レンタルおにいちゃん - Week 5 Discussion (Absolute Beginners Book Club)

@crushlibs がんばれ!I am absolutely terrible low low level now and the next beginner’s book starting 7th November will be a real monster so lets read as much we can to be prepared!

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Great to see at least 52 active readers still for week 5! Week 6 thread is up.

PS @olek - I’m liking the new avatar!

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ぜひしっかりとその姿を見てあげて下さい

I’ve been going back and forth over this sentence because I really couldn’t see what it’s getting at. Finally I’ve put it in ichi.moe and had a different thought. I think maybe we’ve been misinterpreting the second word slightly. My attempt at a breakdown using that:

ぜひ - without fail
しっかり - tightly (holding on)
その姿 - that image
を見て - looking at / watching
あげて - doing for someone
下さい - please (do for me)

Lit: Please do the favour of tightly holding onto the image [of the children presenting] that you are watching.

So following on from the teacher’s previous sentence about how they don’t get many opportunities to see the children hard at work in school, I think she’s saying “Please try to remember/hold onto these moments”.

Thoughts? Corrections?

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I don’t think you’re wrong- it’s just the difference between literal meaning and interpreted meaning. Here, the previous translation involving few opportunities to see their children is more of the unspoken reasoning along with the sentence. This happens a lot; from an English perspective, Japanese sentences can sometimes seem very simple. In reality, a lot is left unspoken in Japanese, meaning a lot can be said with very few words. This is just one of those cases. Whichever interpretation you prefer just depends on how close you want to stay to the literal meaning.

So, you’re both right, I think. :yum:

Long, slightly-unrelated-tangent-not-directed-at-you-or-anyone-else-really

A lot of sentences don’t translate particularly well into English. This is why when you first start learning Japanese and watch anime you start to realize discrepancies between spoken dialogue and subtitles. At a glance, it can seem like the sub is wrong. However, a translator’s job isn’t to translate dialogue literally, but make the content feel as natural as possible in the target language. When you watch translated anime, read translated manga, and so on; assuming it is a good translation, you’ll notice a difference between translated text and native text. It can seem like liberties are taken by the translator (and sometimes that happens) but usually it’s just the translator doing their best to convey the core intent behind a sentence.

I bring this up, because I’ve found thinking literally about sentences in Japanese can sometimes be a hinderance. Others may disagree, but this is just my personal experience. When I started learning Japanese, I would hear things about trying to “think in Japanese” and that never made much sense to me. As I’ve gotten a bit further along with Japanese (still not anywhere near the point where I would consider myself “日本語上手”), I feel like I’m starting to get what people meant when they said to think in Japanese. Japanese is simply so very different from English, and the less you try to shoehorn Japanese into English the quicker you’ll begin the really understand what things really mean in Japanese.

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Here’s Week 5’s changes from original Pixiv release to commercial release:

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The teacher’s dialogue changed a bit.

Pixiv Commercial
さて 本日は 保護者の皆様
お忙しい中どうも お忙しい中どうも
ありがとうごさいまず ありがとうございます
今日は皆に 本日は
作文の発表をして 作文の発表をして
もらいます もらいます

47pixiv2 47commercial2

The teacher’s continued dialogue originally started with 「ご家族の皆さま」. This was moved to her previous line of dialogue, with a change from using the the word 家族 (members of one’s family) to using 保護者 (parent, guardian).

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Very minor change here. 1日 became 一日.

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A loss of kanji occurred, as 所 became ところ.

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Another kanji loss. 貰った became もらった. In my reading experience, I’ve found kanji typically is not used for もらう when following the て form of another verb.

Page 51

Another 沢山 demoted to たくさん. Also, someone refilled the crane game between photo shoots.

It looks like Kanami’s taller height (compared with the Pixiv release of chapter 1) may have been settled on by this scene, as her height matches the commercial release.

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This panel, not only is a kanji lost (嬉しい becoming うれしい), but a stray 、 has also gone missing.

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A minor text change, and そんな was demoted down to …… punctuation status.

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More kanji demotion, as 全て became すべて.

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出来ず became できず, and another comma was dropped.

Rental Big Brother’s reference to himself was changed from レンタルおにいちゃん to 俺.

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The opening 今の became この, and the kanji 関係 (かんけい, relationship) was given the furigana レンタル to emphasize (or perhaps clarify?) the nature of the relationship.

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A change from 間だけ to 時間 took place.

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The furigana レンタル was originally used here, on この関係. Aside from the furignana being moved to the earlier panel, this wording became それ.

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Here’s another case of 貰った becoming もらった (although this time the word is used on its own). Sae-chan’s aside comment on how she’d attached it to her purse received a in the commercial release.

A が was added after Kanami’s name. I wonder if this is to make it more clear she’s accusing Kanami while addressing the whole class, rather than giving the impression she’s addressing Kanami without stating who the thief may have been.

(Adding extra text to try and get around Discourse thinking I’m spamming since I accidentally posted this comparison in the wrong thread…)

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:rofl: Thank you for going to such great effort to make these comparisons each week! I love poring through them!

It’s fascinating to see how the art was refined in the print version, though there is some charm to the looser original as well. I also always wonder what discussions were had when the publishing editor got to the work. The changes as subtle as demoting kanji to hiragana must carry slight nuances to native speakers. I love to think about what those might be, and slowly get a sense for how various native speakers might see their own language.

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Looks like おにいちゃん’s neck got demoted too :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thanks for your response. Yeah, I completely get what you’re saying. My initial reading of that sentence was “Take a good, hard look at them!” which seemed to strike completely the wrong tone based on the other sentences and the artwork. So I was trying to find something that fit a bit more which is why I thought it had to be a bit less literal. I wondered if elements of this were sort of stock phrases or expressions which are reasonably well-known in Japan but don’t translate that well.

It is interesting how much the interpreter’s style or artistic license can alter the meaning in another language. For example, I saw a few complaints about the English translation of Neon Genesis Evangelion recently when it appeared on Netflix with a lot of hype saying that the political biases of the translator had come through.

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I’m still reading through all of the replies in this thread, since just now I finished this week’s pages, so I’m a little ~very~ late to the party.

But I had to stop for a moment since I felt the urge to reply that this, this is exactly how I feel, word by word.

Part of the reason I’m so late is that life got in the way (I’m repainting and refurbishing my house, and my workload is not helping), but another great cut in motivation was the sudden spike in difficulty that made me struggle to get back to reading.

I’m so glad I just finished this section, and I’m 100000% sure that it could only be done because of this book club. So thank you from the bottom of my 心.

Now back to reading the rest of the thread – which has splendid questions and even greater explanations if I may add, annihilating most of my own questions so far! :bowing_man:

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Page 51

するとゲーム得意(とくい)なおにいちゃんが上手(じょうず)()ってくれました

How can we have two が subject markers on one sentence? Is it actually treated as two sentences? I am very grammar-newbie so maybe this is supposed to be a no-brainer, but I had trouble parsing this sentence as a whole.

Nonetheless, here is my take on the translation: Then, Big Brother is very good at games, and he skillfully caught one for me.

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立花(たちはな)さんのお(にい)ちゃんへの(おも)いがよく(つた)わりますね

How exactly does へ and の work together here? I feel like お(にい)ちゃん(おも)い would mean Feelings towards Big Brother, while お(にい)ちゃん(おも)い would be Big Brother 's feelings, but not sure how to put it when it is both of them. Is this a specific grammar rule that I’m missing?

My translation: Tachihana’s affection for Big Brother was properly introduced, right?

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でもそれがより叶実(かなみ)(きず)(ひろ)げているとしたらー

This is another instance where I could not parse the sentence very well; what I got for the components are:

でも: but
それが: that + (subject marker)
より: than
叶実(かなみ)(きず)を: Kanami’s pain + (direct object marker)
(ひろ)げている: widening
としたら: assuming that

But I could not piece all of that together. The farthest I got was: Assuming that it’s widening Kanami’s pain ___.


Lovely thread as always, it is so rich in content that I was able to answer almost of my notes-to-ask-later just from reading the replies, so thank you one more time. :bowing_man:

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Page 51

Just to note it’s 得意(とくい) not 特使(とくし). Your translation is spot on.

The main sentence is おにいちゃんが上手に取ってくれました - “big brother skilfully caught one for me”

ゲームが得意な is a clause that modifies the word おにいちゃん. So it means as you correctly translated - “big brother, who is good at games”.

So there is no problems having two が in the sentence. One is part of the main sentence, and one is part of the sub-clause which tells us more about おにいちゃん.

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That’s reassuring to know, thank you! It took a lot of rephrasing and iterations to get to my final translation, but I feel that next time I’ll be readier.

Also, thanks for the correction, I have to pay more attention to my whole Manga → Notes → WaniKani transcriptions. Fixed!

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If I were to make one slight change (which you may have figured from @Micki’s answer):

“Then, Big Brother who is very good at games, and he skillfully caught one for me.”

By adding “who” (or in other cases “which” or “that”), the following words become a modifier for “Big Brother” in English, same as in the Japanese.

I’m short on time at the moment, but I wanted to introduce a tool that might be a bit advanced for you to use yet, but it may be fun to play with:

(Both are the same, but sometimes I find one server is down and the other is up.)

Drop the sentence in there are you can see:

Notice how ゲームが is shown pointing to 得意な, as that’s what it’s the subject of. And おにいちゃんが is pointing to the verb, as that’s the subject of the verb. You can also see on the right-hand side, on the line for 得意な, it denotes the subject with ガ/ゲーム. (I haven’t yet learned what the ガ2 means.) Likewise, on the verb’s line, you can see ガ/にいちゃん listed, telling who the subject of the verb site.)

Warning: This tool does not parse every single sentence correctly. It’s usually right, but there are occasional exceptions.

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Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I left my translation a bit raw because I was not sure about its constructs, but I’ll update my notes now. Thanks!

Ooooohhh, I do love some tools! Guess I know what I’ll be doing tonight…

I guess there’s already a lot one can take just from the visual sentence breaking but, any chance you know if there’s an English article somewhere giving an overview of this tool?

If there is, I don’t know of it.

Here’s what some of the words mean:

  • 体言: Words that do not conjugate. (Nouns and pronouns.)
  • 用言: Words that do conjugate. (Verbs, い-adjectives, and な-adjectives.)

The conjugation words include a second value after a colon:

  • 形: Adjective
  • 動: Verb

You also have:

  • 格解析結果: Grammatical Case Analysis Results (which basically means “here’s all the words with particles that modify this word”)
  • 修飾: modifier

Note: Some people prefer the term inflection over conjugation. I tend to use them interchangeably, even though technically the English grammar term “conjugation” is just for verbs.

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I… I think I’m in love.

Just don’t click the checkbox next to 解析結果の詳細を表示. I’m not ready to do a full breakdown of everything going on in there. :wink:

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I think you’ve got it right again. Without the へ it would be “Tachibana’s brother’s feelings”, but with the へ acting as a particle meaning “to/towards/for” it becomes “Tachibana’s [towards her brother] feelings”.

I would translate it with slightly different wording in English - Tachibana’s affection for her big brother was conveyed/explained well. The verb is in the present tense in Japanese but sounds more natural in the past tense translated into English.

I would translate this as: “but what if it’s actually worsening/extending her pain?

それがより - I read this as “more than that”
としたら - Jisho link

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へ forms a noun phrase here, and thus needs to be used with の to join two noun phrases together. おにいちゃん おもい is grammatically incorrect (on its own) because へ particle alone is expected to be used with a verb and 思い is a noun. I hope my explanation isn’t too confusing :grimacing:

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That’s interesting :bulb: good to know, thanks! :smile: