Was re-watching an episode of One Piece. Episode 661.
They translate a line of dialogue as “prepare to die”. The line is: どうとうとうしんだくれる
I had learned that くれる is to give from the receivers point of view. And that とうとう was “finally” or “at last” and しんだ is the past tense of しぬ.
Though I know the words, the grammar is confusing me. Can someone help me understand the grammar behind this sentence and why it would translate into “prepare to die”?
ありがとう
Hmm, are you sure it wasn’t どうとうとうしんでくれる?
Meaning-wise, it seems like a loose translation, the more literal meaning is something like, “How about finally (doing me the favor of) dying” ----[loosely translated]---->“Prepare to die”
どう – how about
とうとう – finally/at last
死んで – dying (て-form of 死ぬ)
くれる – doing (me) the favor of
くれる attached to the て-form gives that nuance of “doing a favor” for the speaker in some way, and in case you’re not familiar with it yet, here are some sites where you can read up on it:
Maggie Sensei
Japanese Ammo (video)
Tae Kim
Wasabi
So perhaps a better translation for the anime would’ve been “Why don’t you die, already?”
Or “Would you just die, please?”
I haven’t watched any One Piece, so I don’t know what kind of flavours the characters have.
Yeah oddly enough it was しんだ I replayed it a few times to make sure. But the explanation about the て-form and くれる is very helpful thank you 
Maybe the character was pronouncing it weird? I’ve never seen だ + くれる, only within the verb 飲んだくれる, which is why I’m wondering if it was an odd/dramatic pronunciation of で 
If you have access to the Japanese subs, that may make it more clear ^^
It doesn’t sound like it was a question though.
not knowing the character who said it, or what the context of the scene was, maybe a question in english would better suit the mood? that errs more on the side of localization rather than pure language translation, i think, but i can’t say i’m confident about it.
Well I’m someone who hasn’t seen it responding to someone else who hasn’t seen it, and being responded to by someone else who hasn’t seen it, so we’ll get there eventually somehow.
now we only need someone who hasn’t seen any of this thread OR one piece to relay their input on what is happening in one piece’s japanese script
I haven’t watched One Piece before but after reading this, I wanted to confirm that the line you wrote was what was indeed said. (This has happened before in another thread in the past and that OP had misheard the line).
So, I searched for the episode and found it rather quickly. Thankfully the line happens quite early in the episode. The attacking character doesn’t say, “どうとうとう死んでくれる？”. He says, “トットと死んでくれる?”
I listened to it a couple times and am pretty sure that was what was said. The attacking character seemed to be impertinent and seemed to relish the idea of carrying out this dirty task.
So, to answer your question, my response is very similar to the answer that @MissMisc made but with one change. Instead of どうとうとう, we’ll insert トットと.
トットと means “quickly”, “at once”, etc.
So, more literally translated,
“Will you (do me a favor and) die quickly?”
Not in the Japanese, you mean?
Yes, the OP didn’t say that it was framed as a question, although now it sounds like that was wrong.
Yeah, I was basing my translation on what @MissMisc has said. But it seems that @LucasDesu solved the mystery.
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