英語検定ライティング準１級（第137回）

裏金「語源に説得力がある話」

English has too many vocabulary for us to memorize.

昨年末に自民党議員の裏金問題が表沙汰となって今でも燻っている。複数の地方の補欠選挙は自民党からの独自候補がことごとく落選した。大手メディアが報道するのには意図がある。
The government party has gained numerous kickbacks from the profitable corporations for many years, which was exposed by several weekly magazines at the end of 2023, and their malicious behaviors have been criticized even now, we suppose.
All the candidates supported by the LDP members couldn’t win the by-elections in several local areas.
Major mass media reported these inconvenient topics on TV, which means that they have a few vital intentions.

年初めは大物芸人のスキャンダルで日本中のゴシップ好きは盛り上がった。政権与党の裏金問題を誤魔化すスピン報道だったが、芸能事務所も中枢なので大手メディアは控えめだった。
At the beginning of 2024, a few weekly magazines continued to report about a big entertainer’s scandals for several weeks, which made a large number of people in Japan curious about what he did in the past.
The rumors about his sexual scandals became prevalent by several TV stations, most of which were the spin coverages, but the company he belongs to is also the major corporation whose many comedians have been in charge of the responsible position in a lot of fields.
As a result, major mass media refrained from reporting the sexual affairs about him, we agree.

裏金は「キックバック」とか「シークレットマネー」で表現できるが説得力のある英語がある。廃油を売って儲けた基金のイメージらしい。廃油をパーティ券になぞらえていて泡銭になる。
The money many politicians obtained from the general contractors was called “kickbacks” or “secret money,” but we have a more persuasive expression, which is “slush fund.”
“Slush” means “waste oil,” and “fund” means “collected money,” which originally means this : a sailor secretly sold wasted oil and he collected money in the safe.
This proverb compares “party tickets” to “wasted oil,” which is dirty money.

しかも事務所の金庫の中に蓄えておいて万一に備えていたところも「ファンド」でしっくりくる。こう考えてみると、日本人と欧米人の思考回路が類似していて極めて興味深いと思った。
In addition, such money was accumulated in the safe of their office in a rainy day, in other words, in the case of emergency, which might fit “fund.”
Considering this, American way of thinking is similar to ours, which seems extremely interesting, we agree.

こんな感じで興味を持って英語を勉強すると進んでいくんだと思う。しかし高校生は数学や理科など他にも勉強すべきことがたくさんある。だから英語だけに時間はかけられないのだよ。
Like this, we learn English, which promotes us to study English harder and harder.
But a high school student must study math, science and so on, as well as English.
After all, they mustn’t spend their precious time in studying only English, we suppose.

We should have an effective way of learning English.