一日一文英訳してみましょう！ 以下、解答例と僕の英作文に対してネイティブからもらったアドバイスも載せました。
ムムッ～、このお題、どう訳そうか。
解答例
I think it would be a poor token of our gratitude after what he’s done for us.
解説
問題文 我々のために彼がしてくれたことに対するお礼としては、それでは粗末だと思う。
・彼がしてくれたこと：what he has done for us
→ 「してくれたこと」が現在も継続して作用しているというニュアンスを持つ場合は現在完了形を使用します。
→ 過去の出来事や行為という意味では、過去形で表現しするようですが、過去完了形で表現すると昔の出来事のように感じてしまうようです。
・お礼：token, the expression of gratitude
・粗末な：shabby, poor
・～だろう： 可能性を表す助動詞として、would/might/could があります。
would > might > could の順で可能性の確度が低くなります。
僕の英作文
I think it would be poor as a token of our gratitude for what he had done for us.
ネイティブからのアドバイス
– I removed “as a” from “poor as a token of gratitude”. This is because you don’t need these words. The natural and often used phrase is “a poor token of (our) gratitude”. I added “a” to refer to “a poor token…”
– I changed “for” to “after”. This is more natural. You are referring to “what you have done” AFTER “what someone else has done (for you)”.
– I changed the tense of your last phrase. You used the past perfect tense (he had done). I have used the perfect present tense (he has done). This is natural when referring to something that occurred in the past and which is still relevant in the present time. This indicates that whatever he did for you is still of benefit to you right now. You are probably referring to something that happened quite recently.
– The past perfect is used to refer to something that occurred in the past before something else. This indicates that whatever he did for you in the past is no longer of use (or relevance); it also indicates that you are probably speaking of something that occurred a very long
良く分かった！
