Hi everybody, as you can see I am Level 16 on Wanikani, I want to start reading something, but my grammar is very basic (halfway of N5 on Bunpro…).
I discovered Watanoc website, I think its articles are perfect in order to start reading, and here we are, I come up with this sentence:
そら から ドローンで とった えいぞうです
Sora kara DORON de totta eizou desu
The main sentence is “eizou desu” → it is a picture
totta is the verb of the relative clause, it is the past version of 取る verb, which is godan and transititive.
Now the phrase has been translated as “it is a picture taken from the sky using a drone”
It is not the literal way, because the verb is not in passive form, I will translate it as:
“it is a picture that a drone took from the sky”.
But is not correct neither, because the drone particle is “de” while in this case the drone is the grammatical subject that took (totta) the photo.
So, can anyone explain me this?
Which is the grammarical subject of the relative (objective) clause?
Maybe that the subject is someone that took the photo by a drone ?
Yes, I would say the subject of the relative clause is omitted. This is normal because it can be understood from context.
In an example sentence there often is no context, so it’s not worth thinking too hard about it. Whether it’s the speaker or someone else, it’s not that important.
Ok, I understand.
This is the hard thing of japanese I think, phrases are built very differently from my native english (italian), so it’s hard to put together all the pieces sometimes.
In this case, in italian, we would use 100% the passive form.
“It a picture taken by a drone from the sky” and not “it is a picture that (someone) took by the means of a drone”.
I would not overthink it. “From the sky by a drone taken picture it is”, pass it through the de-yoda filter, and end up with “It’s a picture taken by a drone from the sky”. Good enough for government work!
In English I would probably say “It was taken by a drone”. This is a complete sentence. The subject is “it”. What “it” is depends on the context. We know from the remainder of the sentence that “it” is a photograph. In Japanese we do not explicitly say “it”. The subject is omitted for brevity in this case.
Also I congratulate you on paying attention to the particles. That will help you go far in your understanding of Japanese.
Think of そら から ドローンで とった as one long adjective here describing the picture. We don’t really care about who or what took it, because the purpose of this clause is to describe the actual action of the photo’s capture. In this way, “taken from the sky using a drone” is the most literal translation available. When the English sentence uses “taken” as an adjective it’s actually implying that the photo (was) taken (by someone), or that this is a photo (which someone) took. To use a verb in an adjectival manor like this in Spanish we can do something similar.
Capturar una fotografía - to take a photo
becomes Una fotografía capturado - a taken photo, or more concisely, a photo which someone or something took
So in Spanish you could say Es una fotografía capturado del cielo con un dron. - It is a photo taken from the sky using a drone.
I use a Spanish example because I don’t know any Italian at all and I’m really hoping they’re close enough to help make this more intuitive.