Word lists

This country Japan where English learning material has been nurtured as a full industry is choked full with books listing words by categories, the more the better. I fished out the other day one that had laid dormant since having bought it earlier this year. A.H. Birse in his memoir - pre-Internet historical time - stresses the importance and challenge to work on glossaries. If you have about ¥2000 to spend, I would recommend this one : ニュース英語のキーフレーズ8000. If you want to spend less, you can find the previous version for under ¥300 at Amazon Japan. The book comes with 2 audio CDs, the core words being read aloud both in Japanese and English. 


There are 33 domains listed in the earlier edition, and 36 in the new one. That is why, unless they replaced the narrators with better ones, the cheaper version may be plenty enough.


Each core word or expression comes expanded with related vocabularies. This alone doesn't make the book exceptional in anyway. But if you look at the content, you get a pretty much good idea that a wide but essential chunk of basics and more for business liaison interpreting is covered here. Here is the content list of the latest version. The difference with the earlier version are the end chapters related with IT, environment, medicine, etc.


1 経済(市場経済
経済成長
統計・数値
景気循環
景気動向
景気対策
国家財政
税金
社会保障
国際経済
外国為替
国際貿易)
2 金融(金融・日銀
銀行
郵貯・保健
証券・投資
株式市場
株式売買)
3 産業(産業・生産
流通・建設
電力・環境
鉄鋼・機械
電子・バイオ
農業・食品)
4 ビジネス(企業・組織
営業・業務
販売
人事
雇用・労働
倒産・再建
経営
会計・財務
業績・法務)
5 補遺(IT
環境
医療・その他)

Chapter 4 - Business (Corporation, Organizations, Management, etc.) alone wraps up very efficiently matters that invariably pop up in real professional life. In that sense, at least between Japanese and English, the amount of ready to use up material for interpretation training and real life preparation is solid. What is lacking are strategies to make the best of these materials not specifically geared at interpretation, for interpretation purpose. Glossary workout must be plugged into a global approach that help crystallize the reviewing of words on one side with a constant stream of listening and shadowing exercises. The audio CDs can be manipulated using simple audio editing software to adapt the content for other languages. The copyright owners won't like it but does it matter? 

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Lionel Dersot
Language Interpretation for Business and Technology in Tokyo
Japan Liaison Agency and Business Support Services
Mobile : +81 90 6858 1106
Fax: +1 815 572-8300
lionel.dersot@japan-interpreters.com
Skype : lionelskp
http://www.lioneldersot.com
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