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本を読んでいるうちに

eeky

先輩
8 Jun 2010
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Hi,

いつも本を読んでいるうちに眠ってしまう。

Does this imply that falling asleep is intentional/desired? Or is it an accidental consequence?
 
Accidental. I doubt you'd say 眠ってしまう if it were intentional. There's too much of an "oops" factor there.
 
Thanks Glenn, the translation is "I always read myself to sleep" which didn't seem quite right to me.
 
~てしまう is always "accidental", not only 眠ってしまう. (So it's often used with 思わず "accidentally / unwillingly / unexpectedly" as a set.)
 
Thanks Glenn, the translation is "I always read myself to sleep" which didn't seem quite right to me.

The translation is accurate. Sure it's not the literal translation but it is the most natural in English than i always fall asleep unexpectedly while reading. Most sentences needs heavy interpretation, even more so in Japanese.
 
The translation is accurate. Sure it's not the literal translation but it is the most natural in English than i always fall asleep unexpectedly while reading. Most sentences needs heavy interpretation, even more so in Japanese.
I second eeky-san. He pointed out that the original Japanese sentence doesn't have the meaning "to read a book in preparation for falling asleep" at all, which the given English translation has. As is often the case with the textbook he uses now, it is not a good translation.
 
Yeah, "I always read myself to sleep" is ambiguous at best on whether it's volitional.
 
As is often the case with the textbook he uses now, it is not a good translation.
I've now graduated from textbooks to Japanese children's books! In fact, this is another sentence from tatoeba.org, which I think includes user-generated content and is not always 100% correct, though still a very useful resource.
 
Ah, not a book, but a site. Yeah, I referred to it. You often can "feel" the oddness of the translations in the site (and post them here), aren't you?
 
本を読んでいるうちに /

Yeah, "I always read myself to sleep" is ambiguous at best on whether it's volitional.

Subject to interpretation I guess. Some people might interpreted it as reading in order to sleep which I didn't find at all.
 
Ah, not a book, but a site. Yeah, I referred to it. You often can "feel" the oddness of the translations in the site (and post them here), aren't you?
I try to read a few example sentences from that site each day (or most days), in addition to trying to make progress with my book. Some of the sentences that I don't fully understand, I ask about here.
 
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