I think the original translation is better; 資金にする means to make something (in this case the securities) into funds, not just to raise funds.

yudantaiteki Wrote:I think the original translation is better; 資金にする means to make something (in this case the securities) into funds, not just to raise funds.

The thing is, I am trying to interpret sentences sequentially. I don't think I can't ask this to a Japanese speaker that doesn't know at least English or hasn't studied how to teach Japanese, so to those of you already fluent in Japanese, what are the strategies you use to process Japanese sentences that are often, if not always, more or less, reversed versions of possible English interpretations.

So, as I start processing the sentence I go like this:
証券を売って sell bonds and / by selling bonds
資金にしようと思う intend to raise a capital

I intend to raise a capital by selling bonds.

It may be obvious that the subject will use the earnings from selling the bonds to make the funds but the sentence is not, as far as I understand it, explicitly telling us so.

No, there's also no explicit "I" in the sentence either, so I'm just going off of most likely interpretation for a no-context sentence.

Xにする means "make it X" or "make it into X", or sometimes "Decide on X". The に is important there. This is not just "raise funds".

Let me fix it then, as you pointed out, Ｘにする means 'I will make it (my choice/decision) X':

証券を売って sell bonds and / by selling bonds
資金にしようと思う intend to make it funds

I intend to sell bonds and make them funds. :o

Thanks, I went back a full circle but I find it logical now. The whole を売って資金にする is acting over the direct object 証券.

In this sentence: 話せるようにならなかった

1. s.o still can't speak
2. s.o was never able to speak

Are both 1 and 2 correct? I am trying to get away abominations like "it didn't become so that someone was able to speak".

delta Wrote:In this sentence: 話せるようにならなかった

1. s.o still can't speak
2. s.o was never able to speak

Are both 1 and 2 correct? I am trying to get away abominations like "it didn't become so that someone was able to speak".

I'm not sure if it's a good idea to change the sentence into natural sounding English if you don't absolutely have to (i.e., if you were doing a translation or something). You water down the meaning, and come up with a sentence with a different range of uses than the original Japanese.

Why are you putting it into English in your head at all? Seems like a crutch to me. (Doing so can be useful scaffolding for learning certain types of grammar, such as causative, passive, etc., but I'm not sure how it helps here)

Also, it's a bit vague and I'm not sure what you are trying to differentiate between in the options 1 and 2.

Tzadeck Wrote:Why are you putting it into English in your head at all? Seems like a crutch to me.

Well, what other choice do I have? How do I do it without it?

delta Wrote:

Tzadeck Wrote:Why are you putting it into English in your head at all? Seems like a crutch to me.

Well, what other choice do I have? How do I do it without it?

I personally think it's fine as long as you still understand the grammar points. If it helps you understand the sentences you're reading, then I say go for it. Japanese definitely phrases ideas differently from English, but I don't think this means you always have to do a direct translation, since the essence of a sentence can still come through in a paraphrase which sounds natural. They are often different ways of saying the same thing. I think it will eventually happen that, as you become more proficient, the translation stage drops out naturally from the comprehension process.

delta Wrote:Well, what other choice do I have? How do I do it without it?

Well, you seem to understand the concepts just fine.

"It didn't become so that he/she/etc. was able to speak" is pretty much what the sentences says, so the concepts seem to be coming through to you loud and clear. If you were reading this in a story, or your friend said it to you, wouldn't you be able to imagine the situation that the sentence is explaining?

Rethinking it, however, I admit that it might be hard depending on your circumstances. I was lucky enough to always either be taking a class or to be in Japan while learning Japanese, so it was always possible for me to have things in context. As long as you can imagine what the sentence means, or act in an appropriate way during a conversation, you don't need to translate a sentence back to your native language--a process which ultimately slows you down, and confuses you when things in Japanese cannot be expressed exactly in your native language.

However, I don't know how hard the goal of not translating in your head will be if your circumstances are very different. And I think with very tricky grammar it is useful to do translation at first, as the concept of the sentence is too hard to understand without translation.

At any rate, the goal is to understand the concept, not to express Japanese clearly in your native language. However, if you are asking us to clarify the concept, that's a useful question (that might very well be what you're doing--I'm not sure since I thought it was a bit vague).

People who are fluent in Japanese here often note how translation even of everyday language is an extra skill that must be learned on top of learning the language itself. Because ultimately you abandon translating things when using Japanese, and then when you try to translate something you find that it's quite a bit more difficult than simply using Japanese.

Well, I was hoping you would give me some special advice. I actually understand the idea of thinking in the target language, but I just can't quite do that in Japanese yet.

Just a quick 'what's this kanji?' question:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g148/A...areyou.png
The one after 水着, I can't figure it out and it's bugging me since I get most of the rest of the conversation.

If it helps to hear it, it's at about 9:03 here:

Any tips on getting better at reading small kanji? It really gives me a lot of trouble.

Thanks!

ampharos64: 姿


I simply googled "女性に点数をつけるなど”

I have feedback from a translation company and I have

２． 評価項目と評価レベル(５点満点)
(ア) 訳漏れ： ４
（コメント：【0005】（第１の調整方法）など）

Could any kind person tell me what 訳漏れ means?

Ampharos64 Wrote:Just a quick 'what's this kanji?' question:
http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g148/A...areyou.png
The one after 水着, I can't figure it out and it's bugging me since I get most of the rest of the conversation.

姿 （すがた）

Quote:Any tips on getting better at reading small kanji? It really gives me a lot of trouble.

Learn more Japanese :-) Context and knowing what the word is likely to be means you don't need to stare really hard at maybe-ambiguous kanji (especially with the audio track here).

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:Could any kind person tell me what 訳漏れ means?

http://translation.harrington.jp/2012/03...rd_length/ defines it as その単語の意味が翻訳から抜けている場合 -- something you've missed out of the translation, as opposed to a 誤訳, a mistranslation.

thanks - do you think that it is good or bad that I got 4 out of five for this? I don't know how to interpret it

HonyakuJoshua Wrote:ampharos64: 姿

I simply googled "女性に点数をつけるなど”

pm215 Wrote:姿 （すがた）

Learn more Japanese :-) Context and knowing what the word is likely to be means you don't need to stare really hard at maybe-ambiguous kanji (especially with the audio track here).

Thank you both. : )
Ah, Google sounds a good idea, I'll bear that in mind. It's also encouraging to hear that knowing more will make it easier to figure out what those teeny tiny kanji are.
*Adds sentence to deck - that should help, it was getting a bit boring, so I've been trying to add more fun stuff today*

Before the English lesson, mom arrives with her little girl.

ティーチャー: How are you?
女の子: えと…
ティーチャー: I'm good (whispering)
女の子: あっ、I'm good.
お母さん: あ〜、やったのに。

I think やったのに means "but she did it!" or "despite the fact she did it", but as you can see from the dialogue, she only said "I'm good" after the teacher whispered the answer to her, so I don't understand why the mom said "やったのに".

delta Wrote:Before the English lesson, mom arrives with her little girl.

ティーチャー: How are you?
女の子: えと…
ティーチャー: I'm good (whispering)
女の子: あっ、I'm good.
お母さん: あ〜、やったのに。

I think やったのに means "but she did it!" or "despite the fact she did it", but as you can see from the dialogue, she only said "I'm good" after the teacher whispered the answer to her, so I don't understand why the mom said "やったのに".

It's implying something like "Even though she did it, she needed help." のに has a negative connotation. It's pretty common to have a dangling のに where the reason is either omitted, or stated earlier, out of order.

In らんま1/2, あかね laments the loss of her one and only student by saying たった１人の最後の生徒さんだったのに…。

My first instinct is that she was referring to the fact that they'd gone over the same thing earlier ("Even though we did that") , but it's hard to say without more context. Gaiaslastlaugh might be right.

Well, I looked it up again and found this:
http://dev.jgram.org/pages/viewOne.php?tagE=noni3

The wishful のに. So, it could be that the mom was just saying "I wish she had said it herself". Does that make sense to you too?

delta Wrote:Before the English lesson, mom arrives with her little girl.

ティーチャー: How are you?
女の子: えと…
ティーチャー: I'm good (whispering)
女の子: あっ、I'm good.
お母さん: あ〜、やったのに。

I think やったのに means "but she did it!" or "despite the fact she did it", but as you can see from the dialogue, she only said "I'm good" after the teacher whispered the answer to her, so I don't understand why the mom said "やったのに".

My first interpretation as a native Japanese speaker is exactly what Splatted said. You already taught the "How are you? Good." greeting thing in a previous lesson, and she couldn't respond the way you told her to before. If the pitch was like

　　　　　　た
あぁ
　　〜
　　　　やっ　の
　　　　　　　　に

then it must be it.

@magamo Something like "even though we have practiced this many times before"? That would be OK I guess but what about the wishful のに, like "I wish she had said it herself"?

delta Wrote:@magamo Something like "even though we have practiced this many times before"? That would be OK I guess but what about the wishful のに, like "I wish she had said it herself"?

Whatever you were taught, that particular phrase in that context is most likely something along the line of "Heeey, you already learned it, didn't you?" It's a very common phrase actually. You can use it to yourself when, for instance, you got the wrong answer on a test when you just studied the material and knew the correct answer for the particular question you got wrong. It expresses the idea that you should've answered correctly. I don't like to use it when someone fails though.

By the way, the page you linked has an obvious typo: のだけれでも should read のだけれども. Also, this is NOT interchangeable with のに. In fact, あ〜、やったのに。and あ〜、やったのだけれども。sound different. I leave grammatical explanations to whatever textbook you're using.

あっ！ So, the mom was not talking to me but to her daughter or to herself, that would make sense.

"Even though (you've done/practiced | you did) this (already/before)".

In short, the meaning is that the girl failed despite the fact that she knew the answer. Right?

delta Wrote:あっ！ So, the mom was not talking to me but to her daughter, that would make sense.

Yep. She was talking to either her daughter or no one (i.e., just spouting the common phrase that fits the situation and matches her emotion). If anything, I kind of feel like it's so idiomatic that it's not directed to anyone anymore just like how "Seriously?!" is not used to "talk to someone" but is just working as an emotion indicator. On the surface, you're saying "seriously?!" to the listener. But actually often you aren't. You may say it when you're alone, and the meaning doesn't change.

Edit: Yes. That interpretation is good. It's saying kind of like she should've known better than to mumble because she already learned how to respond properly in class.