こんな時だからじっくり本を読もう！特に原書絵本を読みましょう！たぶん皆さんは、小学校2年生の時に国語の授業で『スイミー』を読んだと思います。覚えていますか？谷川俊太郎さん訳の文章を味わったのでしょう。今日はそこから1つ、引用しますね。

 スイミーは言った。

「出てこいよ。みんなであそぼう。おもしろいものがいっぱいだよ。」

小さな赤い魚たちは、答えた。

「だめだよ。大きな魚に食べられてしまうよ。」

「だけど、いつまでもそこにじっといるわけにはいかないよ。なんとか考えなくちゃ。」

　スイミーは考えた。いろいろ考えた。うんと考えた。

  スイミー自身大きな魚に仲間を食べられてしまい、独りぼっちで旅に出て、再び仲間を見つけた時の会話です。この場面を原書絵本で見ると、以下の通りになります。

“Let’s go and swim and play SEE things!” he said happily.

“We can’t,” said the little red fish. “The big fish will eat us all.”

“But you can’t just lie there,” said Swimmy. “We must THINK of something.”

Swimmy thought and thought and thought.

   どうですか。日本語と英語では当然ですが、ニュアンスが違いますよね。違いが分かるだけでも大きな発見です。さらに、原書の英語では、強調しているところ－“SEE”や“THINK”、

“thought and thought and thought”－がはっきりしている！となればしめたものです。

　以下に原書の英文を載せましたので、じっくり読んでみてはどうでしょうか！？

　英語科　C.I

  Swimmy (1963)

A happy school of little fish lived in a corner of the sea somewhere.

They were all red. Only one of them was as black as a mussel shell.

He swam faster than his brothers and sisters. His name was Swimmy.

One bad day a tuna fish, swift, fierce and very hungry, came darting

through the waves. In one gulp he swallowed all the little red fish.

Only Swimmy escaped.

He swam away in the deep wet world. He was scared, lonely and very sad.

But the sea was full of wonderful creatures, and as he swam from marvel

to marvel Swimmy was happy again.

He saw a medusa made of rainbow jelly…

a lobster, who walked about like a water-moving machine…

strange fish, pulled by an invisible thread…

a forest of seaweeds growing from sugar-candy rocks…

an eel whose tail was almost too far away to remember…

and sea anemones, who looked like pink palm trees swaying in the wind.

Then, hidden in the dark shade of rocks and weeds, he saw a school of

little fish, just like his own.

“Let’s go and swim and play SEE things!” he said happily.

“We can’t,” said the little red fish. “The big fish will eat us all.”

“But you can’t just lie there,” said Swimmy. “We must THINK of something.”

Swimmy thought and thought and thought.

Then suddenly he said, “I have it!”

“We are going to swim all together like the biggest fish in the sea!”

He taught them to swim close together, each in his own place,and when they had learned to swim like one giant fish, he said, “I’ll be the eye.”

And so they swam in the cool morning water and in the midday sun and

chased the big fish away.