![]() I changed the subject entirely, inserted some words that weren’t there originally, cut some other words. ![]() I’ve slimmed down the sentence a bit more, though it’s now quite divorced from the Japanese syntax. Precisely because it is a snapshot of an everyday scene-two girls innocently going about their daily chores-it must make those viewing the painting keenly aware that this moment in time will never return. ![]() But I think I can probably still get away with one sentence, so now I’m going to shift clauses a little and see what that does for the overall effect. I still haven’t decided how I’ll translate the emphasis marker, and I’m not satisfied with how it reads at all. “Feel” became “aware “time” became “moment”. Even so, though, you can see where I’ve already pulled away a little. The above is a terribly clunky and fairly literal translation. The sight of them so innocently going about such a trivial chore must make those viewing the painting keenly aware that this moment will never return, precisely/especially because it is such an everyday scene. ![]() I’m going to try for one sentence first, and see how it looks and sounds. At this point, I’m also wondering if the resultant sentence will be too long and convoluted in English and whether or not it should be broken in half. And lastly follows the “what.” In this case, the author is conveying that the viewers must keenly feel the ephemerality of the moment. Whom you ask? Those who are looking at the painting. And after the subject comes the main verb of the sentence, which is “make them feel”. However, “sight” is modified by a verbal clause, so I have to restructure that and set it in English syntax. The subject of the sentence is, with the sight being the two little girls referred to in the sentence before this one. Now I’ve unpacked the sentence, I can identify what’s modifying what. This probably looks like gobbledygook if you’re unfamiliar with Japanese syntax, but I can see the flow of things more easily this way when my brain’s not quite hooking into the Japanese syntax. The first thing I do is break out solid pieces of text-that is to say nouns, verbs, adjectives, things more substantial and therefore more likely to have direct translations, and transcribe them as they are with the particle markers intact. The narrator is describing a painting by Sargent. Here’s an example in a text I’m working on right now. Often, I find myself lost in the syntax, and so have to unravel it by writing it out and studying each individual part, finding how it relates to the whole via the clause markers attached to it. Verbal clauses can be embedded inside verbal clauses ad nauseum, and sentences can go on for pages, especially in older works not yet influenced by Western stylistics. It can twist and turn in unexpected ways, especially in the hands of a master writer. To learn more about how and for what purposes Amazon uses personal information (such as Amazon Store order history), please visit our Privacy Notice.Japanese syntax can be infuriating, even after eight years of study. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie Preferences, as described in the Cookie Notice. Click ‘Customise Cookies’ to decline these cookies, make more detailed choices, or learn more. Third parties use cookies for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalised ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. ![]() This includes using first- and third-party cookies, which store or access standard device information such as a unique identifier. If you agree, we’ll also use cookies to complement your shopping experience across the Amazon stores as described in our Cookie Notice. We also use these cookies to understand how customers use our services (for example, by measuring site visits) so we can make improvements. We use cookies and similar tools that are necessary to enable you to make purchases, to enhance your shopping experiences and to provide our services, as detailed in our Cookie Notice. ![]()
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