Quote:
Originally Posted by YuriTokoro
Hi.
Could you correct my English?
"We are entering the realm of the unknown."
Yukio Hatoyama took office as prime minister, and gave his inaugural address on September 16th. “We are entering the realm of the unknown” was a part of his speech.
He promised to reduce bureaucratic meddling in politics, eliminate the practice of wasting tax revenue, and to make the best effort with a sense of responsibility.
He did acknowledge that mistakes will be made, but he will learn from them. It was then that he said “We are entering the realm of the unknown.”, and asked for people to be tolerant.
This would be an odd things to hear, right? This is the Japanese way of speaking. I believe an American president would not speak in this way.
Some Japanese people don’t like a person who displays too much confidence when beginning something. For example, a Japanese person new to a company would say he or she has no knowledge, needs help, and is not confident even if he or she knows the business well and is confident. If you say you are full of confidence when you are new, you arouse suspicion.
Despite that, I believe saying “We might fail” is extravagant.
This is the inaugural address in Japanese. Sorry, we don’t have it in English.
http://www.hatoyama.gr.jp/speech/090916.html
Thank you. |
I see in this post many examples of parallel construction, which is greatly encouraging. As a result, I have tried to keep that structure in mind while doing revisions.
Most of the revisions done were to reduce or change the words in sentences in order to have them read easier and link together in a natural way. Also, I change "he/she" to "he or she" for essentially the same reason. Grammatically, there's little difference but changing the "/" to "or" is easier to say and is less jarring to eye when reading the post.
However, I am unsure of my revisions at the end of the post:
"If you say you are full of confidence when you are new, you arouse suspicion."
I changed "opposition" to "suspicion" based on the belief that people who see a new recruit express confidence right from the beginning could be thought of as arrogant. The established individuals in a company could be thinking "How can he know so much about our business if we haven't seen him before?"
"Despite that, I believe saying 'We might fail' is extravagant."
This sentence seems to introduce a concept that is the exact opposite of overconfidence; that is, being more sure of failure in something. I am not sure how the concept of "extravagance" (or having a conspiciously large amount of something) can be an accurate description of the person's belief in this situation. More explanation may be needed, or some way to contrast displaying a strong belief in failure with displaying humility before beginning a task or joining a new business group.