Some help in providing literal translation in sentence

Source: Rashomon

洛中がその始末であるから、羅生門の修理などは、元より誰も捨てて顧る者がなかった.
/inside the capital /ga/ management(?) / therefore or "for that reason"/ , rashomon /no/ repair / nado(?) /
wa/ from the beginning (?) / everyone or "no one" (?) / throwing away or "to desert"/ to turn around/back on(?) /
person (wha!) / nonexistent

Literal translation: Such being the stage of affairs in Kyoto, the repair of Rashom was out of the question.

I understand the concept of not being not too literal when translating, but I'm still having a tough time getting the original idea behind this sentence. I used questions marks to indicate the words I am most likely misreading.Could someone please provide some help. I am also confused with nado in this sentence since I usually just interpret it as a form of etc.

The dictionary is your friend.

しまつ【始末】
２ ある物事の最終的な状況。特に、よくない結果。「しまいには泣き出す―だ」「万事この―だ」

Click to expand...

しまつ【始末】の意味 - 国語辞書 - goo辞書

しまつ【始末】
3 〔悪い結果〕
こんな始末になって遺憾です
I regret that things have come to this pass.
社長があの始末ではどうにもならない
What can we do when the president himself is so unreliable?

Click to expand...

しまつ【始末】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

など【等／抔】
２ ある事物を例示し、特にそれを軽んじて扱う意を表す。…なんか。…なんて。「わたしのこと―お忘れでしょう」「金―いるものか」

Click to expand...

など【等／抔】［副助］の意味 - 国語辞書 - goo辞書

など【等】
2 〔軽べつ，けんそんして〕
君などの出る幕ではない
It's none of your business.／You keep out of this.
私などにはできない事です
That would be quite impossible for the likes of me.

Click to expand...

など【等】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

もとより【元より／固より／素より】
２ 言うまでもなく。もちろん。「子供は―大人も楽しめる映画」

Click to expand...

もとより【元より／固より／素より】の意味 - 国語辞書 - goo辞書

もとより【固より・素より】
2 〔もちろん〕of course⇒もちろん(勿論)
責任はもとより製作者にある
The maker is responsible as a matter of course.

Click to expand...

もとより【固より】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

だれ【誰】
３ （「だれも」の形で、打消しの語を伴って）全面的な否定を表す。「―もいない」

Click to expand...

だれ【誰】の意味 - 国語辞書 - goo辞書

だれ【誰】
2 〔不特定の人を指して〕anyone, anybody (▼疑問文・否定文で)
誰もその問題を解けなかった
Nobody was able to solve the problem.
人は誰も完全ではない
No one is perfect.／Everyone has his faults.

Click to expand...

だれ【誰】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

かえりみる【顧みる】
２ 心にとどめ考える。気にかける。「妻子を―・みない」

Click to expand...

かえりみる【顧みる】の意味 - 国語辞書 - goo辞書

かえりみる【顧みる】
3 〔心に掛ける〕think of; take notice of
忙しくて他人のことなど顧みる暇がない
I am too busy to 「worry about [pay any attention to] others.
他人の迷惑を顧みない人がいる
Some people think nothing of the trouble they cause others.
彼女は仕事にかまけて家庭を顧みなかった
She was so absorbed in her work that she neglected her home.
彼らの批判も顧みず彼は計画の遂行にとりかかった
Ignoring [Despite] their criticism, he went ahead with his plans.
彼の絵は長く顧みられなかった
For a long time no one paid any attention to his pictures.

Click to expand...

かえりみる【顧みる】の英語・英訳 - 和英辞書 - 英語辞書 - goo辞書

You'd probably get warmer replies if you didn't have such an awful habit of not acknowledging replies to your past inquiries.. ("thanks in advance" is no substitute for acknowledging replies. You come across as taking help for granted, and people don't like being taken for granted).

Thanks Mr. Toritoribe.

Wha, where is this coming from? This is only my sixth post on this forum and someone is implying
that I come off as a jerk. I feel like the worst person in the world now! Am I really that bad.

md1310 said:

Thanks Mr. Toritoribe.

Wha, where is this coming from? This is only my sixth post on this forum and someone is implying
that I come off as a jerk. I feel like the worst person in the world now! Am I really that bad.

Click to expand...

I reviewed all your threads before I spoke.

You may post any way you like. I'm only telling you how to get better replies.

No worries. Best not to let things get personal and just keep things professional. I know I can be a
little rough around the edges in the graces of my speech (it comes with the territory when you have a tendency to be a lonewolf). I'll try to be more cordial in the future (no promises on success, though).

Oh, and yeah, I know the dictionary is your friend, but I guess I just got to reliant on Rikaichan. I also
use Tangorin, but it appears, with kind intent as Toritoribe made clear, there are better dictionaries out there.

If we were professional we would be charging you money to answer your questions. This is personal...individuals voluntarily donating their time and expertise to help others with no reward other than the warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from helping someone and broadening their circle of acquaintances. Threads that go: question-answer-silence are impersonal and make the person answering feel like they were nothing more than a Google search hit or an entry in a dictionary....which was the point Toritoribe (the nicest, most helpful, and most patient guy you'll find anywhere) was making by giving you nothing but a bunch of links as an answer.

We have a long history of "drive-by" posters, people who ask a question, get serious answers typed up to specifically address their individual problem....then never even come back to check for replies. We don't demand thanks from anyone, but we do feel the bare minimum netiquette requires is at least a post to acknowledge that replies were seen and read.

md1310 said:

Literal translation

Click to expand...

Bear in mind that the "literal translation" you have posted for this passage is actually a refined translation, and the translator has taken some liberty in rendering the original Japanese into common English.

It would be tough to extract any meaning from a literal (i.e. word-for-word) translation of that sentence. Judging from the number of entries in chiebukuro etc..., Rashomon is a book that presents problems for many Japanese readers as well. If you are using Rashomon as a Japanese study tool, you might want to put it aside for now and try something a bit easier to begin with.

Yeah, it only has been a few days since I sampled Rashamon. I'm starting to notice as you pointed out that some lines are given a bit more finesse than what I am used to. I actually have two translations of Rashomon. I don't think it is that bad, though. I don't always need every word translated in every sentence like in the example I posted above, but there are some genuine stumpers (which is basically why I came to this site). Since it is an old book, I am bit concerned about the style of the Japanese I'm reading- how relatively natural it sounds. It's like how some people warn against learning Japanese from anime and manga because of formalities. I don't know what to pick. I've visited Aozora Bunko and the western literature doesn't seem that bad compared to Rashamon, but I'm not sure how well I can trust translations from English to Japanese like Sherlock Holmes. I also have a copy of 1Q84. It is a thick book, but I think Murakami's language is a bit more plainspoken, or at least that is how the book sounds when translated. Anyone else want to chime in about where I can look for solid entry-reading literature?

Oh, and apologies to Mike Cash, again. Based on my last post, I thought the issue was closed, so I was very surprised that Mr. Cash needed to have last word again. Unfortunately, due to the demands of the daily grind, I don't have time to enter a pissing contest. I'm afraid, unlike others, I've grown a bit too old for s#^# nonsense. I'm also Canadian, and everyone knows Canadians are peaceful, friendly people who aren't marred by pettiness and rancor. We keep peace rather than start meaningless wars.

You want to take my comments that way, it's up to you.

The problem with Aozora books is that many of them are just so old and language style/usage has changed considerably. Many of their versions retain the original kana/kanji (pre-reform), which isn't a big deal if you're used to reading modern stuff without looking things up, but could be very off putting if you're not.

Have you considered something like modern short stories or something light like detective novels? The Asami Mitsuhiko stories from Uchida Yasuo are entertaining, not hard to read, and are bountifully available from used bookstores for cheap.

My impression from Rashomon (the novel) is that it is a bit like reading Herman Melville, or maybe Edgar Allen Poe. Though not exactly contemporaries, it seems that, like those authors, the author of Rashomon uses the language of a different time. Not necessarily language that is completely out of use, or even difficult, but different enough to present so many stumbling blocks to the learning reader that deciphering it becomes a tedious chore. Rashomon also expects the reader to know certain things: for example, 洛 refers to Kyoto, and so the Japanese reader will know that 洛中 locates the action of the story in and around Kyoto. Anyway, I wish you luck with it.
Some people use anime for Japanese practice. One reader on here uses the Harry Potter books in translation for practice. Some people were using the graphic novels of Ghibli movies (Kiki's delivery service, etc...). There are some things produced by NHK that some people use. All of these are good. All of them present some challenges.

I encountered the 洛 = Kyoto thing in something I was reading last year. I later saw it pop up on a television commercial and remarked on it to my wife, who is both a native speaker and educated, and she had never heard of it before..

Some stories do require or assume quite a degree of cultural familiarity to penetrate them. For example, Akutagawa's 蜘蛛の糸 if read as a straightforward story at face value makes little sense. But read as an allegorical criticism of Hinayana Buddhism it is brilliant.

My teacher has me on the Japanese Graded Readers by Ask Publishing. She specifically uses them because they focus on appropriate grammar in different situations. My only issue with them is how short the stories are.

Serious question: what is it you read in English for light reading? For reading practice, you want something that you actually want to read, and that is at a level that doesn't frustrate you.

This can mean fiction or non-fiction. Short story collections are a great "in" to modern fiction. (look out for stuff like ショート・ショート = super short stories) People ignore non-fiction a lot which I find peculiar - you don't read non-fiction for fun/relaxation in your native language? Ever? Magazines or blogs or reviews or humorous essays or... anything?

Example from 青空 - while I find a lot of the fiction difficult to get into there, there's a bunch of short non-fiction things by 夢野久作 on there which are quite entertaining, e.g. 書けない探偵小説

Another example - if you want to get into the more classical stuff, look for books/websites aimed at explaining the difficult parts to high schoolers.

Reading manga will not necessarily RUIN YOU FOREVER, either. It's a matter of diet - a bit of junk food is fine, as long as you know it's junk. If you read a range of things, and you can recognise that you probably shouldn't copy the speech patterns of fictional teenagers, samurai, space pilots, cat people, etc. no problems. Similarly, if you enjoy the stuff on aozora, go ahead - but try not to make that all you read and be aware that some of the vocab/phrasing will be old-fashioned or even offensive.

For those of us who are outside of Japan where physical book acquisition is more of a problem, I recommend haunting ebay and being decidedly unpicky about what you read (I only check genre - I get stuff at under £2 a book and if some of it is not to my taste so be it).

Finally: don't be afraid to quit on things. Sometimes you need to put something to one side and come back when you've got a bit more language experience under your belt. Sometimes that thing everyone keeps recommending to you as the best thing since fried bread just bores you solid. There's plenty of textbooky type stuff you can work on if you want something boring but worthy - reading practice should be at least a little fun.

nekojita said:

Serious question: what is it you read in English for light reading? For reading practice, you want something that you actually want to read, and that is at a level that doesn't frustrate you.

Click to expand...

What I read is a bit of everything these days: a subscription to the Hiragana Times magazine, NHK, Aozora Bunko (I've read and liked Poe, but never looked at Melville. Typical philistine, right?), Light Novels (Spice & Wolf), script dumps from video game series (Zelda, Final Fantasy), bilingual video games (Persona, Resident Evil Revelations), Nintendo manuals, scripts from films, corporate web sites, JDramas, Grammar books (A guide to intermediate Japanese Grammar) etc.

Of course, I don't do everything at once, but I am just trying to show that I do try to mix things up. I really only asked because I wanted to make sure that maybe there was something out there that I hadn't considered.

"Another example - if you want to get into the more classical stuff, look for books/websites aimed at explaining the difficult parts to high schoolers."

That might help. How would I google that? What keywords would I use? I've never found a book that breaks down classical grammar or readings in literature.

Something like this might be interesting.
Amazon.co.jp： 羅生門 (現代語訳名作シリーズ): 芥川 龍之介, 松尾 清貴: 本

Hopefully, the saying is true about not judging a book by its cover. The art, color, and font layout don't fill you with inspiration. There are no reviews for this product either.

Something like 高校生向け is a good search term. e.g. :
NHK高校講座 国語総合
(羅生門 is under ２年)
More NHK stuff:
http://www2.nhk.or.jp/school/list/bangumi.cgi?das_id=D0005860000_00026

or 簡単、説明、分かりやすい、文法 、解釈 - those sort of search terms combined with whatever I'm looking for.