Sorry for the slight delay in posting this thread. Saturdays are usually pretty busy for me, so that’s yet another reason I try to post them on Friday night. Sorry for any inconvenience!
On a lighter note, if you’ve made it this far into Yotsuba, congrats! You’ve already passed the hardest part. We’ll start picking up the pace a little bit this week because the dialog is simpler (for the most part) from here on out.
Bonkers, for once I am on time… I am back to working through translating each panel. I found the vocab sheet, and that really helped me out. I found I knew most of the grammar points, but my vocab is severely lacking.
Pg 20
Starting tomorrow
It’s summer vacation
huh?
Pg 21
Where are they from?
I’ve never seen them here there.
She’s strange. Is she a foreigner?
Plus…
I wonder what she’s doing?
Pg 22
Ah, she’s coming.
Nah, what’s that?
Eh?
That’s…
a swing?
Pg 23
You play on it like this.
I try!! I Try!!
Yotsuba try!!
Sure
Push me! Push me!
Okay, okay
Pg 24
WOOO!
WOOO!
If you swing back on the recoil, you can move yourself.
Hahahah!!
See you later.
Pg 25
What a strange kid.
That reminds me the house next door is empty.
Someone moved in.
Could this be?!
Pg 26
AHHH!!
AHHH!!!
Hold on! Hold on!
It’ll be bad to let go!
Let Go? (Lol I lost it here)
Pg 28
Are you okay?
Pg 29
Scary! (She actually stumbles through saying this.)
Hold on a second!
This week was a lot easier to work through. I am looking forward to next week!
Well that was quite a ride!
So much easier this week. Needed to vocab sheet for some words, but I got all the grammar, I think, although some is just inferred. But still once I knew the words (not too many) I always got the meaning.
I can’t believe よつば has never seen swings before! Where did she grow up? Antarctica?
Anyway, really fun reading this week. I didn’t actually want to stop.
I’m a little late this week! Stupid work intefering with the important things!
Just read through @LouBin95 's translation above, I got much the same, though not word for word exact. I don’t tend to try to translate the whole thing into English that way, as long as I understand the meaning of what I’m reading that’s good enough for me. But I understood everything in much the same way.
Also, I really like the different font for the new girl!
Thanks to everyone for posting up their translations over the last few weeks! They’ve really helped with my understanding.
I’ve been watching a read-through after each week’s reading. It’s in Japanese, so good listening practice as well.
Here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLES8uqUGlnvasYsw8RTJ6_p82dpqRIoYZ
I never even thought to look for someone reading the book aloud… Definitely adding this to my reading routine to get some listening practice in, thanks for sharingg!!!
That’s actually how I discovered よつばと！ It popped up as a random youtube suggestion for me, so I watched a couple, before deicding I was just going to buy them all, so stopped watching, as I didn’t want to spoil it for myself. He’s great though, I love the way he describes and simplifies things.
Here’s my try at a translation. Thankfully this week wasn’t too hard, and I actually understood everything pretty well (with the help of the vocab sheet, of course).
Girl: Like this - you play on it like this.
Yotsuba: Wowwww! Let me try! Let me try! Yotsuba try too!
Girl: Sure!
Yotsuba: Push me! Push me!
Girl: Okay…
Page 24
Yotsuba: Wowwww!
Girl: If you give your own reaction it moves. [I know what this is saying but I’m not quite sure how to translate it.]
Yotsuba: Hahahahaha!
Girl: Well, bye then…
Page 25
Girl: Weird kid…
…I just remembered, new people moved into the empty house near us…could it be her?
Page 26
Yotsuba: Aaah!
Girl: Hold on! Don’t let go!
Yotsuba: Let go?
Just finished this week’s reading! Not too bad- needed the vocab sheet for a couple words, but could mostly translate it myself. Two sentences in particular got me (listed below in spoiler text) but the thread discussion helped with those. If anyone is willing to break these down in more detail though, I’d definitely appreciate it!
Finally managed to squeeze in some time to read! There were two parts where I want to take a closer look at the construction, because I got the gist but I want to really get it, y’know?
自分で反動つけたら動くから
Let's take a closer look here:
First of all, what do these parts all mean seperately?
自分で = by myself, by oneself
反動 = reaction, kick, recoil
つけ(る) = 付ける? 漬ける? 着ける? 点ける? 浸ける? Oh boy.
付ける = to attach, but a better option would be = to do fiercely!
着ける = to arrive at → eeh… nah
点ける = to turn on, to light up → unlikely
漬ける / 浸ける = to steep, to dunk → unlikely
たら = if, after; why don’t you
動く = to move, to swing
から = from (e.g. time, place, numerical quantity); because
Alright, so we have a conditional here. “If you do this (recoil, kick), you can do that (move)”. The only difficult part is the “から”, I don’t really understand exactly what it does here. Is it more like ～てから? Which would turn this sentence into “if you kick fiercely, after this you will move by yourself”.
Next part:
手はなしちゃダメよ！！
Something I want to point out when using ichi.moe etc
When inputting the above text, the first result will tell you that “は”, “な” and “しちゃダメ” are seperate parts from each other, but from the kindly provided vocab sheet we can see that it is actually “はなし” and the “ちゃ” part refers to the following grammar point (shortened): ～てはいけないは.
Knowing that the “ては” can be shortened to “ちゃ” means that we can read the above sentence as follows:
手はなしてはいけないはダメよ！！
Now the “離す” becomes a bit clearer if you know some of て-form conjugation rules. And we get the sentence: “Letting go with your hands is bad”, or more accurately portraying her panic, “Don’t let go!!”
Anyway, on ichi.moe you can click on the sentence and choose a better sentence breakdown, but there is never any certainty that it will have the correct information.
Also I wanted to point out that on page 25 in the first panel the small text is also something you can try and read! I almost overlooked it because everything not in a textbubble is soundeffects to me lol.
この辺 = this area, around here
じゃ = では, で indicates where something is happening (around here), は closes in the topic around this specific thing, making it the topic or merely emphasizing that what you say is true about “here”, but not necessarily about any other place
見ない = don’t see, it comes before 子 to modify it,…
子 = kid, …so it is actually “kid I don’t see/haven’t seen”
だ = it is
All together, “It is a kid I haven’t seen around here.”
Close; ダメ can be used to replace いけない entirely when used casually, it isn’t added on top of いけない. 手はなしちゃダメよ！！ = 手を離してはいけないよ！！ You still got the right idea, though.
When saying “must” or “must not”, you typically use a conditional plus something that means bad/no/can’t/no good. You can get there multiple ways. For the first half, you have と, て form + は (which is what we have here), and which can often be shortened from ては to ちゃ, and finally えば (conditional) form. To make it must, you just do a double negative by applying these rules to ない.
The second half can be ならない (it won’t become), いけない (it won’t go) or ダメ (it’s no good). ダメ is very direct and forceful; she really wants Yotsuba to listen. I think ば + ならない is most formal, while とダメ and といけない are most casual; not sure I’ve seen とダメ, but といけない is common enough.
Bonus: The most casual for “must”, using a double negative “must not not”, is just なきゃ and なくちゃ.
FYI, the “to do fiercely” is an auxiliary - auxiliaries go after masu stem or te form and modify the verb - in this case, “doing the verb fiercely”. You’d need し (stem of する) for it to mean this.
I find that when I’m reading, the most common meaning of つける is something to do with “following”, which is a nuance of “attach”. I would interpret this as “follow the recoil/reaction/opposite movement”. So basically, to swing, once you swing up and then “recoil” back down, follow that movement with your own force. I found some examples of other bouncing type movements using 反動つける, where you “follow through” on the bounce to get higher.
A hanging から is often “because, since”. They use it much more liberally than we would use because or since. It’s not super clear why she’s saying it, other than she’s explaining “why” the swinging works and you get higher (because you do a certain motion).
I had a lot of trouble with this sentence when I first read it, too.
よつばと！・ Yotsuba&! (Absolute Beginners Book Club) // Home Thread
