I thought it'd be cool to create a thread dealing with
words/phrases that we're unable to find words for.

Can someone translate the below sentences into Japanese?

Here are a couple that came into my mind today:

black art
"It's more of a black art."

center of attention
"She likes to be the center of attention".

You might want to try www.alc.co.jp or Kenkyuusha's dictionary .They are both pretty good for those kinds of things.

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chamcham Wrote:black art
"It's more of a black art."

center of attention
"She likes to be the center of attention".

黒魔術色が強い
pronunciation is ショク.
彼女は目立ちたがり屋なんだよ。

by black art you mean magic?

Translation is interesting. Like I watched taylor swift on some show and they transalted the lyrics to her song and I loved how they didn't direct-translate and at the same time it still captured the meaning.... and made it more japanese than it original was. hard to explain. When I saw that I was like wow being a translator is hard and I don't really feel like aspiring to become a translator anyway but...

but this was my attempt at non-direct translating.

Center of attention is 注目を集める or 注目を浴びる

集める is more common

LOL i got 2 hits when i googled
注目集めたがり屋

AND 7 for 注目浴びたがり屋

It would help a lot if you provide a least a little context...

About "black art," if you mean something along the line of:

"Power Balance, huh? Hah, it's a bunch of nonsense. It's more of a black art than a science, you know. It might work as a good placebo though if you're fortunately dumb enough."

then one good translation would be あんなのデタラメに近い.

But if you mean something like:

"I don't know what it means or how it works. It's more of a black art, actually. But you always put this code at the head of your program. Otherwise your compiler gives a bunch of errors, and you don't want that."

then I'd translate it as おまじないみたいなもんだよ.

Of course, どちらかというと黒魔術です may work if, for example, you're talking about how your job should be a black magician to learn a particular skill in Final Fantasy.

The same goes for "She likes to be the center of attention." But in normal conversations, like howtwosavealif3 says, 彼女は目立ちたがり屋なんだよ。would work.

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merlin.codex Wrote:Haven't heard of 目立ちたがり屋, but it got many hits, so this became a good learning experience. Thank you!

Depending on context, it can mean slightly different from "to like to be the center of attention." Here are some other possible translations:

かまってちゃん (may be a little too internet slangy),
注目されないと気が済まない,
自分中心 (a little slangy and informal, and works only in more limited context).

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Yeah, the second one is more versatile, I think. About 自分中心, it's slightly different from 自己中心. It's more slangy, and grammatical usage is a bit different. As I said, it only works in limited context. But, in informal situations, the me, me, me kind of person is often the kind of person who likes to be the center of attention. So it's just another possible choice among numerous translations. Pick the one that carries the closest meaning on a case-by-case basis.

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Someone asked me for this quote in japanese

“One who is supposed to be a warrior considers it his foremost concern to keep death in mind at all times, every day and every night from the morning of New Year’s Day trhough the night of New Year’s eve.”

It's supposed to be from Budoshoshinshu by Taira Shigesuke, quote pulled from The Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu of Taira Shigesuke by Thomas Cleary.

I tried to google out the original sentence but with no success, so, if someone knows the answer....much obliged.