2014年3月31日月曜日

Memorandum

Cambridge International Book Centre

Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English with Oxford Academic iWriter on CD-ROM

Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Paperback
Publication Date: 2014
Price: £30.00

Description: Level: B1-C2 / Pre-Intermediate - Proficiency
Helps students learn the language they need to write academic English, whatever their chosen subject.

The Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English helps students learn the words and phrases used in academic writing, and how to use them in their own academic written work. With Oxford Academic iWriter on CD-ROM.

The only learner's dictionary to focus exclusively on academic English, the Oxford Learner's Dictionary of Academic English is specifically designed for learners studying, or preparing to study, academic subjects on English-medium university courses. Based on the 85-million-word Oxford Corpus of Academic English, it provides all the tools students need to develop their academic writing skills.

Includes hundreds of academic usage notes, full-sentence examples based on real academic texts, reference pages, and a 48-page Oxford Academic Writing Tutor.

The CD-ROM includes the Oxford Academic iWriter, an interactive writing tutor.

Key Features:
• In-depth treatment of over 22,000 words, phrases and meanings
• Informed by the 85-million-word Oxford Corpus of Academic English, which includes a broad range of textbooks and academic journals from 26 different disciplines within the subject areas of humanities, social sciences, life sciences and physical sciences
• 50,000 corpus-based examples show words in genuine academic contexts and help students use words correctly
• Academic Word List words marked, showing students the most important academic words to learn first
• 690 collocation notes, with full-sentence examples, show over 26,000 collocations and word patterns
• 80 Thesaurus notes, Grammar Points and Which Word? notes
• Language Banks help with functions such as linking ideas and describing trends
• 48-page Oxford Academic Writing Tutor with model texts and writing tips helps students structure and write a variety of assignments, including essays and dissertations
• The Oxford Academic iWriter on the CD-ROM, an interactive version of the Writing Tutor, provides frameworks for students to write their own assignments
• 47-page reference section includes information about academic grammar, as well as punctuation, numbers and measurements, help with irregular verbs and a list of geographical names with pronunciation

印象に残った言葉を英語で

Impressive Words

「ＮＨＫをＢＢＣのような輝く公共放送にするビジョンがない人が会長にいても、意味がない。」

（脳科学者・茂木健一郎さん・今朝のツィートで）

Japanese brain scientist Kenichiro Mogi tweeted today:

"A person without a vision of making NHK a brilliant public broadcasting company like BBC is the chairman of NHK, which holds no meaning for people."

☆　I couldn't agree more.

2014年3月28日金曜日

From the Latest News

March 28, 2014, 12:23 am

World's 'longest-serving' death row inmate freed for Japan retrial

Tokyo (AFP) - A man believed to be the world's longest-serving death row inmate walked free from jail Thursday after decades in solitary confinement, in a rare about-face for Japan's rigid justice system.

A slightly unsteady-looking Iwao Hakamada, 78, emerged from the Tokyo prison with his campaigning sister after Shizuoka District Court in central Japan ordered a fresh trial over the grisly 1966 murder of his boss and the man's family.

Presiding judge Hiroaki Murayama said he was concerned that investigators could have planted evidence to win a conviction almost half a century ago as they sought to bring closure to a crime that had shocked the country.

"There is a possibility that (key pieces of) evidence have been fabricated by investigative bodies," Murayama said in his ruling.

Shizuoka prosecutors, who have three days to appeal the decision, told Japanese media that the court's decision was "unexpected".

Apart from the United States, Japan is the only major industrialised democracy to carry out capital punishment, a practice that has led to repeated protests from European governments and human rights groups, who say the justice system is heavily skewed in prosecutors' favour.

Hakamada is the sixth person since the end of World War II to receive a retrial after having a death sentence confirmed, and his case will bolster opponents of capital punishment.
Of the past five former death-row inmates who received retrials in Japan, four were subsequently cleared. Higher courts threw out a retrial motion for the fifth prisoner, although his lawyers have submitted a fresh request for a retrial with new evidence.

After his arrest, Hakamada initially denied accusations that he robbed and killed his boss, the man's wife and their two children before setting their house ablaze.

But the former boxer, who worked for a bean-paste maker, later confessed following what he subsequently claimed was a brutal police interrogation that included beatings.
He retracted his confession, but to no avail, and the supreme court confirmed his death sentence in 1980.

- Doubts over evidence -

Prosecutors and courts had used blood-stained clothes, which only emerged a year after the crime and his arrest, as key evidence to convict Hakamada.

The clothes did not fit him, his supporters said. The blood stains appeared too vivid for evidence that was discovered so long after the crime. Later DNA tests found no link between Hakamada, the clothes and the blood stains, his supporters said.

But the now-frail Hakamada remained in solitary confinement on death row, regardless.

His supporters and some lawyers, including the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, have loudly voiced their doubts about the evidence, the police investigations and the judicial logic that led to the conviction.

Even one of the judges who originally sentenced Hakamada to death in 1968 has said he was never convinced of the man's guilt, but could not sway his judicial colleagues who out-voted him.

Japan has a conviction rate of around 99 percent and claims of heavy-handed police interrogations persist under a long-held belief that a confession is the gold standard of guilt.

The decision to grant Hakamada a retrial came as Amnesty International issued its annual review of reported executions worldwide, which showed Japan killed eight inmates in 2013, the ninth-largest national tally in the world.

Hakamada's sister Hideko, 81, who has passionately campaigned for a retrial for decades, thanked dozens of supporters who gathered in front of the court house.

"Everyone, really, really thank you," she said through a loud speaker in front of hordes of journalists and supporters. "This happened thanks to all of you who helped us. I am just so happy."

Hakamada seems to have developed psychological illnesses after decades in solitary confinement, Hideko told AFP in an interview last year.

"What I am worried about most is Iwao's health. If you put someone in jail for 47 years, it's too much to expect them to stay sane," Hideko said in the interview.
Amnesty, which has championed Hakamada's cause and says he is the world's longest-serving death row detainee, called on prosecutors to respect the court's decision.
"It would be most callous and unfair of prosecutors to appeal the court?s decision," said Roseann Rife, the organisation's East Asia research director.
"Time is running out for Hakamada to receive the fair trial he was denied more than four decades ago," she said.

2014年3月26日水曜日

Memorandum

INTERVIEW/ Jay Rubin: Translator offers a peek into his life--and Haruki Murakami's as well

The Asahi Shinbun

March 03, 2014

By LOUIS TEMPLADO/ AJW Staff Writer

Editor's note: This interview is part of The Asahi Shimbun AJW's series on internationally acclaimed writer Haruki Murakami.

* * *

Readers can’t get far into a Haruki Murakami book without hearing the music.

From his early works such as “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” (where there is a mention of Bing Crosby singing “Danny Boy”) to “After Dark” (believed to have been titled after a jazz classic) and the latest “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” (Franz Liszt’s “Années de pèlerinage,” or years of pilgrimage, runs throughout it), the famed author always finds aural arrangements to harmonize his words.

Where does Murakami draw the references from?

Probably from his vast record collection, says Jay Rubin, 73, the American translator behind “Norwegian Wood,” “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle” and “1Q84,” among other Murakami works. A former neighbor to the famously reclusive Japanese writer as well, Rubin had the privilege of seeing some of that immense musical vault up close, together with getting a rare view into the private life of the renowned writer.

“He’s a human being. He’s a very nice guy, and he’s kind of low key in person,” says Rubin, speaking on a visit to Tokyo in December. “He’ll talk most if you talk about music with him because he loves music so much. It’s in his head all the time.”

The two first came into contact in 1989, when Rubin penned a letter to the still relatively obscure author proposing to translate a few short stories into English. Murakami responded favorably, beginning a collaboration of nearly a quarter of a century. Rubin, now the Takashima research professor of Japanese humanities at Harvard University, had a big part in bringing Murakami to the institution as an artist-in-residence in 2005.

He’d always known that Murakami was a music buff, he says, but had no idea of just how much so until the writer moved next door to him in Cambridge, Mass.

“I was astounded by the size of his music collection: he must have something like 10,000 records,” says Rubin, counting just the vinyl and not the CDs. “I’ve offered him some old LPs from my collection (after talking about music) and he would say, ‘Oh, I have this one or I can get it myself.’ He didn’t want to take it from me.

“His knowledge of music in any field is just astounding. His knowledge of classical music is really immense,” Rubin says. “When I first read ‘Talking about music with Mr. Seiji Ozawa’--that book where he and the conductor were talking about classical music matters--I would occasionally lose track of who was talking and think that I was reading Ozawa, because there was this very knowledgeable comment about how the Cleveland Orchestra in the 1950s changed with (conductor) George Szell or something like that, but this was Murakami talking.

“He doesn’t just listen to pieces of music and likes them or dislikes them, he listens and he fits them into a big context that comes from his own systematic approach to what he’s doing.”

In some cases their musical tastes have overlapped, says Rubin, which is a boon when he is translating such works as “After Dark,” where a central character is a student-trombonist fixated on the song "Five Spot After Dark" from Curtis Fuller’s 1959 album, “Blues-ette.”

"I've never had problems with his references to jazz musicians or what not," he says. "I usually know what he’s talking about because I used to be very excited about jazz myself, but that was a long time ago.”

Those days were back during his graduate school years, says Rubin, when jazz gave him some relief from the “gray realism” of his academic specialty: Meiji Era (1868-1912) literature (one of his earliest projects was a translation of “Sanshiro” by Natsume Soseki) and the naturalist writers from the early 20th century.

“Those gray novels I was reading from the turn of the last century were not funny books,” he says.

Rubin says Soseki attracted his interest because there was nothing really exotic nor Japanese about his stories--“it’s low-key writing about fairly well-rounded characters who are as depressed as anybody in the West.”

“That was part of what was a great shock about Murakami. Here I am reading works by so-called naturalist writers who are very much focused on rather boring everyday life and along comes this guy who has unicorn skulls and colors floating off into space. I just couldn’t believe that a Japanese writer could be that good.

“Maybe what we have most in common is our sense of humor,” he says. “There are lots of funny scenes and characters in Murakami that were deliberately funny. It was great to have something to laugh about in the genre I was working on.”

Murakami is also a kind of a bookworm “in the best sense,” says Rubin, who, if he had to be described, fits the bill of a “nice guy and pretty low key in person.”

“He’s always got a book with him, and if there’s a lull in the conversation he may pull a book out and start reading it. He just knows an amazing amount of things but he complains about his bad memory. On a daily basis he probably does have a bad memory, and I think that has something to do with his interest in questions of memory and bringing back the past and things of that sort in his books. But he does remember an amazing amount of what he’s read and what he’s heard.”

The Murakami translator also discovered that he and his subject also share the same work habits. Working on “1Q84,” for example, was “just a matter of sitting down at the computer at a certain time of the day, a certain point in the day, and staying there for a while. It’s more a matter of discipline. Murakami is always talking about discipline, and I think I’ve got that, too. And concentration. Those are the two big words for him, and definitely it’s true for me as well. Once I get locked on to something, I can get very obsessed.”

Despite the rumors, there was no conspiracy behind the book’s delayed release in English: Rubin says his work attention span is about four hours, punctuated by frequent play breaks with his grandson. Philip Gabriel translated the latter half of the book.

“To be honest, what I do is not really very exciting,” Rubin says. “In a way it’s like Yukio Mishima, who used to disappoint people by pointing out that being a writer was like being a banker. You go to work at a certain time, do a certain amount of work, and the next day you do the same thing all over again.

"I’m not trying to say it's not fun--it is tremendous fun--but the fun is all up here in the head. I sometimes think that if our neighbors were spying on us--looking for some kind of activity--they would be very disappointed. There’s no movement in the house from the morning. It’s just someone sitting at a computer.”

Memorandum

Twitterbluebirdland （バードランド） - 2日前

2014年3月31日月曜日

2014年3月28日金曜日

2014年3月26日水曜日

INTERVIEW/ Jay Rubin: Translator offers a peek into his life--and Haruki Murakami's as well

柴田先生、最終講義なんだ。

RT @monkey_info1: 柴田さんの最終講義を聞きに東大本郷へ。21世紀のアメリカ小説がテーマ。ブライアン・エヴンソンとケリー・リンクは今のアメリカ小説にとって間違いなく避けては通れない。 pic.twitter.com/xgNilJXjxR

柴田元幸先生の東大専任教員としての最終講義を受講。「21世紀のアメリカ小説」と題した講義は、後半の朗読や質疑応答も含めて、とても良かった！

あー、そうか。今日柴田さんの最終講義だったか。

柴田元幸先生の東京大学の最終講義（専任教員としての）を後にして、土曜日ゆえに荻窪経由で高円寺に到着。

柴田元幸先生の最終講義が終わり、幾人かの人たちにご挨拶して、懇親会には出ず本郷キャンパスをあとに。

柴田元幸さんの最終講義だん。講義内容も勿論ですが、個人的に柴田先生の朗読が上手すぎて脱帽でした笑

柴田元幸が最終講義とかそりゃ俺も歳とったわけだよutenglishnews.seesaa.net/s/article/3892… #メモン

今日は柴田さんの最終講義だったのか。もしや…

今日は柴田元幸氏の最終講義の日でしたね、そういえば。これからの氏の活動にも大注目です。本当にお疲れ様でした。

えっ柴田さんの最終講義ってどういうこと？教員やめるとかいうこと？

柴田さんの最終講義を聞きに東大本郷へ。21世紀のアメリカ小説がテーマ。ブライアン・エヴンソンとケリー・リンクは今のアメリカ小説にとって間違いなく避けては通れない。pic.twitter.com/xgNilJXjxR

柴田元幸さん最終講義『21世紀のアメリカ小説』のレジュメ。この講義の内容は、活字化される予定と聞いています。 twitpic.com/dz0lm4 twitpic.com/dz0lmm

ずいぶん立派な会場であることに驚いた。野谷文昭さんの最終講義と同じ教室だと思っていたが、ちがっていた。あの教室の方が、柴田さんによく似合うと思うのだが、人数の関係だろうか。落ち着かない。

柴田元幸教授の実質上の最終講義はこの記述に従う限りふらっと行けるものではないんじゃあないか（ゆえにぼくは明日行っても無駄なんじゃあないかしら）utenglishnews.seesaa.net/article/389234…

柴田元幸先生の最終講義を小沢健二が聞きに来るのではないかという邪推

柴田元幸先生の最終講義行くか迷っている。

@phyl705 野谷文昭さんの最終講義は、『すばる』誌に掲載されたのですが、柴田さんのはどこに載るのかな。わかる範囲で調べておきますね。

RT @capybaracamera: 柴田先生退官で最終講義なんだ…／utenglishnews.seesaa.net/article/389234…

しまった、藝大馬車道校舎の『アメリカン・スリープオーバー』、ラスト1回の上映で観ようと思ったら、この日は柴田元幸先生の最終講義がある日じゃん！ がーん。

2014年3月25日火曜日

Richard Powers: A Musical Theory of Everything

Richard Powers with Chris Lydon at the Boston Athenaeum, January 22, 2014

しまった、藝大馬車道校舎の『アメリカン・スリープオーバー』、ラスト1回の上映で観ようと思ったら、この日は柴田元幸先生の最終講義がある日じゃん！　がーん。