晩ご飯を食べなかった人は、映画で見た銀行に行った。

[healer]

The translation thereof is "Person who did not eat dinner went to the bank she saw at movie. "

The translation there is not clear to me.

Not sure where or how 映画で見た fits in.
Before going to the bank?
Saw the person on the way to bank?
Saw at the movie long time ago?
Was the person in question seen at the cinema or an actor in the movie?

 

[joadbres]

Part of the reason you are confused is that the English translation that was provided there is not very good.

Assuming that 映画 refers to a single film,

映画で見た銀行: the bank that (人) saw in a movie.

 

[Toritoribe]

Is that a stand-alone sentence with no context?

 

[joadbres]

I think it originates from Tae Kim's Guide to Learning Japanese:

Relative Clauses and Sentence Order

Treating verbs and state-of-being like adjectives Have you noticed how, many forms of verbs and the state-of-being conjugate in a similar manner to i-adjectives? Well, that is because, in a sense, …

www.guidetojapanese.org

I didn't know that when I first replied in this thread, and now I understand why the English translation is so awkward: in his guide Tae Kim always tries to translate into English as directly as possible, without regard for how natural it sounds, to help the learner understand what is going on grammatically in each sentence.

 

[Toritoribe]

Ah I see, so there is no background context. Then, several interpretations are possible. My first impression is 人 is plural, and the subjects of 食べなかった, 見た and 行った are all the same "people".

People who did not eat dinner went to the bank they had seen in a movie.

However, the subject of 見た can be the speaker/writer, i.e., 映画で見た銀行 can mean "the bank I had seen in a movie".

Anyway, I strongly recommend parsing the original Japanese sentence first, not interpreting the meaning from the given translation. The modifying clause is never put after the modified noun in Japanese sentences, so 映画で見た modifies 銀行, as joadbressan wrote above, and never modifies 人. Thus, your interpretations "the subject saw the person on the way to bank" or "the person in question was seen at the cinema or an actor in the movie" are impossible.

 

[healer]

Thanks a lot! Yes it is extracted from Relative Clauses and Sentence Order.

I couldn’t make sense of the sentence. So I was trying to understand the sentence with the help of the English translation. Is my understanding correct as follows?

The person who did not have the dinner went to the bank. And this is what someone saw in a movie.

 

[Toritoribe]

Yes, you got it correctly.

 

[healer]

Thanks!

 

[Toritoribe]

Just for confirmation, "this" refers to "the bank" in the second sentence of your translation, not an event "the person who did not have the dinner went to the bank", right?

 

[healer]

Thanks for drawing my focus to the right word. I almost missed it. I like to be pedantic when language is concerned.