April 30th Daily Reading ブラックジャックによろしく Manga

I’m taking

G/ト

する ってー と 何 かい?
do called/said when what [male-question]

In that case, what?

するってーと=(そう)するというと. It’s a verbal contraction or ‘euphonic change’ according to the dictionary. ( Here’s a discussion about this expression. You may have seen という becoming って. This is essentially the same thing, but with a と added at the end, and some vowel lengthening. そうするというと is roughly (semi-literally) ‘If (we) say (we) do that’, which is to say ‘if we take it that way’ or ‘in that case’.

I believe 何 here is pronounced なに. It could also be なん, but I doubt it since なんか is transcribed without the kanji one bubble later.

かい is a masculine question particle in Japanese. Another way is to form it is to add い after だ as in ‘どうだい?’ but I believe that only works for sentences ending in だ. Women don’t use this, as far as I know. An exclusively female (I believe) question particle is かしら, which is used instead of か at the end of a sentence.

点滴 って やつ意味いみ なんか ない の かい?
IV-drip called thing [topic] meaning something-like not-exist [explanatory question] [male-question]

There's no point to (this) 'IV drip' thingy or something then?

って=という, as said above. という is an inverted ‘to-be-called’ and is made up of と, the quotation particle and いう, ‘to say’, which is written in hiragana here, and not in kanji, because it does not indicate literal speech. AというB means ‘B called A’

奴 is often also written as ヤツ. It indicates an arbitrary thing or person. That’s why I chose to translate it as ‘thingy’.

意味 literally means ‘meaning’, but it can also mean ‘point’ or ‘purpose’. After all, something that is ‘meaningless’ is usually something that is ‘pointless’, no?

なんか means ‘something like’, but as is usually the case in Japanese, it’s an ‘inverted’ version of the English phrase, and is usually placed after the noun in this sense. E.g. あなたなんか大嫌だいきらい! = I hate (people like) you! Here, なんか is used in a somewhat condescending manner, which is appropriate (but rude) since the speaker is angry. You might hear this phrase in anime or between friends having an argument in real life, with one of them walking off in a huff. (The reason I say ‘friends’ is because あなた is a form of address that indicates extreme closeness, unless it’s being used in a textbook or other document where a 2nd person pronoun is desperately needed.) It can also mean ‘kinda’, in which case it is placed before the verb, adjective or noun. E.g. なんかイヤな感じ=a kinda unpleasant feeling (いや literally means ‘disliked/undesired/causes unwillingness’).

の here is a question particle similar to か. The difference (according to my friend) is that の tends to imply a sort of expectation on the part of the speaker. どうしたの?= what’s up/what’s wrong? indicates an expectation that something really is amiss, as opposed to どうした?=what’s up/what’s going on? I believe it’s something like a contracted のです. It’s said that の is a question particle reserved for women and children (this is what Assimil claims, anyhow), but my friend’s experience (and mine on the Japanese internet) tells me that that’s not true. の as a sentence-ending particle is feminine, but that’s for ending statements, not questions. However, to make it more masculine, の can be transformed into のか at the end of a question. A general (but imprecise) rule is that in informal speech, men are expected to end their sentences in a more complete manner with words like だ or のか, whereas women can end them without those words, or with ‘softening’ particles like わ, though apparently わ isn’t heard among Japanese women in real life, even the ‘well-raised’ ones who stereotypically use it. (わ also has a non-softening use that isn’t reserved to women, and is especially common among men and women in Kansai dialects, but NVM that for now.)

In any case, in order to capture the sense of なんか (albeit imperfectly), I added ‘or something’. I added ‘then’ in an attempt to capture the expectation of の, though I doubt ‘then’ is appropriate in all circumstances, since it changes the tone of the question. Thus, I ended up with the translation above. That is all.

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