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Be left behind

ichfrage

Senior Member
Chinese
the following is an example sentence

When a company makes people redundant, those who are left behind start looking over their shoulder.

"Be left behind "here means the people who have not been fired by the company during the action of making redandunt and could continue working in the company,

But for me, the expression is a bit ambiguous. And the people who "are left behind "could also mean the people whose work performance is low and who is afraid of being fired during the action of making redundant.

Does my confusion make sense?

Thanks
Your first interpretation is correct.

"The people who have been left behind" does not refer to people whose work is slow. That's not what 'left behind' means in this context.
As I understand it, "making people redundant" (in BE) means firing them, dismissing them from their jobs. The people "left behind" are the ones who didn't get fired and who still remain at work. They now fear that they in turn may be dismissed.
I think it's a terrible word choice because the common meaning of left behind is some other group is moving forward and you are left behind in a bad position. But in this case, the group that was fired is not moving forward and it's hard to see how the other people could then be left behind.

Remain is a much better word choice.

When a company makes people redundant, those who (削除) are left behind (削除ここまで) remain start looking over their shoulder.
One different way it could be improved is to make both halves of the sentence about leaving (not make the reader have to jump the gap between "made redundant" and "leaving").
When a company forces people to leave, those who are left behind...
I agree that "remain" would still be better, but this way you more clearly have people leaving and therefore leaving other people behind.
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