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■この掲示板では、個々に和訳を添削しているわけですが、たまには１つの和訳問題を複数の人が訳して、評価するのもいいかと思い、とりあえずやってみることにします。
■注意点
※和訳は、この掲示板ではなく、こちらから書き込んでください。
※個々の和訳に詳しい添削はできないかもしれません。
※和訳を投稿できるのは、高校生、大学受験生のみとします。
■問題
以下の英文を読み、下線部を和訳しなさい。
I seldom ride long distance buses, but these past few days had been enough to convince me that there is little romance to them. As a traveler who usually finds himself in airports, I had become tired of this week's endless hours in dark, smelly buses, heading slowly between places that no other form of public transportation serves.
My fellow passengers were not inflation-fighters; they were on the buses because buses are the least expensive form of American transportation. There is nothing cheaper; the low price was the only reason that the people were aboard. They were the bottom social class of country's travelers; they needed to get someplace, and the bus was all they could afford.
Now I was on the last part of my journey; the bus I was on had started the trip in St. Louis, and was on a nine-hour run through Missouri and Illinois. Several hours into the ride, I began to notice something.
It was the driver. He was a young man with neatly-cut hair and moustache; I would have to guess he was in his early thirties. What struck me was how careful, precise and alert he was. He was dressed neatly, and he addressed his passengers politely, and at the rest stop he timed his schedule exactly with his wristwatch.
At every stop, he welcomed each passenger to the bus; hurried out the door to assist with baggage; and made a fresh count of travelers for his record book.
He was just a long distance bus driver heading up some forgotten route in the middle of the country. But from his attitude, you might have thought that we were on a Boeing 747 on its way to Paris. I found myself wondering what struck me so oddly about his man, and in a second the realization came. This attitude of his--this pride in the work he was doing--is the very thing we have for so long been told has vanished from the American workers.
Had the driver taken a lazy and careless approach, no one would have ever known; the passengers on long distance buses are not the kind of people who are influential enough to make their complaints heard. They have no alternative; if they don't like the bus, there is no cheaper way for them to go. Certainly there was no status built into the driver's work.
But on this ride, it was as if the idea of not doing his job well had never crossed the driver's mind. And a funny thing was happening: because the driver found dignity in his own work, he gave his load of passengers a small feeling of dignity, too. Oh, they knew they were riding on an uncomfortable bus with men and women who probably could not afford any other means of transportation; but because the driver had pride, the passengers seemed to feel a little better, too.
When we pulled into the station in Chicago's Loop, the driver stood at the bottom of the steps leading out of the bus, helping each passenger depart, saying good-bye to each of us. He stayed there until the bus was empty.
Because of his attitude--the way he feels about his work--the driver had, for a few hours, made things different. When I arrived home, I realized something inexcusable: for all the driver's impressiveness, I had not even bothered to learn his name. So I called the bus company and found out. It is Ted Litt. [京産大]
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