6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。
When the noted French author Andre Maurois visited the United States, he gave a series of lectures in French before a woman’s club. Maurois was pleased with the attitude of the attendees, because they never skipped class, were attentive to his every word and took a lot of notes.
One morning, the women arrived in the lecture hall with their notebooks in hands as usual. What was different from usual was that Maurois was nowhere to be seen. The women waited one hour before getting in touch with Maurois’s secretary.
“Monsieur Maurois will not be there today,” the secretary said in surprise. “He announced that very clearly at last week’s talk!”
Evidently all the attendees on that day hadn’t understood what Maurois said during the lecture the week before. Presumably they hadn’t understood what Maurois said on every lecture they attended either. What about the lot of notes they were producing, then? They were probably writing every fragment of word they thought Maurois said, deceiving others, and even themselves, by pretending that they understood Maurois’s French.