ドラマ「舟を編む」を見ました。I finished watching a drama called " Fune wo Amu", literally means " Editting a ship". 「舟」とは、このドラマに出てくる架空の辞書大渡海（だいとかい）のことで、The "ship" refers to a dictionary with a title meaning " Going across the ocean", which is a story about the dictionary editors. 辞書を作る人の話です。大きな辞書でも、A one volume dictionary is categorized into middle-sized no matter how thick it is. 一冊になっているものは中型辞書と呼ばれます。つまり、広辞苑なども全て中型辞書です。So almost all thick dictionaries in Japan are middle-sized.
原作では普通に紙の辞書を作る話ですが、The original novel are about only paper versions, but in the drama, the story reflects today's environments. ドラマでは時代が進んでいるので中型辞書の需要について厳しい予測がされ、As the managers of the publisher are negative towards the demands of middle-sized paper dictionaries, they almost gave up issuing the "Going across the ocean". もう少しで刊行中止になりかけますが、WEB版と紙版の二つを同時発売で決着します。Having been persuaded, the CEO decided to publish it with a WEB version on the same day. 最終回ではコロナ流行の時期となり、In the last episode, when they faced COVID19 pandemic they tried to delay the deadline as late as possible so as to include new trend words of the virus dealing with the rapid changes in society, adjusting the words' definitions on each page in a hurry until the last minute. 社会の急激な変化に応じてコロナ関連語彙を載せようと校了をギリギリまで遅らせ、最後まで慌ただしく準備します。
恋愛の語釈に「男女」を入れるかどうか、専門家が書いた項目をどうやって要約するか、いかにめくりやすい紙を作るかなど、数え切れない難題を乗り越えて出版にこぎつけました。Overcoming numerous challenges such as whether to include "men and women" in the definition of "Ren' ai" meaning romantic feelings, how to concise items written by experts in each field, how to produce special paper to turn pages easily, they managed to publish the book.
そして出版しても、After publishing the first version, they begin to fight for a revised version. 改訂版に向けてまた新たな戦いが始まります。今後紙の辞書は続くのか、困難はたくさんありそうですが、Other obstacles are to come in order to keep issuing paper dictionaries, but I think they are fascinating because you can encounter other words when you look up a certain word. ひとつの言葉に出逢う時、探す過程で他の出逢いが生まれる紙の辞書には捨てがたい魅力があると思います。