So some backstory: I was reading a comic about the Sengoku Era, when this sentence came up:
一匹のひねくれた猿めが鎮座ましましていたのでございます。(The sentence was about the possibly fictional warrior of legend “Sarutobi Sasuke”)
This completely threw me off an otherwise good reading flow, and I really didn’t understand it, so I made a question on Hinative and got this answer:
現代文で言いかえると
一匹の ひねくれた 猿が どっかりと座っていました。
猿め の「め」にくらしい相手などに使います。あいつめ とか。
鎮座(ちんざ)は もともと神さまが座ることなので、よっぽど、ふてぶてしく 座っていたのでしょう。
ございます。 は 「でした」の ていねいな 言い方です。
どうでしょうか？
Although the answer did a great job at modernizing the sentence and explaining it detail, I’m still struggling with translating this into English. I keep getting “There was a lone twisted up “monkey” who sat all over.” Any ideas are greatly appreciated!
I feel that’s unnatural to say that in English*. “All over” means something like being in an undignified position, while 鎮座 is the way a Shinto god/spirit would sit (in a solemn, dignified way).
I don’t know context, but also it could be 陳ねくれる (old) rather than 捻くれる (twisted).
I hope it helps!
*Edit: I’m not a native English speaker, so comments on what sounds natural or not should be taken with a grain of salt.
“All over” sounds super wrong, which was one of the biggest problems I had when translating, but I’m not to sure how else to translate “どっかり” in the simplified version of the sentence. Or maybe the Hinative answer I got was wrong?
Thanks for so much for responding, and especially for pointing out 鎮座!!
I don’t know if this helps, but “どっかり” alone is an onomatopoeic word like “bang” or “pow” creating the feeling of something abruptly dropping or slumping went it sits. It might be difficult to translate into a sentence because of this. Perhaps “There was a lone, twisted up “monkey” who sat slumped over.”
Thanks, I didn’t know about that use for どっかり! (Japanese onomatopoeia sure is interesting! )
Let me trying translating the sentence again.
Could the entire sentence be something like “There was a lone, twisted up ((or possibly old or even twirling/spinning)) “monkey” who sat slumped over, in a dignified manner like a Shinto god”?
Yeah, 一匹 as in “one small animal”, right? I’ve translated it here as “lone” (like it “lone wolf”), which I’d say is right? Could be very wrong though!
Thanks for replying! I fixed that error now!
Yes, and I did see that come up in the explanations already given. Just if you copied the sentence you have up there into google translate or some such, you would get a weird answer, maybe?
Probably something like that!
I’ll keep this open a little while longer if anyone else wants to chime in, but so far, thank you all very much for your help!
Yep! It’s the second page of the first volume of the comic 戦国BASARA -猿飛佐助 影忍伝-. Here’s the first two pages (the problem sentence is in the first panel on the second image):
No worries! I know more Kanji than I’ve learned on Wanikani! The first page and the rest of the second page gave me no more issues. Of course, I should always know more though!
Hmm. The character in the second image is a person named Sarutobi Sasuke (猿飛佐助), so this is not a literal monkey. It’s a person who is agile like a monkey.
This is why I put monkey in quotes in my earlier posts. 