言われる

みうらちゃんは きのう ジャンボさんに 男の子って 言われた。

I've come across this sentence in a manga and I would translate it as "Yesterday, Miura has been told by Janbo that she was a boy." because of the passive form of 言う. But it is translated as "Yesterday Miura told Janbo that she was a boy". The following sentences also suggest this, but why is the passive form used instead of a simple 言った?

If I were to translated it literally, I would say 'Miura was called a boy by Jambo yesterday'. (We know it's Jambo as opposed to any other romanization only because you see the roman characters on his shop in another part of よつばと！)

"Yesterday Miura told Janbo that she was a boy" simply isn't correct at all.

As for why it's in the passive form, that adds a nuance that Miura didn't have any control of the situation, that it was something that happened to her, that perhaps she would rather not have happen to her. If you put it in the active voice then the sentence is about what Jambo did, not about what happened to Miura.

Thank you! The translation really threw me off here. It gave me quite the headache.
Since you are familiar with the manga, would you mind helping me with the next sentence as well?
つーかずっと女だって言ってんだろ。
How would you translate daro here, or what kind of feeling does it give to the sentence? Translating it as 'probably' doesn't seem to fit.
And about 'Jambo'...It doesn't seem that important to me how his name is actually spelled in english, that's why I decided to just romanize it.

raikado said:

みうらちゃんは きのう ジャンボさんに 男の子って 言われた。

I've come across this sentence in a manga and I would translate it as "Yesterday, Miura has been told by Janbo that she was a boy." because of the passive form of 言う. But it is translated as "Yesterday Miura told Janbo that she was a boy". The following sentences also suggest this, but why is the passive form used instead of a simple 言った?

Click to expand...

iwareta could mean he've been criticized.

raikado said:

つーかずっと女だって言ってんだろ。
How would you translate daro here, or what kind of feeling does it give to the sentence? Translating it as 'probably' doesn't seem to fit.

Click to expand...

だろ（う） is for confirmation. It also expresses the speaker's irritation here, something like "You know, I always KEEP SAYING..."

The full context here is that this is the girl who was called a boy speaking, in response to the story about her gender being called into question.
"みうらちゃんはきのうジャンボさんに男の子って言われたから今日は女の子なんどよね"
"よけーなこというな。つーかずっと女だって言ってんだろ"

Which, really, I guess just means Toritoribe was right even without the context! さすがとりとりべさんですね

I'd go in this case with something like,
"Since Miura was called a boy by Jambo yesterday, she's saying she's a girl today."
"Don't say crazy stuff. Really, I'm sure I've always said I'm a girl."