Random Phrase: A Process of Translation

Just poking around in the news section of 2Chan - which is not even vaguely a worksafe site; seriously, that place has stuff that creeps me out! Anyway, don't go - and I found this random phrase, which I just happened to like. It's talking about a solid state drive that this guy found in Akihabara.

数ヶ月行かないと、浦島太郎になる街だな
or
suu ka-getsu ikanai to, urashima tarou ni naru machi da na

Now, to get you started, let's first define everything, and we'll see if you can get what it means. Should be fun, right?

Now, when trying to decipher a sentence in Japanese, it's often easiest to start at the end of the sentence. The last word is na, which is what's known as a "sentence final particle", or shuujoshi. It's meaning is kind of like "Don't you think?" or "...you know?", but it's a more rhetorical than anything else. It softens the statement a little by implying that the reader already knows this, and probably agrees.

Next up is da, the plain form of the copula (if that doesn't make sense, don't worry). In other words, it means "is/are". As an example pen da means "it is a pen", though the "it" and the indefinite article "a" are not in the Japanese, because the language, for the most part, doesn't have them. So far, we have "... isn't it?"

machi means "town", but we want to say "place" in English, because "town" conveys a sense of one whole unit, instead of a piece of something larger. So far: "... town, isn't it?"

We'll take the next two words as one to make things simpler, and so this post doesn't end up with a hojillion paragraphs: ni naru. This is "to turn into" or "to become". naru is the verb and ni is the "to" of "turn into". This will make the translation a little iffy if you do it directly and in order, but best of luck. So far: "[the kind of] town [where you] become ... , isn't it?" The brackets indicate implied things, or things that simply aren't there in Japanese due to grammatical differences.

Next bit will also be a two-word chunk, as it's a name: urashima tarou, which like the Japanese version of Rip van Winkle, the guy who fell asleep for twenty years, missed the American Revolution, and woke up to entirely different world. So far: "[the kind of] town [where you] become Rip van Winkle , isn't it?"

to is next up, and serves a variety of purposes based on context and placement, but here is a simple conditional. You could say "if", "when", "and", or "then", depending on where in the English sentence you're presumably making you would put it. So far for this clause: "...and".

ikanai is the plain, nonpast form of iku "to go", so we translate it as "don't/won't go". Japanese has a very confusingly slightly existent future tense, but don't worry about it here, because it's just your normal habitual present tense. So far for this clause: "... don't go and"

ka-getsu is kind-of-sort-of one work, but kind-of-sort-of two words, as well. It effectively means "months", but specifically "in duration" as opposed to "of the year". By itself it's a little weird, so let's tack on suu "numerous", and we get suu ka-getsu, or "a number of months" or "a few months". So this clause in its entirety "Don't go for a couple of months and..."

And we have one remaining problem, which is that the first half the sentence (before the comma) and all the way up to ni naru, are all modifying the word machi "town". This makes necessary a little rearranging to make intelligible English. So, we put it all together, put our patented Lingua-Blender on puree, and what comes out?

"It's the kind of town where if you don't go for a couple of months,
and you become Rip van Winkle, you know?"
suu ka-getsu ikanai to,
urashima tarou ni naru machi da na

If you have no idea how I came to that final sentence from the little bits, try highlighting the whole page (Ctrl+A ought to work well) and you should be able to see some additional hints about how I got from the Japanese to the English.

Presentation (Divtesting)

I was just awake enought to get this up last night, and I honestly don't know what I changed that made it work after two hours. I think Blogger might have just had pity on me.

I woke up on Tuesday at 6AM cooked a super-duper protein breakfast, and worked on my presentation and went over some last random notes for Japanese for Certified Tests (JCT), in which class I had a test. As expected, it took about 15, maybe 20, minutes. No clue how I did, but if you wanted a guess, I'd say 80%. Ish.

After that, I headed up to the school's Japanese Room. I kid you not, we have a room called the 和室 - "Japan (-style)" "room" and it's where the tea ceremony class takes place. I have no interest in tea ceremony itself, but the girls (of my little squad 'o gaijin anyway) were wearing kimono and this would probably be my last chance to spam pictures of them.

Once I was allowed in, I was sat between the head and sub-head - I don't know their official titles, but between Michiharu TANAKA and Mariko UCHIDA. Pictures. Tea. Sweets. Pictures.

Tanaka is the one at the right who looks like he needs to go to the bathroom. He was probably just about to change to a different sitting position than seiza (which should translate to "death to the foreigners", but doesn't, as far as I know). When I asked if it had defeated him, he replied "I think I must be an alien..."

So after ingesting about two handfuls of pure sugar, I had ten minutes in class and a further 30 minutes of sitting around while we talked in class, etc. IE, just enough time to come down from the sugar and be nice and shaky.

---

Good points

1- Researched extensively and summed everything up neatly
2- Hard-to-understand words were clarified, so it was easy to understand
3- Clearly introduced topic at the beginning
4- Looked at the listeners while speaking and used clear pronunciation
5- Speed and loudness of speech was just right, so it was easy to listen to
6- You had fun with your topic, and that came through in the way you held on.

よかった点

・くわしく調べて、きちんとまとめて発表できた。
・わかりにくいことばは、もう一度違う表現で説明しなおしていて、わかりやすかった。
・はじめに何について話すかはっきり伝えていた。
・聞き手を見ながら、はっきりした発音で発表できた。
・スピードも大きさもちょうどよい声で、聞きやすかった。
・自分が内容を楽しみながら、そして、その楽しさをみんなに伝えようとがんばっていた。

Not-quite-there points

7- Sentence-to-sentence connecting words were almost nonexistant.
8- Because of that, there ended up being a lot of "because"
9- You used a lot of "you know?". Instead, it would be good if you used others, such as "... don't you think?", "... isn't that so?", "... or at least, that's what I think.", "... you may be able to look at it like this." There are a variety.
10- Sometimes, you stopped in the middle of sentences, and just kind of lined of words, which had kind of a weird feeling.
11- There were some words where your pronunciation was hard to understand. Especially long words with lots of kanji. I totally couldn't understand "converters"

もう少しの点

・文と文をつなぐ言葉（接続詞など）があまりなかった。
・そのため、「から」が多くなってしまっていた。
・「でしょ？」も多くなっていた。かわりに、他のいろいろな
言葉を使ってみるとよい。（と思いませんか、ではないでしょ
うか、だと私は思うんですがどうでしょうか、という見方もあ
るかもしれません等、いろいろあります。）
・時々、文が途中で終わってしまった。語だけが並んでいる感じで、少し変だった。
・少し発音がわかりにくい言葉があった。特に漢字の長いことば。
（「てんかんしゃ」は、私は全然意味がわかりませんでした。どういう意味のことばでしょうか？）

Thanks for taking so many pictures.
I bet you can make a good compilation with them. Have fun.

Well, be careful not to eat much cream bread!? LOL

写真をたくさん撮ってくださって、ありがとうございました。
いい文集ができることでしょうね。楽しみです。

では、クリームパンの食べすぎには気をつけて！？（笑）

---

So that's what my teacher thought. I have a pack of notes of what the other students thought as well, but I haven't looked at it yet.

Kilk at left, being cheesy. Me at right... WTF? I don't know.

After the presentation, we hustled the class outside for a group portrait, which we took a couple of just to be sure, which was fortunate, as the first three of the four we took didn't turn out well once I checked them.

Then, I spent an hour and a half helping Uchida-sensei piece together a Word document that had quite possibly the worst formatting I've ever seen in a word document - maybe second worst, thinking about it. Someone I live with has done much worse things in Word, if I think about it, which I'd rather not...
Ahem.

Then, we went shopping for ingredients for the food we were preparing for the farewell party, which I need to be at in about half an hour. It's a potluck and I'm being lame and bringing fried rice, but... It's what I can cook that isn't gyouza.

Example Sentences

I had a big test today, and I passed a couple of example sentences to a friend to check. They're apparently okay. I don't have time to translate them right now, but here they are.
[Edit: Okay, that wasn't entirely true. It was actually that I couldn't translate them while talking to my mom on the phone.. Close enough, though, right?]

そのクリームパンはまさにおいしかった
そのクリームパンは非常においしかった
そのクリームパンはいかにもおいしかった
These first three mean "That custard bread was really delicious." I haven't found anybody who can tell me how the meaning is different between masa ni, hijou ni, and ikanimo, except that ikanimo can be used in a similar fashion to tashika ni.

端的に言ってもいいよ
"It's okay for you say it directly."

さて、この新しいソフトについて、どうですか？
Well then, what do you think of this new software?"

ディジタル一眼レフ、すなわち大型のカメラのほうのセンサーが大きいのだ
Digital single-lens reflex, aka "large cameras", have bigger sensors.

それにもかかわらず、写真家が下手なら、まだダメな写真ばかりを取れる
"In spit of that, if the photographer has no skill, you'll still get pictures that are no good."

ＤＳＬＲもしくはヂジカメラ、どちらでも禁止だ
"DSLRs and digicams are prohibited."
Though there's a typo in this one. When I went to write di, I simply typed D and I (ヂ dzi), rather than deli, which is how you have to input the ディ (di) in "digital" when you write it in Japanese. It sounds really random and complex and kind of stupid, but there's a system to it.
The reason for having to type deli to get di is because we're 1) mapping 46 characters onto 26 letters and crossing our fingers and 2) because di in Japanese is a dipthong, but not the traditional kind, and so it's been kind of forked into the system as a whole fairly recently.

Work Notes, part II

My notes for today's presentations:
"member of [the] basketball team"
"do you have any plan[s] tomorrow?"
"I will cook Chinese food tomorrow; do [will] you try some?"

女失敗な人

I went to ramen last night at Kurofune with some friends. The ramen there was a lot better than I remember it being, and used my last 千 ($10) bill for the next few days, but I haven't had ramen in quite a while and hanging out with that group is pretty fun. Well, due to the seating at the place, I ended up around the bend of the counter from them (three of the four of them were female, by the way) and the chef commented 「女失敗だなあ」 onna shippai da naa. This translates roughly to "Wow, you're a failure with women, aren't you?". I responded with something like an enthusiastic "I know!"

On top of that, some cute Japanese girls came in about half an hour later and I traded contact info with two of them. The chef was then like "Wow, you're fast!"

Unfortunately, he was rather more on with the first one, but... しょうがないのね。

今日のいい言葉

The nifty words for today are the following:
二進法　－　ni shin hou - binary number system
十六進　－　juu roku shin - base sixteen

「いいお天気ですね」

I was talking with Mr. Yamada, a guard at my school, today.
Anything not in parentheses is exactly as it was said, or at least as close an approximation as my memory will allow.

Me: おはようがおざいます！げんきですか？ ("Good morning. Are you well?")
山田: So-so.
Me: 今日、いいお天気ですね～
山田: Breakfast.
Me: ...
山田: It's...
Me: "... good weather today"と言っていいと思います。 ("I think you should say 'It's good weather today'")
山田: イッツ、グー、ウェザー (ittsu guu weezaa)
Me: Er, that's pretty close.

And then I explained how to make a TH noise. The mechanics of it aren't so hard, but there is no TH sound in Japanese, so many find it very difficult to say words with TH in them, such as "the", "them", and "thespian".

"I'm Not Dead Yet!" or 「いけない！」

I'm not dead, just busy. I left my computer for a whole day and I have 41 unread email conversations. Woooow. In any case, I've had three kanji tests in the last three days, with another tomorrow. I'm glad I have the next week off. I don't really understand why we have it off, but I'm not complaining.

This next bit will have a bunch of hiragana and katakana, but it make it nearly unreadable to romanize it all, so if you don't read the Japanese syllabaries, I apologize.

In other news, all the various phrases you can construct with the てはいけない and such things. It was always kind of a mystery to me, until I somehow managed to discover that いけない really means ダメ. For clarification, here's a formula you can use:

Condition	＋	Result
すると
すれば		ならない （動詞）
して （は）		いけない（名詞）
しなければ		ダメ（名詞）
しないと		あかん （大阪弁）
しなくて（は）

So to construct a "you must (not)" sentence, you simply take a phrase from the first column, and pick one from the second. It's really that simple. The meaning is pretty simple to work out, too: two red words (negatives) together mean that you must do something, while a red and a black mean you must not.

I asked yesterday, and it turns out that the は here doesn't change the meaning, so much as it is somewhat optional - always use it if you're trying to be formal or polite, but only with て. Then again, who are you going to giving strong commands or admonitions to that you can't speak in plain form with? I don't think you use は with ならない because ならない isn't a noun, but the negative non-past of なる.
[Edit: It turns out you can still do this, as what ever is before the は just ends up becoming the agent of ならない, so it's all good. According to my teacher, anyway.]

I can't get these to line up without using tables, and tables with the freaky way Blogger interprets HTML are too much of a pain, so here's a... splotch of examples.

そう　すると　いけない
[that] [if you do] [is wrong]
You must not do that!

そう　しなくては　ダメ
[that] [you don't, so] [no good]
You have to do that!

Further, remember that you can also swap ては for ちゃ if you're speaking informally: そうしなくちゃダメ is just fine.

I've used the word "condition" simply because conditional forms are common, as seen with the ～ば and ～と forms and I didn't have a better way of saying it. The ～て form is used here in the causative sense, so it may have a different connotation than the others. Also keep in mind that と has a strong 当然 connotation, so you probably don't use it with complex things. In other words, I think it may be limited to simple, fairly natural things or things that the speaker thinks are obvious.

Busy Days

So the three days prior to today were busy. This is going to be a messy summarization of what's gone on, and it's may not make a lot of sense or be particularly well-connected.

Thursday was a trip, but further information on it is secret pending my Evil Scheme©, but it started at 8:30AM and we got back some time around 6PM. With the other stuff I had to do before I left school, it ended up being nearly 8PM before I got any peace.
So then I worked on Evil Scheme© with a friend and got back here around midnight, when I started working on my presentation for Friday morning. Oh, and I ate a maple メロンパン, which was yummy.

Friday, we give presentations and do some random stuff, and take a break. Halfway through the second period of Basic Japanese, I get a call from a teacher at the school who wants me to teach English for him because he has a television appearance that came up suddenly. We'll call him Jay:
Jay: How'd you like $100? Are you busy tomorrow afternoon?
Me: Not anymore, I'm not.
Jay: You want to teach some English?
Me: I'd love to!
Jay: There will be little kids.
Me: ... [through only slightly gritted teeth] I'd... love to!
Jay: Cool, come on by, then, and I'll show you what to do.

So I come back to class after answering my phone - I wouldn't normally, but I figure if someone's calling me twice in immediate succession, they probably have a good reason.

Class was largely uneventful after that, but I did manage to get a good picture of Valentina. Or at least, I think it's good. She doesn't, but her boyfriend in Italy does, so we've got her outvoted. Ha!
This could've been improved with a a hair light high left, I think, but I'm not about to start setting up light stands in the middle of class.

[Edit: Apparently, I like this picture so much that I've used in two posts... I didn't notice before, but I used it in the previous post as well.]

And then...

Paid my phone bill, tried to find some information, called Jay again to actually have the rest of the conversation transcribed above, and about 2PM finally ate something. Screwed around for about ten minutes, then got ready for work.

Work was... Money? It was work-ish. When you're in a room where there are 30 people and two of them are married teachers, there's one other guy your age, and the remaining 90% are attractive, largely eligible women who want to talk to you, work can only be so bad.

Friday night, I did something until midnight, but I don't know what it was.

Saturday, I got up around 8AM, got prepared for the tea ceremony thing and the work that was to ensue, but was worried about time, and not only at one juncture.

See, I left to get to the tea ceremony place around 11AM, and I was supposed to be there at 11:30AM. I originally had planned to get there ten minutes early, but then I looked at a map one last time and realized that it would take quite a bit more than half an hour if I didn't hurry, and that short a time only if I didn't get lost once and could find the place. Half an hour later, I get there right on time, out of breath, covered in a nice layer of sweat, with the sleeves of my T-shirt rolled up to my shoulders. The greeter, with his suit and tie, did not look particularly impressed, but told me exactly what I should do with my bike and indicated that he didn't think I understood.

So I came back, now wearing a button shirt with a collar and sans one bucket of sweat, and go in.

We went in and sat for a while, bowing every so often to people I couldn't see. After maybe ten minutes, they brought out some little candies, which were pretty good, but there was, unfortunately, only one for each of us.

The woman at left in the purple is the one that [verb]ed my tea. Replace "[verb]" with whatever you verb you use for combining hot water with a powder, and proceeding to whip it with a bamboo whisk. "Made" might be an option.

After everybody had their tea, we were allowed to go (and I got these two ladies at right to pose for me) and they gave us some candy and a free admission ticket to a museum that nobody in my group of friends was able to find.

I'm trying to brief with these, but I still haven't gotten the box of underwear from my parents... By the way, pretty much all clothes are expensive here.

I got a lot of pictures like this one of the chick in the pink kimono. She never served anybody near me tea, so all the pictures of her are either while she's walking - and there was too little light to take pictures while they were walking without getting serious motion blur - or of her butt because she's sitting in seiza, which is when you fold your legs straight under you.

The older lady in the next picture (left) gave a little talk while the tea and candy were being distributed. She was definitely American, but I couldn't place her accent well. I'd guess midwest or Pacific northwest, though, given that.

These two ladies (right) were just kind of milling around in front of the place the tea ceremony was held in, rather disturbingly like characters in an RPG. Just kind of wandering back and forth, not for any apparent reason.

This lady (left) was doing pretty much the same thing in a temple right next to the place where I was taking pictures, so I asked for her picture.

She couldn't decide whether or not to include the umbrella, which I think is funny. I have a picture that came out better in terms of lighting and composition, but her expression is weird, so... しょうがない

The temple entrance at right is one of my favorite temple pictures, and I was happy that I got the road and other stuff out of the shot. I guess I didn't quite get that bush at low-right out, though. In case you're wondering, this is the temple that the other pictures were taken in, not a different one. The tea ceremony was in a nont-temple-related building next door.

Another shot inside the temple. Just me playing with my flash. I drained my rechargables trying to get this shot, so I felt I had to do something with it.

And last is a random picture I got while heading to work. I asked her permission first, and she seemed pleasantly surprised.

I got some more pictures, and I hope to get them up soon, but the test tomorrow may prevent that.

And that's what happened weekend-ish.

Most of One of Those Days...

Today was just one of those days where nothing goes right... for the most part. I was doing fine until lunch. After some messy eating, I found out that I had a kanji test in Basic Japanese. Level 4 kanji tests are usually 20 new kanji for writing and about 30 new kanji for reading. Not something I'm able to pull off in twenty minutes right before class. That said, I managed to get 11/15, and two of those points were due to my own inattentiveness and the rule I keep forgetting about with 送り仮名 (the syllabary characters after words with kanji). As a bonus, I also didn't have time to find out what any of the words meant, which killed me later in class, as today - coincidentally? - was the first time we actually did anything relating to the meanings of words on the tests. I swear the teachers are psychic or something. Maybe they're ninja. Psychic ninja?

Unfortunately, I also forgot to do the eight-page packet we were assigned over the weekend. Oh, and research someplace in Japan to want to go. Oh, and read the assigned parts of the book. Oh, and... actually, I think that's it. Normally, forgetting to do your homework wouldn't be such a painful experience, but when class drags out for three hours, it's at least three times as agonizing.

Interesting Choice of Words

Looking up a compound for some homework, I discovered that there's a kanji compound that means "business" and is pronounced けいき keiki. This is effectively the same way that you say "cake" (ケーキ keeki). Anyway, I was a little curious, and apparently there's a whole list of words prounced "cake" in Japanese:
契機 【けいき】 (n) opportunity, chance, (P)
景気 【けいき】 (n) condition, state, business (condition), (P)
計器 【けいき】 (n) meter, gauge, (P)
刑期 【けいき】 (n) prison term
継起 【けいき】 (n,vs) occurring in succession
軽機 【けいき】 (n) light machine gun
Now I will never know whether or not I want to eat some cake in Japanese again. I'm not going to take the chance that the person's talking about an LMG. Hopefully, I won't find anything dangerous that's pronounced クリームパン kuriimu pan, you know?

Yum.