Jacob
Junior Member
練習して、がんばりますね!
Posts: 95
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Post by Jacob on Oct 13, 2013 14:54:07 GMT
I know on the previous forum this translation practice thread helped me so much so here don't be afraid to post sentences for translation either way. Here is an example of a sentence that was hard for me to translate:
"He is my only friend that is younger than I am, all my other friends are 14."
Then who ever would like to try to translate it, may and it is in my lang8 post so I will try to check it. (ninja)
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 13, 2013 16:35:41 GMT
Jacob, thanks for starting this thread again! For clarification this is a thread we had in the old forum. This is a game or activity in which we come up with English sentences that would be challenging or just fun to translate, and then whoever wanted to try it out could do so. So whoever can think of a fun or challenging sentence to challenge other members to translate into Japanese can start us off.
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Post by Jade on Oct 13, 2013 20:48:41 GMT
"He is my only friend that is younger than I am, all my other friends are 14." 私と年下友達は彼しかいない、他の友達は14歳です。 Err, I can't think of a sentence to have translated lol えっと、翻訳してもらいたい文考えられないw
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Post by Jade on Oct 23, 2013 2:34:59 GMT
Translation challenge~~ As soon I opened the door a ghost came out!
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 24, 2013 21:52:11 GMT
Jade I'll take a try at that sentence, ドアをあけたらすぐに幽霊が出てきた! Doa o aketara sugu ni yuurei ga dete kita! I was wondering whether I should say あけたらすぐに orあけたとすぐに, so I just chose one. Also, I could have said 幽霊が現れてきた (arawareru= to appear) which may have been more appropriate for talking about a ghost, but I think 出てきた works fine I guess.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 24, 2013 22:41:07 GMT
Oh I missed this! Hooray for thread!
My immediate instinct when I read that, was to use totan. I'm not sure it IS more natural, but it just feels so to me, maybe because I practiced it during my last bootcamp week, so it's fresh grammar. So My version of the same thing is:
ドアを開けたとたん、お化けが出てきちゃった!
I also went for detekuru, as it was a movement towards the speaker, so instead I chose to call it 'obake' to make mine sound as different as possible. ^^
Here's a genuine one I had an issue with lately (and isn't resolved other than a 'cop-out' version that I'm not 100% happy with).
'It was so sunny today, that I was able to dry two loads of washing on the line!'
Of coure it's the 'two loads' that is causing the trouble.
See, I spoke to Jade about drying washing in Japanese this morning, so she must think this is basically my go-two (go-to See me. Must try harder D- )topic. I swear it isn't, IT ISN'T!!!!
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Post by Jade on Oct 24, 2013 23:19:40 GMT
'It was so sunny today, that I was able to dry two loads of washing on the line!' 今日すごく晴れてるから二つの洗濯物の荷を物干し綱に吊るせた! Ummm... I'm no good at thinking up sentences lol 'The bird is still young so it can't fly well.'
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Post by Jembru on Oct 25, 2013 0:42:08 GMT
Ooh, does 荷 work in this case? I was expecting the answer to be a compound containing that kanji, but couldn't find anything that appeared to fit. It was a non-native speaking friend I discussed this with, we haven't tried asking a native speaker yet (I will when I see them next). I looked into it when I got home and on it's own, thought it appeared to be more about load as in what is being carried, but it's not unusual for Japanese to come to the same linguistic solutions as we have in English, so it's possible they use it! My friend suggested they maybe wouldn't say it as we do so suggested simply using an ordinal counter, but that made things worse as I wanted to find a decent counter for piles or bundles of items.. ^^
Anyway, don't feel you HAVE to think of something. Abby and I tended to use sentences we'd genuinely had to ask our Japanese friends about at some time, or sometimes we'd make up a sentence that uses something we recently learnt to say, to see if the other knew another way to say it and then we could compare. I also often ask things (like the laundry question) I had tried to say when recording a journal video and couldn't work out how to word. It was so much fun, especially as much of the time, we discovered we'd both stumbled over the same language point, at one time or other. I don't think I ever made up a sentence just for the sake of it though, I could never think of something I didn't know how to say, just off the top of my head, it's just something that happens once my mouth starts flapping ^^
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 27, 2013 20:30:03 GMT
Oh I missed this! Hooray for thread! My immediate instinct when I read that, was to use totan. I'm not sure it IS more natural, but it just feels so to me, maybe because I practiced it during my last bootcamp week, so it's fresh grammar. So My version of the same thing is: ドアを開けたとたん、お化けが出てきちゃった! Wow, I had actually never heard of that grammar! I'll have to look it up. So it means the same as 〜とすぐに? Interesting. Thanks for the input! Haha, I completely forgot about the word Obake, yuurei was fresh in my mind from anime the other day.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 27, 2013 21:44:35 GMT
I think it is similar and don't see much difference in meaning personally. It always follows the past tense (as far as I've seen). I'm not sure if とたん is N3 or N2 grammar, as I kind of flit between the two right now.
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Post by Jade on Oct 27, 2013 23:28:45 GMT
〜とたん is N2, and (off memory) it's rarely used outside of stories and stuff like that. I was actually waiting to see who would use it for that sentence cause that sentence is what I'd used as an example for that grammar point in class at Chubu lol
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Post by Jembru on Oct 28, 2013 4:57:50 GMT
I'm not so sure it's ONLY in stories though, because the dialogue I learnt it in was 3 classmates chatting. One was complaining that their friend invited them to study together, yet fell asleep as soon as they arrived! Jpod is usually pretty good at mentioning when something is a written form, or formal form etc. Since learning it, I've been picking it up in JP's shows a fair bit too, although they, by definition ARE stories. It may just be one of those things that generally speaking, is found a lot in stories because 'as soon as' has a narrative feel even in English, but isn't strictly a narrative word..?
EDIT: Now I'm more awake, I have just remembered I'm almost sure this is also used in conversations. I heard it used recently in an expression that although wasn't translated (it was during a conversation), I'm pretty sure translated as, 'just as I thought I knew you, you go and surprise me like that'. It's one of those expressions that I never noticed when I'd only learnt this in passing, but once I'd practiced it during one of me boot camps recently, I started to notice it quite a lot.
It's interesting that you say it is N2 grammar. I wasn't sure because the series I'm currently working through (at home, I have one for home study and one I do if I have a bit time at work), is actually lower intermediate. Considering N2 is meant to be upper intermediate, it kinda shows how subjective the levels can be. It makes me wonder then, if I have accidentally been studying some N1 grammar (well, it's mainly all function words, I was always wary of calling that 'grammar' but everyone else seems to be happy to) when I've been doing the upper intermediate lessons. They're a bit hard for me, because while the grammar includes a lot of revision, the vocabulary is insane in those lessons: it's too much to remember in one sitting, so they don't work with my study method. It means I just dip into them when they revise a grammar point I want to know better. Maybe the the JLPT means when you pass N2, that means you are now upper-intermediate? Not that you are upper intermediate while studying N2 material? So like, while studying for N2, you're a regular intermediate? If so, I've been falsely calling myself upper-intermediate, and thought I was only about a year from advanced level. (T.T)
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Post by Bokusenou on Oct 28, 2013 20:50:51 GMT
とたん is like "at that very moment" while すぐに is like "soon after", so in terms of a timeline とたん is sooner.
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Post by Jembru on Oct 29, 2013 18:23:22 GMT
とたん is like "at that very moment" while すぐに is like "soon after", so in terms of a timeline とたん is sooner. I was going to say that too but then I noticed Midorichan had actually used, 'とすぐに', so deleted what I'd written and just said, 'they're more or less the same' (besides, while I was replying, I noticed she was waiting in chat for me so rushed my reply ^^). It's highly possible I've got the wrong end of the stick here, but I thought this, as a set expression like that, has more of a nuance of 'just as I..' or 'as soon as I..' and thus is a bit closer to とたん than すぐに is on it's own. This is why I love this thread so much. I think we discuss the language in so much more detail in here than in the other threads, because questions creep up that we never knew needed to be asked, and we learn things we'd never thought about before. Or at least I do. I love it!
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Post by MidoriAbby on Oct 29, 2013 19:51:10 GMT
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