質問: the dark glassesからの英文です。 ”you're quite the young lady, joan," he said, looking at my new breasts. i smiled and put my hand in my blazer pocket. he was smaller than he had been two years ago. i thought he must be about fifty or thirty. his face was more freckled than ever and his eyes were flat blue as from a box of paints. miss simmonds appeared silently in her soft slippers. "you're quite the young lady, joan," she said from behind her green glasses, for her right eye had now gone blind and the other was said to be troubling her. muriel sparkのthe dark glassesからの英文です。 he=mr simmondsは検眼士です。 13歳だった主人公の女の子が2年経って再びsimmondsさんのお店を訪れた場面です。 ----------------------------------- his face was more freckled than ever and his eyes were flat blue as from a box of paints.の his eyes were flat blue as from a box of paintsがわからないのですが、 as fromを辞書で引くと ・・・から(法律・契約など正式な日付に用いる)とありました。 この英文の場合には意味的に当てはまらない感じなのですが どのように訳すのでしょうか? 教えてください。宜しくお願いします。 前文は i broke the glasses by sitting on them during my school holidays two years later. my grandmother said, after she had sighed, "it's time you had your eyes tested--" "--eyes tested in any case," said my aunt when she had sighed. i washed my hair the night before and put a wave in it. next morning at eleven i walked down to mr simmonds's with one of my grandmother's long hat-pins in my blazer pocket. the shop front had been done up, with gold lettering on the glass door: basil simmonds, optician, followed by a string of letters which, so far as i remember, were fboa, aic, and others. となっています。
回答: > his face was more freckled than ever and his eyes were flat blue as from a box of paints. この文は明確です。直訳的に訳してみます。 「彼の顔にはかつてそうであったよりももっとソバカスが多くなっていて、そして彼の目は絵の具の箱から取り出したそのままのような青色そのものだった」 つまり as + from a box of paints という構成です。 余りにしつこい嫌いはありますが、 as blue as blue paint from a box of paints (絵の具箱から取り出した青色絵の具のような青色) という表現の一部が省略されたものだと考えてもいいかもしれません。