４月７日の英文添削「日本語での解釈例」への挑戦として以下のものを書いてみました。講師のどなたかに添削して頂き結果を後日投稿します。これを機会によい英文が書けるようになりたいと思います。

A woman was losing at the roulette wheel at a Casino in Atlantic City. When she was down to her last 10 dollars, as her desperate effort to change her situation, she asked the fellow next to her for a good number. “Why don’t you play your age?” he casually suggested.

The next thing he knew, the woman had fainted and fallen to the floor. “Has she won big money following my advice, and fainted from overwhelming joy?” was his immediate interpretation. He rushed to the scene, and asked the attendant if she had won. But the attendant replied, with a mystified look on his face, “No, that lady put 10 dollars on 29. When she saw 41 come in, she fainted.”

“She put 10 dollars on 29, and fainted when 41 came in.” He was the only person in the world who could understand what had been going on in her.

She put the last 10 dollars, he visualized, on 29 which was her age, placing all her dreams in it. But it was not her real age. The number 41, indicated by the ball when it had finally stopped rotating, was nothing but her real age.

“I have lost all the money I brought in here.”, “But I had almost grabbed big money.”, “If only I had bet on my real age.”, “I shouldn’t have been habitually pretending to be 12 years younger than my real age.” Those thoughts kept whirling around in her mind, and when she could no longer stand it, she fainted.