So with this, the prologue ended. So ソヨン did know why the 牙 died, and that was to protect the secrets of the 闘蛇 (that for some reason, only the アーリョ know about).
Just to be sure because this chapter was harder for me for some reason The first part was about a girl(Who I suppose is soyon) discovery an ancient spiritual beast. The beast tell her to watch for the technique of the beast tamer A kind of flashback. After that, we go into the present where the elder meeting discusses about the punishment Soyon received. She killed the beast to protect a secret. Then they talked about how Ari snuck out of the town and she is probably killed. They also talk about preserving a secret of some kind at the end. Just wondering if i’m right or not.
The girl at first is someone we don’t know. While she was walking in the forest she suddenly meets that spirit beast. The beast talks to her in some kind of voice and she, despite being scared, attentively tries to understand what it’s saying. When the beast goes away she goes back to her home. Apparently, she lives in a hideout with other people, those people are the アーリョ. In the hideout, she calls for a meeting, informing the elders that she has something to say. She tells them that she met the spirit beast, and it told her that someone used the forbidden 笛 that controls the 闘蛇. The elders directly suspect it’s Soyon, so they send a person to know what happened. After he comes back, they realized that there are now rumors, although, the 監察官 was a coward enough that he didn’t tell the 大公 about it. They then decide to move to another place and hide.
EDIT:
Forgot one part
Soyon apparently knew about how when the 牙 enter the mating season, their 粘液 changes, and the liquid that is given to them (to make them stronger, IIRC) becomes like a poison. She knew that but chose to protect the secrets (which is related to the whole 戒め thing), which is what lead to the 牙’s death. That’s when her Mom (between the elders) starts crying, realizing that she did protect the secrets, but when Soyon’s child was about to be eaten by the 闘蛇 she got weak and used the 指笛.
Liked this last sentence
And thought it was a cool structure to translate:
たとえ、大公の耳に噂が届くことはなくとも、我らの姿が、噂を心に呼び起こす縁となってはいけない。
It’s hard for me to produce equally nice English, but:
“Even if the rumors don’t reach the 大公’s ears, we shouldn’t allow our presence (to be the means by which) to call those rumors back to mind.”
I didn’t remember this part at all!
I guess it was too hard at the time and I just powered through without much comprehension? Anyway, other things are much clearer now.
Wow, that as a tough section… Thanks @mrahhal for the summary. Apparently I did understand most of it, but it was a lot of work. The last four pages took me over an hour, and I definitely missed some details and nuances. For example, the sentence you said you liked I wasn’t able to piece together.
I’m going to probably have to reread the last four pages again, but for now I have one question.
Page 71
それに、わずか十歳の娘では、いつまでも闘蛇にしがみついてもおられますまい。
I’m mostly confused by the part after the comma, specifically おられますまい. First, I’m assuming the おられます is the same おる we’ve seen in this section in place of いる. I’m also not sure if the おられる is for further politeness. We haven’t seen that from this speaker to this point (who earlier used おります), so maybe it is just a normal passive conjugation. I’m also having a bit of trouble with it being added after ても instead of just て, as I don’t think I’ve seen てもいる in the past.
Anyway… I think the meaning is something like “In addition, a girl merely ten years in age probably can’t cling to the touda forever.” I’m not exactly sure how to translate まい in this context either. I went with “probably can’t” because the “must not” translation didn’t seem right unless I’m missing more about the sentence’s meaning. I’m still not sure how to include も in the translation either.
If anyone can help me break it down further or clarify things that would be great.
This happens a lot in particular with は after て as you know: 分かってはいます (adding contrast).
てもいる is not as used, but I still found it a lot. This is simply the same but adds a も feeling (hmm, obviously this structure doesn’t translate well to English).
And what remains is the まい. I think it’s helpful to convert it to ないでしょう: しがみついてないでしょう (probably won’t cling). This has the exact same meaning here (but of course まい is 硬い).
Small note. I know “must not” shows in the English dictionaries, but. In まい’s case, there are only 2 meanings: ① 打ち消しの推量 …「~ないだろう」と想像する。
② 打ち消しの意志 …「~ないつもりだ」という気持ち。
This makes it clear that the “must not” translation came from the 2nd meaning. But, it’s also clear how there is no 意思 in the sentence we’re discussing, it’s simply a conjecture. So it’s ないだろう.
I actually read that article before posting my question, but thanks for confirming that it is just that usage here. I wonder why he switched from おります to おられます for this sentence since he’s talking to the same people and presumably the same politeness is warranted.
Yeah, that sounds normal to me. I’ll just have to take てもいる as the same thing but with the も nuance. I should do a little more reading of this grammar on my own I think.
I’m at the point in my Japanese learning where I don’t translate most things to English of course, but when I get stuck I still find myself wanting to see it in English. So it can be frustrating when stuff like this comes up and it’s hard.
I can’t believe I didn’t think to look up a Japanese dictionary entry for this one. That definitely clears up the possible meanings and which one is relevant here. I really like that website you linked to by the way. It helped me understand all the forms of ぬ when I was learning more about that a little while ago.
There still might be more than two meanings for まい based on this Goo entry though. It even includes:
One of the particulars of Japanese is that polite speech is not only used to signify respect towards the one you’re speaking to, but also the one you’re speaking about.
So, when the おる is part of an action the speaker undertook himself, you wouldn’t make it more polite by using おられる (I imagine showing such respect to oneself would sound quite conceited), but talking about someone else’s actions you can show respect or appear humble by doing so.
I did not double check to make sure that this is what’s happening here. But whether this applies or not I find it quite interesting.
These respect form or way of speaking always trow me off. I know it in the casual way but when we go into polite way i’m like “can you speak Japanese?” I miss all words. I need to work on that
I liked that we got to finally ‘meet’ the アーリョ after only hearing about them. So far I had gotten the impression that they were so focused on keeping their secrets that they would have no compassion for those that broke the rules, but this part made them seem a lot more humane. Certainly much more than the people we met in the last section (for now?).
I was really confused by how what happened to Erin was explained. I guess he told them she was carried of by the Touda before we join them in the second half, but something about how he immediately started explaining how the waterways were complicated left me wondering if I missed a page or something.