Very nicely done!
I couldn’t figure out a way to squeeze in the ‘little bit’.
2 Likes
Monday, February 27, 2023
Previous senryu
- ちょっと声変えて２度目の問い合わせ
ちょっとこえかえてにどめのといあわせ
disguised my voice / a little bit and / then asked again
Well done gang. Glad we all agree on the interpretation.
Current senryu challenge
Volume: Salaryman
- 衣食住 すべてそろった 偽装品
Interesting. I’d never seen the word 衣食住 before, but understood the meaning right away. The only other tricky bit was knowing the verb 揃う (必要なものが全部ある状態になる).
I think once again, coming up with an English equivalent will be challenging.
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 語源由来辞典 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.
3 Likes
No takers?
- 衣食住すべてそろった偽装品
いしょくじゅうすべてそろったぎそうひん
A complete set
of necessities of life
Counterfeit goods
(4/7/4)
All in stock
Everything you need
Knock-off merch
(3/5/3)
A full supply
All the essentials
Bootleg bounty
(4/5/4)
4 Likes
いしょくじゅうすべてそろったぎそうひん
all you need!
everything is here!
bootleg goods
The thing that gave me pause on this one was 偽装品. I googled it to check if there was some nuance I was missing, and google asked me if I meant “偽造品”, so I wondered if there was some particular reason for using 偽装品 instead, but couldn’t really figure it out.
Here’s an article on the difference between 偽造品 and 模造品.
EDIT:
Here’s an attempt with slightly different wording for the last line because I think I might like it better singular:
all you need!
everything is here!
fake product
4 Likes
I thought I’d also share this here. I discovered Notion over the past week and ended up creating my own, and one of the things I wanted to do with it was compile all of my senryu translations into one place for easy browsing, so I found a spot to feature the most recent one at the bottom of the main page, and also created a page with all of the previous ones I’ve done (in reverse order).
I’m only including the better translations, and there are a few that I’ve tweaked a bit since originally posting them, but it’s fun to see how long the list has gotten! I shared them with my parents and was surprised how much my dad in particular really loved them. His favorite was “日記には上司の名前君付けで”, which made him laugh really hard (I guess I managed to translate the concept into something that also works in English, haha).
5 Likes
That’s great!
I used notion for a while, but tend to use obsidian for all my notes these days. There is real power in plain text files for all your notes. Not so great for sharing, but it’s fantastic as a personal “second brain” so to speak. I keep my list of random numbers for upcoming senryu in there among other things.
2 Likes
Yeah, I’m not generally much of, like, a study aesthetic person (my study log is very unexciting visually 
), but in this case, I took advantage of someone doing most of the template work for me, so it looks a lot better for way less effort than anything I could have come up with 
. It’s mostly just a distilled down version that cuts out all the messiness on my study log and threads like this one, so it’s a convenient resource hub, but all of my actual learning happens in the messiness, so I think of Notion as like something nice to have but optional.
4 Likes
- 衣食住 すべてそろった 偽装品
いしょくじゅう すべてそろった ぎそうひん
Shiny toys-
Seems I’ve got all life’s
Necessities
3-6-4 
Again I had a slightly different interpretation to you all, so I decided to post a bit later so as not to add confusion. However @fallynleaf 's find 「偽装品」vs 「偽造品」made me reconsider. Maybe this is intentional wordplay?
To clarify, my interpretation is The author has a nice set of fancy knickknacks (or perhaps fancy clothes or brand knockoffs「偽造品」) that make it look like they have all of life’s necessities when in reality they are struggling to get by. It reminds me of The Great Gatsby for some reason, but I’m sure everyone can think of someone who acts like they are rich by buying commodities they can’t afford for clout.
5 Likes
Monday, March 6, 2023
Previous senryu
- 衣食住 すべてそろった 偽装品
いしょくじゅうすべてそろったぎそうひん
all you need! / everything is here! / bootleg goods
Notes:
-
Tough call, but I think I liked this one best.
-
The feeling I get i that it’s about a vendor’s booth like you see in or around train stations.
-
I’m not sure if 偽造品 vs. 模造品 means anything here. I think the same subtlety exists in English (“counterfeit” vs. “imitation”).
Current senryu challenge
Volume: Ladies
- 編んだのが私と知らぬ娘の彼
This one seems pretty straightforward once you puzzle out the wording. Pure spoilers below.
I think the key is figuring out that the subject isn’t simply “knitting”, it’s about: “I did the knitting”. The grammar is a little tricky, too, with the が where it is and the non-quotational, “interactive action” usage of と.
I won’t annoy anyone with a diagram, but I think an English transliteration would be something like “(The one) who did the knitting was me. Not-knowing was daughter’s boyfriend” (pure Yoda-speak). It’s not really a single sentence.
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 語源由来辞典 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
This took me several goes to figure out, but having got there, I don’t think your analysis is right.
The と is quotative; it’s quoting 編んだのが私 “the person who knitted it was me”, and it attaches to 知らぬ to give “doesn’t know that the person who knitted it was me”. 知らぬ is modifying 娘の彼, so this is one of those poems which is just a noun-phrase, not a full sentence. A plain translation would be something like “My daughter’s boyfriend who doesn’t know that the one who knitted it was me”. (With “it” here being a scarf or something the daughter has given as a gift, presumably.)
(It does also syntactically parse a second way, something like “The ones who knitted it were me and the boyfriend of my daughter who doesn’t know”, by making the と be the “and” one, but that makes no sense so we can ignore it 
)
2 Likes
It doesn’t parse as 「◯彼と知らぬ」？
I mean, I understand the meaning, but I’m still struggling with と as quoting anything.
1 Like
No, because 彼 comes later in the sentence – whatever the と is attaching to and whichever of the various と particles this is, it must be attaching to a word or phrase that precedes it, which is to say either the noun 私 or the whole phrase 編んだのが私.
The use of quotative-と with 知る is apparently somewhat subtle, but it is possible.
There is apparently a proverb of vaguely similar form, but I suspect it’s super obscure because it seems to be listed on just two websites. This may be more confusing than enlightening:
饅頭の木と知らぬ杣の子（まんじゅうのきとしらぬそまのこ） 木樵（きこり）の子は饅頭など見たこともないから、饅頭の木というのが、実は見慣れた檜（ひのき）のことだとは気が付かない。卑（いや）しい者は、とかく知識も不足しがちだということ。 ★「饅頭の木」は、檜の異称。枝葉の茂った様子が饅頭の形に似ているところから。
I don’t think 偽造品 vs. 模造品 is relevant for our purposes, but I do think 偽装品 vs. 偽造品 might be, since their readings are so similar, and 偽装品 does not appear to be an actual word (google has only 10 results for it…), whereas 偽造品 is. I personally appreciated the article because it helped me understand the nuance of 偽造品 better, so I thought it was worth linking .
2 Likes
Sorry, I dashed off my last reply from my phone as I was walking out the door. I didn’t exactly make it easy to understand what I was trying to say.
I meant that, to me, sentences like 「お母さんが病んだと知らなかった”」don’t feel quotational. It’s not the “interactive action” usage I linked to, either, though, so I’m unsure what it’s called. It’s not the conjunctive (“and”) usage nor the “quoting something” usage, so what is it?
EDIT: Actually, I think it might be the “strong causal relationship” usage (or at least something very similar). I’m not precisely sure what’s causing what, though. Mumblety something caused me not to know?
To me, “quotational” means literally quoting something that someone said (or wrote).
Knowing something, understanding something, learning something, etc. feels conceptually different than literally hearing or reading something that someone else literally said.
It doesn’t seem to be limited to 知る, either. This not-exactly-quotational-to-me usage of と also works with 分かる, and 習う, at least, and almost certainly other verbs as well.
Lastly, I think ending with a noun phrase is what makes my transliteration sound so much like Yoda-speak: “(The one) who did the knitting was me. Not-knowing was daughter’s boyfriend”.
Possibly.
It’s poetry, so subtlety abounds, but typos are also possible! (What do you call IME typos? 
)
My Japanese definitely isn’t up to the task. If there is a deeper meaning than “fake/counterfeit/camouflaged/disguised goods” I’m not understanding it.
My wife is in Japan, but I’ll text her and my daughter to see if they think it’s relevant.
Oh! Definitely. Thanks for the find – never hesitate to link to anything that helps the discussion.
Daughter says “Maybe a typo for 偽造品？”
Still possible it’s a generational thing my wife will understand. Will let you know what I hear.
Daughter followed up with:
Uhhhh. If there is [a hidden meaning], it’s too hidden for me too.
It’s the same と as in あれは猫だと思う, 犬がワンワンと鳴いている, 赤ちゃんがスヤスヤと眠っている etc (to steal examples from the Tofugu article). The natural English translation is usually not a direct quote but rather an indirect one (“I didn’t know that your mother was ill”, etc), but this is the と people usually call the ‘quote’ と, not some different grammatical thing. It does a wider range of jobs than literal quoting, but quoting is kind of its core meaning and ‘quotative’ is an easy way to refer to it. Especially in お母さんが病んだと知らなかった it’s taking a complete sentence お母さんが病んだ and attaching it to a verb for something your brain does, so this is pretty close to its central meaning.
I think you’ve just been confused by the label people tend to give this particle. Especially Japanese does not make the strong ‘direct quote’ vs ‘indirect quote’ distinction English does.
It’s definitely not the strong causal relation particle (aka the conditional).
3 Likes
There is also an ambiguity within the phrase 知らぬ娘の彼.
There is an interesting feature of sentence-level pitch accent that disambiguates the scope of modifiers like this in spoken Japanese. (In English we can use pauses and stress changes to achieve the same effect.)
In the phrase 知らぬ娘の彼, a full pitch rise between the first and second mora of 娘（むすめ）will force the parse:
“the {boyfriend of my daughter} who doesn’t know”
whereas suppressing the initial pitch rise of むすめ after しらぬ will instead force the parse:
“the boyfriend of {my daughter who doesn’t know}”
Indeed.
Japanese people are generally unaware of this feature of pitch accent, since the process is entirely unconscious.
Here's how the rule works
If a modifier is tightly bound to the immediately following element, the initial pitch rise between the first and second mora of the immediately following element is suppressed. If the modifier is bound less tightly to the immediately following element, the initial pitch rise of the immediately following element is more prominent. This has the effect of ‘resetting’ the pitch back to the baseline, thereby creating an audible signal that there is a syntactic ‘break’ between the two elements.
4 Likes
It was definitely worth linking, if only for the joy of reading the Google Translation.
Here's how Google Translate describes the difference
"The terms “counterfeit” and “counterfeit” are often used interchangeably, but they are not the same thing.
Counterfeit products are designed to resemble the original product. Visually, counterfeit products may look almost identical to the original, but they are often made from lower quality materials. Counterfeiting involves the misappropriation of a brand owner’s intellectual property by using the brand owner’s trademark to trick consumers into believing that they have purchased a genuine product.
Counterfeit products, on the other hand, may resemble the branded genuine product, but are usually not the same. Counterfeit products do not contain the same trademarks or logos as the original product. For example, a counterfeit product may have the brand name misspelled on the product and the consumer understands that they are not buying the genuine product."
1 Like
- 編んだのが私と知らぬ娘の彼
あんだのがわたしとしらぬむすめのかれ
Daughter’s boyfriend
Is unaware that
I knitted it
(4/5/4)
8 Likes