ChanomiTalk

When a doctor was explaining an illness to a family, I heard him say “She’s basically carrying around a bomb. It could explode at any time.”

This is an expression that gets used a lot. Yesterday I heard someone say “It looks like your heart might explode.” It was as if he interpreted the meaning of a doctor’s metaphor as a literal cardiac rupture.

The above “carrying a bomb” is in fact used to refer to patients with chronic conditions or to conditions that may return or get worse at any time.

They also tend to say things like “you’re carrying a bomb in your shoulder” when a baseball player has an aching shoulder, for example.

Aya Miyata
English by Chay Schiller




日本語の表現

医師から家族へ病気の状態を説明する際に
「爆弾を抱えている状態です。いつ爆発してもおかしくありません。」
このような表現が使われることがあります。
先日「心臓が爆発するかもしれないみたい。」と話している人がいました。
医師が使った比喩を心臓破裂のように思ったようです。
この「爆弾を抱えている」というのは、いつ再発したり悪化したりするかわからない時や慢性的な疾患がある時に使われます。
野球選手が肩を痛めている時にも「肩に爆弾を抱えている」とよく使われています。

Recently here in America, there was a medical case where a pregnant woman, due to complications, became brain dead. She lived via life support in a hospital as doctors were concerned about her baby. The woman’s parents wanted the doctors to take her off of live support as they didn’t want their daughter to live as a vegetable. Eventually, a judgment was made in the courts to end life support. Her parents consented.

Here in the U.S., if there is a patient living by a machine, whether they have money to pay or not, there has to be legal consent by a guardian and/or court to terminate support.

The final line of this entry was somewhat problematic for me to translate.
This is the original Japanese:

みなさま、風邪やウイルス感染にはくれぐれもお気をつけ下さい。

Literally, this says “Everyone, please be very careful of colds and viral infections.”
When I try to picture under what circumstances this line might actually appear, I think of a movie about an epidemic with a squad of specialists being briefed on the dangers they will face. It doesn’t sound normal at all. It sounds like exactly what it is – something spoken by a non-native English speaker that seems perfectly reasonable to them.

In a normal situation, an English speaker might just say “Stay healthy!” in order to express their best wishes. But if I used that as the translation in this post, it would come out sounding too casual for the authoritative and informative nature of the writing. So, the normal line needs to be expanded to something like “Let’s all take care to stay healthy and avoid infection.”, which also incorporates more of the sense of the original sentence. However, now the sentence sounds too stiff and formal, like something from a pamphlet issued by the government. The author of this post maintains a personal voice, which should not be lost at the very end, so my translation needed one final touch:

“Let’s all take care to stay healthy this winter and avoid infection.”

Now the line accomplishes its purpose, but at the same time, it has become somewhat far removed from the original Japanese, which could cause some people to complain, especially if they are trying to compare the two versions to learn Japanese or English. Like I said – problematic!

Disease Prevention Strategies


When winter hits in Japan, we start getting a lot of cases of influenza and stomach flu. The patients and staff at the hospital where I work are no exception. Today, I’d like to present a few preventative measures to take against viruses like these.

1. Extensive hand washing

Hand washing is simply the most effective method that there is. They say you should wash your hands for 30 seconds each time. A lot of people forget their fingertips and the area around their thumbs, so be careful.

Aside from hand washing that relies on soap, one may also opt for antiseptic alcohol. In a hospital, there is antiseptic alcohol all over the place, so it’s quite easy to wash your hands when entering and exiting patient rooms or moving into other areas. Using this method is said to be at least as effective as washing with soap and water, if not more so.

However, antiseptic alcohol does not kill the stomach flu. So, there’s no way to avoid thorough hand washing with soap and water if one wishes to prevent this virus.

2. Maintenance of indoor humidity

Viruses are able to drift more efficiently through dry air, so it’s very important to manage the indoor humidity level. As a rule of thumb, you should maintain at least 40% humidity, and 50-60 percent if possible. In Japan, the humidity level during winter is often as low as 20-30%. Be sure to remember this and humidify your air, but also remember that when the temperature drops, the amount of water in the air also drops. An indoor temperature of 20-25 degrees celsius will ensure that this doesn’t happen.

3. Breathing masks

Masks are distributed daily to all hospital workers from novermber to march. We receive two masks a day – one for the morning and one for the afternoon. It’s unknown to what extent these masks are effective at preventing illness, but I do think that they are fairly effective at preventing disease transmission from aerosol sources such as saliva droplets in the air.

There are many other methods besides these for the prevention or mitigation of disease transmission, but that’s all for today.

As for what you can do at home, extensive hand washing would be the best place to start.
If you can afford it, investing in a humidifier for your home would also be a great idea.

Let’s all take care to stay healthy this winter and avoid infection.


Umi Oda
English by Chay Schiller