(The increasingly less) Daily senryu thread


かたたたきけんふわたりにしてまごかえり

Trot: shoulder pounding/massage ticket didn’t get processed/bounced because granchild went home

Massage coupon,
unable to cash;
grandchild went home

Notes: so I am guessing the op was relying on the grandkid to give a shoulder pounding massage to them, but got cut short by them leaving. which the 不渡り was listed as “a check bouncing” or “not being processed” maybe it was something similar to those “give a chore coupon book!” ideas around birthdays and holidays to your family. Or its just metaphorical. Either way, the syllable count is awful

3 Likes


Oh! Yeah. That makes sense. I was thinking it was a ticket for a professional masseuse at first. But I think you’re right, it’s just a handwritten “free shoulder massage” ticket created by the grandkid.

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My chief quibble with this is that it omits the “sound”. If I understand the structure correctly, the rest of the poem is a modifier of that final 音, and makes it in a way the most important word in the poem. I imagine the author hearing that fart and seething in frustration but being unable to address it directly.

5 Likes

Ok, being brave and trying this one w/o looking at other comments first.

肩叩き券不渡りにして孫帰り
かたたたきけんふわたりにしてまごかえり

I’m assuming that the “request to resign” meaning of 肩叩き is the one at play here. So I take the overall meaning to be “my grandkid who lost their job and can’t even afford the train ticket is coming home” Not ready to try a translation- this is another tricky one where the imagery of the foreboding shoulder tap isn’t readily conveyed in english.

Now to look what the rest of you have had to say and see if I hit anywhere near the mark!
Edit: ok, I see we are very different! I’m not sure that I’m wrong, though. Anyone else have any opinions/insight?

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“request to resign” meaning of 肩叩き

I did not know of this! This can make sense either way too. I’m gonna ask a native speaker now :0

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かたたたきけんふわたりにしてまごかえり

massage coupon
bounced due to grandchild
heading back home

I also think it’s the “massage ticket” meaning. That seems to make the most sense from the context of the rest of the poem, and also fits the theme and the sort of general vibe I get from senryu haha. But I could very well be wrong.

2 Likes

Saturday, October 1, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 肩叩き券不渡りにして孫帰り
    かたたたきけんふわたりにしてまごかえり
    massage coupon / bounced due to grandchild / heading back home

Notes:

  • I thought “bounced” was a nice poetic interpretation for 不渡り

  • The key was realizing the “ticket” was one of those hand-written things that kids sometimes make to give out as rewards: “good for one free shoulder massage”.

  • 肩叩きされる is also a colloquial expression for being pressured to retire early, but this connotation seems unrelated.

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Intense

  1. 損をした話は人に喜ばれ

This one seems like it will be difficult to interpret (at least I’m not confident in my understanding).

My initial interpretation: “Depending on who it’s with, losing an argument can be a a good thing”.


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.

そんをしたはなしはひとによろこばれ

Can’t really find a way to make it as poem, seems to fit better in one sentence.

People love a good loss-story

This senryuu is a 体言止め, like so many of them are, but as usual it’s a bit clunky to translate directly in English. “The delight of people over a loss-story?”

I did some research about 損をした話 but couldn’t find any specific meaning, it really seems to be something as vague as “loss-story”. Monetary loss, time wasting, getting ripped-off or taking advantage off, come off as a loser, suffer a loss… The only unfortunate thing is that 損 seems to never be about losing someone, which “loss-story” could imply.

So in the end I’m not sure what’s the senryuu is aiming at… People gloat over the misfortune of others? But why in the 強烈 volume? :thinking:

6 Likes

損をした話は人に喜ばれ

そんをした・はなしはひとに・よろこばれ
(Or, “On schadenfreude”)

3-4-3
The talk of
other’s loss makes
one feel good

Couple of the senryus that I missed while I was absconding were quite interesting. Particularly, the おならにも… (brought to mind the ancient Japanese 屁合戦 scroll) and 肩たたき券… (these tickets seem to have spawned an industry)

6 Likes

Monday, October 3, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 損をした話は人に喜ばれ
    そんをした・はなしはひとに・よろこばれ
    The talk of / other’s loss makes / one feel good

Welcome back @LaVieQ.

Not sure why, but for some reason my brain wanted to interpret this one as 人によって. It does seem more likely that it’s just about pure schadenfreude, though.

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Salaryman

  1. 無料でも 家族間での 通話なし

I think I must be missing some context again. I can read all the words but the meaning hasn’t clicked yet.


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.

PS: the ‘previous senryu’ block has the wrong text and the hyperlink/text is odd for the 語源由来辞典…

I think this one is the author lamenting that nobody in the family calls to see how they are / have a chat / etc, even though in these days of internet calls and mobiles they no longer have the excuse that phone calls cost money. (Maybe this one’s harder to see for US residents, who I think have been used to free local calls even back in the days when all you had was a landline?)

3 Likes

Thanks for the heads up. Both fixed.

Also, I think you may be right about why this one was difficult for me to easily grasp. ()たり()(かん)

1 Like

無料でも 家族間での 通話なし

むりょうでも・かぞくあいだで・のつうわなし
(assuming that つう is counted as one mora)

CORRECTION:
むりょうでも・かぞくかんでの・つうわなし
(It is 5-7-5, after all! Thanks to @Myria for pointing out alternate usage of かん reading for 間. Mea culpa.)

2-4-2
Free calls,
yet… family
won’t phone

  • Painful memories of AT&T (telephone monopoly in the US at that time) phone bills from the 80’s…
5 Likes

The 5-7-5 works out much better if you put かぞくかん for 家族間 :slight_smile:

3 Likes

I wasn’t familiar with the “inter-” meaning of 間, which I am now, thanks to you pointing it out.

Trying to find examples of compound words that use 間 as a 接尾 with the above meaning was challenging, though, as they are not easily found in dictionaries. I ended up using DeepL, where, by attaching various nouns in front of 間, I found a few words that made sense (e.g. 夫婦間 - between husband and wife、大学間 - intercollegiate、会社間 - inter-company、州間 - interstate、人間間 - interpersonal…) and then searching for their use in sentences with Weblio to confirm that the word is indeed valid and not a DeepL artifact. :wink:

Just wondering if there’s a simpler way to locate such compound words and related examples without having to do the app acrobatics that I did. Hope someone here knows…

2 Likes

For in particular 家族間 I looked it up in ALC Eijiro, which lists some collocations/phrases that use it, with English translations. I don’t know anything that would let you search to find other words that use the suffix, though.

2 Likes

Wednesday, October 5, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. 無料でも 家族間での 通話なし
    むりょうでも・かぞくかんでの・つうわなし
    Free calls, / yet… family / won’t phone

I think 2-4-2 in English is a first. Can’t get much shorter than that!

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Ladies

  1. どの彼の時も最初はこの料理

As is so often the case, I’m probably wrong in my initial interpretation.

I think this one means something like “Whichever boyfriend it is this time, this is what (I cook? she cooks?) first.” As usual, the lack of a specific subject makes it tricky to interpret. It sounds gossipy like it might be about someone else, but “cooking” makes me wonder if the author is talking about herself.

Help!


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

どのかれのときもさいしょはこのりょうり

No matter which
boyfriend it is, their first meal
is always this

I agree with your original translation! I think it’s judgy but since putting a pronoun in makes it confusing, I tried to keep it neutral. I am not sure if I want to keep “their” instead of “his” but I don’t mind either way. My original thought is to emphasize that many men have had this same “first home cooking”

4 Likes

どの彼の時も最初はこの料理

どのかれの・ときもさいしょは・このりょうり

3-4-3
My time with
any SO starts
with this dish

  • I understand 彼の時 as “my time with a boyfriend,” which would read better in English as “my relationship with a boyfriend.” But, that is too syllable verbose, so I ditched it for a less effective translation. (Also the reason why I switched boyfriend with the colloquial SO)
  • Is this senryu about “the way to his heart is through his stomach?” Or, perhaps a lament along the lines of “here we go again?”
5 Likes

Friday, October 7, 2022


Previous senryu

  1. どの彼の時も最初はこの料理
    どのかれの・ときもさいしょは・このりょうり
    This dish starts / every occasion of / boyfriend-time

Notes:

  • I liked how @superelf94’s version sounded, but I think my initial interpretation led you astray.

  • @LaVieQ cleared it up for me: 彼の時 means “boyfriend time”. Without the どの at the beginning I’d have understood that immediately, but somehow adding it confused me. I now think どの彼の時も means “any/every boyfriend-time” (i.e. with the same boyfriend, but different times) rather than “time with any [new] boyfriend”.

  • In other words, I think this senryu is about the dish that immediately precedes putting on a Barry White or “boom chicka wow wow” soundtrack.

  • This also convinced me that the subject here is the author rather than some third person.

  • For all of these reasons, I decided to go with my 3-6-3 version above (apologies).

  • It always fascinates me how reversing the order of the original usually works better in English.

  • I’ve been spending a ridiculous amount of time recently translating Japanese middle-school grammar instruction, which has improved my understanding of Japanese grammar significantly. I believe the absolute “core” of this senryu is simply:

    料理(りょうり) [だ]

    with an implied だ at the end. In other words, “[it is] cooking”. Adding the この modifier: “[It is] this cooking”).[1]

    If I were to transliterate this senryu, attempting to keep the structure somewhat similar (vs. translations which sound like more natural English) it would be something like: “As for the beginning, any boyfriend-time is this-cooking.” The structure 「どの◯も」of course just means “any ◯”. Here, it means “any boyfriend-time”.

    That’s obviously far less understandable in English, but I really do believe that analyzing the grammatical structure this way (making the differences from English obvious) helps tremendously. Translations aren’t the best way to learn the true nature and idiosyncrasies of a language.

    My English translation, for example, made the word “dish” a grammatical subject. English is a subject-focused language, so this feels natural. I’m firmly convinced, however, that as a predicate-centric language, Japanese puts a single noun like that in the predicate (with an implied copula だ). 料理 does not function as the grammatical subject in the original sentence. The subject is “boyfriend-time”.

Current senryu challenge

Volume: Various settings

  1. 趣味日舞 詳しくきけば盆踊り

I could read and understand all of the words except 日舞(にちぶ) (I guessed the reading correctly, but still don’t really understand the meaning — it obviously must be different than 盆踊り!). So far I’ve not found any good examples of 日舞 online to explain this one for me.

Help!


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. As an aside: I recently learned the word 指示語(しじご) which means “pointing” words. This includes この and どの in this senryu. These are also colloquially referred to as こそあど words: れ、れ、れ、れ. ↩︎

1 Like