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Hi Guys,
I’ve bought Twilight in Japanese, because it’s my favorite book.
Now I try to translate one sentence per day. If I become better (and I think I will) than I will translate more than one sentence per day.
As there are nearly no Furigana in this book I need help with the reading, if I cannot find it with my Kanji dictionary. Sometimes I will have trouble with grammar or just with putting this words together so they make sense.
I want to ask you, if you could help me with this. I will allways, if I have trouble post the sentence here. Tell what I understand, what I guess and where I need help.
I hope that is all right with you and I think there are no problems with copyright as I’m not posting the whole book.And, of course, I have problems with the first sentence.
It’s 自分の死にざまなんか、真剣に考えたことはなかった。自分 じぶん oneself
死 し death
真剣 しんけん earnest (i don’t know if this is the right translation in German it is ernst, ernsthaft)I don’t know how 考えた is readed. also I don’t know how to translate ざまなんか. I think the sentence means something like “I have never thought about my own death in an earnest (? as I said with ernst, ernsthaft in German is it allright) way.”
Hope you can help me. Thanks.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
> I don’t know how 考えた is read
The dictionary at jisho.org does a fairly good job of deconjugating verbs. It will tell you the dictionary form and reading.
You might also try getting an audiobook in Japanese.
> also I don’t know how to translate ざまなんか.
I think that breaks up as ざま なんか, but I think the usage is probably idiomatic. For ざま, take a look at the dictionary on goo.ne, which often does a good job of providing examples.
http://dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/je2/29398/m0u/%E3%81%96%E3%81%BE/
In this case those examples aren’t really on point. Next try Eijiro, which is often useful for tracking down idiomatic phrases. The trick is what to look up. Sometimes you have to guess a few times before getting something that returns good results. In this case a search which does the trick is にざま, which tells you about the idiom 死にざま:
http://eow.alc.co.jp/%E3%81%AB%E3%81%96%E3%81%BE/UTF-8/
Short words in hiragana are usually difficult to research, because you get too many false matches, and besides that they often mean lots of different things. So you have to be clever with your searches. If I were doing this, I would just do some quick research, and if that doesn’t work out, just make a note of the word and where you saw it. Read the original English version to make sure you understand what the sentence means, and move on. The next time you see the word, it may become clearer how it is being used.
Good luck!
自分の死にざまなんか、真剣に考えたことはなかった。
(I) didn’t seriously consider the circumstances of something like my own death. (or one’s own death)
I actually checked the official English translation to check if I was right and that’s basically what it is. (The topic of the translation being “correct” isn’t worth talking about as they often fudge the meaning to make it more readable).
Well this was a challenge! Its hard to put into English because I don’t clearly understand it, and it seems 死にざま is not a standard word at all and I had to refer to this site in Japanese for an explanation. http://www.geocities.jp/shinmeiker/2003/shinizama.htm
Oh and by the way.
考える （かんがえる） – to consider, to think about.
Pretty much. My own translation would be “I have never given serious consideration to the manner of my own death.”
ざま as a suffix means the ‘way’ or ‘manner’ of it. So 死にざま is literally the ‘manner of death’ or ‘kind of death’. It is like 死に方.
なんか is the colloquial form of など and means ‘things like’. To quote the Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar: “It is used as nado is used except that in a context conveying undesirability or contempt there is more emphasis on the derogatory meaning.”
Sheepy: It’s more commonly written as 死に様 and should be found that way in a dictionary.
Ahh yeah you put it in English better than I did. Although as long as the understanding is the same ^^
EDIT: yeah I noticed that earlier after I had already looked it up, but it was a good exercise as I researched Japanese resources which is always the best way I think lol. On なんか I’m not sure if theres a large difference between なんか and なんて
Oh and Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is a god send.
The Dictionary of Basic/Intermediate/Advanced Japanese Grammar books are by far the best resources that I’ve bought for my Japanese learning. I consider them indispensable and every learner should own at least the Basic and Intermediate ones :)
There are two なんて’s and one does indeed have that usage. The other is the colloquial of なんと. Both are covered in the Advanced grammar dictionary, which doesn’t only contain advanced grammar but also things that were missed when they wrote the first two dictionaries.
And yeah, I hadn’t actually come across 死に様 before either. Though it’s in both the Kenkyusha and Edict dictionaries.
Oh yeah i’m already aware of the なんと usage. Also now im just hijacking Kyoko’s thread so I should stop now lol
Thx for all this answers, it will help me a lot. After finishing Twilight I will be a pro if you all help me like this^^
Day 3 and i have the next problem :D
Sorry guys, but this time i don’t get where the words start and where they end. Be patient with me I’m a beginner and try to translate a book for teens.
The sentence is this:
でも、たとえ考えたとしても、こんなことになるとは想像もしなかっただろう。でも but/ however
考えた thought/ thinking
こんなこと this thing
想像 imagination
もしなかった never (says google)
だろう wouldMy problems:
what means たとえ rikaichan says something else than google, and I know that cannot be true, but I think google’s translation sounds better. Google says it means “also” rikaichan says it means “although/compare/comparison”. “Although” might fit, but “compare” not.Than こんなことになる I think こんなこと means “this thing” maybe refering to 考えたこと of the first sentence (the second did as well). so になる would be “will become” after rikaichan.
Next thing is, how does とは emphasize こんなことになる or does と belong to になる?
If I make a sentence out of it it would be:
However, if I had thought about it, it would have never become such(?) an imagination.I think there are a few problems with the translation. like the “such/こんな” is connected with こと and I think that refers to the thinking. However, although I’d knew the connections in the sentence I wouldn’t know how to translate it to a correct sentence.
I’m sure you can help me. Thank you a lot.
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This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
“But even if I had thought about it, I wouldn’t have imagined it would turn out like this.”
Ok, this could be a little tricky to explain…
たとえ and としても often come together and mean ‘even if’. I think that using both places more emphasis on it than having としても alone.
こんなことになる = ‘turn out like this’, ‘work out this way’, ‘come to this’ etc.
とは is the quoting particle (と) plus the topic marking particle and it’s linking the preceding to the 想像する to show what is being guessed or imagined.想像もしなかっただろう = ‘wouldn’t have guessed’ or ‘wouldn’t have imagined’
This is the negative, past tense of 想像する plus だろう. I’m not 100% on the も but I’m pretty sure it’s being used for emphasis here. So it’s kind of like, “I wouldn’t even have imagined”.Also I don’t mean to discourage you at all, but this is pretty difficult stuff for a beginner. Maybe it would be better to aim at something easier for now?
Thanks for the help, and no I will go on. I hve found something that I think is fun and also I can divide it well into many parts for everyday. Also, alone in this past three days I have learned 考える so well, I will never forget it. And I will learn many other things. Yes, I need your help, however, I sorted out a lot of thinks on my own, too. That will also help with studying as I will remember it better this way. was able to read over and over again without getting bored. I will use that so I will not lose the fun with translating. However, if I’m annoying you with this, I will ask in another forum or other people who are good in Japanese.
It’s like the Mini-lesson of Koichi. Only that I have choosen the topic for myself. I’ve took a book I-
This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
Ah I missed this one lol. Good job Elenkis
Install Rikaichan as an addon for Firefox.
Open up Google Translate. Paste/Write the Japanese text in it.
Use Rikaichan to understand the kanji / smaller parts of the sentence.Once you went over the sentence a few times, try to figure out it’s general meaning/gist, then
maybe go on Lang-8 and write about it and get help from your friends there.
(Make japanese friends on Lang-8 and chat with them in Skype or similar. They’ll most likely
love to help you with the book, too!) -
This reply was modified 13 years, 2 months ago by
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