The Employee Factor blog has a
great post about the Japanese word Karoshi:
“Death by overwork” or karoshi (Kah-roe-she) is killing the Japanese Manager in his prime. How? Marathon hours at work lead to heart failure and brain bleeds.
…
We’re talking a lot of overtime. Maybe 100 hours of overtime as estimated by an expert on karoshi.
Take a moment to take that in.
Imagine death from overwork being so common in Japan, that there is actually a word for it. From the Wikipedia entry on Karoshi:
The first case of karōshi was reported in 1969 with the death from a stroke of a 29-year-old male worker in the shipping department of Japan’s largest newspaper company.
It was not until the latter part of the 1980s, during the Bubble Economy, however, when several high-ranking business executives who were still in their prime years suddenly died without any previous sign of illness, that the media began picking up on what appeared to be a new phenomenon.
This new phenomenon was quickly labeled karōshi and was immediately seen as a new and serious menace for people in the work force. In 1987, as public concern increased, the Japanese Ministry of Labour began to publish statistics on karōshi.
As you may know I’m Danish, and I take pride in the fact that there is no word for Karoshi in Danish. Instead we have a very different word: arbejdsglæde. Arbejde means work, glæde means happiness so arbejdsglæde simply means happiness at work.
And in case you’re wondering how that little sucker of a tongue-twister is pronounced, you can hear me explain it a little more here:
The word arbejdsglæde and how to pronounce it. (2 Mb mp3 file, 2 minutes).
This word exists only in the Scandinavian languages (I’ve checked!) and this is not a coincidence. Nordic business culture has a decades-long tradition of focusing on the well-being of employees.
UPDATE: Apparently it exists in Dutch as well. Thank you to Virgil for pointing that out.
Vocabulary matters. It says something about Japanese vs. Scandinavian business cultures that we have arbejdsglæde and they have karoshi.
And I have absolutely no doubt which culture is more likely to make people happy and to create great workplaces.
译文:
过劳死：苦力还是楷模？！
在雇员要素（Employee Factor）博客上有一篇关于日语单词Karoshi的精彩报道：“过度操劳致死”或过劳死（Kah-roe-she）正在杀死处于全盛时期的日本经理。怎么杀？马拉松般持续的工作使心脏衰竭，脑出血。
。。。
我们多次谈论加班问题。一位专家估计可能加班100多小时会导致过劳死。
花些时间思考这个问题。
想象一下在日本，死于过度操劳的案例比比皆是，的确有专门的词汇来形容。Wikipedia中对过劳死的描述：
报道首例karōshi是在1969年，一位在日本最大的报纸公司运送部门工作的男性工人猝死，年仅29岁。
直到20世纪80年代后期，在泡沫经济时期，当数位职位很高的公司行政人员也在他们最全盛的时期突然死亡，之前也并没有任何疾病的征兆，媒体才开始关注此事，逐渐形成一种新的现象。
此新现象很快被标明为karōshi，并立即被所有工作的人视作一项新的、严重的威胁。在1987年，随着越来越多的公众关注，日本劳工部着手公布karōshi的统计数据。
正如你们所知，我是丹麦人，我很骄傲在丹麦语中没有过劳死这种意思的词语。我们有着与此大相径庭的词汇：arbejdsglæde。Arbejde的意思是工作，glæde的意思是快乐，所以arbejdsglæde的意思就是快乐工作。
如果你正好奇这个如绕口令版拗口的词怎么读，你可以听听我的说明：
单词Arbejdsglæde及如何发音。（一个2mb的mp3文件，2分钟）。
这个单词仅存于斯堪的纳维亚语（我检查过了！），这并不是巧合。北欧公司文化对于雇员的福利有着数十年的传统。
更新：显而易见，它也存在于荷兰语。感谢Virgil指出。
词汇事件。这有点说明日本和北欧的公司文化，我们有arbejdsglæde，他们则有karoshi。
并且我对于哪个文化更能让人们快乐工作，创造一个很棒的工作场所毫无疑问。