アルカディア翻訳会2008年1月課題 出題: 仁保真佐子
日時: 1月20日(日) 14:00-17:00
場所: 渋谷区立大向区民会館 会議室1号
①から⑤までの訳せる範囲を訳してください。
Sailing Toward Paradise
①THERE are few places on
the planet more appropriate to contemplate a sea journey than at the Miraflores
Locks, on the western end of the Panama Canal. It is a balmy March evening, and
the red tropical sun hangs low over the jungle-covered hills. At eye level a
container ship slides silently by, seeming close enough to touch. The size of a
lengthwise ChryslerBuilding and stacked
high with multicolored metal boxes, it slips into the lock, and great steel
gates swing closed as the 65,000-ton ship is lowered in its final stage
from Lake Gatún. The lower gates open like the doors of a cathedral, and the
enormous vessel is pulled forward by tow lines. It fires up its engines and
churns toward the Pacific. 』
I have come to
Panama to join a ship. Not a tanker or
freighter bound for the Far
East, but rather a 48-foot, two-masted
sailboat named the Shangri La, owned and captained by my college friend Andrew
Whyte and his wife, Francesca. Our primary destination is the
Galápagos Islands, a two-week sail to
the southwest across a thousand miles of open water.
Andrew and Francesca know what they are doing; they’ve made a
life out of it, Now the Shangri La is anchored at the Balboa Yacht Club near
the mouth of the canal. The little white ketch bobs like a bath toy in the
wakes of the constantly passing freight vessels. I take a launch from the dock
and join the other five crew mates aboard. At 32, I am the oldest. Everyone
else is in their mid-20s, just as
Charles Darwin was when he sailed to
the Galápagos aboard the Beagle in 1835.
②I’ve long had a
fascination with ships and the sea, a passion limited by my disposition to get
terribly seasick on almost everything that moves, including cars, roller
coasters and swing sets. This is one of the few traits I share with the
young Darwin. Serving as the expedition’s naturalist, he was violently
seasick for almost the entirety of the Beagle’s five-year circumnavigation. Two
weeks I think I can handle, but as a precaution I am carrying enough Dramamine
to tranquilize a humpback.
Motoring out of the mouth of the canal, we keep a watchful
eye on the dozens of freighters maneuvering into line for the Miraflores Locks.
The skyline of
Panama City vanishes in the morning
haze as we head out to the open sea. Setting the luffing white sails to a
steady wind, Andrew puts us on a starboard tack, and the Shangri La plows
happily southward. In a few hours, we are alone in the
Pacific. 』
③Surrounded by watery
vastness, I am quickly confronted by the totality of our disconnection from
terrestrial habits. As an unrepentant media addict, the severing of the
Bluetooth umbilicus is profound. There is no satellite phone aboard, no cell
service, no radio traffic and certainly no Internet.
It is a difficult withdrawal, but our little group soon falls
into a workable routine to sail the ship. We divide the clock into two-hour
watches at the wheel, and I pull the 2-to-4 shift, a.m. and p.m. The rest of
the day is filled with reading, and talking, and dozing in the shade. I finish
a novel in a day for the first time since college. Andrew and Tucker Thiele, a
friend of ours from
Vermont, invent a marathon hybrid of
cribbage and Risk. Rhys Hayes, an Australian Internet entrepreneur, passes the
time by stitching a beautifully monogrammed iPod case out of leather for his
girlfriend. 』
④We trawl a fishing
line, and hooking a smallish yellowtail is an event akin to a papal visit. Our
Down East Maine crew mate Jared Grant expertly hauls the catch on deck, and
Andrew makes mercifully short work of it. Tucker conjures four brilliant
courses from a single fish: sushi, ceviche, tacos and chowder.
Days blend into one another. We cross the Doldrums, the vast
belt of low pressure and light wind that girdles the equator. We don’t see a
single other ship, but there is plenty of life: terns rest on the ship’s rail,
pods of pilot whales breech beside us, and dolphins surf in our bow wake. We
even spot a huge solitary leatherback turtle, paddling its way to the Galápagos
for its spring migration. At the wheel in the middle of the night, I steer with
one eye to the long axis of the Southern Cross, which points our way, or stare
out at the dark water and the eerie green glow of the bioluminescent sea
creatures stirred up by our passing. 』
⑤At dawn on the 14th day
out from Panama a rosy smudge appears on the horizon, barely discernible from
the smoky convergence of sea and sky. Francesca shouts “I see it!” and there,
rising 500 feet straight out of the still water, is the volcanic tuff cone León
Dormido, “Sleeping Lion.” The rock serves as a sentinel to the Galápagos
archipelago. Behind it the low green island of
San Cristóbal comes into view.
When Darwin
arrived at San Cristóbal (then
called
Chatham Island) on
Sept. 17, 1835, he remarked in his journal: “Nothing could be less inviting
than the first appearance. A broken field of black, basaltic lava is everywhere
covered by stunted, sun-burnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life.” He
had very little inkling that the signs of life he observed there would
eventually help lead to one of the most revolutionary theories in the history
of science. 』
We anchor in the tiny harbor of
Puerto Baquerizo Moreno, population 5,000, one of the two main ports of the
Galápagos. Several dozen yachts and fishing boats are moored in the deep blue
water. The public dock where we tie our dinghy is covered with slick brown sea
lions dozing in the equatorial sun. Hundreds are sprawled along the shore like
fat sunbathers, barking to one another. Having evolved with no terrestrial
predators to fear, they don’t move, or even seem to notice us as we step
gingerly over them. It is our first clue that the Galápagos are a place where
humans are utterly foreign.
Arriving by private boat is an uncommon way to experience the
Galápagos, and has both limitations and benefits. Because nearly all of the
archipelago is preserved as national park, there are only two permitted
anchorages, here at Baquerizo Moreno and at Puerto Ayora on the nearby
island of Santa
Cruz. The vast majority of the 70,000
annual tourists to the islands arrive from the mainland by plane, and take
multiday boat tours around the islands to observe the wildlife, stopping at
each for a few hours. We decide to keep the Shangri La anchored at
San Cristóbal for a week, which will allow us to dig deep into
San Cristóbal’s natural treasures.
The Galápagos have served as a laboratory for life ever since
they bubbled up above the ocean’s surface more than five million years ago.
Today there are 13 main islands, and the newest are still being created by
volcanic activity. The most recent eruption occurred in 2005. All species on
the islands arrived through some extraordinary luck or toughness: seeds blown
by the wind or carried in the stomachs of
birds; small land tortoises that
drifted for months on ocean currents, or on rafts of vegetation that blindly
bumped up against the new land. Those that survived the harsh environment gave
rise to an astonishing array of endemic species: marine iguanas, tool-using
finches, giant tortoises that weigh almost 700 pounds. Life evolved in quiet
isolation, unaffected by the outside world.
No longer a lonesome outpost of life untouched by humans,
today the Galápagos are a laboratory of conservation, where humans’ fraught
relationship with the natural world can be studied and, hopefully, repaired. In
1959, the centenary of the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of
Species,” the Ecuadorean government declared the archipelago a national park.
Today, 97 percent of the archipelago is preserved, along with 40,000 square
miles of the surrounding ocean. Working with the Ecuadorean
National Park Service, organizations like the Charles Darwin
Foundation finance conservation programs, education and scientific
research.
最終更新:2008年01月06日 11:38