Hello, i’m trying to translate a novel for training my Japanese and my grammar but, obviously, my level is so bad that i have to look after the dictionnary a lot… but it’s funny ! I’m learning a lot of things (well, i’ll forgot everything the next day but anyways it’s funny ! ah ah)
So i’m trying to translate some sentences and i’m locked by a sentence.
This is the original text :
虐められていると認めたくないプライドから、あくまで佐伯とは友達であるかのように振る舞ってきた。
And this is my translation (First in French and then in english) :
Comme ma fierté ne veut pas le reconnaître et que je suis harcelé, enfin de compte Saeki est venu danser en saluant la main comme si nous étions amis.
As my pride doesn’t want to approve this and i’m being bullied, at the end Saeki has come dancing in waving his hand like we were friends.
So there is some strange things in my translation, but i don’t understand where i’m in fault
振る舞う is indeed composed of 振る (to wave) and 舞う (to dance), but it’s actually one word in this case, meaning “to behave” or “to act.”
The first half of the sentence would become more natural tied together with “that.”
“Because my pride keeps me from acknowledging that I’m being bullied”
Also… keeping with the first part, shouldn’t it be the speaker who is acting like Saeki is a friend? I don’t see the sentence suggesting it is Saeki coming or acting. Unless there is some context before this that means we should interpret the subject as someone else.
Hum, i think that help me to understand how constructing sentences, yes. But i guess that everyone have to find out his own way to enjoy the learning of Japanese. I didn’t chose the easiest way, for sure but that’s the funniest for me.
I’ve been practicing translation while learning advanced-intermediate Japanese for about the past year I guess, and my answer is that it depends on where you are in your studies.
Earlier on, as I was still cramming in JLPT grammar, I felt they were pretty separate activities. Studying, listening, reading without intent to translate–those were Japanese excercises, and translation was an English-writing one.
Now that I’m further along with Japanese though, and able to pinpoint more niche phrases to remember, and that reading overall is just smoother, yes, sometimes the deep dive for translation does help lock in a new phrase or vocab. But I’d still say it’s more an English activity than a Japanese-study one, because that’s where most of your effort is going. Understanding it is the easy part, and then the hard part is figuring out how the hell to word it in a way that reads well.
