桐壺177：白き大袿(おほうちぎ)に御衣(おんぞ)ひとくだり、例のことなり。
それは白い大袿に御衣一領と、まずきまりどうりの品々であった。
N君：－－－ a white Oouchigi and a set of Onzo, which were usual articles as rewards.
S先生：They were conventional articles : a white cloak and a set of robes.
今日の英作談義はちょっと昔になりますが「2012.3/12(日)の朝日新聞天声人語」を取り上げて英訳してみたのでいっしょに読んでみましょう。2011.3/11東日本大震災からちょうど1年経過した感慨を記しています。ちなみに天声人語は英語で Vox popuri, vox Dei といいます。民の声は天の声、というわけです。ラテン語系なので名詞が前・形容詞が後になっています。さてそれではいきましょう。
Asked whether it is already a year or only a year since the East Japan Great Earthquake, I will say that one year has already elapsed. I feel as if it were only yeasterday that I wrote with a trembling hand that day, "I could not help averting my eyes ftom the TV's screen." I was very shocked when I saw the TV pictures taken from above in which Seawater was attacking violently over the Sendai Plain.
The other day a year after I visited Natori City in Miyagi Prefecture, which was the very place where the horrible pictures were taken. The clock of Yuriage Junior High School had stopped at 2:46. Three fishing boats have still remained lying on the playground. There was built a new monument, on which the names of fourteen dead students were engraved.
From Hiyoriyama Hill only 8 meters high, you can see what broad areas of the city were obliterated by the Tunami. A middle-aged woman, who was praying before a wooden tablet for the dead, said, "I can't believe that I lived here. I feel as though it had happened long, long ago." The time which has been stopping since that day and the days which are passing without stopping are mingled in the minds of the people of the stricken areas.
The time before 3.11 has become an opposite bank where not only the victims but also the Japanese cannot go back. Looking back, we find that the bridge joining both banks is gone and the stream separating us from the other bank is very deep. It seems that we have been living this one year, leaning on one another's shoulders helplessly and warming our hearts over a fire called "kizuna(bond)."
The word "kizuna" has been used so frequently that it has been a bit worn away. If the late writer, Inoue Hisashi, lived now, he would call it "tsuru-tsuru kotoba." He meant by the word that if a word is convenient enough to use, it will become meaningless and worn down by and by.
Nothing can be done only by chanting a beautiful slogan. But isn't it a rare thing in history that we have been so concerned about others ? Today we would like to put our soul anew into the word "kizuna," accepting our mutual sorrows.
N君：案外平易な英文でスラスラ入ってきましたが4～5分かかっています。こういうのを30秒くらいで読み、その要旨を60字前後の日本語で60秒以内にまとめる、という作業をやることが必要だと思っています。僕の回答例は、「東日本大震災後1年が経過して絆というスローガンも言い古された感があるが、今一度お互いの悲しみに心を寄せて生きていこう」。以上58字でした。
