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Two Japanese-fluent characters in an English novel I'm reading are talking
about a specific heart problem one character concealed from medical exams.
That character is requesting the second character keep this secret, lest they
be kicked off the mission.

The second character drops briefly into Japanese:

> "Watakushi no doryo wa, wakarimasu," Nicole said kindly, changing into
> Japanese to show sympathy for her colleague's anguish.

Both characters are fluent, and I believe the writer was as well.

One of the problems here is whether "doryo" should be written どりょ or どりょう -
this would help with translation. However, none of the translation services
I've tried actually seem to translate this in any way which makes sense. The
closest I've gotten from Google has been "magnanimity" - but I don't think
this makes contextual sense.

What is the meaning of this statement, and how should "doryo" be written in
hiragana?
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words rōmaji
What does this person mean by "doryo" in this context?
It is likely `[同僚]{どう・りょう}` which means "colleague"/"coworker".
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I'm reading Rama II and just came to this. Asked my wife about it. The word
doryo means "magnitude, weight," or in this case "capacity, caliber." She had
difficulty explaining the meaning of this phrase. She says it sounds very
"old" and the meaning doesn't really fit the circumstance of the passage.

But what it seems she is saying is something like: "I know my own capacity and
cannot change how I will respond." Basically a humble way of saying that she
can only be who she is, so she cannot overlook his health issue even though
going to Rama means everything to him.
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You can see the Turkish(?!) version of this online here:
[https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=xbzji0dHTHcC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Watakushi+no+doryo+wa,+wakarimasu,&source=bl&ots=0RCiBfH12e&sig=laPoZJTXNBqwDkwM8Ap9LPbBLz8&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=fIqWVLi-
GoKtmAWU5YHQCw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false](https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=xbzji0dHTHcC&pg=PA65&lpg=PA65&dq=Watakushi+no+doryo+wa,+wakarimasu,&source=bl&ots=0RCiBfH12e&sig=laPoZJTXNBqwDkwM8Ap9LPbBLz8&hl=fr&sa=X&ei=fIqWVLi-
GoKtmAWU5YHQCw&ved=0CC4Q6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Lo and behold, it's written _dôryô_ with circumflex (perhaps because the
Turkish printers didn't have macrons).

I can't find any evidence that Arthur C Clarke spoke Japanese. I don't think
it is profitable to try to understand this in Japanese, you have to think what
the English would be that he was trying to translate, so I think this is just:

"My colleague, I understand"

I ought to have a stab at translating it into Japanese. Something like this
perhaps?

Yoku wakatteiru, yo, Hakamatsu-san.

(Not sure if this is the right name of the person she is talking to.)
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This is kind of a messed up translation. It means "My colleague understands,"
but she's probably trying to say "My colleague, I understand." In Japanese you
don't usually use terms of address unless trying to get someone's attention,
or you are an anime character talking to your similarly hulking brother.

The best translation for, "My colleague, I understand," is:

> 分かった **or** 分かった、はかまつさん
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