蜜柑/芥川龍之介 を英訳した！
めちゃくちゃ昔に書かれた英訳論文を元に自分なりに色々変えてみました。
単語選びとか辞書引いて頑張りました。長文読解の練習にもいいですよ〜
＊修正してるけどミスが所々あるので気をつけてください。
One cloudy winter evening, I sat in the corner of a second-class carriage on the Tokyo-bound train, and absentmindedly waited for the starting whistle. The carriage, already lit by the overhead lamps, was ― unusually empty but myself. Looking out at the platform, I noticed, strangely enough, that not a single person had come to see anyone off. Nothing could be heard but the occasional, sad whining of a puppy, as if echoing my own gloom. I felt very tired and worn out. My mood was heavy and gloomy. With both hands deep in my pocket, I didn’t even feel like taking the evening paper out of it.
After a while, I heard the starting whistle. Feeling a faint relief, I leaned my head against the window frame and watched the station moving backward, away from me. Just then, I heard the sharp noise of geta and the sharp voice of a guard. The door of my carriage opened and a girl about thirteen rushed in. At the same time the train began to move slowly forward. The pillars of the platform passed one by one, a tank car which perhaps was forgotten ― and blessing porter, all these fell away as the smoke from the engine blew against my window, staying behind like a reluctant goodbye. Feeling slightly relieved, I lit a cigarette, raised my eyes and looked at the girl who was sitting across from me.
She was a dull-looking country girl, not at all remarkable, yet I found myself observing her. Her hair was unoiled and had chapped cheeks with disagreeable red on it. On her knees, over which lay a light green muffler dangling from her neck, was a large bundle. Her coarse, frostbitten hands, holding the bundle tightly, clutched a third-class ticket as though it were her last link with life itself. The coarseness of her face and the uncleanness of her clothes were displeasing. Lastly, her dull-mind ― couldn’t even distinguish a second-class carriage from a third ― irritated me even more. Lighting a cigarette and partly wishing to forget her existence, I casually looked at the evening paper which I had taken from my pocket and spread over my knee. Then the light falling on my paper was suddenly illuminated by the electric light, and the almost indecipherable letters in several columns became unexpectedly distinct. The train had just entered one of the many tunnels on the Yokosuka line.
The paper illuminated by light however, showed only the usual ordinary events and the peace problem. The instant we entered the tunnel, I felt almost as if in an illusion, that the direction of the train had been reversed, while I mechanically ran my eyes from one monotonous column to another. In the meanwhile the girl was there, sitting in front of me, appearing to embody all the tedious realities in the human form. The train, the tunnel, the girl, and the evening paper filled with commonplace events ― they were nothing but symbols of life, incomprehensible and wearisome. I dropped the paper I had been reading and leaned my head against the window frame, closing my eyes as if in another world.
Several minutes passed. Suddenly, and for no reason I could explain, I felt frightened. Turning my head, I saw that she had left the opposite seat and came next to me, where she was anxiously struggling to open the window. The heavy frame would not move. Her cold, chapped cheeks grew redder than ever, and occasional sniffling was heard above the noise of the train. This was something which could at least draw a bit of my sympathy. But I could also see that we were near the mouth of another tunnel. The mountain hillsides, bright with tall grasses in the twilight, drew near to the windows of the train. Despite this, the girl was still trying to open the window, which had been closed for the tunnels. I didn’t know why she wanted the window open, and I felt it was simply a whim. So I sat still, feeling bitter, and watched as her cold hands were desperately trying to lift the window. Then suddenly, with a terrific noise, the train rushed into the tunnel, and at the same time the window flew open with a crash. Through the square opening in the window, clouds of dark smoke began to blanket the whole carriage. The smoke dashed my face too suddenly for me to protect it with a handkerchief, and I, whose throat was usually sore, was nearly choked. Her butterfly knot waving in the smoky black air, the girl showed no concern at all for me. Stretching her neck outside the window, she looked straight ahead in the direction the train was going. And my eyes were fixed on her figure, silhouetted in the smoke-dark electric light.
Had not then, the carriage quickly grown light again, and the refreshing smells of nature: hay and water; flowed in to drive off the choking smoke, I should surely have given her a sharp reprimand to make her close the window, for I had barely stopped coughing by that time.
Now, however, the train had already glided out of the tunnel and was nearing a small crossing on the outskirts of a town surrounded by hills. Near the crossing stood a dirty group of straw-thatched huts and tile-roofed cottages. The watchman's white flag waved slowly in the twilight. Just after the train had passed out of the tunnel, three ruddy-cheeked little boys appeared at this dark crossing, standing closely side by side. They seemed short as though pressed and stunted under the clouded sky. Their clothes were the same color as the gloomy town where they lived. The minute they caught sight of the coming train, they looked up and raised their hands, and, opening their little throats like so many birds, they shouted out a farewell at the top of their voices. At that time, the young girl just stretched her body from the train window and waved her hands left and right. Then, as though from the skies upon the heads of the little children fell five or six tangerines dyed with the warm fiery color of sunshine, which made my heart pound and pause for some seconds. Breathlessly I watched, for in this moment I understood everything. The girl, who was probably going out to work somewhere, gave the brothers a reward by throwing them tangerines, for coming to see their big sister off as she left home.
The crossing at the outskirts of this lonely town in the dark evening, the three little youngsters who called like little birds; the bright tangerines which fell down over their heads: all this, coming and going in the twinkling of an eye, was branded upon my heart. Deeply impressed, I turned slightly and looked at the young girl as though she were a different person. She was already back in her seat in front of me, hiding her cold cheeks in her light green muffler. She held her third-class ticket like a treasure in her cold, chapped hands over the large bundle in her lap.
At that moment, I forgot all my fatigue and ennui, and became unaware of the incomprehensible and monotonous nature of my life.
