguyen. “‘If I had written the book for a white audience, I would have sold it for a lot more money and many more publishers would have been bidding for it.”
The Sympathizer tells the story of an unnamed half-Vietnamese, half-French communist spy who lives a double life in Los Angeles. Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee who grew up in California’s Bay Area, has always been fond of spy novels. The life of the spy, who makes his way by duality and subterfuge, resonated with someone who grew up as an immigrant in America. “There’s that experience of feeling between two worlds, seeing things from two sides, being the lone minority in an environment,” he says. “It was very liberating to write about someone who is completely unlike me in his biography, even though he is like me emotionally.”
LOS ANGELES — THURSDAY, the last day of April, is the 40th anniversary of the end of my war. Americans call it the Vietnam War, and the victorious Vietnamese call it the American War. In fact, both of these names are misnomers, since the war was also fought, to great devastation, in Laos and Cambodia, a fact that Americans and Vietnamese would both rather forget.
In any case, for anyone who has lived through a war, that war needs no name. It is always and only “the war,” which is what my family and I call it. Anniversaries are the time for war stories to be told, and the stories of my family and other refugees are war stories, too. This is important, for when Americans think of war, they tend to think of men fighting “over there.” The tendency to separate war stories from immigrant stories means that most Americans don’t understand how many of the immigrants and refugees in the United States have fled from wars — many of which this country has had a hand in.
ここでもBut in mastering that language and its culture, I learned too well how Americans viewed the Vietnamese.とアメリカ人の視点でしかベトナムが語られないことを指摘しています。
I watched “Apocalypse Now” and saw American sailors massacre a sampan full of civilians and Martin Sheen shoot a wounded woman in cold blood. I watched “Platoon” and heard the audience cheering and clapping when the Americans killed Vietnamese soldiers. These scenes, although fictional, left me shaking with rage. I knew that in the American imagination I was the Other, the Gook, the foreigner, no matter how perfect my English, how American my behavior. In my mostly white high school, the handful of Asian students clustered together in one corner for lunch and even called ourselves the Asian Invasion and the Yellow Peril.
教授になって小説も書いて賞をもらって、人もうらやむサクセスストーリー。家族も裕福で兄弟も医者でいうことなしと思ったらour family story is a story of loss and deathと書いています。確かに戦争がなければアメリカにくることもなかったんですよね。
This Black April, the 40th, is a time to reflect on the stories of our war. Some may see our family of refugees as living proof of the American dream — my parents are prosperous, my brother is a doctor who leads a White House advisory committee, and I am a professor and novelist. But our family story is a story of loss and death, for we are here only because the United States fought a war that killed three million of our countrymen (not counting over two million others who died in neighboring Laos and Cambodia). Filipinos are here largely because of the Philippine-American War, which killed more than 200,000. Many Koreans are here because of a chain of events set off by a war that killed over two million.
We can argue about the causes for these wars and the apportioning of blame, but the fact is that war begins, and ends, over here, with the support of citizens for the war machine, with the arrival of frightened refugees fleeing wars we have instigated. Telling these kinds of stories, or learning to read, see and hear family stories as war stories, is an important way to treat the disorder of our military-industrial complex. For rather than being disturbed by the idea that war is hell, this complex thrives on it.
