small translation
 

I apologize if this is the wrong forum. I am trying to find an accurate Japanese translation for this phrase:

Pray for us

or this one: Our Lady of Akita, Pray for us

If someone could help me out with either one I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

edit: I just noticed there's already a long thread dedicated to translations. I apologize for starting my own :)

Do you mean Mary? Our Lady of Akita - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Our Lady of Akita , Pray for us　
私達の秋田の聖母マリアよ、私達の為に、祈って下さい 。
Watashitachi no Akita no seibo maria yo,
Watashitachi no tame ni inotte kudasai.

Classical Japanese language
我らの秋田の聖母マリアよ、我らの為に、祈り給え。
Warera no Akita no seibo maria yo
Warera no tame ni inori tamae.

Thank you very much. Yes that is the Mary I was referring to. If you don't mind, which of the kanji part is just "pray for us"?

私達の為に、祈って下さい。

私達の為に、祈って下さい。
But I'm not entirely confident that allhailhata got this from a Japanese site. A careful writer of Japanese would not have used kanji for ください nor for ため.

私たちのために祈ってください。
US-possessive SAKE PRAY-performforus.
Please [do for us] pray for us/our sake.

Also almost none of the sentence is kanji. Most is hiragana. Only 祈 and 私 are kanji. た, ち, の, た, め, に, っ, て, く, だ, さ, and い are all hiragana.

hmm okay thanks. I'm really hoping to find a faithful (or as close to as possible) translation, so I'll just wait and see if anyone has more input.

I don't know the differences between hiragana and kanji, so don't understand why both would be used together in a phrase/sentence, unless there wasn't a good translation for a word in kanji, so maybe hiragana would be used instead? anyways, thanks for the help.

Iｔ's a relatively new Bureaucracy.

General Secretariat, The Catholic Bishops' Conference of Japan Top Index
If you want official translation,ask them.[email protected]

thanks. I did just send them a message although I suspect they may probably not have time for such requests :)

I'm not necessarily needing an "official" translation, so much as I'm looking for a translation that would commonly be used in Japanese writing.

Fine. Some sources do still kanjify 為.

For reference, the Angelic Salutation ("Hail Mary full of grace...") includeswhich is translated asRemove the "now and in the hour of our death" and "sinners" and "mother of God" and you haveTo keep that level of formality and "religious stiffness," I'd sayA more modern translation of the Angelic Salutation iswhich yields, for our purposes,So, OP, I provide you with the definitive answer(s), taken directly from official translations:
1. 我らのために祈り給え
2. 私たちのために祈ってください

There is no question these are correct.

EDIT:delete

やっぱりallhailhataさんの言った通りです。ネーティブだ� ��全く知りませんでした。
いつも通りで、間違えてしまいました。ごめんなさい。

しかし、初めてコメントを投稿（ポースト？）した後で 、AHHさんがコメントを投稿する前に、自分のコメントを 書きなおしました。思わないでなにか横柄にコメントを 投稿してしまいまして、すぐに後悔しました。

「下」と「為」の使い方を日本人に教えられました。今 には他の日本人がもう少し教えてくださいました。ホン マニオオキニ

And because I'm almost certain I fudged up somewhere (and I'd like this to be a more public shaming of myself than it was by you posting in Japanese) since I rarely write like that anymore, what I intended to say was essentially that I didn't know you were a native, I will definitely go with what you say, and that I'm appreciative to refine my knowledge of the use of kanji. I always learned the non-use of 下 in ください if it is used as an auxiliary verb with a てform verb, and I did not know the rule was relatively new.

It was a mistake to so haughtily post my first comment. I nearly regretted it immediately (and especially after I did a bit more reading and realized I was not right). I changed my post quickly, but not quick enough to avoid the embarrassment of you schooling me.

In any case, thanks for the lesson.

OP, pay attention to what allhailhata said. He's native.

haha :) thanks for helping too though. Is there a consensus here on which one is correct, or should I just wait for those people to email me back?

Go with what allhailhata said.

Go with what　KyleGoetz said.:)
1. 我らのために祈り給え
2. 私たちのために祈ってください
maybe correct as official translation.because KyleGoetz knows Christian terms more than I.
but my first translation is not wrong as Japanese.
I'm a native,but I don't know how to pray or write or sing a song in Christian Church.

@KyleGoetz 　.
I can read English(of course,with dictionary),but I can't write well.sorry, in Japanese again.
謝る必要ないですよ:D かえって恐縮してしまいますので、お気になさらずに。 日本語ですいません。
私の最初の訳はAve Mariaの日本語版WIKIを参考にしています。これだと漢字を 使っています。ただし、これを誰が訳したのかは、私も わかりません。聖書等で公式な訳があるのならばそれに 従うKyleGoetzさんの訳が適切だと思います。ただ、日本人 クリスチャンの方が一番回答者としては適切だと思いま す。なので協会へリンクはりました。できればOPさんに� ��お伝えください。アヴェ・マリア - Wikipedia
実際には、日本の教会ではどのように、クリスチャンの 方が歌ったり、お祈りしているんでしょうか？宗派によ っても違うことはあるんですかね。仏教だと重要視する お経が違ったりします。

ここからはOPさんの質問からはそれます。
「下さい」の使い分けは文法を学ぶためには合理的だと 思います。しかし、公的文書以外で、厳格に従っている 人は、それほどいないような気がします。
その使い分けは1973年に文部省によって発表されたとい� �ことです。当然、うちの母は気にしません。
私も1980年代に小学生でしたが、そんなことを大学卒業� �で教わったことありません。かえって　勉強熱心なKyleG oetzさんのような日本語学習者の方の方が気になるかも� �れませんね。
日本語って面倒くさいですね:mtongue:

well okay then lol. :mtongue:

If it makes any difference, I'm not looking for a translation that would be given if spoken of a deity. Just "Pray for us" or "Please pray for us" as one would normally speak to another.

I suppose a translation as it would be used in relation to royalty (like a queen) would be most appropriate. However, not particularly necessary.

I forgot to clarify this before. But why did you give two translations? Is one more common, and one traditional? Sorry for so many questions, I just really want to make sure I get this right.

The first is a bit more old and formal. I'll be honest that outside of church I've never heard the first (and technically I'm not Catholic, so I never heard either in church anyway!).

But basically the first is a bit more "literary" than the latter. I've never heard conjunctive+給え spoken in my life. But I'm only an above-average non-native Japanese speaker, so that could explain it, too.

It sort of happened outside of your view (since the exchange was going on in Japanese), but I'm a non-native Japanese speaker and allhailhata is a native Japanese speaker. So his Japanese is better than mine.

On the other hand, I'm Christian, and he's not, so I (allegedly, haha) have a bit more expertise there.

My honest evaluation is that both of our answers are correct. His is absolutely grammatically perfect (him being a native). The only issue is whether his is actually what they say in church or not.

I'm not 100% sure what they say in Catholic church, either (I'm a Protestant, and we don't do Hail Marys and stuff).

The nice thing is that our suggestions boil down to exactly the same thing for the simple phrase "pray for us" with one being a more "literary" version.

Additionally, we were discussing the translation, and allhailhata provided a good link about Ave Maria, which includes the phrase "pray for us" in it. The link he provided is the Japanese Wikipedia page for Ave Maria: アヴェ・マリア - Wikipedia

Here is the more literary version of Ave Maria:
アヴェ・マリア - Wikipedia
Here is the more colloquial (口語) version:
アヴェ・マリア - Wikipedia

As for not being Catholic and, thus, not knowing exactly what they would say in a Catholic Church, that is fine. I appreciate the help regardless. I did find this translation on a blog that I read which is from a Catholic who is from Japan, so it might be the best bet. It is identical to your last "colloquial" version, except for the very last characters, which I assume is just meant to be translated as "Amen."

Catholic in Japan Blog --

恵み溢れる聖マリア、主はあなたとともにおられます。
主はあなたを選び、祝福し、あなたの子イエスも祝福さ れました。
神の母聖マリア、罪深い私達の為に、
今も、死を迎える時も祈って下さい。　アーメン。

_______________________

Megumi afureru sei Maria, Shu wa anatatachi to tomo ni oraremasu.
Shu wa anata o erabi, shukufukushi, anata no ko Iesu mo shukufuku saremashita.
Kami no Haha, sei Maria, tsumifukai watashitachi no tameni,
ima mo, shi o mukaeru toki mo inotte kudasai.

Amen.

You are correct.

I did find footages of ceremonies in Japanese catholic church which is called Nanzan church.
Nanzan church is one of the most famous catholic church in nagoya district.

This is footage of 洗礼式( I don't know accurate name in English,maybe Baptism
ceremony?)
They say(or sing?) in old literary Japanese .
And from around 0:56 they repeat obviously "warera no tame ni inori tamae"(pray for us)
YouTube - カトリック南山教会・洗礼式2009年

On the other hand,they use colloquia Japanese for The Load's Prayer(not including "pray for us")
YouTube - 主の祈り

wow. You definitely went above and beyond with the research. thanks :cool:

I'm not sure why they would switch from traditional literary language in one part to colloquial language for the other part. The only thing I would guess is that in Catholicism precise language is necessary for sacramental activity (which Baptism is). And for prayers, such as "the Lord's Prayer" it isn't needed as much, so perhaps more conversational language is used.

I tend to prefer a more classical/traditional style of things. As long as warera no tame ni inori tamae is a valid (albeit classical/literary) translation, then it should be fine for my purposes. I would like to have this written down as part of a gift and maybe the traditional language would be nicer than today's colloquial.

As long as this same literary style phrase doesn't have another different translation in colloquial language.

So referring back to one of your earlier posts on this topic:

"Classical Japanese language
我らの秋田の聖母マリアよ、我らの為に、祈り給え。
Warera no Akita no seibo maria yo
Warera no tame ni inori tamae."

The bolded Kanji is a correct match? And is "、" just a comma and can it be removed?

Kanji is a correct match. "、"can be removed. As for "。" it is like a period in English.

kanji+hiragana combinations　
1　我らの為に祈り給え using kanji as possible
2　我らのために祈り給え KyleGoetz recommend (maybe close to official)
3 我らのために祈りたまえ
4　われらのためにいのりたまえ　all hiragana

I tried googleing.All hiragana version 4 is not so usuall version.
There is not a big difference between 1,2 and 3. But it seems that version
3 is most used.I think you can choose from 1~3.　

I should say again,I don't know official translation.

cool. I think I might go with 我らの為に、祈り給え (Warera no tame ni inori tamae).

It seems that you got it right in your first post, so I apologize for dragging this out for so long :)

Is there a difference in the order of the characters if one were to draw/paint them? I think they would traditional be vertical, but what if I wanted it horizontal (yokogaki???)

Would this kanji phrase need to be changed to be read right to left, or is it fine as is?

Feel free to drop out of the discussion at any time, you've already been a huge help, and I don't want to be a bother.

I don't hesitate to join the discussion again:)
All phrases I and KyleGoetz provided on this thread is written horizontally (from left to right).It's yokogaki. exactly same as English.
Vertical(tategaki) web page　is so rare.It is difficult to write sentences in tategaki on the web.but try.

yokogaki
我らの為に祈り給え
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89
　→

tategaki
我1 ↓
ら 2 　　 　
の3
為4
に5
祈6
り7
給8
え9
If this tategaki have second line,it will be on the left side of the first line.

You don't need to apologize.I could learn something new about　Christianity　in Japan.But I didn't expect over 20 posts :mtongue:

awesome thanks. yeah I figured vertical writing would be pretty uncommon online :D I just didn't know what was customary when writing down by hand on paper (or wherever). And with the horizontal, if it should be right to left, or left to right when copying down.

copy it exactly the way you see it here