英語構文・文法の土台第18回: 報告・推測表現

中心イメージ

報告・推測表現は、事実、観察、推測を分けて話すための型。

障害調査やレビューでは、まだ確定していないことを断定しすぎると危ない。seems, looks like, suggests, turns out を使うと、確信度を調整できる。

表現	中心イメージ	例
It seems that…	そう見える、少し客観的	It seems that the cache is stale.
It looks like…	見た感じそう	It looks like a config issue.
It turns out that…	調べた結果わかった	It turns out that the token expired.
The logs suggest that…	証拠がそう示している	The logs suggest that the job retried twice.
According to…	情報源によると	According to the dashboard, latency increased.

ニュアンス比較

seems / looks like

It seems that the issue is related to caching.
It looks like the issue is related to caching.

seems は少し客観的で文書にも使いやすい。looks like は会話的で、見た印象に近い。

turns out / found that

It turns out that the token expired.
We found that the token expired.

turns out は「調べたら実はこうだった」。found that は調査結果として中立的。

suggest / show / prove

The logs suggest that the job retried twice.
The logs show that the job retried twice.
The logs prove that the job retried twice.

suggest は示唆。show はより強い事実。prove は証明でかなり強い。

日本語トラップ

`seems like` の後ろ

OK: It seems like the cache is stale.
OK: It seems that the cache is stale.
OK: The cache seems stale.

It seems like ... は会話寄り。文書では It seems that ... や The cache seems stale が使いやすい。

根拠がないのに断定しない

Strong: The database caused the issue.
Safer: The logs suggest that the database failover contributed to the issue.

調査中は suggest, seems, likely を使って確信度を調整する。

`according to me`

Awkward: According to me, this is a cache issue.
Natural: I think this is a cache issue.
Natural: Based on the logs, this looks like a cache issue.

according to は外部情報源に使う。自分の意見なら I think。

実務例文

Chat

It looks like a config issue.
It seems that the job retried twice.
Based on the logs, this started after the deployment.

PR review

It looks like this branch is not covered by tests.
The type error suggests that the response can be null.
I found that this helper is used in three places.

Incident

According to the dashboard, latency increased at 10:03.
It turns out that the token expired during the batch job.
The logs suggest that the retry logic worked as expected.

3秒練習

日本語	英語
設定の問題のようです	It looks like a config issue.
ログを見る限り、デプロイ後に始まりました	Based on the logs, this started after the deployment.
レスポンスがnullになりうることを型エラーが示しています	The type error suggests that the response can be null.
調べたら、バッチ中にトークンが期限切れになっていました	It turns out that the token expired during the batch job.