Problems with these descriptions in my textbook

Question

For full context (pictures attached to the text) see here: https://www.docdroid.net/J4wjKwf/jap.pdf

「暮らしとアイデア」について話し合う会議に参加することになりました。日本には曲がるストローやプルトップリングなど、生活に役立つ発明で、特許を取ったものがたくさんあります。あなたが知っている発明で商品になったものを参加者に紹介してください。 First, my attempt at translation: It was decided that you will partake in a conference discussing ‘ideas and life circumstances’. In japan, bending drinking straws and rings for cans etc. (I don’t know what this is in English) are inventions which are helpful in daily life and there are many things which are patented/take patents. Please present things which being inventions you know became commercial articles/Please present things which were inventions you know and became commercial articles.

1) 暮らしとアイデア is kind of a problem for me. „Life circumstances and ideas“? I can only try to conclude what is meant by this. Maybe ideas which have arisen from certain cirumstances in life? Like a drinking straw maybe for people who have issues drinking from a glass directly?

2) 生活に役立つ発明で、特許を取ったものがたくさんあります These two parts 生活に役立つ発明で and 特許を取ったものがたくさんあります seem a bit disconnected to me. I think that I’m being told that there are many useful inventions and that many of them are patented. But the way I see it, this is poorly reflected in the grammar of the complete sentence. If 曲がるストローやプルトップリングなど was made a topic, it would be easier for me to give the impression that all these elements are one and the same thing: “Concerning bending drinking straws and rings for cans, they are inventions which are useful for daily life and there are many things which took patents.” Another option would be to extrapolate a continuative copula after など: “In japan, there are bending drinking straws and rings for cans and the like and they they are inventions which are useful in daily life and and there are many things which took patents.” If I regard もの in the last part as a pronominal element referring to 発明 and ultimately to 曲がるストローやプルトップリングなど then the contextual cohesion would improve even further: “Concerning bending drinking straws and rings for cans, they are inventions which are useful for daily life and they are one of many things which took patents.” This seems very far fetched to me though.

3) あなたが知っている発明で賞品になったものを参加者に紹介してください As it is probably obvious from the two options I offered in my translation for this sentence, I ran into trouble here as well. The first option is a literal translation trying to reflect as much as possible the syntactical connections I tried to establish. The second option is the way I would then translate it in a less literal, but hopefully more comprehensible way. I don’t really know wether the connections I established in my literal translation are legit or not :/

Answer 1

For your point (1), 暮らし refers to everyday life, so I think what 「暮らしとアイデア」 is trying to get at is the theme of useful ideas that help people out in their everyday lives (simple inventions such as straws, pull-rings etc).

For point (2), I think what you may be having trouble with is a common usage of など followed by a comma to mean "such as". For instance, a sentence like パスタやピザなど、色々な食べ物があります would mean "There are lots of different foods, such as pasta and pizza". In the same way, I think the など in this sentence links forward to 特許を取ったもの, meaning "there are lots of patented things, such as bending straws and pull-rings".

As for the で, I can see a couple of different ways to interpret this, and I'm not entirely confident which is more natural from a native perspective, but they both work out to mean roughly the same thing:

• The first is to interpret the で as the て-form of である, so that the phrase is equivalent to 生活に役立つ発明であり、特許を取ったもの "Things that are patented, and are inventions that help out in everyday life."
• The second, which I'm slightly leaning towards, is to treat で as a particle being used with a meaning equivalent to ～の中で, so that it reads as "Amongst the inventions that help out in everyday life, there are many patented things."

In point (3), we have a similar usage of で to point (2), and again both of the above interpretations are possible, but I'd lean fairly strongly towards the latter interpretation for this one. So the sentence would translate literally as "Please present to the attendees something that has been turned into a product from among the inventions you know of."

Answer 2

1. According to my light research「暮らしとアイデア」 seems to mean "暮らしの中で役立つアイデア". My interpretation is that 暮らし describes アイデア。

2. First of, で here is not a conjunctive here. It means "ことがらが成立する範囲を示します"。(The range in which something holds true).

   Second, など here indicates examples of things that are described. So it roughly more or less means "Among inventions useful in daily life, such as drinking tab and bending straws, there are many that got patented."

3. 賞品 literally means prize, so I don't think you can interpret that as "Commercial product". I also don't think 紹介 should be interpreted as "present" as that implies (to me at least) that you are showing off a physical product.

In this sentence I think it means you should introduce or do a presentation of an invention that was used as a prize somewhere to the attendees.