北海道大学 英作文 公式模範解答分析

The Japanese publishing industry has been going through difficult times for the past few decades. Sales in the industry have declined since 1996, when the figure reached its peak, as the internet and smartphones took over much of the place that books and magazines previously held. Magazines have suffered more than books, because web-based media and SNS are more effective in terms of providing timely information or connecting people with the same interests, both of which were primary functions of paper magazines. According to the statistics, the total sales of the publishing industry in 2021 were only 63% of what they were twenty-five years ago.

One promising option for the industry is e-publishing. In early 2010, Amazon launched the first e-reader to support Japanese-language PDFs, immediately followed by Apple's first iPad. These innovative devices encouraged publishers to offer digitized versions of their books: e-books. The latest statistics show that the share of e-books to total publication sales is now over 30% and is expected to grow.

There are a number of advantages to e-books. First, they cost less to produce, so the prices are generally cheaper compared to their paper counterparts. Second, they do not take up as much space as paper books. You can buy hundreds of e-books and read them on a tablet or an e-reader, with no need to keep bookshelves in your home. Third, e-books are believed to be more environmentally friendly, or "green." Since they are not made of paper, e-books do not consume forest resources.

Some people, however, point out potential problems e-books have. If you buy a paper book, for instance, the book stays with you unless you get rid of it, but in some cases e-books you purchased may become inaccessible when the publisher goes out of business. Also, e-books may not be as environmentally friendly as you might think. E-readers require a lot of energy, chemicals, rare metals, and water to produce. In addition, maintaining online platforms for e-books is energy-intensive, consuming fossil fuels and contributing to global climate change. Thus, whether e-books are the smarter choice remains debatable.

Today, sushi is very popular and eaten all over the world, from high-end restaurants in New York City to street markets in Morocco. It tends to be favored as healthy food and its aesthetic quality often fascinates people. Despite the common belief that sushi is a traditional dish in Japan, it has been historically transformed through cultural adaptation to the present.

When asked which country sushi comes from, one would instantly respond "Japan". However, sushi was first eaten in Southeast Asia over 1600 years ago and was called Narezushi, pickled fish with salt and rice. Hundreds of years later, sushi arrived in Japan and was slowly adapted over the centuries. It was not until the 1820s that the Edo style sushi was created using fresh fish and rice vinegar, and from there, in the 1970s, sushi became modernized and more widespread across Japan with the advancement of refrigeration. Yet, credit for this now international dish is only given to the Japanese with its roots forgotten.

When Japanese people travel abroad, many have the opinion that sushi is not authentic. For instance, many Japanese might consider the American tuna roll with cream cheese, Jalapenos, and a spicy southwestern sauce not to be proper sushi. Also, some might take issue that sushi is often prepared by untrained cooks in America whereas in Japan it is an artisan skill developed over a lifetime. However, sushi in America has been changing since the 19th century. Similar to how sushi was adapted to the flavor profiles of the Japanese, the same can be said for America.

Sushi is not the only cuisine that has been adopted from other cultures over the past 100 years. One example is taco rice, which was created in Okinawa but was heavily influenced by Tex-Mex cuisine. After World War II, with the occupation of allied forces in Okinawa, there was a demand for tacos, which requires ground corn to make flatbread to wrap meat and vegetables. However, because there was a lack of ingredients to make traditional Tex-Mex cuisine, a local restaurant owner adapted the recipe to use more Japanese ingredients, chiefly rice. Nowadays, when many Japanese think of taco rice, they only relate it to Okinawa instead of the American southwest or Mexico. This is because it has been made into something uniquely Japanese, similar to how Jalapeno sushi in the U.S. is uniquely American.

While American sushi restaurants might sell traditional Japanese sushi, it is currently diverging away from Japanese traditions, just as modern sushi was adapted from Narezushi. However, it remains to be asked whether American sushi will ever be accepted as its own cuisine or will always be labeled inauthentic.

Machine translation is the process by which computer software is used to translate text in one language to text in another language. In recent years, this software has become available online and free to use. Google Translate is perhaps the most famous example of machine translation software, but there are many others available online and integrated into computers and mobile devices. In light of recent advancements in machine translation technology, people have begun to consider whether machine translation will replace foreign language learning in the future.

One major strength of machine translation is the ability to translate whole sentences, paragraphs, even pages of text all at once, which requires the processing of interconnected relationships between multiple words, phrases, and whole sentences within a single block of text. Machine translation software achieves this by analyzing the similarities and differences in the grammar rules of multiple languages. Another major strength is the speed of machine translation. Today, machine translation is capable of translating pages of text in mere seconds. When combined with software that recognizes human speech and automatically records it in text form, oral conversation can also be translated in real time. Whether in an office, or walking outside, machine translation can potentially eliminate the need for foreign language skills.

However, despite the potential of machine translation, translated texts still have many errors. The longer and more complex the sentence is, the higher the chance for errors. In addition, professional human translators argue that machines cannot understand culture and situations of communication, which are closely connected to language. For example, the Japanese word sumimasen is often translated to "I'm sorry" in English. But, sumimasen has a special cultural meaning in Japan and could also mean "thank you." If someone receives a gift or an act of kindness, replying "sumimasen" does not mean "I'm sorry." In this case, the meaning is closer to "thank you," and this is due to Japanese culture and communication situation. Such complications cause inaccuracies in machine translation. Intended use of the translation is also a problematic factor for machine translation. For example, machine translation software cannot tell the difference between the appropriate sentences needed in a business email and those needed in an academic essay. The human brain should be respected because it can understand these things. That is why many people say that human language learning will never be replaced by machine translation.

While it is certainly true that machine translation will not replace foreign language learning today, it is improving daily. The shortcomings of machine translation listed above may eventually be overcome by technological advances. Artificial intelligence programs get smarter every day by continuously gathering and analyzing samples of language from newspapers, books, blogs and streaming videos all over the world. Some people believe that machines will eventually become smart enough to master languages. However, others feel that there are parts of language and communication that can only ever be understood by humans.

There is an ongoing debate about whether students should be required to study subjects that are considered part of the "liberal arts." The liberal arts are university subjects that include history, philosophy, foreign languages, music, and so forth. A liberal arts education exposes students to a range of different subjects and seeks to cultivate students' critical thinking and reasoning skills. These are not the most practical subjects, but by exposing students to different ideas through liberal arts classes, supporters of the liberal arts believe that students will develop a more balanced skillset that will allow them to pursue different careers in the future.

However, in today's increasingly specialized world, many people question the validity of such an education. A liberal arts education is often compared to more practical majors, such as business, engineering, or computer programming. These specialized and more practical majors explicitly seek to cultivate students' skills in these fields and prepare them for jobs in industries related to their majors. By majoring in a field such as finance, for example, students can be expected to be best prepared to obtain jobs in the financial industry. This is because they will have specialized and detailed knowledge of finance and will hypothetically not require much time to learn how to perform the duties of their future jobs.

One can expect that in today's data-driven and technical work environment, a specialized major would be better for most students. However, the evidence is far from conclusive. Many successful people received a liberal arts education and they have been able to translate the skills learned from their liberal arts curriculum into success in many specialized fields. For example, Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and a successful technology entrepreneur, majored in philosophy at Stanford University. Jack Ma, billionaire and founder of Alibaba Group, majored in English. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube, majored in history.

It is thus clear that a liberal arts education will definitely not prevent one from entering a more specialized field. But is it truly advantageous? Would it serve students best to avoid a liberal arts education and instead focus on a specialized one? The debate continues, but we should be able to obtain a clearer answer to this question in the near future.