I have been rewatching one of my favourite anime and trying to work out what is being said. I have a bit of a tin ear (not great for language learning!) so not easy.
One key moment the joint protagonist says “I would rather die” (as per the English subtitle). What I think I hear is 死んでも終わりたくない
Does that make sense, if not any idea what is being said?
Without the audio, it’s not going to be easy to piece it together, because we don’t know if we can trust the translation or if it was a loose translation, etc.
Yeah, but the English translation actually makes a bit of sense.
Even if I die, I don’t want to end (Whatever he’s doing).
So I’d rather die, than end it. No?
I would not translate 死んでも終わりたくない as “I’d rather die.”
It might not be such a terrible translation after all, it’s hard to say without the full context and that’s half the problem of translation in any language.
A reasonably direct translation could be
“Even if I die I don’t want this to end”
This could certainly also be interpreted quite reasonably as
“I’d rather die [than let this end]” where the “than let this end” part is implied from the context of what is said previously.
If those are shows you can get on Netflix (or even better get the audio / subs) I would highly recommend tools like Voracious (need video / subs) or Subadub (working over subs in Netflix), as those allow you to quickly pick phrases on the spot, which I’ve found it is specially useful to pick idiomatic expressions that otherwise would have gone right through me without even notice them.