For today’s news article, I have selected a short and easy one. I still don’t feel confident in reading long articles or articles about politics, I fear they might be discouraging…
Anyway, there is a subject that interests me this week: the British writer Kazuo Ishiguro カズオ・イシグロ receiving the Nobel Prize ノーベル文学賞.
This is a short article published on Asahi this morning, mainly focused on Kazuo Ishiguro saying that a part of him is Japanese, as announced by the title:
イシグロさん「私の一部は日本人」 ロンドンで取材対応
The word 取材・しゅざい means “collecting data”, “doing research for an article”, “covering a story”, “gathering news”. Here, we can simply translate it by “interview”.
To say “to grant an interview” we use the verb 応じる・おうじる：取材に応じる.We find this expression at the beginning of the article: “取材に応じた”. In our title, we have the noun 対応・たいおう which can be used in a lot of situations and have different meanings. Here it simply carries the meaning of “response”.
The article starts by describing Ishiguro’s reaction when he heard (about the information) that he received the Nobel 受賞の一報. When he first heard of it, he thought it was a case of fake news フェイクニュース. Then the Academy phoned him to ask him to come to the Award Ceremony 授賞式.
Hum, it is 受賞 but 授賞式? 😒 Why? 😟
In this other article about the same subject, the word 授賞理由 appears. It seems that both 受賞 and 授賞 exist (the latter being maybe more respectful?), but 受賞 is the most commonly used word. In my dictionary, 授賞 only appears in: 授賞の理由 and 授賞式.
Ishiguro said that, even if he grew up in England, his way of seeing things ものの見方 and his view of the world 世界観・せかいかん received a Japanese influence 影響・えいきょう. He said that his parents are Japanese and that he saw the world through his parents’ eyes: 親の目を通じて世界を見ていた. The expression ～を通じて・つうじて means “through”.
To conclude, I must admit that I am not familiar with Kazuo Ishiguro’s work… I would like to read An Artist of the Floating World, it’s been a long time since I haven’t read a novel in English!
About
I’m learning Japanese, Korean and Chinese to read mystery novels and play video games in these languages.
Learning languages has always been one of my favourite hobbies, but I’m not a social person, I don’t like to meet new people and make friends, this is just not me. I keep hearing that languages are meant for communication, that we have to actively use them, talk with natives, etc. and for a long time, I thought it was weird to learn languages just to read books, with zero interest in communication.
Now I don’t really care what people think, and this blog helped me a lot to stop doubting myself and just do what I enjoy doing.
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