This is a question about a sentence on Satori Reader.
The sentence is:
よく、春子の面倒を見てくれる、やさしい兄だったからだ。
The translation given is:
That’s because he was a kind older brother who looked after Haruko well.
My question is what よく is doing here. The yoku, if you mouse over it on the site, is listed as “frequently/often”. The translation has no frequently, but includes “that’s because” without any vocabulary that corresponds. Is that just context?
Can yoku mean because in this situation?
It’s being translated as “well” in their version.
“That’s because” corresponds to から
Dang! You’re obviously right about から, no idea how I forgot that.
よく meaning well is almost as much of a mystery to me. Does doing something “frequently “ often mean well, or just in cases like this?
This is the adverbial form of the adjective 良い（よい）, which means good. So as an adjective this would be “goodly”, or in more proper english, “well”. It can also mean frequently, though.
Okay, now that makes sense.
I think their translation was a little wonky. They should probably just put yoku as good,
You mean
“That’s because he was a kind older brother who looked after Haruko good.”?
Actually in proper English grammar it would be “well” which is a perfectly valid meaning of よく. Good is an adjective, so to modify a verb you use the adverb ‘well’.
I write well.
I cook well.
You can do a good job, but you do a job well.
Facepalm.
No. I mean when you mouse over yoku not show it as “frequently “? I think that should have been obvious.
Let’s reword that though: should have translated it as “well”.
See post above this.
Okay, so if it’s two people maybe it wasn’t obvious. If the site hadn’t translated yoku as frequently, I never would have had this confusion at all.
Satori reader’s translations are obviously context sensitive but I guess that its dictionary (i.e., when you click over a word) just gives the general meanings and not the one being used in that particular context.
If you’re using a “hover over” tool and things don’t make sense, take the time to look up the words individually in a dictionary to see if any of the other listed meanings make more sense in context, since the hover over tools will just give the most common/frequent meaning of a word.
よく can mean frequently/commonly/usually as well.
Yes, that hover over you mentioned does seem flawed. It seems it would be less confusing if it provided a hover translation consistent to the context. Unfortunately, this is probably going to come up quite often because many words are going to have multiple meanings that are really only going to be applicable in certain contexts. ちょっと, for example.
Edit to add:
And just as an analog to this issue with the hover over, ichi.moe is a great site and very useful, but as with all of these automatic tools, it is not going to be 100% perfect all the time. You need to go in understanding the flaws and more often than you think, you may need to double check their work.
Oh, I just realized it’s a little rude that I didn’t thank you + Leebo for the help. So thanks.
I never would have connected 良い. I also wish the hover over would mention it is the adverb of good. Mostly because Satori does usually say “x form of y”. That only added to the confusion.
It’s not some huge deal or anything. The adverb form of good only being given as frequently, without mention of good, is a bit weird.
Sorry, yeah, now that I understand where you came from, I agree. That seems like something the app maker should check. It’s kinda silly to give a nicely written English translation and then have a hover over translation on the original Japanese give a completely different meaning. Definitely an easy way to confuse learners especially for words like this that have very context-specific meanings.
I guess my confusion was, the “translation” was the sentence. The hover over thing is just a quick reference or something. Anyway.
Yeah, sorry about that. I quickly realized my response was incredibly needlessly snippy and rude.
No worries. We also have many non-English natives here who are generally very good at English, so I try not to make assumptions about English knowledge.
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.