Start Learning Japanese in the next 30 Seconds with
a Free Lifetime Account

Or sign up using Facebook

PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS ONE!

Moderators: Moderator Team, Admin Team

magnum
New in Town
Posts: 1
Joined: December 12th, 2008 7:31 am

PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS ONE!

Postby magnum » December 26th, 2008 7:14 am

Hello everyone! I'm a beginner in Japanese language and I need help understanding the following sentences. I would like to ask for help from experienced students or speakers to translate these passages from Japanese to English. Please help me out in this one. Thank you very much!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

しばらく海外に行ってしまうからです。

さてそんなわけで、来年の正月は実家に帰らないんですが、偶然にも兄姉逹も誰一人帰らないらしく、祖母も最近はディサービスやら泊まりで介護施設に行っているので、父と母は何と結婚以来"初めて゛夫婦だけで正月を過ごすみたいです。

Psy
Expert on Something
Posts: 845
Joined: January 10th, 2007 8:33 am

Re: PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS ONE!

Postby Psy » December 26th, 2008 9:55 am

I can understand being a beginner and getting lost in something like this, but for future reference it's not considered polite to dump a large translation request on a forum without first showing some effort on your part-- this is especially true for one's first post. There is a lot of grammar happening in what you wrote, and since you haven't stated where you're at in your studies, nor what specifically is causing you trouble in the text, one could write an entire book before fully explaining all of the particulars. Still, here are some of the things I'm getting:

It looks like Mom and Dad are going to be spending, for perhaps the first time since they were newlyweds, the next New Year's holidays alone. It's unlikely that [the narrator's?] siblings will suddenly show up, and Grandma has been spending more days at the senior-center lately on disability. The first sentence, shibaraku kaigai ni itte shimau kara desu, means "... because [I/he/she/they/we] will end up overseas for a long time. Intuition says it's the speaker, who in this case is the story's narrator, but since the subject is context-dependent, it could also refer to someone else.

I'm still a newbie to Japanese novels, so it's entirely possible that I've misread/misinterpreted some points. Still, I'm willing to bet you'll see a 私は within the next 2 paragraphs.

That's my take-- hope it gets you started in the right direction. Corrections welcome.
High time to finish what I've started. || Anki vocabulary drive: 5,000/10k. Restart coming soon. || Dig my Road to Katakana tutorial on the App store.

Get 51% OFF
gerald_ford
Expert on Something
Posts: 119
Joined: August 29th, 2006 5:16 am

Re: PLEASE HELP ME WITH THIS ONE!

Postby gerald_ford » January 19th, 2009 3:01 pm

Psy wrote:I can understand being a beginner and getting lost in something like this, but for future reference it's not considered polite to dump a large translation request on a forum without first showing some effort on your part-- this is especially true for one's first post.


Agreed. I'd recommend using Google Translate or something for something on-the-fly like this. It makes a lot of mistakes (and awkward translations), but you at least get the gist of the sentence and can then work through it bit by bit with a good dictionary and helpful references.

Thanks!
--Gerald Ford: Pirate-Viking-Monk in training.

Blog: http://nihonshukyo.wordpress.com/

Return to “Learn All About Japanese”