ノリの悪い日記

古今東西の映画、ポピュラー音楽、その他をいまここに交錯させながら随想します。

Sunny Skies

蓮實重彥の『監督 小津安二郎』の「晴れること」の中間部分を省略して “Sunny Skies” として英訳されたものが、Cambridge University Press の “Ozu’s Tokyo Story” に収められているので読んでみた。よく訳されているとは思うものの、次の 3 点はさすがに気になる。

1. No Ozu film made on a predominantly cloudy day exists. Even the clouds to which Sugai Ichiro turns his gaze at a railroad crossing of the Yokozuna Line in Bakushu (Early Summer, 1951) emphasize the exhilaratingly fine weather.
※ もちろん、Yokozuna は横須賀のこと。 

2. Nevertheless, Tokyo Story is an incredibly moving film. This is because the perfectly clear sky on the morning Higashiyama Chieko is taking care of her grandson and the warm day that will become increasingly sun-drenched are so vividly caught on film.
※ ここはかなり酷い間違いだと思う。東山千栄子が息をひきとる早朝のあの場面が、おそらく冒頭の「イサムちゃん、あんたおおきゅうなったら何になるん?」の場面になっている。確かにあそこも、この作品の中では絶対忘れようのないショットで背景の空も晴れていることは認めるんだけど、この後の文章には繋がっていない。とはいえ、ここのアクション繋ぎは何度見ても凄い。 

3.  Having received a telegram about the mother’s illness and having been so indecisive about whether to take mourning clothes when they about to leave Tokyo, the eldest son and daughter, played by Yamamura So and Sugimura Haruko, take this as an opportunity to wear them. Moreover, their conversation about having to rent mourning clothes from a rental shop takes place just before they leave for Onomichi.
※ 最後の “just before they leave for Onomichi” の部分が意味が通らない。その会話は喪服を二人が着る前の東山千栄子の臨終の場面だったはずである。 

一方、次のところの訳は原文よりもよいと思った。

Ozu is a director who understands how to imbue a scene with poetic sentiment in a bold and brutal way; his is a domain totally different from a Japanese rhetoric based on seasonal words, which people too easily believe to be poetic. Ozu’s talent lies in choosing an image that can function poetically at a particular moment by being assimilated into the film, not by affixing to the film the image of an object that is considered poetic in a domain outside the film. Whether or not it is called “poetic” is meaningless. Let us say that the cinematic emotions we experience the instant the film is projected onto the screen are poetic.

最後の the instant the film is projected onto the screen は「画面に映画が露呈された瞬間」の訳としてはかなり違うとも思うが、英訳でもその通りだと思ってしまう。原文の方は、少し後にある

bringing to the surface the condition of the film’s being a film

が意味的に近く、もっと言えば the condition は the limits なのかもしれない。

 

Ozu's Tokyo Story (Cambridge Film Handbooks) (English Edition)

Ozu's Tokyo Story (Cambridge Film Handbooks) (English Edition)