Hi all,

A while ago, I saw a book a Japanese friend had that he bought before he came to North America... that contained a ton of idioms / expressions in Japanese translated into English for him, and they were all very good. It was a book with a light bluish white cover. This book was not your average "learn the most common 250 kanji!" type books, in that it is actually useless, and only produced to take your moeny. It was not useless and very dense with content.

1. Has anyone seen this book?
2. If not, can anyone recommend a very thorough, dense compilation of idiom translations?

PS: The reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to translate a script into Japanese, and this phrase: "I'm gonna rough you up" (in a prison context), is confusing a lot
of my Japanese friends. They keep translating it to "I'm going to be mean to you", or, believe or not, "I'm going to cook you."

Any help? Thanks in advance.

Stay out of prison so you don't have to put it to use?

I'm willing to almost go to jail and risk my life just to get this one sentence translated. I know they'll use お前 or 手前 to address him... but I'm having trouble with it.

maybe: お前をひどい目に合わせてやる！　omae o hidoi me ni awasete yaru!

This book is out of print, but you can still find it used.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812094336

2001 Japanese and Enlighs idioms.

I have the German version. It's okay. Kind of hit and miss at times. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it's "huh?" And it lacks "rough up."

Don't translate idioms into other (English) idioms unless it truly is natural. Looking at Eijirou I see people have really pushed it too far and have dug up some odd southerny feeling idioms/slang (many that I've never even heard of) just to have something that they can plug in 1:1.

Is this the book he had? http://www.amazon.com/2001-Japanese-Engl...0812094336

I've had it for years and I've honestly never used it. For anyone wanting to learn idioms instead of translating, don't try too hard. Learning idioms is just like learning dialects or slang. You're best off learning them as you encounter them naturally (from people your gender, age, and social standing) instead of systematically studying them. So many are out of date/only used by old people. A perhaps more useful book would be one on 慣用句/諺 meant for native Japanese children. Those would be less likely to include a ton of outdated expressions just for the sake of completion. For translation a complete book as a reference is useful, but you're still better off just using a monolingual dictionary if you can manage.

-edit-
I just noticed that you're trying to translate INTO Japanese. It shouldn't be that hard to think of something if you've watched a few yakuza movies. 「ふざけんなよてめえ、、ぶっ殺すよ！」 etc. Eijirou can be a good source for slang translations, but just be sure that you understand what the "definition" says and not just plug it in wholesale. You will easily end up with something ridiculous. I remember looking up すりすり (from when a kid was rubbing up against an adult begging them to buy a toy or smth) in it and ending up with "pussy bumping" as the definition.

Here is one of the examples for "rough up" in it: "Keep quiet or we'll have to rough you up. 静かにしろ、さもないと痛い目に遭わせるぞ。 "

yukkuri_kame Wrote:maybe: お前をひどい目に合わせてやる！　omae o hidoi me ni awasete yaru!

The awaseru should be this one -> 遭わせる

smujohnson Wrote:PS: The reason I'm asking is because I'm trying to translate a script into Japanese, and this phrase: "I'm gonna rough you up" (in a prison context), is confusing a lot
of my Japanese friends. They keep translating it to "I'm going to be mean to you", or, believe or not, "I'm going to cook you."

Dunno about the idiom dictionary, but if your friends are still confused you could point them at the EXCEED EJ dictionary's entry, which includes (under 他動 6) the relevant sense, or the Eijirou translations of the phrase. None of those are likely to be the right register for your translation but I'd hope a native speaker could come up with something sensible once they've got the right end of the stick.

(PS: ALC's （人）を怒らせる looks decidedly dodgy as a translation for 'rough up' to me...)

Can't help you with a general source of idiom translations, but the things that come to mind for this particular case are one of the following:

ぶっ飛ばす (a little soft for a prison, I think)
痛い目（にあう）(indirect compared to the others, maybe better for a warning than an announcement of imminent thrashing)
ぶっ倒す
ぶっ殺す
八つ裂き (might be a little too strong; while I've seen ぶっ殺す used figuratively, I'm not sure I've seen this one outside a context where the death of the person being spoken to is desired)

If I think of something else, I'll check back in.

~J

[Katsuo]

smujohnson Wrote:1. Has anyone seen this book?

The book you saw may have been "A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents" by Charles Corwin. It originally came in a light blue plastic back (inside a claret sleeve).

As the title implies, this book tries to match equivalent idiomatic expressions in the two languages.

Link: 252 Japanese Language Books List (large page, may be slow to load)