http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/07/22/national/abe-not-in-hurry-to-amend-constitution/ The Japan Timesからです。If you have already read a few articles of mine in this blog, it is easily to find that I'm totally in the other side of something like the LDP. Actually I really dislike the party.(言い方が強くなってしまったので英語で緩和しましたf^ ^;)...その「赤信号みんなで渡れば怖くない」的な思想。確かに人間は本能的に「群れを成す」ものです。それは認めます。でも魚類など見れば分かりますが、弱者ほど「群れ」ます。しかも真理を無視して、ほとんどの場合支配的立場にある者に迎合するための群れです。だいたい「自由」で「民主的」な党、その名前自体が全くの偽りでしょ。ナチスの本当の党名は「国家社会主義ドイツ労働党」、北朝鮮の国名は「朝鮮民主主義人民共和国」。確かに名前など無関係と皆が分かっていればいいのですが、世間ってそうじゃないですよね。世の70%位の人は自民党が「民主主義」の党だから支持する...なんてレベルなのではないでしょうか?早稲田○○○○(某塾)には「早稲田」という名が付いているから安心だ...とかね。自民党って実際は相当「右」の思想を持った党ですよ。自民党議員の半分はネオナチと言ってもいいくらいだと思われます。もうすぐ靖国参拝の季節ですから、各議員の発言を聞いておいたほうが良いですよ。そして、上記私の考えから筋だっていると思うのですが、私は「国民投票」にあまり肯定的でありません。例えばこの国の国民の何%が毎日、テレビを見ているのかな?そしてその意見(みのもんた、ビートたけし、その他テレビ局側に体制や原発批判はしないからOKとされた評論家達)にどれだけ左右されてしまうのでしょう?アベノミクスって何か中身あるのでしょうか?もし今回の自民の大勝さえも実はマスコミによるマニピュレイト(扇動)、即ち世論操作みたいなものが働いていたとしたら?YouTubeに最近の選挙結果での面白い映像があったので参考までにどうぞご覧ください。
Abe not in hurry to amend Constitution BY AYAKO MIE JUL 22, 2013 Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged Monday to stay focused on efforts to revive Japan’s moribund economy and to not aggressively pursue his goal of amending the pacifist Constitution, even though his Liberal Democratic Party-New Komeito bloc now controls the Diet.
Speaking to reporters a day after the LDP and New Komeito secured an Upper House majority in Sunday’s election, Abe said, “Throughout the election campaign, I repeated that beating deflation is the foremost priority for Japan, and the voters endorsed that goal.
“It is not easy to steer Japan out of 15 years of deflation, but we will not have a soundwelfare system, national security or diplomacy, unless we have a strong economy.”
Since the LDP returned to power in the Lower House election last year, Abe has been pounding away at his “Abenomics” plan of traditional fiscal spending, radical monetaryeasing and reform promises to get voters to help it end the opposition camp’s hold on the Upper House.
Abe said he will work to flesh out his economic growth strategies during an extraordinary Diet session slated to start in October, and aim to pass bills that aim to improve industrial competitiveness by drafting corporate tax breaks to expedite capital investment.
Voters Sunday handed the ruling party the largest portion of Upper House seats, 65, giving Abe a chance to build a stable government — something Japan hasn’t seen for some seven years.
Together with the 11 seats won by New Komeito, the ruling bloc now has a majority of 135 seats in the 242-seat chamber, allowing it to appoint the heads of all standing committees, dealing a further blow to the opposition camp.
LDP candidatesfared well in the electoral districts, bagging 47 of the 49 seats up for grabs. Conspicuous losses included the Iwate prefectural district, which Tatsuo Hirano, a former reconstruction minister for the Democratic Party of Japan, won as an independent, and the seat in Okinawa, where independent Kazuko Itokazu beat an LDP candidate by opposing the party-backed plan to replace U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma with a new airstrip to be built farther north on Okinawa Island, on the coastal district of Henoko next to Camp Schwab.
Overall voter support, however, was not enough to give the ruling coalition a two-thirds majority, which it would need if it planned to revise any clause in the Constitution before an amendment is put to a national referendum, as stipulated under Article 96.
Abe aims to revise the article so it only requires a simple majority of 51 percent, ultimately so he can revise war-renouncing Article 9 with a simple coin flip vote.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Sunday that the time has come to have a realistic discussion on revising the Constitution. Abe said he will start the process by first lowering the voting age for national referendums to 18 from 20, as he acknowledged that his party lacks enough public support.
Abe said he first needs to get two-thirds of the voters to support an amendment.
The election results did not give the LDP the strength to pursue the constitutional revision. And New Komeito, backed by the pacifist lay Buddhist group Soka Gakkai, opposes watering down Article 96 as that step could make it much easier to amend sensitive Article 9.
Nippon Ishin no Kai (Japan Restoration Party), which supports Abe’s view on the Constitution, has only nine seats in the lower chamber. Your Party, which now has 18 seats, originally backed Abe’s goal but now refuses to cooperate with the LDP.
Abe is expected to expedite talks on allowing Japan to engage in collective self-defense, a goal he pushed during his first stint as a prime minister in 2006 but is restricted by Article 9.
'Trayvon Martin could have been me' - Barack Obama 20 July 2013 Last updated at 01:43 GMT
President Barack Obama has said that "Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago1", in his first comments on the case since last week's verdict.
The unarmed black 17-year-old was shot and killed in Florida in February 2012.
George Zimmerman, 29, said he opened fire on the teenager in self-defence and was acquitted of murder by a Florida court last week.
In an unexpected press call, Mr Obama said very few black men in the US had not experienced racial profiling2.
Mr Obama said the pain that3 African-Americans felt around the case came from the fact that3 they viewed it through "a set of experiences and a history that3 doesn't go away".
He said African Americans were also keenly aware of racial disparities in the application of criminal laws.
"That all contributes to a sense that if a white male teen was involved in the same kind of scenario, both the outcome and the aftermath might have been different," Mr Obama said.
"When Trayvon Martin was first shot, I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that3 is Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago."
He shared his experiences of being racially profiled in the past, such as being followed while out shopping.
"There are very few African-American men who haven't had the experience of walking across the street and hearing the locks click on the doors of cars.
"There are very few African-Americans who haven't had the experience of getting on an elevator and a woman clutching her purse nervously and holding her breath until she has a chance to get off," he said.
Mr Obama also hailed the "incredible grace and dignity" of Trayvon Martin's parents - Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton - in the way they reacted to the verdict.
Calling for "soul-searching" from Americans on issues of race, he also sounded a hopeful note, saying that race relations were improving with each generation.
中略
Trayvon Martin was shot dead by Mr Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watchman, after an altercation in a gated community in Sanford, Florida.
Florida police did not arrest Mr Zimmerman for six weeks after the shooting, provoking mass rallies throughout the US.
Detroit Files For Bankruptcy by SCOTT NEUMAN July 18, 2013 4:45 PM
The city of Detroit has filed the largest municipalbankruptcy in U.S. history, seeking Chapter 9* protection from creditors and unions owed some $18.5 billion1 in debt and liabilities.
In a news conference on Thursday, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing said he didn't want to go into bankruptcy, but the city will now "have to make the best of it."
The city's state-appointed emergency financial manager, Kevyn Orr, said the move was a 'step toward restoring the city.'
The 16-page petition was filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Detroit Thursday afternoon, beginning a 30- to 90-day evaluation period to determine whether the city is eligible for Chapter 9.
In a letter to Orr, Gov. Rick Snyder approved the move, saying: "Only one feasible path offers a way out."
The Associated Press says that "if approved, the filing would allow Orr to liquidate city assets to satisfy a host of creditors and city pensioners lined up to recoup losses from bad bond investments and unpaid contracts."
The Wall Street Journal reports that the city's strategy, unveiled last month, is "to pay off the majority of what secured creditors such as certain bondholders are owed while offering pennies on the dollar to unsecured bondholders, unions and pension funds."2
Detroit lost some 250,0001 in the decade from 2000 to 2010, with much of the middle class and many businesses fleeing to the suburbs3, destroying the city's once large tax base.
Quinn Klinefelter of member station WDET in Detroit, says the move is "not a surprisingly development, but [it] ... makes some people in the city catch their breath."
Hardest hit, he says, will be anyone who was expecting a pension from the city — police, firefighters, city workers, "people who have their future staked on the fact that they did their 20 or 30 years and were going to get x amount in benefits when they got out. .... That is just not going to be there. The city can't afford it."
Reuters reports:
"A judge in Ingham County, where the state capital Lansing is located, has scheduled a hearing Monday on a proposed injunction that would prevent Orr from a bankruptcy filing. "City retirees and workers made arguments in the two lawsuits that Orr's plan to injunction vested pensions for city retirees would violate strong protections in the Michigan constitution for retirement benefits of public-sector workers. "The pension funds' lawsuit makes similar claims. It also was filed in Ingham County Circuit Court, by the city's two funds — the General Retirement System and the Police and Fire Retirement System."
Mike Lafaive of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, Mich., tells NPR that the city had no other choice. "They are facing a financial situation that has been brewing for decades," he says.
"It's municipal bankruptcy territory that is largely uncharted," he says. "We haven't seen the type of numbers we're looking at in Detroit or anywhere else."
このsomeは「約」と訳します。「約」はabout = around = approximately = roughly = someなどがあります。ちなみにこれらはこれらは皆、形容詞でなく副詞です。数詞は形容詞の仲間だからです。
The Wall Street Journal reports that the city's strategy, unveiled last month, is "to pay off the majority of what secured creditors such as certain bondholders are owed while offering pennies on the dollar to unsecured bondholders, unions and pension funds."
この文の全訳ができるでしょうか?
まず、メインの主語、動詞は"The Wall Street Journal”と”reports"です。そしてthat節の主語の後にいきなり", unveiled last month,"「先月明らかにした」という挿入句が入ります。その後"is "to pay off...""と続きますが、まずはbe toにより未来を表して、to以下からはクオーテーションマークがついていますが、それは「明らかにした」内容だからです。"majority of what"のwhatは先行詞を含む関係代名詞です。それがowedまで続きます。多分この辺りが一番訳しづらい部分だと思います。このwhatは実際はare owedの目的語です。英語の知識がある人はここで疑問が生じるでしょう。are owedは受け身の形なのだから、目的語は取らないだろうと。そうです。SVOの受け身は、例えば"It is used."で文が終了します。でももとがSVOOの場合は受身形の後ろに目的が一つ残るのです。例えば"The book was given me."のように。owe「~に~の支払い義務がある、~に~を借りている」が二重目的語を取るときは「owe+人+物」となります。したがって受け身になる前は"it(町) owes secured creditors such as certain bondholderswhat"なはずです。これが受け身形になって、さらに関係代名詞whatが文頭に出る。しかも"the majority of"「~の大部分」という言葉が前に付いたのです。したがって訳は、
「ウオール・ストリート・ジャーナルは以下のようにレポートしている。先月明らかにされた町の対策は、公債保持者のような(町によって)支払われなければならない債務者には、債務の大部分は完済される予定だ。一方、無保証の公債保持者や年金基金、労働組合にはわずかなドルを提供するだけだ。」となるはずです。
英語ってこういうものです。単語力、文法力、慣れを含めた読解力、英語以外の知識、それらが総合的に必要となります。長くなってしまったのでついでに言いますが、単に受験勉強の一科目だからといって英語を片手間に勉強して、こういう文が理解できるようになると思いますか?理解と言うのは聞いて瞬時、読んで瞬時の話です。...英語は言語ですよ。
この部分は一般的には「withの付帯状況」と言われる形です。訳し方は「~しながら」でいいでしょう。しかし、この事も知っていて下さい。withの付帯状況とは名目上の名で、実は形は「独立分詞構文」なのです。独立分詞構文とは分詞構文の前に主語役を置いたものです。これを説明するには分詞構文から説明し直さなければならないので、今回は端折ります。ただし独立分詞構文とは今も言ったように主語役が必要なのです。よって"I ate my supper with watching TV."などと書いてもwithの付帯状況にはなりません。"I ate my supper with my children watching TV."なら成り立ちます。
file 提出する、申し立てる
municipal 地方自治の
bankruptcy 破産
creditor 債権者
news conference 記者会見
make the best of 精一杯やりくりする
state-appointed 国選の
move 処置
petition 請願
evaluation 評価、見積もり
be eligible for ~にふさわしい
Gov. 州知事(governor)
feasible 実現可能な
liquidate 清算する
pensioners 年金受給者
recoup 取り戻す
bond 担保、公債
strategy 戦略
pay off 清算する、解雇する
bondholder 公債保有者
pennies on the dollar ずっと安い値段
catch their breath 一息つく
staked 利害関係がある
injunction 禁止命令
vested 既得の
brew 醸造する
territory 領域
uncharted 地図に載ってない、未知の
*Chapter 9: A bankruptcy proceeding that provides financially distressed municipalities with protection from creditors by creating a plan between the municipality and its creditors to resolve the outstanding debt. Municipalities include cities, counties, townships and school districts.