Why Japanese is so much fun.
Oct. 27th, 2010 10:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sechan19I've been reading Japanese articles pretty steadily since I came back from my year in Yokohama. Not only because I want to keep in practice, but because I've recently moved onto studying subjects that simply don't have much published about them in English.
Last night as I was slogging through the latest article on my most recent topic of interest, tsukumogami (tool specters), I came across a sentence with five negatives in it. After I cursed the author for having the audacity to have been born only to grow up and write a sentence with five negatives in it, I worked out the translation - which wasn't nearly as hard as it would have been before Yokohama.
Here's the sentence:
私は、こういうフェティッシュに憑かれるような気質を持った画家でなければ、とても妖怪画などというものは描けないのではないかと思わざるを得ない。
In romanji:
Watashi wa, kou iu fetish ni tsukareru you na kishitsu wo motta gaka de nakereba, totemo youkaiga nado to iu no wa egakenai no de wa nai ka to omowazaru wo enai.
Literally:
I must not not think is it not that a painter who does not have the kind of mentality that gets possessed by these types of fetishes truly cannot paint things like monster pictures?
My translation:
I must conclude that a painter who does not have the kind of mentality for being possessed by these types of fetishes would truly be unable to paint things like monster pictures.
---
Fun fun fun until Daddy takes the T-Bird away, y'all.
Last night as I was slogging through the latest article on my most recent topic of interest, tsukumogami (tool specters), I came across a sentence with five negatives in it. After I cursed the author for having the audacity to have been born only to grow up and write a sentence with five negatives in it, I worked out the translation - which wasn't nearly as hard as it would have been before Yokohama.
Here's the sentence:
私は、こういうフェティッシュに憑かれるような気質を持った画家でなければ、とても妖怪画などというものは描けないのではないかと思わざるを得ない。
In romanji:
Watashi wa, kou iu fetish ni tsukareru you na kishitsu wo motta gaka de nakereba, totemo youkaiga nado to iu no wa egakenai no de wa nai ka to omowazaru wo enai.
Literally:
I must not not think is it not that a painter who does not have the kind of mentality that gets possessed by these types of fetishes truly cannot paint things like monster pictures?
My translation:
I must conclude that a painter who does not have the kind of mentality for being possessed by these types of fetishes would truly be unable to paint things like monster pictures.
---
Fun fun fun until Daddy takes the T-Bird away, y'all.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 06:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-10-27 07:59 pm (UTC)And...tool spectres? Now I'm curious.