tour de force

AsimovのI, ROBOTを読み始めました。

The Talking Robot was a tour de force, a thoroughly impractical device, possessing publicity value only. Once an hour, an escoreted group stood before it and asked questions of the robot engineer in charge in careful wispers. Those the engineer decided were suitable for the robot's circuits were transimitted to the Talking Robot.
"tour de force" は外来語ですね。英英辞典にも載っているはずです。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A performance or achievement that has been accomplished or managed with great skill.: his novel is a tour de force

・Collins Dictionary: If you call something such as a performance, speech, or production a tour de force, you are emphasizing that it is extremely good or extremely well done or made.: Stevenson's deeply felt performance is a tour-de-force.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: an achievement or performance that shows great skill and attracts admiration: a technical/musical/political tour de force

My, How You've Changed!

Reader's Digest 5月号の特集記事 'Your Mom Said What?' から"mamapropisms" の例を紹介します。
　　
One day, my mother ran into a woman who said they had gone to high school together. Mom insisted she didn't remember her. So the woman came to our house with her yearbook. She pointed out her photo and then my mother's.
"Well, of course I didn't recognize you!" Mom said. "You were pretty back then!"

mamapropism

Reader's Digest 5月号の特集記事 'Your Mom Said What?' の副題に "Does your mother have a habit of saying things she shouldn't?..." とあり、笑わせる例が沢山ある記事でした。記事の一部を抜粋します。
People always laugh when I tell them stories about my family's silver tongues, but they invariably have their own tales. So we at RD decided to collect readers' favorite stories. Some of them are accidental zingers, like my mom's. Others are language mix-ups that produce a sort of sweet word salad. Think of them all as a tribute to helpful moms everywhere--a verbal Mother's Day gift! We even gave them a name: mamapropisms, after the inimitable literary character Mrs. Malaprop. Come to think of it, she was probably a mother too.

Mrs. Malapropは可笑しな言葉の誤用が多く、それから "malapropism"（12/6/2007に取り上げました。）と云う言葉が生まれました。それをもじった "mamapropisms" とは傑作な造語ですね。

lean year

The Emissary(written by Yoko Tawada) は年寄りが元気で長生きし、若者は病弱で元気がないという、最近の傾向を極端に描いた様なＳＦでした。
When he was young, tall men had still been favored in Japanese society. This prejudice had obviously been imported from abroad, through foreign movies and magazines. Then, at the end of the Heisei Era, with society changing at the speed of pebbles rolling down a steep hill, memories of the Edo period rose up from dilapidated graveyards to dispel the notion that tall men had the advantage, for back then, in lean years the tallest were always the first to sicken and die.
この小説は２０１４年に発表され、英訳版は２０１８年に刊行されたとウィキペディアに書かれていました。英語を読んでいると元の日本語は言葉遊びのような表現だったと思われる個所が度々出て来るので翻訳者は大変だったろうなと推測します。
さて、"lean years" の意味を調べます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Offering little reward, substance, or nourishment; meagre.: the lean winter months; keep a small reserve to tide you over the lean years

・Collins Dictionary: If you describe periods of time as lean, you mean that people have less of something such as money or are less successful than they used to be. With fewer tourists in town, the taxi trade is going through its leanest patch for 30 years.

・Cambridge English Dictionary: If a period of time is lean, there is not enough of something, especially money or food, at that time: It has been a particularly lean year for the education department.
なるほど、"lean" は痩せているだけではなく、こんな使い方があるのですね。

call it a day

Reader's Digest 5月号の記事 'An Inspired Choice' からの引用です。
After God created 24 hours of alternating darkness and light, one of the angels asked him, "What are you going to do now?"
God said, "I think I'm going to call it a day."
座布団一枚！

nettle / knotweed

The Emissary(written by Yoko Tawada) から又植物の話題です。
Another Tokyo vegetable that gained popularity for a time was nettles. Due to a long standing prejudice created by the proverb "Some prefer nettles," not even the most eccentric farmers in other prefectures wanted to grow them. Capitalizing on this lack of popularity, a certain company got the idea of marketing nettles as Tokyo specialty. They even put up posters showing the mayor of Tokyo happily munching away at nettle salad, though it was whispered in some quarters that this may have actually hurt the vegetables's reputation.
実際にはどんな植物か分かりませんが　"nettles" は棘があって触ればチクチクするイラクサとまる覚えしていますが、上の文章中に 'the proverb "Some prefer nettles,"' とあるので小説の日本語原文では蓼となっているのではと思います。もっとも蓼も実物は知らないのですが、和英辞典で蓼を引くと英名は "knotweed" とありました。

Not cutting in the line

Reader's Digest 4月号 "9 Really Practical JOKES" からの引用です。
It was the morning of Black Friday, and there was a big sale at the electronics superstore. People lined up outside at 5 a.m. At about 7:30, there was a huge commotion when a short guy in khaki pants tried working his way to the front of the line. He didn't get very far before the mob grabbed him, wrestled him out of line, and threw him into the parking lot.
The little guy got up, brushed himself off, and tried again. He was barely able to take another step before an even bigger mob attacked him and threw him out of the line again. Undeterred, the guy got up and started limping toward the front of the line a third time.
"Are you nuts?" asked one of the red-faced mob members. "Don't you know you're just gonna get tossed out of line again?"
"Yeah, I know," the man replied. "But if you don't let me get to the front of the line, I'll never be able to open the store."

shepherd's purse

The Emissary(written by Yoko Tawada) を読み始めました。
話の中に面白い名前の植物が出てきました。

From sidewalk cracks stalks of shepherd's purse grew straight up, six feet high. Now that human beings had disappeared from this urban center, the cherry trees that had once stood demurely beside sidewalks, slender as brooms, had grown thicker around the trunk, their branches spreading boldly out in all four directions, their luxuriant green afros swaying gently back and forth in the breeze.
植物名は英英辞書で見てもピンとこない場合が多いのですが、一応辞書で "shepherd's purse" を見ます。
・Oxford English Dictionary: A widely distributed white-flowered weed of the cabbage family, with triangular or heart-shaped seedpods.: That food consists of various seeds - including grasses, alfalfa, nettles, thistles, shepherd's purse and cranesbill - as well as grain stolen from area farms.
・Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary: a white-flowered weedy annual herb (Capsella bursa-pastoris) of the mustard family with flat heart-shaped pods
話の舞台は日本だし、"triangular or heart-shaped seedpods" で食用にもなる様なので春の七草のナズナ、俗称ぺんぺん草かなと思いますが、辞書には写真がないので 'picture' も加えてグーグル検索するとナズナの写真が出てきました。ペンペン草が英語では "shepherd's purse" とは面白いですね。

Don't come to my garage sale!

Reader's Digest 4月号 "LAUGH LINES" からの引用です。
Please don't come to my garage sale if you've ever let me borrow something.

Kevlar chaps

Reader's Digest 4月号の記事 'Death Rattle' から引用します。
Garrett and I strap on protective Kevlar chaps, as though we're preparing to disarm a car bomb.
カリフォルニヤのヨセミテ付近の山中でガラガラヘビの足を噛まれ九死に一生を得た人の話でした。
"Kevlar chaps" のKevlarは大文字で始まっているので何かの商品の固有名詞だと推測は付きます。　"chaps" を "chap" で調べると見当違いの意味しか出てきません。
"chaps" で調べ直すと次の意味がありました。
・Oxford English Dictionary: Leather pants without a seat, worn by a cowboy over ordinary pants to protect the legs.: He wore a blue cotton shirt, jeans and leather chaps, boots.

・Collins Dictionary: Chaps are leather leggings without a seat that are sometimes worn by cowboys over their pants.: Greenough wears a blue checkered shirt, red scarf and brown chaps.
昔ＴＶでよく見た西部劇に出て来るカウボーイが着ているあれですね。そうするとKevlarはそのブランド名かと思いましたが、念のために辞書を見ると違いました。

・Oxford English Dictionary: A synthetic fiber of high tensile strength used especially as a reinforcing agent in the manufacture of tires and other rubber products and protective gear such as helmets and vests.: The nanotube fibers are also stronger than spider silk and Kevlar, meaning they can support more weight.
特殊な合成繊維ですね。