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そのぐらいなら?

hideway

still hiding
8 Dec 2006
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Hey.

Recently I've decided to give another try reading a Japanese manga, and I've come across something that seems like an expression. What I'm assuming being an expression is the following: ぐらいなら.

To give you a bit more of context, as far as I understood, a person is talking about something that was broke, and is asking if one couldn't just take and fix it.

Here is the text:
でも、そのぐらいなら 修理 出せば。

I've been reading about conditional sentences, and I feel I'm probably missing something, meaning that ぐらいなら probably really isn't an expression. Here is how I understood it.

I've read that なら is the connector between a condition and the result, but ぐらい as far as I know can be translated as "around of (as of quantity)". And seems as if ば is a suffix to something that is obvious, something that would be used in a sentence like "If you fall from up there, it will hurt.".

Thing is, ば is supposed to replace the "る" on ru verbs, so I'm assuming that 出せる is a verb. Knowing that 出 has the connotation of "leaving" or "taking something out". Knowing that "take out" is 出す I'm assuming 出せば is a conjugation of it.

So it should mean something close to "take if out to repairs"?
And where does ぐらいなら enter that sentence?

I've been looking for it on google but didn't manage to find anything useful. I appreciate any help or comment you might have. Thanks.
:)
 
I'll try to translate into English.

But, it seems not so dameged, try to send the thing to the repair shop.

ぐらい means the degree of the damege. In this context, the degree of damege is not beyond repair, so the speaker proposes that send the thing to a repair shop.
 
でも、そのぐらいなら修理に出せば。

修理に出す means to ask (someone or some shop) for repair service.

出せば can be rephrased by 出せばいいのに (you'd better send it for repair).
「~ば」 is a form of suggestion, like "why don't you"?

Without the context it is not clear what is そのぐらい (at such a degree), it could be either it takes tooooo long a time to fix it oneself, or the cost for repairs is not much. Either case, the speaker is suggesting to someone to send it (the thing that got broken) for repair, instead of trying it to fix by oneself or just sit and wondering if it is worthwhile to get it fixed at a shop or not (or something else, which is not clear with just this one sentence.)

Maybe it is easier to understand if I rephrase it in polite form?
でも、そのぐらいなら修理に出したらどうですか。
 
Nice! Thank you both very much!

It took a few re-reading the sentence, knowing the context and reading your explanations. But I finally managed to get the full meaning.

The context is that, last year, someone dropped a doll (雛様), breaking it on both the neck and hand. The conversation implies that because of that event the doll either no longer exists or is still unavailable.

At that time a third person makes that very comment: "でも、そのぐらい なら 修理 に 出せば。。。" (yep, missed the に
:(). Meaning something like the following: "But, with only that degree (of damage), couldn't have it been taken (at that time) for repairs?".

The following drawings on the manga show a dog holding the doll on it's mouth, so I'm guessing that would be a "no". :oops:

Thanks again for the help!
 
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