Please Help Me Figure This Out

[Fantt]

I have the Oct 5 Shonen Jump from Japan here in front of me. I'm fiddling around with my neato translation tool Wakan seeing if I can figure out some of the Japanese. The first manga in the issue is, of course, Naruto. On the first page on the left hand side, vertically is some text. The first bit (ending with a period) is the following:

無機質な雨音だけの静寂。

According to the tool, 無機質 means "inorganic or mineral matter". I'm not sure why there's a な next - does that make the preceding into an adjective?

Next is 雨音 - would that be "sound of rain?"

Then we have the だけ particle which means "only" or some limiting factor, right?

Then の which to me implies that the preceeding is going to modify the following...

And then we have 静寂, which Wakan tells me is silence.

In the pictures on the rest of the page, it is raining. Would this text perhaps be a title, something like The Inorganic Sound of Rains Only Silence? The Dead Rain's Silent Sound? The sound of the dead rain's silence?

I figure that 雨音 probably means something different from what I think it means, but Wakan comes up short, and I have no idea about the Inorganic, other than maybe it's refering to rain not being alive.

The pictures show a figure kneeling over another unconscious figure. I know nothing about Naruto, but I figure one of them probably is Naruto himself.

Any clues? How should this be translated, or is this not enough information?

Thanks!

Terry

UPDATE: I love the internet!! I just found a site where people have already translated this chapter. Their translation is "The mineral rain is all that is calm." I kinda see how this came from that, but not sure about how silence turned into calm, and I'm still not sure about that kanji for sound next to the kanji for rain. The furigana for 雨音 reads "あまおと" which I can't find in my dictionaries.

Further insight would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Glenn]

According to the tool, 無機質 means "inorganic or mineral matter". I'm not sure why there's a な next - does that make the preceding into an adjective?

I'm not sure why it's there either. It usually is the form of the copula used with attributive adjectives (vs. complementary) and when the copula preceds no, but mukishitsu isn't a keiyoudoushi as far as I can tell [from what I've seen it's a noun (meishi)], so this is confusing me. But I would definitely say that it modifies either amaoto or seijaku.

Next is 雨音 - would that be "sound of rain?"

Yes. Or, more specifically, the sound of rain falling.

Then we have the だけ particle which means "only" or some limiting factor, right?

Right.

Then の which to me implies that the preceeding is going to modify the following...

Right again.

And then we have 静寂, which Wakan tells me is silence.

And right again.

UPDATE: I love the internet!! I just found a site where people have already translated this chapter. Their translation is "The mineral rain is all that is calm." I kinda see how this came from that, but not sure about how silence turned into calm, and I'm still not sure about that kanji for sound next to the kanji for rain. The furigana for 雨音 reads "あまおと" which I can't find in my dictionaries.

Further insight would be greatly appreciated!

Bah, you got to this when I was replying! "Calm" probably came from this sense of the word: 静かなこと。ひっそりとしていること。また、そのさま。

As for amaoto, that's just the way it's read. Ama happens to be a reading of 雨. From Jim Breen's kanjidic:

雨 -- ウ あめ あま- -さめ rain

 

[bentenmusume]

UPDATE: I love the internet!! I just found a site where people have already translated this chapter. Their translation is "The mineral rain is all that is calm." I kinda see how this came from that, but not sure about how silence turned into calm, and I'm still not sure about that kanji for sound next to the kanji for rain. The furigana for 雨音 reads "あまおと" which I can't find in my dictionaries.

Hmm. This 'translation' is taking some poetic license I think. Or, without being so diplomatic, I could say that it's misleading or outright wrong. "The mineral rain is all that is calm" would be (without changing the original words and leaving aside the issue of 'calm' vs. 'silent') 「静寂なのは無機質な雨だけ」. The translation here is confusing the word order and leaving out the nuance of 雨音. Actually, as Glenn pointed out, your analysis of the sentence structure and the vocabulary was pretty much accurate, which should lead you closer to the actual meaning:

You have 無機質な雨音だけ connected (using の) to 静寂. 静寂 coming at the end means that it's the "main noun" here, and the preceding phrase is describing _a certain kind_ of 静寂. What kind? The kind which can be described as 無機質な雨音だけ. Also, the fact that the phrase ends with a noun here means that the whole thing is just a complex noun phrase, not a complete sentence. Literally, "silence of (only/just the inorganic sound of the falling rain)" meaning "silence [consisting of / which can be described as / in which nothing can be heard but] only/just the sound of the falling rain."

This use of a complex noun phrase to "set the scene" so to speak is a phenomenon you see fairly often in Japanese. In English, we'd probably use a complete sentence in the same situation. I guess you could approximate the feel of the Japanese with something like "It was silent, with only the inorganic (there's probably a better way to express this, but I'll stick to the literal definition) sound of the falling rain to be heard."

I hope that makes sense.

Also:

I'm not sure why it's there either. It usually is the form of the copula used with attributive adjectives (vs. complementary) and when the copula preceds no, but mukishitsu isn't a keiyoudoushi as far as I can tell [from what I've seen it's a noun (meishi)], so this is confusing me.

Hmm, googling for 無機質な seems to suggest pretty strongly that it's used quite often as a 形容動詞.

But I would definitely say that it modifies either amaoto or seijaku.

Hmm, this is true, it could possibly be ambiguous, although if it were modifying 静寂 I'd probably expect something like 「雨音だけの無機質な静寂」 or maybe a break (comma-intonation) after 無機質 like 「無機質な、雨音だけの静寂」... This is why I interpreted it as modifiying 雨音 above, but what you say here is certainly possible.

 

[Glenn]

Well, thanks for the consideration, but you're probably right. You seem to be better at getting the modifiers in the right place than I am.

 

[Fantt]

Thanks, guys! That helps a lot. I'll probably have more questions later as I try to figure this out.

 

[Scrivener]

Hi, just jumping in here (I write here for my interest not yours lol)

無機質な雨音だけの静寂。

jt is on the ball as always. What they are trying to get across here is that the sense of peace is due to the fact that the sound of rain is not due to any conscious human or animal agency. The 無機 is connecting to the 雨音. If you were putting something like that in an English comic you might say...

"so quiet: only the sound of rain mechanically falling"

(you can see why it's hard to translate haiku...)

 

[Fantt]

Hey - thanks Scrivener! That actually makes sense. It's very odd to read something in one language and kind of understand it, but be unable to fully express it in your native language. I am beginning to see now why learning more than one language is a really powerful thing.

 

[PaulTB]

It's very odd to read something in one language and kind of understand it, but be unable to fully express it in your native language. I am beginning to see now why learning more than one language is a really powerful thing.

It is a not uncommon, although contraversial, view that being bilingual makes you effectively more intelligent because you have more than one set of language 'tools' in which to think. The theory goes something like that it is easier to conceive certain ideas and concepts in one language than another so if you know two languages you can use the easiest for whatever it is you're thinking about.