I've been going through a Japanese script of the popular anime "Fairy Tail" and trying to make sense of the translations, in the hopes of becoming more familiar with Japanese. I came across the phrase 新商品だって ちゃんと揃ってますよ (first episode, about 3 minutes, 35 seconds in), which is translated in the English subtitles as "I've got lots of new goods too." I understand the first part, 新商品, being translated to "New goods" , but I have no idea how the rest of it could be translated. I've got that だって means something along the lines of "because the goods are new" which seems odd already, but then since ちゃんと means "perfectly" and 揃って would mean something like "all of them", and ます is usually used with verbs stems, which I'm pretty sure 揃って isn't, I'm just completely lost as to how this phrase is supposed to work grammatically. If anybody knows Japanese and can help me break this sentence down, I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks a lot for any help.
新商品だって ちゃんと揃ってますよ translation
- Thread starter Cole
- Start date
- 22 Feb 2008
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だって means "too/also" here, not "because".
揃って is the -te form of a verb 揃う, not an adverb 揃って. Have you learned "-te iru" structure?
だってを英語で訳す - goo辞書 英和和英
揃って is the -te form of a verb 揃う, not an adverb 揃って. Have you learned "-te iru" structure?
揃うを英語で訳す - goo辞書 英和和英
- Thread starter
- #3
I do indeed know about ている, however I seem to have forgotten about it in my confusion(I've done this a lot since I started trying to learn Japanese - I often overlook things which seem incredibly simple and obvious and feel foolish afterwards). Since the い was left out in 揃っています(which I've already been told is common slang) I guess I just missed this. it doesn't help that the dictionary I search for some reason listed 揃って as its own separate entry which it labelled as an "expression" where it usually says "verb" or "Adjective" or "noun." Thank you very much for your help!
nekojita
先輩
- 14 Jan 2009
- 1,660
- 444
I guess the dictionary you are using is EDICT based. Not in itself a bad thing, but it's important to actually learn how to use a dictionary. (Yes, this is an actual skill).
You have made a mistake with ちゃんと which is extremely common. You saw a dictionary entry that lists "perfectly" as a possible gloss and interpreted it as「ちゃんと means "perfectly"」when the truth is more like "ちゃんと can be translated as 'perfectly' in some limited set of contexts".
Don't just look at the English "gloss" (single word translation). Look at example sentences to understand how the word is used. Make sure that it fits with the grammar and context of your sentence, and that you aren't mis-parsing (e.g. looking up そろって rather than recognising the conjugated pattern そろってます and looking up the base verb).
Borrowing the sentence pattern from your example, ちゃんと might take a different gloss in translation for each of these, but the general meaning/feeling is the same - it's doing something the way it should be done. "Properly" is a common gloss but sometimes there isn't a single word-to-word match. "Perfectly" might work for the first. "Properly" for the second. The last, you might choose to go for "paying attention" rather than "listening properly".
ちゃんと覚えてますよ
ちゃんと食べてますよ
ちゃんと聞いてますよ
In the translation you give they have chosen to cover it with "lots", which arguably fits. If you have "properly" stocked your shop with new products, you have lots/plenty of new products to choose from. Also it's more natural than trying to shove "perfectly" or "properly" in, neither of which naturally fits in here.
And here we come to the crux of the issue with trying to learn from translations of fiction - the translator is not just making a sentence that matches the Japanese word-for-word, they are trying to keep as much of the meaning as possible while making it sound like something you would say in English, and they were doing so probably under a deadline. So translations are often somewhat loose. Other times they may be incorrect. Sometimes, where the Japanese doesn't translate well (for example, puns), they may have just rewritten stuff entirely.
You shouldn't feel bad about this one because what you are trying to do is actually very difficult when you're starting out. Do you have some other source for learning grammar? It's almost impossible to do it by trying to figure out stuff from text, because grammar you don't know yet or have forgotten is relatively hard to look up. If you have a good grounding in the grammar of the language, dealing with unfamiliar words becomes much, much easier.
You have made a mistake with ちゃんと which is extremely common. You saw a dictionary entry that lists "perfectly" as a possible gloss and interpreted it as「ちゃんと means "perfectly"」when the truth is more like "ちゃんと can be translated as 'perfectly' in some limited set of contexts".
Don't just look at the English "gloss" (single word translation). Look at example sentences to understand how the word is used. Make sure that it fits with the grammar and context of your sentence, and that you aren't mis-parsing (e.g. looking up そろって rather than recognising the conjugated pattern そろってます and looking up the base verb).
Borrowing the sentence pattern from your example, ちゃんと might take a different gloss in translation for each of these, but the general meaning/feeling is the same - it's doing something the way it should be done. "Properly" is a common gloss but sometimes there isn't a single word-to-word match. "Perfectly" might work for the first. "Properly" for the second. The last, you might choose to go for "paying attention" rather than "listening properly".
ちゃんと覚えてますよ
ちゃんと食べてますよ
ちゃんと聞いてますよ
In the translation you give they have chosen to cover it with "lots", which arguably fits. If you have "properly" stocked your shop with new products, you have lots/plenty of new products to choose from. Also it's more natural than trying to shove "perfectly" or "properly" in, neither of which naturally fits in here.
And here we come to the crux of the issue with trying to learn from translations of fiction - the translator is not just making a sentence that matches the Japanese word-for-word, they are trying to keep as much of the meaning as possible while making it sound like something you would say in English, and they were doing so probably under a deadline. So translations are often somewhat loose. Other times they may be incorrect. Sometimes, where the Japanese doesn't translate well (for example, puns), they may have just rewritten stuff entirely.
You shouldn't feel bad about this one because what you are trying to do is actually very difficult when you're starting out. Do you have some other source for learning grammar? It's almost impossible to do it by trying to figure out stuff from text, because grammar you don't know yet or have forgotten is relatively hard to look up. If you have a good grounding in the grammar of the language, dealing with unfamiliar words becomes much, much easier.
