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Could someone help me with a translation, please? ( English->Japanese )

Rayaqin

Registered
20 Apr 2017
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Greetings everyone,

The phrase I'd like toask you guys to translate from English to Japanese is " True love waits ".
It is the title of a Radiohead song, and also appears in the lyrics.
Some of the lyrics for more context:
"...
Just don't leave
Don't leave

And true love waits
In haunted attics
And true love lives
On lollipops and crisps
..."

It would be very important for me to know how to properly translate this to Japanese, because knowing how to say this would be part of a marrige proposal and my girlfriend is fluent in Japanese, so she would spot anything off with the translation.
 
I would say 本当の愛は待っている.
Could you write it phonetically so I could pronounce it? And what does 本当の愛は待っている mean literally? ( I don't really understand how Japanese works, but as far as I can tell expressions consist of combinations of other words or something.. so by literally I mean "how did you put it together?" )


*EDIT*
Translator programs say this ( 本当の愛は待っている ) means: True love is waiting.
I'm not saying programs know better than you, but I'd like to be sure that it's "waits" and not "waiting" as the two phrases are very different in meaning.
Thanks for the help btw.
 
Honto no ai wa matteiru.

I'm not going to write a whole chapter of a textbook to explain the different between the present progressive in English and the -te iru form in Japanese...
 
Honto no ai wa matteiru.

I'm not going to write a whole chapter of a textbook to explain the different between the present progressive in English and the -te iru form in Japanese...
Thanks for the reply. I didn't ask you to explain anything, I'm just trying to make sure that what you said means "waits" and not "is waiting".
 
It means "waits", and a whole chapter is needed to explain the reason. Incidentally, you can find so many Japanese translations of the lyrics; 真実の愛は幽霊の出る屋根裏部屋で待っている Shinjitsu no ai wa yūrei no deru yaneurabeya de matteiru in google search results. Both Sinjitu and honto mean "true", but the former sounds a bit stiff. That's why I chose honto.
 
It means "waits", and a whole chapter is needed to explain the reason. Incidentally, you can find so many Japanese translations of the lyrics; 真実の愛は幽霊の出る屋根裏部屋で待っている Shinjitsu no ai wa yūrei no deru yaneurabeya de matteiru in google search results. Both Sinjitu and honto mean "true", but the former sounds a bit stiff. That's why I chose honto.

A japanese friend of mine said that Honto no ai wa matteiru means True love waits us. I've had been talking to her about this for a while before I posted here, and ( as she pointed out ) she had already suggested this translation, I just didn't "accept" it, because there is no "us" in the original phrase. True love has the habit of waiting, but for noone in particular. Just in general. Looks like I'll have to go with this translation though, because it seems like direct translation is somehow not possible in this case.
 
The one I provided is a direct translation. There is no "us" in it. I'm a native Japanese speaker, by the way.
 
Another choice is 本当の愛は待っていてくれるものだ Honto no ai wa matteitekureru mono da if you want to emphasize "True love has the habit of waiting."
 
I'd like to be sure that it's "waits" and not "waiting" as the two phrases are very different in meaning.
This is very interesting because it is similar to another thread that is going on simultaneously with this one. You say that "waits" and "is waiting" are two phrases that are "very different" in meaning. Actually, as a native English speaker, I think the two phrases are very similar. Even with the context provided, the meanings are nearly identical.
True love waits in haunted attics
True love is waiting in haunted attics

It sounds quite similar to me. Actually it sounds a bit creepy.
本当の愛は幽霊の出る屋根裏部屋で待っている
Hmmm...if its all the same to you, I reckon I'd leave that love alone. No telling what else is up in that attic. I digress.
 
This is very interesting because it is similar to another thread that is going on simultaneously with this one. You say that "waits" and "is waiting" are two phrases that are "very different" in meaning. Actually, as a native English speaker, I think the two phrases are very similar. Even with the context provided, the meanings are nearly identical.
True love waits in haunted attics
True love is waiting in haunted attics

It sounds quite similar to me. Actually it sounds a bit creepy.
本当の愛は幽霊の出る屋根裏部屋で待っている
Hmmm...if its all the same to you, I reckon I'd leave that love alone. No telling what else is up in that attic. I digress.

The reason why I asked for the translation is that I want to put this expression as a solution of a riddle ( each letter has a unique card with a frame of a comic that indicates the ordinal number of the letter and a riddle on the other side.. if you solve the riddle you get a number which is the ascii code of the letter .. if you type all the numbers in the correct order into an exe file made by me that displays a keypad, you get "Honto ai wa no matteiru" written on the screen ) and if it would say "True love is waiting" then 1: it would not refer to the song's title 2: it would imply that the relationship is on some kind of hold.. which would be... suboptimal
She left for a 1-year-scholarship in Japan and I was waiting for her in Hungary. If she was still in Japan, saying " True love is waiting " would make more sense..but now that she is home I just want to say "True love waits".. as in "true love has the habit of waiting", so it did wait and it would wait again
( I'm not a native english speaker, but I hope I was able to clarify )
 
At the risk of unnecessarily complicating this whole thing, I would like to revisit the issue of translating that phrase.
I read on one seemingly authoritative Radiohead commentary site that the song title is an ironic reference to a Christian advocacy group that lobbies against premarital sex. That group is also called True Love Waits, and on another site I saw that group name translated as 「真実の愛は待つ」.
It seems to me that if, in the case of the Radiohead song, the title is being interpreted as something along the lines of "true love has the habit of waiting" or "the thing about true love is that it will wait", etc., etc., then perhaps 「待っている」 is not the best choice for translation.
@Toritoribe -san offered the translation 「本当の愛は待っていてくれるものだ」 which I think captures the correct intent of the song title, but unfortunately this phrase is long and unwieldy.
If @Toritoribe -san feels that 「本当の愛は待つ」, when read by a native Japanese person, could convey the sense "the thing about true love is that it will wait", then this would be my recommendation of how to translate. If it doesn't convey that, then I wonder if there is any other concise way to convey this sense of meaning...

One other point:
From the original posts on this topic, I envisioned this as something that would be spoken during the proposal. If, instead, it is something that will be written on a computer screen, then I strongly recommend that it be written in Japanese, rather than the Roman alphabet. Asking Japanese people to read words in their own language but written in the Roman alphabet is awkward. And if you do decide to write it in the Roman alphabet, make sure you put the words in the right order. In previous post, the word order is messed up.
 
Given the original meaning and intent of the phrase, "wait" shouldn't be directly translated into 待つ to begin with. Or at least it needs clarifying context.
 
The problem I had to consider is ambiguity about the agent, in other words transitivity/intransitivity of the verb 待つ. The one I thought of first is 本当の愛は待つものだ, but immediately I realized that this can mean "You/We/I should wait true love." The same goes to 本当の愛は待っているものだ. That's why I used 本当の愛は待っていてくれるものだ. 本当の愛は待ってくれるものだ can work well, but it's impossible to omit くれる in order to avoid being misinterpreted anyway. Incidentally, a Japanese title of an old Hollywood movie Heaven Can Wait is 天国は待ってくれる.

If, instead, it is something that will be written on a computer screen, then I strongly recommend that it be written in Japanese, rather than the Roman alphabet.
Agreed. In that case, 本当の愛は待っていてくれるものだよ or 本当の愛は待ってくれるものだよ might be the best choice.
 
Agreed. In that case, 本当の愛は待っていてくれるものだよ or 本当の愛は待ってくれるものだよ might be the best choice.


Okay so I've already made the 23 cards and hand-drawn one side, made a riddle for the ascii numbers n stuff on each for "Honto no ai wa matteiru" ( 19 letters 4 spaces ) , is there a good solution for displaying it using the Japanese characters as well ( that can be read like: honto no ai wa matteiru , but is somehow closer to the original meaning of the phrase ) ?
This is how the displayed form looks like after you enter the correct numbers in the correct order. I guess I could have the japanese characters displayed on the right side.. but idk if they can match the Roman-letter-version and still be close to the original meaning... : | ( sorry if this seems like a semi-retarded question for some reason, I really don't know how this - the language - works )
upload_2017-4-27_11-13-11.png
 
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Asking Japanese people to read words in their own language but written in the Roman alphabet is awkward.
We don't know whether she's actually Japanese - the original poster so far only mentioned that she's fluent in the language - but indeed, presenting the text in Japanese writing would certainly be nicer than romaji.

@Rayaqin: Instead of going from ascii codes to Latin characters and from there somehow making the jump to Japanese characters (a very complex and error-prone process), you could use the Unicode codepoints of the Japanese characters. For example, instead of the two numbers 97 and 105 for "ai", you'd have the single number 24859 for 愛.

As another option, you can simply choose a bunch of random numbers as a sort of password. Each correctly entered number "unlocks" a word (or part of a word) of the sentence, while an incorrect number simply results in nothing. This means both less effort and better feedback for the player.

(And while you're at it, pick a nicer colour scheme and font for the application! Black-on-gray Times New Roman isn't very romantic :) )
 
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the original poster so far only mentioned that she's fluent in the language

The only thing more bloated than a foreigner's self-assessment of their Japanese ability is their friends' assessment of their Japanese ability.
 
The only thing more bloated than a foreigner's self-assessment of their Japanese ability is their friends' assessment of their Japanese ability.

"Statistically most people who claim to know Japanese or claim that their friends know Japanese are either misjudging their abilities or lying, so I decided I will automatically assume that this is the case every time somebody says somebody knows Japanese"
Does sound like a smart, nice, necessary thing to do?
 
"Statistically most people who claim to know Japanese or claim that their friends know Japanese are either misjudging their abilities or lying, so I decided I will automatically assume that this is the case every time somebody says somebody knows Japanese"
Does sound like a smart, nice, necessary thing to do?

Did I write both of those? If not, who wrote the second one?

I don't know about smart, nice, or necessary, but based on my past experience it is certainly prudent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect
 
Did I write both of those? If not, who wrote the second one?

I don't know about smart, nice, or necessary, but based on my past experience it is certainly prudent.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

it is dumb, rude and unnecessary to give voice to an assumption based on a possibility of this kind

just that there are people out there who claim to be better than they actually are or tend to overvalue the 'quality' of people they love or admire ( even if it's a high percentage ) doesn't mean everyone who claims to speak fluent Japanese is wrong about his/her own ability..

She does not claim to be fluent in Japanese because she is a humble person, but she has been studying Japanese for more than 10 years, she has been in Japan for years, and is passionate about the language and the culture.. so I assumed that even if I can't be a rightful judge about this, I can confidently say that she is fluent based on what I percieved. And I don't think this calls for a response in ill intent from the likes of you.
 
She does not claim to be fluent in Japanese because she is a humble person, but she has been studying Japanese for more than 10 years, she has been in Japan for years, and is passionate about the language and the culture.. so I assumed that even if I can't be a rightful judge about this, I can confidently say that she is fluent based on what I percieved.

If so, you're probably safe with what you are doing. I would never say I'm fluent and I gave up learning Japanese over a decade ago but I can read and make sense of the phrase you will use. I'm not sure she'll make the link to that radiohead song without some explaining but that shouldn't be a problem. I hope this all will be a wonderful surprise for her. (You've at least seriously talked about a future together?)
 
And I don't think this calls for a response in ill intent from the likes of you.

So you admit that you have no way of correctly assessing her actual ability, and you're insulted that I pointed out that you have no way of correctly assessing her ability.

I realize that English isn't your first language, so I will clarify for you that my post said nothing about your friend's Japanese ability. I offered no opinion on her ability. I have no way of assessing it, as I have never met her. However, if I ever did meet her I would have a far better basis for forming an opinion of her ability than you do.

The fact that she has been studying Japanese for X number of years is meaningless information. There are plenty of foreigners who have been studying Japanese for years (and some living in Japan for decades) who can't order a cheeseburger from McDonald's without pointing at the picture menu.

Who wrote the second part you quoted? Was that from me? Could you link to it, please?
 
If so, you're probably safe with what you are doing. I would never say I'm fluent and I gave up learning Japanese over a decade ago but I can read and make sense of the phrase you will use. I'm not sure she'll make the link to that radiohead song without some explaining but that shouldn't be a problem. I hope this all will be a wonderful surprise for her. (You've at least seriously talked about a future together?)


I've decided to give it to her as 'just' a birthday present, and she loved the surprise and the thought. She is working as a Japanese/English/Hungarian translator/interpreter btw. She 'made the link' to the Radiohead song right away, so thanks to everybody for the help.
 
Congratulations, I'm glad it worked out for you.

You're not going to answer my question? You took offense at me either for something somebody else wrote or which I wrote elsewhere and you had to go hunting for. What was the source of the text you copied in from somewhere else and got mad at me about?
 
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