Quote:
Originally Posted by GinaS
I was almost through the chapter, but then they threw this at me:
ミランがチャペックを揺り起こすと、彼は怖い夢を見た といいました。亡命する時、危険を目に遭ったのかとミ ランが尋ねると、彼は笑って、怖かったのは亡命の前... ...あの事件のあとの七年間だった、わたしは彼に代わっ て計画を進めたが、いい人材にはあたらなかった、だが 四十二を四十六にした時ほど頭をひねり、怖い目にあっ たことはなかった、まったくあの人のせいだ、といった そうです。
Nine clauses and an eliptical break - I've mulled this over for two days now and I know when I'm beaten. 
This is the best I can do:
Milan shook Chapek awake, and he told him he'd had a terrible dream. When Milan asked him if he had experienced something terrifying at the time of his defection, he laughed and said, "No, I'm afraid of the seven years before that..." He said "I carried forward the plan in his place, though regrettably I was not such a talented man, but I wracked my brains over (or puzzled over) the 42 and 46, it wasn't such a dreadful thing to experience, entirely because of that man. (or, that man was entirely to blame)."
It seems like he should be saying it was dreadful, but doesn't なかった mean that it wasn't? I also don't know if いい人材 means what I thought. I feel like I'm not even close on that last He said sentence. Talk about wracking brains. Btw, I think I know what the 42 and 46 refer to, but I also think it's intended to be cryptic here.
One more: 世間の話じゃあ, could this mean something like repeating history, or just as it happened in the past? "Then the history of the world" doesn't quite work as an introduction to what follows that clause. 
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This is becoming almost impossibly difficult. Being a Japanese-speaker isn't helping much as I just don't have the larger context.
Important question: Is it a comma, rather than a period, that comes after あの事件のあとの七年間だった? If so, this is one monster of a sentence.
Problems with your translation:
Minor: "seven years before that" > "seven years before that after that incident"
Major: "I was not such a talented man" > "I was unable to find a talented man"
Major x 80. Emoticon needed:
"it wasn't such a dreadful thing to experience" >>>>> "I've never had a more dreadful experience than (the 42/46 business) "
The key word is ほど. 「～～ほどXXXない」 = never xxx as ~~
I naturally have no idea about the 42/46 bit. I'm thinking when they tried to lie about someone's age but I really shouldn't be speculating.
世間の話じゃあ menas "They say that ~~", "It's rumored that ~~"