Dante's Inferno

[tajroycalhoun]

Can someone tell me if this is grammatically sound:

地道な道がなくなってしまったから命の旅路の途中で私わ私自身を森の闇に見つかりった.



It's from the first line of Dante's Inferno. In English it (most commonly) goes:

"Midway upon the journey of my life I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward path had been lost."

I tried to translate it myself as a challenge, but I'm pretty new to Japanese. I've never attempted something anywhere near this complex before.

I'd appreciate any help!

ありがとうございます

[mertzem8535]

Moshimoshi,

OK I've had some fun with this one. You'r right it's quite complex and I am also not all that good with Nihongo yet, but this was a good challenge.

Mostly your translation makes sense to me. Just 2 things:
Firstly the 'wa' particle, while pronounced 'wa,' is actually written は and not わ so it should be ...私は... this is just one of those odd language rules without a good explanation. Like the same spelling but different meanings + pronunciations of 'dough' in English. It just is that way.

Secondly, your translation has 3 instances referring to the speaker - me, I, myself. While in English it has to be that way for the sentence to make sense, this is not the case for Japanese. The rule of thumb is to omit repetition of the subject from dialogue/sentences much as as possible. So I first edited your sentence as follows:

地道な道がなくなってしまったから命の旅路の途中で私自身を森の闇に見つかりった.

However this still seems a little ungainly to me so tried substituting
命の旅路の途中 = "lifetime's journey's way" with 人生行路の途中 = journey of life's way

So my final attempt is:
地道な道がなくなってしまったから人生行路の途中で私自身を森の闇に見つかりった.

It might still sound odd to a native speaker though, I don't know.

That was a good one, thanks for the challenge!