Japanese Sentences Can Be SO LONG

[KyleGoetz]

This kind of thing is considered absolutely awful writing in English, and yet it's so frequent in Japanese literature!

For example, here's a sentence I've come across doing the translation for the competition:

あずかっていたというときこえはよいが、山岸が若狭へ 疎開したいといってきたので、村の農家を借りてやった だけのことなのだが、この友人は、疎開して三日目に召 集令がきて、横須賀の海兵団に入ったが、出発時に、あ とのことをよろしく頼むといって出たので、私は、細君 と子二人を、とにかく、村に住まわせて、援護してやら ねばならない場所だった。

That is one sentence. How can one even juggle this much information in one's head at one time? "...but...because...but....but...because..." Argh!

Depending on how I end up rendering this in English, it might even be multiple paragraphs of text in English! That is, if I can figure out who is being drafted into the military, the speaker or Yamagishi!

I just thought good speakers might get a kick out of witnessing my pain, beginners might see that they need to work doubly hard to become skilled, and intermediates might be similarly humbled by our common inability to read this sentence despite recognizing even 100% of the words and grammar structures contained within.

It's no wonder Japan demolishes the west in so many standardized tests of academic excellence—if your population is trained to hold this much syntax in the subconscious at one time, you must all have been molded into geniuses!

Edit Reading this sentence, what I pull from it is: the Yamagishi [family] needed to evacuate (Tokyo) to Wakase, so the speaker arranged for a rental house for them. However, Mr. Yamagishi got conscripted into the military after only three days in Wakase. When he left, he asked the speaker to continue on with the renting, and the speaker ended up having to protect/look after the wife and kids.

The first part of the phrase (あずかっていたというと〜) is completely baffling to me, though.　預かっていたというと聞こえは良い means nothing to me. I'm about 90% sure I'm parsing it incorrectly, though, as indicated by my attempt to put kanji in the sentence. This is a good example of why I maintain that Japanese with kanji is much easier to understand than Japanese without kanji.

[yuriyuri]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

This kind of thing is considered absolutely awful writing in English, and yet it's so frequent in Japanese literature!

For example, here's a sentence I've come across doing the translation for the competition:

That is one sentence. How can one even juggle this much information in one's head at one time? "...but...because...but....but...because..." Argh!

Depending on how I end up rendering this in English, it might even be multiple paragraphs of text in English! That is, if I can figure out who is being drafted into the military, the speaker or Yamagishi!

I just thought good speakers might get a kick out of witnessing my pain, beginners might see that they need to work doubly hard to become skilled, and intermediates might be similarly humbled by our common inability to read this sentence despite recognizing even 100% of the words and grammar structures contained within.

It's no wonder Japan demolishes the west in so many standardized tests of academic excellence—if your population is trained to hold this much syntax in the subconscious at one time, you must all have been molded into geniuses!

Edit Reading this sentence, what I pull from it is: the Yamagishi [family] needed to evacuate (Tokyo) to Wakase, so the speaker arranged for a rental house for them. However, Mr. Yamagishi got conscripted into the military after only three days in Wakase. When he left, he asked the speaker to continue on with the renting, and the speaker ended up having to protect/look after the wife and kids.

The first part of the phrase (あずかっていたというと〜) is completely baffling to me, though.　預かっていたというと聞こえは良い means nothing to me. I'm about 90% sure I'm parsing it incorrectly, though, as indicated by my attempt to put kanji in the sentence. This is a good example of why I maintain that Japanese with kanji is much easier to understand than Japanese without kanji.

To me, あずかっていたというときこえはよい looks like 預かっていたというと聞こえは良い.
聞こえがいい meaning something like "ear-pleasing" or "sounds nice/good".
Although I could be wrong.

And I keep on wanting to translate 農家 as "Farmer" although I don't understand how that could work with 借りる so now I want to translate it as "Farm House", even though I'm not sure that is even correct.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind but I thought I would have a go at my own translation

This is what I came up with:

あずかっていたというときこえはよいが、山岸が若狭へ 疎開したいといってきたので、村の農家を借りてやった だけのことなのだが、この友人は、疎開して三日目に召 集令がきて、横須賀の海兵団に入ったが、出発時に、あ とのことをよろしく頼むといって出たので、私は、細君 と子二人を、とにかく、村に住まわせて、援護してやら ねばならない場所だった。

It sounds good to say I was taking them under my care, but the Yamagishi family wanted to evacuate to Wakase, so all I could do was rent them a farm house in the village for them.
On the third day after they had evacuated a draft order from the military came and this friend joined the Yakosuka Marines.
At the time of his departure he said, "I'll leave the rest to you" and took his leave, so I was left having to put up and support both the wife and child in the village.

[Nyororin]

That is one sentence. How can one even juggle this much information in one's head at one time? "...but...because...but....but...because..." Argh!

I don`t think it`s that bad because the sentence follows a logical order. Instead of looking at it like "but" and "because" and being linked into a single sentence - you have to realize that this is a very fluid spoken-style passage. Because it is so informal in tone, it is more natural to just let the sentence stretch on and on instead of using things like しかし or the like to split it into multiple sentences.

Originally Posted by yuriyuri

To me, あずかっていたというときこえはよい looks like 預かっていたというと聞こえは良い.
聞こえがいい meaning something like "ear-pleasing" or "sounds nice/good".
Although I could be wrong.

You`re both right on this - the kanji is perfectly fine in there. He is basically saying that it sounds better than the reality in this case.

And I keep on wanting to translate 農家 as "Farmer" although I don't understand how that could work with 借りる so now I want to translate it as "Farm House", even though I'm not sure that is even correct.

I would personally translate it as "farm" - because you hear 農家をやってる a lot more than it being used to actually refer to a specific building.

Also - a bit of curiosity. Why do you both use Wakase?　若狭 is Wakasa, in Fukui. Dialectal territory I am quite familiar with.

If I get around to it, I may post a bit of a dialect challenge as I have a really nice and short video with 3 people talking. One is from the Wakasa area, one from the Echizen area, and one from the Fukui city area. They all have different and pretty heavy regional accents. Might be kind of neat for a few more advanced learners to try to figure out.

[KyleGoetz]

This is pretty close to what I had come up with (if not the exact words, the similar tone and structure of concept-expressions, except for that first part. I kept thinking of 聞こえ as "reputation" or "renown," which made me keep thinking the narrator was trying to say (with a similar tone as your translation) something about how taking care of them would bring make him seem like a good fellow.

I'm trying not to get too much into making an appearance of asking for specific translation help because this is a competition I'm entering, and I don't want to inadvertently cheat. Saying "Hey, I don't understand this grammar structure" strikes me as OK, but "can someone help me translate this paragraph?" seems not OK.

Suffice to say, I'm doing more heavy duty research into Japanese grammar in Japanese than I ever have before. I am fairly certain this other, even longer, sentence, containing a structure like "〜たという意味と、〜long long phrase her〜のだ、という、かすかなand on and onである," is a really good example of parallelism (the parallel という), but I haven't managed to puzzle my way through that sentence yet.

It's amazing how I can comprehend, fairly easily, a certain length of sentence, but there's some fixed length that, once a sentence surpasses it, the entire meaning just flees from my mind instantaneously. It's some sort of mental fatigue. Hopefully with time I overcome it.

[yuriyuri]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I would personally translate it as "farm" - because you hear 農家をやってる a lot more than it being used to actually refer to a specific building.

I will keep that in mind for future reference

Originally Posted by Nyororin

Also - a bit of curiosity. Why do you both use Wakase?　若狭 is Wakasa, in Fukui. Dialectal territory I am quite familiar with.

Hahahaha!
I didn't even realise I had written 'se'!
I just saw the 狭 and though of せ from 狭い automatically

I'll try to take a bit more care in my reading from now

Originally Posted by Nyororin

If I get around to it, I may post a bit of a dialect challenge as I have a really nice and short video with 3 people talking. One is from the Wakasa area, one from the Echizen area, and one from the Fukui city area. They all have different and pretty heavy regional accents. Might be kind of neat for a few more advanced learners to try to figure out.

If you do get around to it that could be quite interesting!
I'm not very good at working dialects out, but dialects are one of my favourite parts of Japanese.

[KyleGoetz]

Originally Posted by Nyororin

I don`t think it`s that bad because the sentence follows a logical order. Instead of looking at it like "but" and "because" and being linked into a single sentence - you have to realize that this is a very fluid spoken-style passage. Because it is so informal in tone, it is more natural to just let the sentence stretch on and on instead of using things like しかし or the like to split it into multiple sentences.



You`re both right on this - the kanji is perfectly fine in there. He is basically saying that it sounds better than the reality in this case.



I would personally translate it as "farm" - because you hear 農家をやってる a lot more than it being used to actually refer to a specific building.

Also - a bit of curiosity. Why do you both use Wakase?　若狭 is Wakasa, in Fukui. Dialectal territory I am quite familiar with.

If I get around to it, I may post a bit of a dialect challenge as I have a really nice and short video with 3 people talking. One is from the Wakasa area, one from the Echizen area, and one from the Fukui city area. They all have different and pretty heavy regional accents. Might be kind of neat for a few more advanced learners to try to figure out.

I was saying Wakase because the second kanji I only know as セまい (can you use katakana like that, as a Japanese equivalent of italics when the "emphatic dot above" is technologically impossible?). I knew it was a town, but it's a region I have zero familiarity with. I've never been further west than Kanagawa.

As for the incredible length, I had a feeling it was supposed to mimic a conversational, flowing style rather than something specifically high literature. The story's structure really starts out with a lot of setup where the narrator is using very long sentences. But when he gets into the actual main events (Yamagishi's wife contracts typhus and the narrator and his father must take her, by bicycle cart/rearcar, a few towns over to be quarantined), the sentences shorten up.

Thanks to both of you. I'll no doubt be hitting up JF for some help with new structures I learn from this project. Thankfully, I have until around November to finish this and one other work.

[yuriyuri]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

I'm trying not to get too much into making an appearance of asking for specific translation help because this is a competition I'm entering, and I don't want to inadvertently cheat.

Sorry about that, I hope I didn't ruin anything

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

It's amazing how I can comprehend, fairly easily, a certain length of sentence, but there's some fixed length that, once a sentence surpasses it, the entire meaning just flees from my mind instantaneously. It's some sort of mental fatigue. Hopefully with time I overcome it.

I think sentences of these lengths can be difficult for me to read sometimes because I am used to speaking or writing in short sentences, so when I see a long sentence I automatically try to read it all at once.
When this happens I like to just try and remember that all I have to do is focus on the small sentences which make up the larger sentence and it makes it much easier to read.
Whether I always understand correctly or not is another matter

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

I was saying Wakase because the second kanji I only know as セまい (can you use katakana like that, as a Japanese equivalent of italics when the "emphatic dot above" is technologically impossible?). I knew it was a town, but it's a region I have zero familiarity with. I've never been further west than Kanagawa.

In the terms of this passage, I am going to guess that it is referring not to the town but rather to the 若狭 region... The western side of what is now 福井県. 若狭 and 越前 joined to make 福井, and the western side is still referred to as 若狭 and the eastern 越前.

It's amazing how I can comprehend, fairly easily, a certain length of sentence, but there's some fixed length that, once a sentence surpasses it, the entire meaning just flees from my mind instantaneously. It's some sort of mental fatigue. Hopefully with time I overcome it.

I think this may be more to do with you actively trying to keep the whole thing in memory. With the longer sentences, I don`t think they`re supposed to be kept in the subconscious like you would expect with a long sentence in English. You can just read the first part, understand it, then set it aside as if it had been an independent sentence. If you try to juggle them in your mind, it just becomes a lot of stress... And is unnatural, in my opinion. The connections in the sentence, to me, are more signals for the ordering of events rather than actual parts of the sentence.

I`m terrible at explaining this as I didn`t learn via study or classes, but I`ll give a sort of rundown on how I parsed the sentence in reading as there is a slim chance it might help someone...

「あずかっていたというときこえはよいが、」
Okay, anything after this is the reality of the situation.

「山岸が若狭へ 疎開したいといってきたので、」
First this happened...

「村の農家を借りてやった だけのことなのだが、」
So in response to that, I only did this (implication that something more happened in the end that was out of his control - so things after this are unexpected to the speaker).

「この友人は、疎開して三日目に召 集令がきて、横須賀の海兵団に入った」
Next, this happened.

「が、出発時に、あ とのことをよろしく頼むといって出た」
When that happened, this also happened.

「ので、私は、細君 と子二人を、とにかく、村に住まわせて、援護してやら ねばならない場所だった。」
Because of the previous event, this is how things ended up. (Which is the reality that doesn`t sound as good as just simply saying he did such-and-such)

[KyleGoetz]

So the が here don't actually function as the "however"-が? If that's true, it sure makes translating this thing accurately so much easier.

[Nyororin]

Originally Posted by KyleGoetz

So the が here don't actually function as the "however"-が? If that's true, it sure makes translating this thing accurately so much easier.

I don`t feel confident in saying it doesn`t, but in the context of the sentence it feels a bit different. I don`t think that it is saying "but" or "however" in a direct sense, but setting the tone for the bit.
The ので is pointing out a direct action on the part of the speaker in response to the events - the が is more just pointing out that it just happened.

Instead of thinking of it as "but" or "however" - I`d say "and" is a much better choice. Much like the type of が used in this exchange:
田中さんですよね。
はい、そうですが・・・