夢屋敷、いいですね。
詩心のない私が無謀にも、遊び心で「夢屋敷」の英訳に挑戦してみました。

英詩の場合も、韻を踏むことが重要らしいのですが、
実務翻訳者の私には、とてもそうした余裕やスキルなどあるはずもなく、
ただひたすらに原文の趣旨を伝えることに専念しました。

まずは、訳文をご覧あれ。

Dream Mansion

Written by Katsuko Harada
Translated by Townsman
March 18, 2007

The devil's advocate lived in a house called the Dream Mansion
On top of a eucalyptus tree that had grown too big

Eucalyptus trees grow very fast but weak with shallow roots
They are often blown down easily in gales
So there weren’t many gigantic eucalyptus trees around the area

The eucalyptus with the Dream Mansion on top was even taller than nearby apartment buildings
For it stood in a space between apartment buildings, sheltering from gales

Along the Myoshoji River near Shimo-Ochiai Station of the Seibu Shinjuku Lines
You would notice a dense growth of trees

They were camphor trees, cherry trees, maples, keyaki and, of course, eucalyptus trees.
All tall but no one knew how long they had lived there
Yet, each tree was competing for beauty
“The older a tree grows, the more beautiful it will become,” they say

The devil had chosen as premises the evergreen eucalyptus tree, the tallest of all the trees
And lived in the fluffy house, made of small pieces of clouds
At the tip of twigs grown from a branch high up in the sky

The devil always alone on top of the eucalyptus
Quietly without being noticed by anyone
Had been looking down on the world

There appeared a stout, speckled cat
With a rustle, it began to dig up the fallen leaves with its forepaws
Made a moderate hollow on the ground
Then sank its rump skillfully into the hollow and lay down comfortably
After a while the cat got up, shook itself, carefully backfilled the hollow with a rustle again
And went somewhere else

The devil, too, sometimes lay down to look up into the sky

There were times when only the moon was shining awfully bright
Even though all the other stars were dim and faint in the night sky

A clear blue sky in the daytime would make the devil feel keenly all alone
Yet, the moon staying with dignity under the cold winter sky
Always encouraged the devil in a friendly manner

The stout cat came almost every day whenever it wanted to
But the moon came out regularly to stay there with the devil

The devil wanted to go nowhere any more
Life was now really filled

But then the day came all of a sudden

The scaffolding was set up on branches of the eucalyptus
And a ladder was extended into the sky

With only the Dream Mansion intact
All the branches were cut down one by one

Without letting out a scream or anything
The eucalyptus was quietly cut down
Rather, as if it had long since known this occasion

“We should cut branches down slowly,” said the master gardener
He looked up into the sky each time he cut down a branch off the eucalyptus
Then he took a puff and another, sitting in a sunny place nearby
As if to cherish the years the eucalyptus tree had lived for

Three days went by and on the fourth morning
The eucalyptus was changed to a stump

The devil now had to go down to the ground
The cherry trees lining up along the Myoshoji River
Had already been in full blossom, with branches hanging low over the river

How many seasons had ever passed?
And how many blossoms had come out so far?
Changes would have been repeated several thousands of times?
More than ten thousand? Or maybe the countless number of times

The devil was attracted by the cherry blossoms
“I’ll take a rest on top of them for a while,” said the devil

In the fragrance of spring
In the comfort as being in small pieces of clouds
The devil remembered the innocence of its childhood
Mother, Father, brothers and sisters
What the devil forgot for a long time
No, what the devil tried to forget
The devil forgot time but remembered its good old days

A great number of blossoms opened and fell
The surface of the Myoshoji River was fully covered with the petals
Several days later, spring was flown away

And ...
With the petals, and with spring
The devil has gone too, as if it had been melted away

No one knows about the times of the Dream Mansion
No one knows the stump is of the eucalyptus tree
On that stump, still fresh as if to try to survive,
There is a cicada's shell

Townsmanさん。
読んでいただいただけではなく、英訳まで。本当にありがとうございました。とても英語の勉強にもなります。そして、今後とも「リベラル21」をよろしくお願いいたします。