I'm trying to get a better handle on translating the は particle. Consider the sentence:

今日はライオンスが勝った。

I could translate this either as:

1. The Lions won today.

or

2. Today the Lions won.

According to my understanding of "Japanese 101" rules, (2) would be the better translation, because it emphasizes "today" (the implication one may read in (2) is something like "The Lions may have won today, but it doesn't mean that they will win tomorrow").

But if I turn the problem around and ask: how would I translate (1) above into Japanese? The best I can come up with is precisely, "今日はライオンスが勝った", or maybe "今日、ライオンスが勝った". (As I understand it, these two sentences are considered basically equivalent, with the second one being a looser version of the second; in the second one, the は is implied.)

Maybe this is one of those cases in which a correct translation is impossible without more context...

What do you think?

gfb345 Wrote:Maybe this is one of those cases in which a correct translation is impossible without more context...

I agree.

I think 1) sounds more natural, so it would be the best alternative, but as you say, the context will determine which one is more appropriate.


BTW, do you know how many translators you need to change a bulb?




















It depends on the context.

Sebastian Wrote:BTW, do you know how many translators you need to change a bulb?

It depends on the context.

But seriously, I get the impression that translating between Japanese and English, tends to require more context than does translating, say, between Spanish and English, or French and English.

This greater need for context for Japanese/English translations becomes particularly problematic at the time of making sentence flashcards, because in this case there is typically no context (unless one is making flashcards out of, e.g., movie subtitles).

The English translations for the Japanese sentences in Smart.fm's Core 2K and Core 6K collection give me a lot of trouble, because of this lack of context. For example, here's a typical English/Japanese pair of sentences from this collection:

I put mayonnaise on the salad.
サラダにマヨネーズをかけたの。

If I had not seen the Japanese sentence of this pair, I would have translated the English one as "サラダにマヨネーズをかけ(まし)た". The の ending of the Japanese sentence makes no sense to me without additional context; it sound to me as if it were an explanation given in response to something said before. I have a hard time coming up with an English translation that conveys the same nuance. The closest I can come up with are sentences like:

The thing is, I put mayonnaise on the salad.
I put mayonnaise on the salad, you see.
But I already put mayonnaise on the salad...
...because I put mayonnaise on the salad.

There are many, many examples of this type of translation problem in the Core 2K/6K collections. Here are a few more. In all of them, the Japanese version has some ending that gives the sentence an implied context; in contrast, the English version is devoid of any such implied context. I also give my context-free translation to Japanese of the (context-free) English sentence.

Frogs have no belly button.
original: カエルにはへそがないんだ。
mine: カエルにはへそがない。

The marathon started in the rain.
original: マラソンは雨の中でスタートしたの。
mine: マラソンは雨の中でスタートした。

Steam is coming out of the kettle.
original: やかんから湯気が出ていますよ。
mine: やかんから湯気が出ています。

I hope it'll be sunny tomorrow.
original: 明日は晴れるといいですね。
mine: 明日は晴れたら良かった。


I think that my translations are more correct that the original ones if we assume no context, and therefore more suitable for flashcards. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

gfb345 Wrote:I hope it'll be sunny tomorrow.
original: 明日は晴れるといいですね。
mine: 明日は晴れたら良かった。

I would not do this kind of change myself, unless I could confirm with a native speaker. It's very easy to change the meaning of a sentence radically doing even small changes. In fact, I think 「明日は晴れたら良かった」 means nothing like "I hope it will"; it's more like "It's a pity it won't".

gfb345 Wrote:Steam is coming out of the kettle.
original: やかんから湯気が出ていますよ。
mine: やかんから湯気が出ています。

Why not 「やかんから湯気が出ている」? That's the most basic/fundamental.

gfb345 Wrote:If I had not seen the Japanese sentence of this pair, I would have translated the English one as "サラダにマヨネーズをかけ(まし)た".

And you would be correct. If you flashcards are asking you to produce 「サラダにマヨネーズをかけたの」「サラダにマヨネーズをかけました」 or any other specific variation upon seeing "I put mayonnaise on the salad", then they are ill-designed. At least change the English text to "I put mayonnaise on the salad [explanatory]" or "I put mayonnaise on the salad [polite]", or something.

iSoron Wrote:

gfb345 Wrote:I hope it'll be sunny tomorrow.
original: 明日は晴れるといいですね。
mine: 明日は晴れたら良かった。

I would not do this kind of change myself, unless I could confirm with a native speaker. It's very easy to change the meaning of a sentence radically doing even small changes. In fact, I think 「明日は晴れたら良かった」 means nothing like "I hope it will"; it's more like "It's a pity it won't".

I would say that you need a のに after it to mean "It's a pity it won't"; I read 晴れたらよかった as "It would have been nice if it had been sunny today [but it wasn't]", although that would often have のに after it too.

But yeah, I would strongly urge against trying to "correct" translations in that manner.

gfb345 Wrote:I hope it'll be sunny tomorrow.
original: 明日は晴れるといいですね。
mine: 明日は晴れたら良かった。

If you're talking about the future (明日), then the adjective should take its non-past form.


明日は晴れたら良い。

If you say that it would've been good if yesterday was sunny, then you could say:

きのう晴れたらよかった。

And as yudantaiteki noted, it would convey a sense of "it would have been good if ***, but it didn't happen", so using のに at the end would have been probably the most natural way of ending a sentence like that.

Of course, you could also say:

きのう晴れてよかった。

In which case, you're saying that you're glad yesterday was sunny.

I think the idea of adding comments to note the nuance of each sentence is a good one. Japanese and languages like English, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. are very different, so sometimes don't use the same resources (meaningful words, interjections, tone of the voice, facial expression, etc.)for expressing different nuances.

Other thing that one has to take into account, is what a "correct" or "good" translation translation is depends on the goals you have. If you just want to read a translated book for pleasure, you most probably aren't interested in getting every nuance of the message, because that would make the text feel "foreign" (in many levels). On the other hand, if you use translations for learning, probably you want translations that show in one way or another the nuances, even if they don't sound like natural texts in your language.

I don't think it's good to use the same "flash card" to go both J->E and E->J when you're talking about sentences. I think it's much better to pick which one you want to focus on for that card and then create it to help you as much as possible. This is going to be easier than trying to devise natural translations for は or んだ out of context.

Thank you all for your corrections and comments!

gfb345 Wrote:Frogs have no belly button.
original: カエルにはへそがないんだ。
mine: カエルにはへそがない。

The marathon started in the rain.
original: マラソンは雨の中でスタートしたの。
mine: マラソンは雨の中でスタートした。

Steam is coming out of the kettle.
original: やかんから湯気が出ていますよ。
mine: やかんから湯気が出ています。

I hope it'll be sunny tomorrow.
original: 明日は晴れるといいですね。
mine: 明日は晴れたら良かった。


I think that my translations are more correct that the original ones if we assume no context, and therefore more suitable for flashcards. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

I think that the translations are correct as originally given. In Japanese, various ways to show that a sentence is an explanation for something are used CONSTANTLY, much more often then in English. Because of this, often the correct way to translate a sentence that contains a ん or の construction is to just ignore it in the English--that's just what sounds natural in English, especially in written English. Whether or not you add a construction in English that shows a sentence to be an explanation depends on the sentences before it. If you try to make everything an explanation in English writing, and to a certain extent English speaking, you sound really weird. So you vary your speech, by explaining things without using language that specifically states that what you're saying is an explanation. But in Japanese it's completely acceptable to use language that conveys the fact that you're explaining something over and over again.

The same can be said of other particles like よ. Very often, in a situation where a Japanese person would use the よ particle, in English we would just say a simple sentence that doesn't have anything to convey the things that よ convey.