what makes human beings tick

Donald Keen氏が訳した太宰治の人間失格を読み始めました。

今日取り上げるのは第一の手記の次の個所です。

Nothing was so hard for me to understand, as baffling, and at the same time so filled with menacing overtones as the commonplace remark, "Human beings work to earn their bread, for if they don't eat, they die."
In other words, you might say that I still have no understanding of what makes human beings tick.

"what makes human beings tick" の "tick" の用法を辞書で調べます。

"what makes somebody tick" で次の説明がありました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: what makes somebody behave in the way that they do: I've never really understood what makes her tick.
・Collins Dictionary: If you talk about what makes someone tick, you are talking about the beliefs, wishes, and feelings that make them behave in the way that they do.: He wanted to find out what made them tick.
・Merriam-Webster: the things that cause someone to behave a certain way : the feelings, opinions, concerns, etc., that are parts of someone's personality: I've always wondered what makes people like that tick.

"tick" だと人間も時計仕掛けのロボットの様に思えますね。

Isn't she beautiful?

Reader's　Digest 7・8月合併号の記事 "Laughter the Best MedicineTw" からの引用です。
Two men are seated on a train. One pulls out his phone and shows the other a photo of his girlfriend. "Isn't she beautiful?" he asks.
The second man responds, "If you think she's beautiful, you should see my wife!"
"Oh? Is she gorgeous too?"
"No, she's an optician."

ditty

Osam Dazaiの小説 "No Longer Human" を読んでいます。

We started a guessing game involving comic nouns and tragic nouns. It was a game I invented.
...
"I've got it! Clouds."
"Right, right. Wind scatters blossoms. The antonym of flower is wind."
"Not great. Sounds like a line from a popular ditty. You're betraying your roots."


"ditty" で、大学を卒業して入った会社の仕事で覚えた最初の新しい英単語 "ditto" を思い出しました。"ditty" を辞書で調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: a short simple song: It reminds me of a little music-hall ditty my grandad used to sing.
・Collins Dictionary: A ditty is a short or light-hearted song or poem.: His drinking was the subject of a music hall ditty during the war.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a short simple song: Folk-song had died out in country villages and the music hall 'ditty' was to be found in its place.

"No Longer Human" を読み終えましたが、Donald Keen氏が訳した人間失格も読んで見たいと思いました。

harum-scarum

Osam Dazaiの小説 "No Longer Human" を読んでいます。

Taciturn and unsmiling, day after day, while babysitting I would work on "The Adventures of Kinta and Ota." "The Easygoing Priest"--a clear rip-off of "Easygoing Daddy"--or "Harum-Scarum Pin-chan," a manga serial whose title made no sense even to me, something I came up with in desperation.

"Harum-Scarum" は大文字で始まっていますが、英語の何らかの表現の様なので、辞書を見ます。

・Collins Dictionary: reckless; rash; irresponsible: He had a harum-scarum youth
・Cambridge English Dictionary: (behaving) in an uncontrolled way: How many of us do not have regard for the wild, harum-scarum boy of 11 and like him better than the little swot?

語源も次の辞書に出ていました。
・Online Etymology Dictionary: 1670s (harum-starum), probably a rhyming compound of obsolete hare (v.) "harry" + scare (v.), with 'um as a reduced form of them, the whole perhaps meant to be mock Latin. As an adjective from 1751; as a noun, "reckless person," from 1784.

swoon

Osam Dazaiの小説 "No Longer Human" を読んでいます。

People speak also of a "sense of wrongdoing," a term that appearently refers to wretched losers and rogues. I feel I have been an outcast since the day i was born. Whenever I encounter someone whom society has branded an outcast, my heart softens, becomes so tender and mild that I could swoon.

"swoon" を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: swoon (over somebody) to feel very excited, emotional, etc. about somebody that you think is sexually attractive: He's used to having women swooning over him.
・Collins Dictionary: If you swoon, you are strongly affected by your feelings for someone you love or admire very much.: Virtually every woman in the '20s swooned over Valentino.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: to feel a lot of pleasure, love, etc. because of something or someone: The audience swooned with delight.

cutup

Osam Dazaiの小説 "No Longer Human" を読んでいます。

I was living away from home for the first time, and life felt much easier. Perhaps this was because being a cutup had become second nature to me.

"cutup" を調べます。

・Cambridge English Dictionary: someone who behaves in an active and silly way in order to make people laugh:　It's hard to believe Ella was a cutup in school - she's so polite now.
・Merriam-Webster: a person who clowns or acts boisterously: In school he was always a cutup, telling jokes and acting silly.
・Wiktionary: Someone who cuts up; someone who acts boisterously or clownishly, for example, by playing practical jokes.: I've got a brother who's a real cut-up too.

小中学生にはそう言う子、特に男の子がいますね。自分もその頃はその傾向があった覚えがあります。

protean

Osam Dazaiの小説 "No Longer Human" を読み始めました。

太宰治の人間失格を最初に英訳したのは有名なDonald Keenだそうですが、私が読むのはJuliet Winters Carpenterという方で、最初にそのTranslator's Introductionからの文を引用します。

He feels superior to others, yet at the same time he deeply fears them. To mask his fear and also to gain love and acceptance, he adopts the persons of a clown, always trying to make others laugh with his shenanigans. The pervasive gloom in the novel is lightened by Yozo's ironic self-awareness as well as by Dazai's genius for storytelling and his protean, fluid style.

"protean" の意味を調べます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: able to change quickly and easily: a protean character
・Collins Dictionary: If you describe someone or something as protean, you mean that they have the ability to continually change their nature, appearance, or behaviour.: He is a protean stylist who can move from blues to ballads and grand symphony.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: easily and continuously changing: the protean talents of this comedian

頑固者の正反対ですね。

string bean

Yoko Ogawaの短編 "Dormitory" を読んでいます。

"Do you remember how the river crabs used to come into the garden while we were sitting on the porch helping Grandmother clean string beans? He seemed to be wandering back to a summer afternoon in the country.

"string beans" は細長い豆の様ですが、推測できるのはインゲンだけですが、辞書を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: a type of bean that is a long thin green pod, cooked and eaten whole as a vegetable
・Collins Dictionary: String beans are long, very narrow green vegetables consisting of the cases that contain the seeds of a climbing plant.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: UK also French bean),US also string bean or green bean: Other crops which contribute to the economy are potatoes, carrots, corn, sweetpeas, string beans and herbs.

最後に引用した辞書には写真も載っているのでリンクを付けました。

quadrangle

今日は台風が近づいてきているので毎週金曜日の午前中に行っている卓球クラブの練習は珍しく休みにしました。午後のテニスの練習はどうするかまだ未定です。テニスクラブまで自転車で20分はかかるのでこの雨では厄介です。
さて、Yoko Ogawaの "Pregnancy Diary" を読んでいます。

I remembered a meeting that some fellow students had dragged me to a few months earlier. The title of the program was "Pollution: Our Earth, Our Bodies." There weren't many people there, but they seemed a sincere little group. As an outsider, I sat at a desk in the corner and stared out the window at a row of poplars lining the quadrangle.

"quadrangle" は４に関係ある言葉の様ですが辞書を見ます。

・Oxford English Dictionary: an open square area that has buildings all around it, especially in a school or college: It has a large central quadrangle entered from the south side.
・Collins Dictionary: A quadrangle is an open square area with buildings round it, especially in a college or school.:
Developers want to replace faded quadrangles with glass and concrete towers.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: a flat shape with four straight sides: Squares and rectangles are forms of quadrangles.

四角い中庭のことですね。

pith

本のタイトルは "The Diving Pool" となっていたのですが、実際の中身は短編集で "The Diving Pool" の他にも二つの短編がありました。今日は二番目の小説 "Pregnancy Diary" から引用します。
妊娠しているのは主人公の妹で、日記は主人公が書いています。主人公がグレープフルーツのジャムを作っている場面から引用します。

The thick rinds strewn across the table were somehow comical. I cut the pith away and shredded the zest before dropping it into the spot. Yellow juice spurted everywhere, covering the knife, the cutting board, my hands.

"pith" はグレープフルーツのどの部分を指しているのでしょうか？　辞書を見ます。

・Collins Dictionary: The pith of an orange, lemon, or similar fruit is the white substance between the skin and the inside of the fruit.: Peel the zest from three oranges or lemons and remove the pith.
・Cambridge English Dictionary: the white substance between the skin and the flesh of citrus fruits such as oranges, or the soft, white inside part of the stem of some plants: The stems are usually hollow due to the presence of ant colonies that remove the pith.

柑橘類の果物の白い部分ですね。専門用語があるのか知りませんが、適当な日本語はしりません。