Last autumn at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, something unusual happened. Buyers on the floor couldn’t keep their eyes off a tuna trawler returning with its haul of bigeye tuna. Hushed whispers in the market gradually turned into a roaring cacophony of heated voices and frenzied bidding. The winning bid - Y11,000 for one kilo of bigeye tuna, completely rewriting the record books by (2) shattering the previous high bid of Y8,000, (3) flooring every buyer, auctioneer, fisherman and anyone else (4) involved with the legendary fish market.

The answer to the riddle of this unusually high bid lies within the bowels of the vessel for on board is a freezing unit unlike any other. Known as CAS (cells-alive system), it is revolutionizing food storage as we know it.

1. bid
2. I’m glad you opted for “vessel” rather than simply calling it a “boat” or “ship”.
3. While we are talking exclusively about tuna in this article, your sentence makes it sound as if CAS sole application is for tuna, when of course it can be used for many kinds of food.

1. Great title!
2. I love your opening sentence.
3. newly developed を挿入。
4. 削除。

1. theを挿入する。
2. 「関係者」を文字通り訳さないで具体的に書く。
3. bizarre という言葉は機械に対して使わない。風変わりな機械を表すには other-worldly などが使える。

“Place your hand in here,” says Norio Owada, president of Abi Inc., with a mysterious smile on his face. Inside Mr. Owada’s research facility is an array of freezing units. My hand is concealed inside the device as I place it over the magnet. A gust of chilled air spews forth as the machine is switched on. Within seconds, my hands are shivering uncontrollably, but it’s not from the cold. It’s as if some unseen force is pulsing and shaking through me..

Conventional quick-freezing freezes (1) foods with chilled air several dozen degrees below zero. In this method, the outer surface of the food is thoroughly frozen, but freezing the inside is a time consuming process. As moisture is drawn to the surface, the inside is left dry while ice crystals cluster on the outer surface, destroying cell tissue and leading to what is known as capillary action where juices drip from the thawing food.

1. hold だと「つかむ／握る」感じになる。原文の「磁石を載せた手」とは違うかも。[訳者註]
2. Really good work here. The pacing and rhythm of your sentences help build the drama.
3. methods blow
4. Opting to use "material" for 素材 really takes something away from the translation. We lose the sense of the freshness, flavor and texture of delicious tuna, or any other food for that matter, when the bland "material" is used in its place.

CASは食品だけでなく医療用にも使われるので、ここでは食品を含むあらゆる「素材」を指す語を入れたかった。セッションでの議論では material、stuff、matter など候補はいろいろ出たがいずれも不適当であり、食品を含むあらゆる「素材」を指す語は見つかっていない。やはりこのパラグラフでは tuna などの一例に特化して説明し、医療用などの別の用途例は後で別途説明するしかないのかも。[訳者註]

5. the material’s surface
6. dripping
   I think you can polish this paragraph. Probably the most challenging part of this translation was trying to understand the ドリップがあふれる. At the very least, we would have liquid “dripping”, not “dipping”. This may have just been a typo on your part.
   

1. I was 挿入。
2. I’m glad you used the first person “I” in this paragraph; many others did not and it hurt the drama and tone of their translation. On a different note, I normally don’t see “wagged” used in this way. A dog wagging its tail or wagging your finger at someone, yes, but used as a force felt through your body doesn’t seem natural.

♪ How much is that doggie in the window? The one with the waggly tail…♪


3. This was tricky. There’s no clean way to translate 数十度 in English but we can come close. Others in the class also tried “several tens of degrees” but it’s awkward. While not perfect, “dozens” of degrees would work better. A dozen is 12 so dozens would be at least 24, thus coming within the range of 数十度.

1. この場合は you より I を主語にした方が臨場感が出るのでは？ 誰を主語にするかを決めるのは日英翻訳の難しいところ。

With CAS, fish, for example, is placed inside a magnetic field and pulsed with a faint dose of magnetic waves. Vibrating slightly, CAS doesn’t allow moisture to be drawn to the tissue surface, thus evenly freezing the food throughout at once.

Food given the deep freeze under CAS can keep ingredients fresh for up to two or three years, keeping the cell tissue intact even when frozen. Even after thawing, the food’s flavor and freshness remain exactly as before. The unprecedented high price tag for CAS-frozen tuna is surely a stamp of approval from pro evaluators.

What started as technology for preserving cream has now taken the food and medical world by storm.

1. a を入れる。
2. upon
3. the を入れる。
4. prior to
5. an を入れる。
6. longer periods

1. No doubt 素材 can cause fits when trying to find a suitable English word. The question here is “What is the context?” “Object” is just too vague. More importantly, this article talks about CAS being used primarily in the food industry. So, when we’re talking about electro-magnetic fields and quick-freezing and pulsations and all this other amazing technology, it’s even more incredible when we realize it’s being used on something as delicate as food. If we use “object”, we lose the sense of how all this high-tech is being applied to something so fragile and short-lived as food freshness, taste, color and texture. While CAS is not limited to food only, I think this article presents a situation where we can safely and very loosely translate 素材 as “food” or even “fish” since tuna is the fish in question. In fact, you open the first sentence of this paragraph with “food products or ingredients” so it would have been better to substitute either of those words for object.
2. Excellent work here.

1. a product shelf life of…
2. hard-bitten はあまり使われない。hardened、steely、hard-to-impress などがよい。