To Lose your balance

Beetle

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Hi guys,
Sorry for the romaji.
The word for balance in Japanese is kinkou. I take it that to be in a balanced state is kinkou shiteiru.
So to be unbalanced is kinkou shinaideiru. Does that mean that to become unbalanced is kinkou shinaideiru ni naru?

I know that in English you are said to have lost your balance or I've lost my Balance. Is there a colloquial way to say that in Japanese?
 
バランスを崩す is the most common expression for "to lost one's balance". 平衡(感覚)can be also acceptable.

to be in a balanced state: バランスを保っている
to become unbalanced: バランスが崩れる / バランスを保てなくなる
I've lost my Balance: バランスを崩した / 失った


均衡 is used for a balance between two or more things, espesially balance in abstract concepts such like power.
e.g.
チーム間で戦力が均衡している。
The powers are balanced among the teams.
 
Hmmm, is 体勢が崩れる strange for 'to lose (one's) balance'? That's the one that I always think of...
I've seen some other balance expressions that used other words that were neither バランス or 体勢, but I can't recall them right now.

バランスを取る・バランスが取れない are for 'to keep (one's) balance' / 'to be unable to keep one's balance', just to round out the set of balance expressions.
 
体勢が崩れる / 体勢を崩す works perfectly fine, of course. :)
 
Cool so most the terms end with the verb 崩す. Great I can also keep my ears open for term when I'm watching ultimate 番付! I take it that show would use バランスを崩す?
 
I don't know "ultimate 番付" but if it refers to 筋肉番付 or the similar, it would be so.
 
no word for balance?

Hi, this is my first time posting on this forum.

I have a question about the katakana "translation" of this word.

Is the idea of balance foreign to the Japanese language. or is the idea so ingrained in the language/culture itself, that there was never a need to describe it?

体勢 means posture, doesn't it? From a western view, posture is more like the outward appearance and presentation of what society deems to be proper balance rather than the idea of internal balance itself, either from a physical, or metaphysical standpoint.

Any thoughts or insights on this would be really helpful.. I know this might be a departure from the norm in a forum for learning to speak Japanese, but I always thought learning to speak a language should always mean adjusting your mindset to the culture of the language instead of just raw translation.

edit: please note I only have very rudimentary Japanese skills, so I apologize if there actually is an existing word that already fits what OP is asking for. I only looked on google translate at first, but upon further searching I found that 皿秤 could be used to describe balance, and 権衡 like Toritoribe mentioned in his post. Are these words all just comparisons between 2 different things?

What about 釣合, 調和, or 均衡 and 平衡 which I assume are variations on 権衡?
平衡 and 衡平 look promising, but are these only used for bank balances?

Thanks in advance.
 
maybe 対称, or mathematical symmetry, would be more apt? I have no idea how to use this in a sentence though.
 
Another suggestion to add to the pile: 安定 (maybe less for physical, more for mental/emotional balance?)
[MENTION=22184]allen[/MENTION]:
If you lost your 皿秤 , you should check the kitchen cupboards. This is why you shouldn't use Google Translate for anything but a laugh, especially between Japanese and English.

In most of these cases it's just that there are multiple translations depending on context, nuance, etc, and one happens to use katakana. Sometimes foreign-origin words (which not all katakana words are) become popular for whatever reason. Quite often they diverge from their source-language meaning in the process. It doesn't mean that there previously was no word for that concept, or no way to describe it, or reflect really anything much about the culture.

"Balance" came into English from French, but that doesn't mean that before the Norman invasion my distant ancestors didn't have some way of describing the associated concept(s). It would just have been different (or, since that's another French word, ungelic).

If you want to adapt your mindset to a new language, first throw away the idea that there are any simple "X means Y" relationships between words in different languages.

体勢 doesn't mean exactly "posture". It doesn't come with the same cultural baggage as might accompany it in English (for example, "posturing" in Japanese would use an unrelated word). When "posture" is listed in the dictionary for 体勢, it means the meaning of 体勢 overlaps with the meaning(s)/nuance(s) of the English word posture to a sufficient extent that it is sometimes useful as a translation, given the appropriate context. A good dictionary will have sufficient explanations/examples that you can understand what the appropriate context is.

I'm not sure what you're seeking. If it's a word that you can always use in place of the English "balance", there is no such beast. Not even バランス. Some you've listed are already described upthread. 対称 is close to "symmetry".
 
nekojita, thanks for your clarification. I do understand the need to abandon ideas about X to Y translation.

Japanese is so unique in the fact that they actually invented a new lettering system specifically to represent foreign words and ideas. You won't find that in Chinese or Korean. Sometimes it feels like those words and concepts exist in a parallel hybrid universe of thought that is not quite Japanese, and not quite the language of origin from which it was adopted.

安定 sounds like exactly the thing I was looking for, and yes, I was talking more about non-physical definitions of 'balance'.

As to the origins of the English word "balance", I had thought it came from the Latin bilancia as pertaining to scales. In that regard I guess even English definitions of balance still originated from comparing two or more things. Maybe people from before the 9th century never bothered themselves much about internal conflict because that abstract thought just hadn't been invented yet. The earliest literary example I can think of is Macbeth.

Thanks again.
 
Japanese didn't invent katakana to represent foreign words. This is a relatively recent phenomenon. Katakana is used as a form of 表音文字 when using Kanji or 万葉仮名 for the task was a overkill and made the text unnecessarily hard to read. They then simplified and only used a part of Kanji to represent Japanese sounds.
 
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