(文中の訳は、土屋政雄氏の翻訳を参照させていただいております。)
Chapter 1
Feb. 12 (P.3)
まず、冒頭の登場人物描写から。キャシーの職業は「提供者」の介護人だとの紹介がある。患者ではなく提供者を介護しているという辺りから、何やら謎めいたものを感じる部分。
Now I know my being a carer so long isn't necessarily because they think
I'm fantastic at what I do. There are some really good carers who've been
told to stop after just two or three years. And I can think of one carer
at least who went on for all of fourteen years despite being a complete
waste of space. So I'm not trying to boast. But then I do know for a fact
they've been pleased with my work, and by and large, I have too.
a complete waste of space=役立たずの人間
下線部は「私もそれなりにこの仕事に満足していた」との訳したのだが、翻訳では「わたし自身、自負めいたものがないわけではありません。」と訳されていた。ということは、my
workは「私の仕事ぶり」と解釈すべきなのだろう。
Feb. 18
Kathy H., they say, she gets to pick and choose, and she always choose
her own kind: people from Hailsham, or one of the other privileged estates.
No wonder she has a great record. I've heard it said enough, so I'm sure
you've heard it plenty more, and maybe there's something in it. But I'm not the first to be allowed to pick and choose, and I doubt if I'll be the last. And anyway, I've done my share of looking after donors brought up in every kind of place. By the time I finish, remember, I'll have done twelve years of this, and it's only for the last six they've let me choose.
下線部の意味は分かるが、訳すとなると難しい。(土屋訳：まったくの的外れだとは言いません。)
Feb. 22 (P.4)
And why shouldn't they? Cares aren't machines. You try and do your best
for every donor, but in the end, it wears you down. You don't have unlimited
patience and energy. So when you get a chance to choose, of course, you
choose your own kind. That's natural. (1)There's no way I could have gone on for as long as I have if I'd stopped
feeling for my donors every step of the way. And anyway, if I'd never started choosing, how could I ever have got
close again to Ruth and Tommy after all those years?
But these days, of course, there are fewer and fewer donors left who I
remember, and so in practice, I haven't been choosing that much. As I say,
the work gets a lot harder when you don't have that deeper link with the
donor, and though I'll miss being a carer, (2)it feels just about right to be finishing at last come the end of the year.
下線部(1)は分かりやすく言い換えると、I could work this far as I felt for my donors.
であり、下線部(2)は、I feel it right to finish when the end of the year comes. となる。
土屋訳(1) 介護の一瞬一瞬、提供者に共感し、思いやることができなければ、どうしてこれほど長く勤められたでしょう。
(2) いい潮時かなという気もしています。
Mar. 4
Ruth, incidentally, was only the third or fourth donor I got to choose.
She already had a carer assigned to her at the time, and (1)I remember it taking a bit of nerve on my part. But in the end I managed it, and the instant I saw her again, at that
recovery centre in Dover, (2)all our differences - while they didn't exactly vanish - (3)seemed not nearly as important as all the other things: like the fact that we'd grown up together at Hailsham, the fact that
we knew and remembered things no one else did. It's ever since then, I
suppose, I started (4)seeking out for my donors people from the past, and whenever I could, people
from Hailsham.
下線部(1)のtake a bit of nerveは、「少し勇気が要った」という意味だが、「今振り返ってもずいぶん強引なことをしたものだ」と上手く訳されている。
下線部(2)「かつてわたしたち二人の間にあったあれこれは」の訳も巧い。
下線部(3)では、all other thingsを敢えて訳さず、「さほど重要なことではなくなりました」とさらっと訳しているのが印象的だ。
下線部(4)では、seek outの目的語である＜people from the past, and whenever I could, people
from Hailsham＞が長いため、文の最後へと後置されている。この倒置に気付くようであれば、英文読解力は高い。
この文はもともと、seeking out people(人を捜し求める)＋for my donors(ドナーとして) である。しかし、倒置によってmy
donorsとpeopleが続くので、'seek out for'と'my donors people'をひとまとまりに考え、それぞれ「探し求める」、「ドナーとなる人々」と訳す人が多いのではないだろうか。
Mar.14
There have been times over the years when I've tried to leave Hailsham
behind, when I've told myself I shouldn't look back so much. (1)But then there came a point when I just stopped resisting. It had to do with this particular donor I had
once, in my third year as a carer; (2)it was his reaction when I mentioned I was from Hailsham. He'd just come through his third donation, it hadn't gone well, and he must have known he wasn't going to make it. ( A ) He could hardly breathe, but he looked towards me and said: 'Hailsham. I bet that was a beautiful place.' Then the next morning, when I was making conversation to keep his mind off it all, and I asked where he'd grown up, he mentioned some place in Dorset and his face beneath the blotches went into a completely new kind of grimace. And I realised then how desperately he didn't want to be reminded. Instead, he wanted to hear about Hailshm.
下線部(1)は、「でも、ある時を境に」という訳。
土屋訳では、下線部(2)を( A )の位置に持ってきて、訳されていた。つまり、he wan't going to make it.の後で訳されていたのだ。donorの説明(かつて世話をしていたが、経過が悪く、もう長くなかった)をまとめ、さらにhis
reactionの説明(息をするのもやっとなのに、こちらを向いて「ヘールシャムか…。」と言った。)をすぐ後に持ってきた方が良いとの判断からか。
Mar. 22 (P.5)
(1)So over the next five or six days, I told him whatever he wanted to know,
and he’d lie there, all hooked up, a gentle smile breaking through. He’d
ask me about the big things and the little things. About our guardians, about how we each had our own collection chests under our beds, the football, the rounders, the little path that took you all round the outside of the main house, round all its nooks and crannies, the duck pond, the food, the view from the Art Room over the fields on a foggy morning. Sometimes he’d make me say things over and over; things I’d told him only the day before, he’d ask about like I’d never told him. ‘Did you have a sports pavilion?’ ‘Which guardian was your special fovourite?’ At first I thought this was just the drugs, but then I realized his mind was clear enough. What he wanted was not just to hear about Hailsham, but to remember Hailsham, just like it had been his own childhood. He knew he was close
to completing and so that’s what he was doing: getting me to describe things
to him, so they’d really sink in, so that maybe during those sleepless
nights, with the drugs and the pain and the exhaustion, the line would
blur between what were my memories and what were his. That was when I first
understood, really understood, just how lucky we’d been - Tommy, Ruth,
me, all the rest of us.
下線部(1)の訳は、他の箇所でもしばしば見受けられることだが、訳す順序を敢えて原文とは変えている。
「…求められることはなんでも話してあげました。大きなこと、小さなこと、なんでも。チューブにつながれて横になったまま、その人はときおり穏やかな笑みを浮かべて聞いていました。」たしかに、原文より、翻訳の順序の方が、自然な感じがするが、ここまで気をつけながら訳さなければならないのだろうか。
Mar. 30 (P.6)
Driving around the country now, I still see things that will remind me
of Hailsham. I might pass the corner of a misty field, or see part of a
large house in the distance as I come down the side of a valley, even a particular arrangement of poplar trees up on a hillside, and I’ll think: ‘Maybe that’s it! I’ve found it! This actually is Hailsham!’
Then I see it’s impossible and I go on driving, my thoughts drifting on
elsewhere. In particular, there are those pavilions. I spot them all over
the country, standing on the far side of playing fields, little white prefab
buildings with a row of windows unnaturally high up, tucked almost under
the eaves. I think they built a whole lot like that in the fifties and
sixties, which is probably when ours was put up. If I drive past one I
keep looking over to it for as long as possible, and one day I’ll crash
the car like that, but I keep doing it. Not long ago I was driving through
en empty stretch of Worcestershire and saw one beside a cricket ground
so like ours at Hailsham I actually turned the car and went back for a
second look.
「木立を見上げて、木の並び方にはっとする。」という訳は、続くand I’ll think: ‘Maybe that’s it! I’ve found
it! This actually is Hailsham!’を受けての訳だと思う。「はっとする」というフレーズが入るだけで、直後の独り言が生きてくる。
April 5 (P.6)
We loved our sports pavilion, maybe because it reminded us of those sweet little cottages people always had in picture books when we were young. I can remember us back in the Juniors, pleading with guardians to hold the next lesson in the pavilion instead of the usual room. Then by the time we were in Senior 2 － when we were
twelve, going on thirteen - the pavilion had become the place to hide out with your best friends when
you wanted to get away from the rest of Hailsham.
私訳：体育館は大のお気に入りでした。おそらく、若いころ絵本の中で描かれていた暖かい小さな小屋を連想させてくれるからだと思います。自分たちが年少の頃、保護管に次の授業を普通教室ではなく、体育館でするようせがんだのを覚えています。年長の２年生の頃-12歳から13歳-には、体育館は親友との隠れ場所になっていて、へイルシャムの他のどの場所にも居たくなかった。
下線部が特に、土屋訳と異なっていた。土屋訳：体育館が言わば隠れ家になっていました。ヘールシャムの誰にも邪魔されず、仲良しグループだけで何かしたいときは、いつもここに集まったものです。
April 22 (P.6-7)
The pavilion was big enough to take two separate groups without them bothering each other – in the summer, a third group could １hang about out on the veranda. But ideally you and your friends wanted the place just to yourselves, so there was often jockeying and arguing. The guardians were always telling us to be civilised about it, but in practice, ２you needed to have some strong personalities in your group to stand a chance
of getting the pavilion during a break or free period. I wasn’t exactly the wilting type myself, but I suppose it was really because of Ruth we got in there as often as we did.
(私訳：その体育館の広さは、二つのグループが互いに干渉しないで済むほどの広さがあり、夏ならもうひとつグループが来たとしてもベランダでたむろできただろう。でも理想を言うと、誰だって自分たちだけで占有したかったから、グループ間で絶えず小競り合いとかいがみ合いをしていた。そんな時保護官はいつも、「もっと大人になりなさい。」と言ったが、実際グループの中でも際立って強い個性の人物がいないと、休み時間や空いている時間に体育館を使えなかった。自分自身決して軟ではなかったが、たびたび体育館に行ったのは、ルースのせいだと思う。)
下線部1、2の土屋訳は、以下の通り。
下線部１ ベランダで陣取る
下線部２ 我の強いメンバーのいるグループが勝ちです。そういう誰かがいないと、休み時間や自習時間に体育館を使うことはまず無理でした。
April 29 (P.7)
(1)Usually we just spread ourselves around the chairs and benches – there’d be five of us, six if Jenny B. came along –and had a good gossip.
(2)There was a kind of conversation that could only happen when you were
hidden away in the pavilion; we might discuss something that was worrying us, or we might end up screaming
with laughter, or in a furious row. Mostly, it was a way to unwind for
a while with your closest friends.
(3)On the particular afternoon I’m now thinking of, we were standing up on stools and benches, crowding around the high window.
That gave us a clear view of the North Playing Field where about a dozen
boys from our year and Senior 3 had gathered to play football. There was
bright sunshine, but it must have been raining earlier that day because
I can remember how the sun was glinting on the muddy surface of the grass.
(試訳：ジェニーがいたら６人ほどが、(1)たいていは椅子やベンチのまわりにたむろして、噂話に花を咲かせた。(2)体育館の裏でしかできないような会話だった。たとえば、いつも気にかかっている話だったり、結局は笑い飛ばしたり、怒って見せたりするような話だ。たいていそうやって親友とつかの間の気休めをした。
(3)決まった曜日の午後になると、腰かけ椅子やベンチに上がって、高窓の周りに集まった。そうすると、北の運動場がはっきりと見えて、そこでは同学年から年長の三年生までの１０人ほどがサッカーをしようと集まっていた。明るい太陽の日差しが注いていたが、その日差しががぬかるんだ芝生の表面できらきら光っていたから、朝方は雨だったにちがいない。)
下線部(1)は、土屋訳では、「椅子やベンチにすわって、…」と訳されていたが、私はspread ourselves aroundを訳さなければならないと思い、「たむろして」と訳してしまう。
下線部(2)の土屋訳で、a kind of conversation that could only happenを「弾む会話」としているのは、なるほどと思った。
土屋訳：体育館にひっそり隠れているからこそ弾む会話というものがあります。
下線部(3)のOn the particular afternoonは、土屋訳では「ある日の午後」となっていたが、oneではなくonだったので、「今私が考えている特定の午後に」と解釈し、「決まった曜日の午後に」とした。
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