Help Japanese Newspaper Translation

[SomeCallMeChris]

I'm off to bed but what's considered to be the best dictionary then as I'll use that one instead.

Hmm. The answer is not actually that simple.

I don't mean you should stop using jisho. For speed and convenience, I use it constantly. Probably 80% or so of my questions are answered by jisho (or by an app on my phone that also uses JMdict, so same thing effectively).

For more thorough J-E definitions with hand-picked examples, I go to goo, which uses Shogakukan Progressive for its definitions. For all-around solid definitions with examples for learners, this is really good. It's quality over quantity though... it does not have nearly as many entries as either JMdict or Kenkyuusha, so you can often come up empty.

Weblio's J-E dictionary will give you Kenkyuusha's definitions, and that's a well regarded dictionary, but it will also give you its own definitions, the JMdict definitions, and the wiktionary definitions, so its answers can be a bit messy. Also you can search the 例文 corpus, although the search works much better when searching an English phrase than when searching a Japanese phrase. Oh, and a lot of common set phrases are defined in the Weblio英語表現辞典, and will show up when you do a 和英 search. All in all, a very powerful tool, but it is a slow site with a messy layout.



If I need to get a more precise definition, then there's the pure Japanese dictionaries. goo uses 大辞泉 and weblio uses 大辞林. They are both good, but I slightly prefer 大辞林.

Ah, and there's kotobank. It does multiple dictionaries, somewhat similarly to weblio, but I think not as well. Still, some people like it better. It is more responsive.

- Jisho.org: Japanese Dictionary (Online Japanese-English Dictionary; romaji input)

- 国語・英語・四字熟語のオンライン辞書 - goo辞書 (Online Japanese/J-E/E-J Dictionary )

- 辞典・百科事典の検索サービス - Weblio辞書 (Online Japanese/J-E/E-J Dictionary ; many example sentences )

- コトバンク [ 時事問題、ニュースもわかるネット百科事典 ] (Online Japanese/J-E/E-J Dictionary)

 

[Zizka]

That's an interesting take on the な adjective for sure. Doesn't なる mean 'to become' though? Either way, I like this explanation for its simplicity!

 

[Zizka]

Your reply about dictionaries could be sticked somewhere, very informative.

 

[Zizka]

Anyhow there's ように and ようにする I think the latter is what I'm looking for here as it applies to the article I'm reading.
"Something causes circumstantial or behavioural change to take place."

Possible translations, "to make sure that, bring it about that".

"So Japan wants to make sure that it's possible to clean up the big space debris by 2025."

Closer?

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Doesn't なる mean 'to become' though?

In modern Japanese, yes. なる is the *classical* form of the copula. At some point it change from n- to d- and stopped having a dictionary form, and now the copula is だ・で・な and arguably です.

"So Japan wants to make sure that it's possible to clean up the big space debris by 2025."

日本は、２０２５年度ごろまでに「宇宙ごみ」の中の大きな物を片づけることができるようにしたいと考えています。

Close in concept, but missing quite a few words from the original.

 

[Zizka]

Could you provide a hint as to what I'm missing? I know I'm missing academic year, I forgot to add it back in. I k ow I'm also missing 考える. Anything else I should be on the lookout for?

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Could you provide a hint as to what I'm missing? I know I'm missing academic year, I forgot to add it back in. I k ow I'm also missing 考える. Anything else I should be on the lookout for?

ごろ、中

Why 'academic year'?

 

[Zizka]

Ah ok, I approximately 2025. You told me that 年度 wasn't exactly a synonym of year. So I thought you meant academic year. Or school year since I don't think fiscal year would make sense here.

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Academic year and school year are the same thing. But what do they have to do with this issue, and why wouldn't fiscal year make sense?

 

[Zizka]

Well, we're not talking about finance here I don't think so I thine it wouldn't really relate.

By the way, regarding 中, it's the big debris among the space junk.

Approximately 2025 is the date by watch they want to clean the big space debris?

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

All formal organizations - business, governments, agencies, etc. - operate on a budget, and to have a budget you must have a fiscal year. Passing the budget resolution each year is one of the largest (and often most contentious) responsibilities that any government carries out. Cleaning up space debris is going to be an expensive process that requires a significant amount of money to be allocated by the Japanese government to JAXA.

 

[Zizka]

Oh I see!

How does 考える fit in? Is it in the sense that Japan is considering the clean up?

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

It's just to think. They 'are thinking' everything quoted by と. Does that let you attempt the whole sentence again?

 

[Zizka]

I don't know who is thinking, that's the trouble. Is it a relative 'they' which doesn't refer to anyone in particula?

 

[SomeCallMeChris]

Figuring out who is doing what is precisely what identifying your ESUs is for, isn't it?

 

[Zizka]

Well I think it's Japan since it's mark as the topic of the sentence.

 

[bentenmusume]

Yes, it's Japan.

I think one problem is that you're thinking too literally about this.
～と考えています doesn't necessarily mean that a specific individual someone is "thinking" about something.

The most idiomatic English translation of ～できるようにしたいと考えています here would be something like "Japan hopes to make it possible to..."

It's worth pointing out that ～たいと考えています、～たいと思っています are often used just as "softening qualifiers " of a sort in Japanese. In English, we would rarely say "They/I think I want to..." but in Japanese, just ending with the ～たい form can come off as overly blunt (and even outright ungrammatical at times when referring to a third party, since you cannot speak definitively about another person's thoughts).

Because of this, you'll often see ～たい forms qualified like this, so it's a good idea to train yourself to think of it in a less rigidly literal manner.

 

[Toritoribe]

From "An Introduction to Modern Japanese" I was actually taught that there aren't any actual adjectives in Japanese, but rather 'descriptive verbs' and words like those you list are all called 'adjectival nouns'.

They say,
"In addition to the descriptive verbs we met in lesson 11, there is another set of words that translate into English as adjectives but that operate in a rather different manner in Japanese; these are nouns that modify other nouns by means of the link な. な is a form of the classical copula なる and so the underlying pattern is again one of 'noun which is X': きれいな花 'a flower which is pretty', hence 'a pretty flower'."

This approach to understanding Japanese 形容詞 as "descriptive verbs" and "adjectival nouns" has always worked for me, but I suppose that you disagree with this theory?

This is off-topic of this thread, but yes, you can't say all stems are nouns. As I mentioned in the post I linked in my previous post, the most common definition of nouns is whether we can make a natural sentence using the word with が or を. We can't say きれいがある or きれいを持つ, right? You can see that there actually are many types of adjectives (or sub-categories in adjectives) in Japanese in the following post.

The adverb 一々（いちいち）－ ichiichi

Hello! I know the adverb 一々 means 'one by one/separately'. Could someone please give me an example of a sentence with ichiichi in it? Thanks a bunch ! :D

jref.com

 

[Zizka]

Ok I'll keep an eye out for those と situations in the future. Happy to learn that.

ウィーンにある国連日本代表部の引原大使は「宇宙で活動するとき、いちばん問題になるのが宇宙ごみです。
I've started to investigate that sentence but I'll wait until tomorrow to translate it. I think I understand it but there's some technical jargon I can't decipher just yet.

 

[Zizka]

国連日本代表部
What is this: 表部? I can't find a definition. I realise the whole string above is together but I'm missing the last two kanjis.

 

[Toritoribe]

国連 / 日本 / 代表部

代表部 - Jisho.org

jisho.org

「代表部」の英語・英語例文・英語表現 - Weblio和英辞書

｢代表部｣は英語でどう表現する？【単語】a mission...【例文】head of a former executive department...【その他の表現】head of a former executive department... - 1000万語以上収録！英訳・英文・英単語の使い分けならWeblio英和・和英辞書

ejje.weblio.jp

If you can't find a word in the dictionary, you should be skeptical about your way of parsing.

 

[Zizka]

I'd like to use Weblibio but I find the vast amount of Japanese a bit intimidating to navigate.
So a United Nations-Japan diplomatic mission.

By the way, I've noticed something. In the last paragraph of the article, there's an open quotation 「 but it's not closed anywhere else. Is it a mistake or does it mean something special in Japanese?

Regarding とき, is there a reason why it's written in kana as opposed to kanji 時? When there's a kanji for it, is there a reason why we use kana instead? Would I be right in thinking that word classes like nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs prioritise kanji while kanas are used for everything peripheral? I realise that's a vague comment but I'm wondering about the kana/kanji use in Japanese.

"In Vienna, the ambassador of the Japan-United Nations diplomatic mission considers that in space the most important problem has become space debris."

I'm still missing the integration of とき and there's no mention if anyone considering anything but I wanted to have a first draft at it. The reason why I put "consider" is because there's a quotation mark so I assumed the ambassador was saying that.

 

[Toritoribe]

So a United Nations-Japan diplomatic mission.

It's Permanent Mission of Japan To The United Nations.

By the way, I've noticed something. In the last paragraph of the article, there's an open quotation 「 but it's not closed anywhere else. Is it a mistake or does it mean something special in Japanese?

See the next line of it. There actually is "」" after 協力していきたいと思います. Thus, this is the end of the quotation of his words.

 

[Zizka]

Oh in the next sentence. Ok. So for the first quoted sentence:
In Vianna, "In Vienna, the ambassador of the Permanent Mission of Japan to the United Nations considers/says that in space the most important problem has become space debris."

I'm just missing とき.
宇宙で活動するとき
Does it mean time here or something else?

 

[Zizka]

ウィーンにある国連日本代表部の引原大使は「宇宙で活動するとき、いちばん問題になるのが宇宙ごみです。日本は宇宙ごみについて長い経験があるので、協力していきたいと思います」と言っています。
"In Vienna, the ambassador of the Permanent of Japan to the United Nation says: "Of the space activities, the most important problem has become space debris. Because Japan has a long experience regarding space debris, we want to collaborate."

I think the last と思います is a case of softener after a ~たい as was previously explained.