(The increasingly less) Daily senryu thread

Yes, this was my interpretation, too.

夫婦の関係に亀裂が入る[生じる] a rift opens up between (a) husband and wife

Not a very fun or funny senryu, though!

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Now, that is a more interesting and apt reading of the senryu.

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You folks may eventually convince me to start reading manga, yet. :smile:

Still looking for submissions …

子は鬼滅 夫婦は亀裂 おうち時間

こはきめつ・ふうふはきれつ・おうちじかん

“Demon slayer” kids
bring about working-from-home
parents’ rock to split.

  • 5-7-5 translation
  • Hail to @weaverZ for deciphering another secret connection (like that of Ichitaro Suzuki before) as only a reader of the 鬼滅の刃 manga can
  • As with the Ichitaro senryu, this one is hard to translate to English without footnotes to explain “demon slayer,” “split rock,” etc. not to mention the herculean task assigned to the protagonist of the manga that every kid aspires to imitate.
  • Thanks to everyone here working together, we somehow manage to eke out our daily 米.
2 Likes

And they told me watching anime would never get me anywhere!

Husband and wife, cleaved
By time at home with the child
Become demon slayer

Yeah, this doesn’t really work as a stand-alone, but I’m trying to stick to what’s in the original. At first I used “A” instead of “become” for the last line, which keeps the 5-7-5 rhythm, but I feel like “become” does a lot better for the meaning. And the cleaved in the first line, while technically 1 syllable (unless you are Shakespearean), really pushes the limit.

2 Likes

Wednesday, September 7, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 子は鬼滅 夫婦は亀裂 おうち時間
    こはきめつ・ふうふはきれつ・おうちじかん
    Husband and wife, / cleaved by home time with / demon slayer child

Notes:

  • Minor tweaks to @weaverZ 's excellent submission. The shorter 4-5-5 meter seemed to sound and parse a little better than the 5-7-6 original.

  • For those as confused as myself, there is a manga called 鬼滅(きめつ)()(やいば) or “Demon Slayer”. Apparently, to pass the first part of his training, the protagonist has to split this enormous boulder in a single strike, i.e., it is a seemingly impossible task. It’s a thing. This senryu is a play on that premise.

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Husbands

  1. 「私には夫います」と妻寝言

This one made me laugh! Seems pretty straightforward, but the には was interesting grammatically.

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that the に acts as sort of an intensifier or “exclusifier” for introducing a topic. That is, I’d normally translate 「私は」 as, “as for me, …”. But I’d translate 「私には」 as, “in regards to me, …” or “regarding me in particular, …”.

It seems like a slightly stronger way of emphasizing a specific topic.


Remember to please use the spoiler tag with your translation attempts! Also, please include the reading in kana with your submission.

Everyone is encouraged to participate, no matter your level! Questions and comments are as valued as translation submissions.

Please try not to be disappointed if your translation isn’t selected or if you disagree with the daily choice: the judge isn’t terribly consistent with his grading (and has awful taste!).
Online tools like dictionaries, sentence databases, and even AI translation engines are fair game and can be extremely helpful. Yomichan is particularly handy if you use the Chrome or Firefox browser. The 語源(ごげん)由来(ゆらい)辞典(じてん) is also an excellent resource for researching the etymology of various words and expressions.

Here are the links to the 356 Japanese originals (spoiler free) and to the the spreadsheet with all the upcoming senryu as well as the translations to date.

3 Likes

「わたしには・おっといます」と・つまねごと

“I do have a
husband!” - wife’s
somniloquy…

  • 4-3-4 version. Heck. Why not? :slightly_smiling_face:
4 Likes

My friends accuse me of using big words. I’m fairly certain I’ve never used that one, though!

Nicely done.

1 Like

Thursday, September 8, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 「私には夫います」と妻寝言
    「わたしには・おっといます」と・つまねごと
    “I do have a / husband!” - wife’s / somniloquy…

Notes:

I come from a long line of sleep-walkers and sleep-talkers. My mother and I both sleep with our eyes open if we fall asleep on our backs. I terrified more than one roommate that way when I was younger.

My favorite story though is about my dad’s cousin Ratus. Once when he was about 20, he sleep-walked into my Aunt Carol’s bedroom (she was about 11 at the time). She woke up the entire house screaming because Ratus, wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whities, was perched on the footboard of her bed like a bird, just rocking back and forth (but fast asleep).

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Universal truths

  1. 百年後ほとんど死んでる今の人

Good luck creating a humorous translation for this one!


Remember to please use the spoiler tag with your translation attempts! Also, please include the reading in kana with your submission.

Everyone is encouraged to participate, no matter your level! Questions and comments are as valued as translation submissions.

Please try not to be disappointed if your translation isn’t selected or if you disagree with the daily choice: the judge isn’t terribly consistent with his grading (and has awful taste!).
Online tools like dictionaries, sentence databases, and even AI translation engines are fair game and can be extremely helpful. Yomichan is particularly handy if you use the Chrome or Firefox browser. The 語源(ごげん)由来(ゆらい)辞典(じてん) is also an excellent resource for researching the etymology of various words and expressions.

Here are the links to the 356 Japanese originals (spoiler free) and to the the spreadsheet with all the upcoming senryu as well as the translations to date.

1 Like

百年後ほとんど死んでる今の人

ひゃくねんご・ほとんどしんでる・いまのひと

Hundred years hence,
most of those alive
now will be dead

  • 4-5-4. However, not so confident about my translation, which is based on this book description.
  • Meaning seems to be roughly the same as “In 100 years we’ll all be dead anyway” (or, “Don’t worry, be happy!”).
5 Likes

Yeah, that’s the “happiest” interpretation I could come up with, too!

1 Like

Once again, I feel like I am missing a big chunk of cultural context here. Is this senryu a reference to that book? They are strikingly similar. Otherwise the senryu seems like a rather uninteresting statement of fact.

I translate the title along the lines of “we’ll all be dead in 100 years, so stop worrying, a how to guide”. I should probably read that book.

But also it gives me “Dr Strangelove: how I stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb” vibes

2 Likes

Maybe? I kind of feel the same way, but suspect it’s less Japan-cultural-context and more that at least a few of the 354 senryu in the original list will be a bit of a clunker.

I can’t imagine any other way to interpret this one, but will ask my wife when she’s free.

Pretty sure it’s just “we’re all gonna die eventually, no reason to sweat things”. 仕方が無い


This triggered a memory from when my elder daughter was around 5 or 6 years old. We were driving past a small grove of trees and out of nowhere I hear from the back seat “These woods must be full of dead people.”

Startled, we all turned to look at her and ask why she said that. She said, “Well, people have lived for thousands of years, right? Where did all the dead people go? Some cavemen must have died without being buried in cemeteries!”

Bemused but without much to say, we all just turned around and kept driving. :laughing:

4 Likes

LoL! Now, there’s a visual - Col Kong riding that bomb all the way down while reciting the senryu, as the end titles roll.

Come to think of it, the senryu is quite appropriate from a “Japanese culture” POV, since the Japanese sweat the details so much. Rules, ways of doing things, etc. run amok and govern the daily lives so much to make life stressful. Perhaps the senryu is just saying “Chill out and go with the flow.”

I’m not sure that it is related to that book I found by googling. There were a couple of other such web pages as well. For instance, this one starts off from a slightly different place, but ends up with the same sort of conclusion.

2 Likes

Saturday, September 10, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 百年後ほとんど死んでる今の人
    ひゃくねんご・ほとんどしんでる・いまのひと
    Hundred years hence, / most of those alive / now will be dead

Notes:

The consensus is that this is basically a “don’t sweat the small stuff” message.

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Universal truths

  1. 臨終を旅立ちとする人の知恵

Geez. Another knee-slapper.


Remember to please use the spoiler tag with your translation attempts! Also, please include the reading in kana with your submission.

Everyone is encouraged to participate, no matter your level! Questions and comments are as valued as translation submissions.

Please try not to be disappointed if your translation isn’t selected or if you disagree with the daily choice: the judge isn’t terribly consistent with his grading (and has awful taste!).
Online tools like dictionaries, sentence databases, and even AI translation engines are fair game and can be extremely helpful. Yomichan is particularly handy if you use the Chrome or Firefox browser. The 語源(ごげん)由来(ゆらい)辞典(じてん) is also an excellent resource for researching the etymology of various words and expressions.

Here are the links to the 356 Japanese originals (spoiler free) and to the the spreadsheet with all the upcoming senryu as well as the translations to date.

1 Like

My interpretation:

  1. 臨終を旅立ちとする人の知恵

りんじゅうを・たびだちとする・ひとのちえ

On their deathbed,
people departing are
full of ideas

It’s a weird 4-6-5, but I think “full of ideas” captures the meaning more than the normal translation of “wisdom” for 知恵 (despite the 3-syllables in “ideas”). One dictionary definition is 物事を考え (“thoughts about things” lol).

Faults:

  • “on their deathbed” isn’t a very direct translation for 臨終. The real definition is the moment or occasion of death, but I couldn’t think of a better way to word it.

  • It’s a bit of a cheat to translate ◯とする人 as “people ◯ing” but I think it captures the meaning. If anyone has suggestions for how to better create a more direct translation that captures this grammatical structure, I’d love to see it.

2 Likes

The wisdom of / people who see death / as a journey

Grammar: I take this to be XをYとする == to treat/view/see X as being Y. This verb-phrase then modifies 人.

Haven’t bothered to cut-n-paste the reading since I agree with @Rrwrex on that.

7 Likes

I tend to agree with the grammar, but (especially since it’s a senryu) I still suspect that “are full of ideas” might be closer to the meaning. Despite the “universal truths” category, a slight element of humor still seems likely.

Note that the Y here is 旅立ち and not 旅立(たびた)つ. It’s a noun that has to go with the する to become a verb, so despite the weird reordering I effectively interpreted it as 旅立ちすると. That is, I read it as a と for a strong causal relationship. Am I off base?

So, can XをYとする人 be translated as “people doing Y with X” (in this case, “people who are departing on their deathbed”)?

That usage of と requires a verb in front of it, and as you note, we don’t have a verb in this case, we have a noun.

XをYとする wants X and Y to be nouns, so we’re fine there. (eg 彼女は辞書を枕として横になった。)

If I wasn’t trying to compress the translation into the poetic format I might have gone for something like “people who treat dying as embarking on a journey” – in English ‘dying’ and ‘embarking on a journey’ are also both noun phrases.

No, I don’t think so. Depending on the X and Y it could be “people doing X with Y”, eg ゲームを友達とする人. But you can’t “臨終をする” so that parse is no good for us.

The other thing I wondered about was whether the を with verbs of movement was in play here, making the deathbed the point of departure. You can say 島で暮らす最後の子どもたちが、この春島を旅立ちました。 “…they left the island this spring”; but I’m less sure that works with 旅立ち the noun, and then you need to do something with とする, so this doesn’t feel right overall.

3 Likes

But 臨終 is not really a location anyway, right? In the dictionary it’s 死に臨むこと。また,死ぬこと

2 Likes