kokoro ni yoyuu ga nai
Dougal Phillips
I'm translating a man's account of why they got divorced for
immigration purposes. He talks about how his wife was probably more
stressed than he thought, they started arguing and as a result:
結果、二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた。
kekka, futari tomo kokoro ni yoyuu ga nakunatte ita.
Literally I could go for something like "As a result, we both lost room
in our hearts for the other." but is this perhaps more simply a matter
of falling out of love?
FWIW, a Japanese friend of mine gave the following explanation of
心に余裕がなくなる
「相手を思いやる気持ちがなくなる、愛想がなくなる」。
(aite o omoiyaru kimochi ga nakunaru, aisoo ga nakunaru).
I'd be interested to hear what you thought.
Cheers,
Dougal
Hitoshi Yanagida
Hitoshi Yanagida
Jim Lockhart
> He talks about how his wife was probably more
> stressed than he thought, they started arguing and as a result:
> 結果、二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた。
> kekka, futari tomo kokoro ni yoyuu ga nakunatte ita.
>
> Literally I could go for something like "As a result, we both lost room
> in our hearts for the other." but is this perhaps more simply a matter
> of falling out of love?
I think "we both lost room in our hearts for the other" would convey I
different message than 二人とも心に余裕が無くなっ[た], which essentially
means that they were both too stressed out/uptight/wound up in their own
problems to be able to listen to/be considerate of the other or the
other's problem/perspective.
HTH,
--Jim Lockhart
Christopher Girsch
At 12:12 06/12/29, you wrote:
>On Thu, 28 Dec 2006 18:56:48 -0800
>"Dougal Phillips" <howtolear...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> He talks about how his wife was probably more
>>stressed than he thought, they started arguing and as a result:
>>結果、二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた。
>
>I think "we both lost room in our hearts for the other" would convey I
>different message than 二人とも心に余裕が無くなっ[た], which essentially
>means that they were both too stressed out/uptight/wound up in their own
>problems to be able to listen to/be considerate of the other or the
>other's problem/perspective.
Dougal,
I second what Jim has written above.
Essentially: 'we both seem to have drifted apart and
are now more consumed by our own issues than to have time
for each other as a married couple.'
Chris Girsch
Marc Adler
> FWIW, a Japanese friend of mine gave the following explanation of
> 心に余裕がなくなる
> 「相手を思いやる気持ちがなくなる、愛想がなくなる」。
余裕がある・ない is a difficult concept to translate into English when
referring to a person's psychological state. About as literally as you
can get, it's your psychological/emotional capacity to endure adverse
circumstances. That capacity = your 余裕. Obviously, you can't translate
余裕がなくなった as "I'm running low on my psychological capacity to
endure adverse circumstances," so you have to tailor the translation to
the specific context. Most of the time "stressed out" is close enough,
but if your original says something like ストレスがたまって心の余裕がな
くなった, then you might just ignore the 余裕 part.
> (aite o omoiyaru kimochi ga nakunaru, aisoo ga nakunaru).
-> aiso
By the way, out of curiosity, was it the divorce that was for
immigration purposes, or the description?
--
Marc Adler
ma...@adlerpacific.com
Gauzak ez dira multzutu eta berretu
behar, mengoarik eta premiarik gabe.
Malcolm James
> I'm translating a man's account of why they got divorced for
> immigration purposes.
Suppose it makes a change from getting married for immigration purposes. <g>
> ... He talks about how his wife was probably more
> stressed than he thought, they started arguing and as a result:
> 結果、二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた。
> kekka, futari tomo kokoro ni yoyuu ga nakunatte ita.
How about:
... just couldn't take any more.
Malcolm
________________________________________________
Malcolm James
Fontaine Limited, Kyoto
Japanese to English translation by native speakers
web: http://www.translation.co.jp
Kirill Sereda
k
Eric Tschetter
But, that has seemingly aggressive connotations (there was something that
the other person did that was not tolerable). The original sentence
> > 結果、二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた。
is more of an 当たり障りの無い表現. Mixing this sentence with the context
given would probably turn it into something more like "We were both caught
up in our own problems too much to be able to properly take care of the
other's needs." Of course, this rendition puts a lot of burden on what
exactly the word "needs" means. If you want to cover all the bases, write
down exactly what Jim said.
--Eric Tschetter
er...@nii.ac.jp
Kirill Sereda
が無くなっていた?
k
-----Original Message-----
From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Eric Tschetter
> person, how come 余裕
> が無くなっていた?
I'm not saying that there was nothing intolerable done by the other person.
I'm just saying that the statement 二人とも心に余裕が無くなった is taking
the emphasis off of the actions other either party and putting in on their
mental state of being. I just wanted to make the point that, while "they
couldn't tolerate each other anymore" is ultimately saying the same thing,
it is introducing emphasis and connotations that are not in the Japanese.
I.e., "They couldn't tolerate each other anymore" is what friends would say
when talking about why the two divorced, but I think it comes across as too
accusative for use in an official document, that's all.
--Eric Tschetter
er...@nii.ac.jp
Kirill Sereda
term is much less emotional.
k
-----Original Message-----
From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Of Eric Tschetter
Sent: 2006年12月28日 23:05
To: hon...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: kokoro ni yoyuu ga nai
Jim Lockhart
> > And if there was nothing intolerable done by the other
> > person, how come 余裕
> > が無くなっていた?
>
> I'm not saying that there was nothing intolerable done by the other person.
> I'm just saying that the statement 二人とも心に余裕が無くなった is taking
> the emphasis off of the actions other either party and putting in on their
> mental state of being. I just wanted to make the point that, while "they
> couldn't tolerate each other anymore" is ultimately saying the same thing,
> it is introducing emphasis and connotations that are not in the Japanese.
Right. "They couldn't tolerate one another any more" implies that each
is faulting something the other does or has done, whereas the Japanese
is saying that neither had the psychological/emotional energy to engage
the other. They were probably too consumed by their own issues to be
able to tend to the needs of the other.
> I.e., "They couldn't tolerate each other anymore" is what friends would say
> when talking about why the two divorced, but I think it comes across as too
> accusative for use in an official document, that's all.
Maybe, but the friends wouldn't say that on the basis of the couple's
having said the ran out of 心の余裕. It's not so much the (emotional)
capacity to tolerate as it is the emotional stamina to cope, that 心の余
裕 indicates.
Even though I agree pretty much with his analysis of its meaning, I
disagree with Marc Adler that this expression is difficult to render into
English. I think it's a great example, though, for the pitfalls of
literal translation or attempts to break idiom down into parts for
translation.
HTH,
--Jim Lockhart
Dougal Phillips
Marc Adler wrote:
> By the way, out of curiosity, was it the divorce that was for
> immigration purposes, or the description?
The description of the divorce. Two divorcees got married. One was
already living in Australia and they were trying to get a visa for the
other. They needed an account of how they came to get together,
including their past marriages. Sorry for the ambiguity and thanks for
your analysis of yoyuu as capacity.
D
Dougal Phillips
I'm a fan of the 'I couldn't take it anymore' and the 'we got wound up
in our own problems' ideas.
I'm an Australian English speaker by the way. Is the phrase 'I
couldn't hack it any more' used in other dialects of English?
Generally I go through two processes when I translate. I do a fairly
literal translation to make sure I get everything in the Japanese into
the English, then I edit it as an English document (paying special
attention to idioms, collocations and the like) to make it sound
natural. 'We both lost room in our hearts for the other' came out of
the first stage.
As I was trying to come up with something more natural it occured to me
that that this literal translation might still convey the idea that not
enough 'room in one's heart' (which I was conceptualising as
psychological space, in a similar vein to Marc's idea of capacity)
would potentially lead to a lack of consideration of the other, but my
monolingual, native English speaking partner told me that, to him, the
phrase made it sound like they had fallen out of love, which I imagine
was the different message that Jim said it conveyed.
Anyway, after a hectic few months of translating till my hands drop
off, I think it's time to include a yoyuu or two in my New Year's
resolutions.
Cheers,
Dougal
Eric Tschetter
> the emphasis off of the actions other either party and
> putting in on their mental state of being.
Talk about taking the emphasis off of actions and putting it on something
else. Of course, I had intended the above to read "... is taking the
emphasis off of the actions _of_ either party and putting _it_ on their
mental state of being."
As an intriguing aside, even when I reread the incorrect sentence above, my
mind doesn't notice the errors. It just glosses over them because it knows
what I intended to say. I didn't notice them until I saw them quoted in
other emails...
Just goes to show you that you cannot always edit your own material.
--Eric Tschetter
er...@nii.ac.jp
Doreen Simmons
>As an intriguing aside, even when I reread the incorrect sentence above, my
>mind doesn't notice the errors. It just glosses over them because it knows
>what I intended to say. I didn't notice them until I saw them quoted in
>other emails...
>
>Just goes to show you that you cannot always edit your own material.
Eric -- and others --
You can _never_ edit your own material. And you've just pointed out why.
Doreen despairing (almost) at a recent rash of bad English coming out of
the Gaimusho, obviously from people who think, "It looks perfectly all
right to me, so why waste time getting a native check?"
Doreen Simmons
<jz8d...@asahi-net.or.jp>
William Sakovich
There are native checks, and then there are native checks.
A few months ago, there were complaints from a customer about a translation
I did, and the agency asked me to look at them.
They all stemmed from changes made by a native speaker at the agency (who
couldn't read Japanese). I know it was a native speaker because I wound up
talking to her.
Some of her corrections were so bad they were incomprehensible sentences in
English. But--she had a college degree!
And at a different agency recently, I wound up having to explain to their
native checker the rules for using a semicolon. He said, "Oh, they have
rules for that? I just thought it was a style thing."
It actually may be a Brit/Yank thing; most of the semicolon use I'd consider
incorrect comes from the British English world, and that's where he was
from.
- BS
Mark Spahn
native checker the rules for using a semicolon. He said, "Oh, they have
rules for that? I just thought it was a style thing."
It actually may be a Brit/Yank thing; most of the semicolon use I'd consider
incorrect comes from the British English world, and that's where he was from.
William Sakovich
[[Do you happen to remember the specific semicolon usage that was at issue?
If there is a BrE/AmE difference in usage, I'm curious about what it would be.]]
It was the use of a semicolon when a colon should be used. It was something like this – “Three colors were used: red, yellow, and green.”
He used a semicolon instead of a colon.
I don’t think there are specific differences in usage rules, it’s just that when I see blatant errors in usage, it’s usually someone writing in or trained in British English.
The last time I saw one of these (and it was in a serious magazine, as I recall) a semicolon was used to separate the items of a series. An American would have simply used commas. I was surprised it got by the editor.
- BS
Jim Lockhart
> It was the use of a semicolon when a colon should be used. It was something
> like this - "Three colors were used: red, yellow, and green."
>
> He used a semicolon instead of a colon.
>
>
> I don't think there are specific differences in usage rules, it's just that
> when I see blatant errors in usage, it's usually someone writing in or
> trained in British English.
I agree: It's just an error. I've seen a lot of people, writers of BrE,
OzE, and AmE, make the mistake--and some of them were writers who were
otherwise pretty good with both style and mechanics; others were ones
who were very good with style, but just not so hot with mechanics.
That said, some native checkers can be harder to deal with the
non-native window sitters. Many people--employers as well as some
checkers themselves, don't seem to realize that to be good at these
things, a person needs to take an active interest in the subject (i.e.,
read style manuals and be willing to consult them frequently as well)
and be an attentive reader--regardless of educational background. By
that I mean that I've seen a few plumbers and lawyers who could write
and punctuate better than many journalism and English literature grads.
Length of time in the business doesn't always mean anything either. I
recently had to deal with a customer who got upset when an in-house
checker told her that a translation of mine was full of incomprehensible
sentences and sprinkled with "literal translations," and that he
wondered whether the translation had even been seen by a native speaker.
I asked to see his "corrected" version. I will admit that it was more
readable in two or three spots (as just about anything that has been
edited one more time will be), but for the most part he had only changed
colloquial expressions to more formal ones (the translation was of a
transcription of a talk). Others were changes from AmE to more BrE, and
in a few others he had changed technical terms (e.g., _purchasing
behavior_ to _buying patterns_). In one place, he swapped the subject
of the sentence (which I think was a translation mistake). But what
bugged me most was that, for all his accusations of sloppiness on my
part, his version was full of editing artifacts and completely ignored
to relationship between the speaker (author) and the audience
(readership).
I've been in this business for 22 years; he, for 16. Once you get past about
10 or 12 years, it shouldn't make much difference anymore....
Fwiw,
--Jim Lockhart
Karen Sandness
question is a wide-ranging reader of good prose and whether he or she
ever received instruction from the kind of old-fashioned writing
instructor who forces one to pay attention to punctuation, agreement
between nouns and verbs, overall cohesion of sentences and paragraphs,
and rhetorical devices.
Any NES can tell whether the definite and indefinite articles in a
passage are correct, but not everyone can catch common errors in usage
such as dangling participles, "would of" for "would have," or, my least
favorite, misuse of "lie" and "lay."
But you can't expect a Japanese person to evaluate a NES according to
those criteria, especially when said Japanese person has to be told
that the "reference" document that the client provided is nearly
useless because it was machine translated.
Editorially yours,
Karen Sandness
Marceline Therrien
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 5:33 AM
To: hon...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: Native checks: (was RE: kokoro ni yoyuu ga nai)
[[Do you happen to remember the specific semicolon usage that was at issue?
If there is a BrE/AmE difference in usage, I'm curious about what it would
be.]]
It was the use of a semicolon when a colon should be used. It was something
like this - “Three colors were used: red, yellow, and green.”
He used a semicolon instead of a colon.
I don’t think there are specific differences in usage rules, it’s just
that when I see blatant errors in usage, it’s usually someone writing in or
trained in British English.
The last time I saw one of these (and it was in a serious magazine, as I
recall) a semicolon was used to separate the items of a series. An American
would have simply used commas. I was surprised it got by the editor.
- BS
Semicolons can be used to separate items in a series when the items
themselves contain punctuation.
http://www.uhv.edu/ac/grammar/semicolon.asp
http://www.writingcenter.emory.edu/colonsemi.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semicolon
Marceline Therrien
J2E Business Translations
Oakland, California, USA
Alan Siegrist
> the Japanese
> is saying that neither had the psychological/emotional energy to engage
> the other. They were probably too consumed by their own issues to be
> able to tend to the needs of the other.
What Jim has to say here seems to ring true.
I was just now asking my Japanese wife what was bothering her, and she
replied with something along the lines of あなたは人のことを話す心に余裕がな
い。
It might be quite true that I could be consumed with my own issues (and
there have certainly been some) to be sufficiently available emotionally to
my wife.
Considering the original context of this query, I think that I need to get
some of this mystical 心の余裕, despite not being completely sure what it
is.
Regards,
Alan Siegrist
Orinda, CA, USA
<AlanFS...@comcast.net>
Nora Stevens Heath
>> It was the use of a semicolon when a colon should be used. It was
>> something like this - 典hree colors were used: red, yellow, and
>> green. He used a semicolon instead of a colon.
> Semicolons can be used to separate items in a series when the items
> themselves contain punctuation.
Which is not the case here, but rather would be in a sentence such as
"Three colors were used: red, to punch it up a little; yellow, the same
shade as the sun; and green, his favorite color." It's used to
*separate* items in a series, not to *introduce* them.
Nora
--
Nora Stevens Heath <no...@fumizuki.com>
J-E translations: http://www.fumizuki.com/
Warren Smith
(self-absorbed) or "completely withdrawn"?
W
Marceline Therrien
> From: hon...@googlegroups.com
> [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Nora Stevens Heath
> Sent: Friday, December 29, 2006 9:55 AM
> To: hon...@googlegroups.com
> Subject: Re: Native checks: (was RE: kokoro ni yoyuu ga nai)
>
>
>
> Marceline Therrien wrote:
>
> >> It was the use of a semicolon when a colon should be used. It was
> and green.
> >> He used a semicolon instead of a colon.
>
> > Semicolons can be used to separate items in a series when the items
> > themselves contain punctuation.
>
> Which is not the case here, but rather would be in a sentence
> such as "Three colors were used: red, to punch it up a
> little; yellow, the same shade as the sun; and green, his
> favorite color." It's used to
> *separate* items in a series, not to *introduce* them.
Nora,
You seemed to have missed the fact that I was responding to Bill's comment
as follows:
"The last time I saw one of these (and it was in a serious magazine, as I
recall) _________________a semicolon was used to separate the items of a
series________________[emphasis added by MT]. An American would have simply
used commas. I was surprised it got by the editor."
Perhaps you could exercise more care in your comment chopping in the future.
James Sparks
> I was just now asking my Japanese wife what was bothering her, and she
> replied with something along the lines of あなたは人のことを話す心に余裕
> がない。
This is getting off topic, but is that really what she said? I'm
having trouble parsing that. I could see:
あなたは人のことを話す余裕がない
or something like that, but I don't see how your version works
grammatically. Naturally, if that's what she said, then the problem is
likely on my end, but I'd like to know which it is. Or, is her
statement an ellipsis of some sort? (Like, あなたは人のことを話すって、
まったく心に余裕がない.)
James Sparks
Nora Stevens Heath
> You seemed to have missed the fact that I was responding to Bill's comment
> as follows:
::snip::
> Perhaps you could exercise more care in your comment chopping in the future.
You're right--I did miss that; in your replies, it's difficult to tell
where the text to which you're responding ends and your reply begins
since you didn't use leading >s, for whatever reason. Looks like we
could both be a bit more scrupulous in our replies.
Alan Siegrist
> > I was just now asking my Japanese wife what was bothering her, and she
> > replied with something along the lines of あなたは人のことを話す心に余裕
> > がない。
>
> This is getting off topic, but is that really what she said? I'm
> having trouble parsing that. I could see:
> あなたは人のことを話す余裕がない
> or something like that, but I don't see how your version works
> grammatically.
Well, we were having a somewhat emotionally charged conversation, so it
certainly could be that my recollection of her exact words is a bit fuzzy. I
am certain about the 心 and 余裕 and ない parts, though, since I was paying
attention to this Honyaku thread.
But she may have actually said something more like
あなたは人のことを聞く心の余裕がない。
I could ask her again what she said exactly, but that might be slightly
awkward...
Regard,
Mika Jz
> am certain about the 心 and 余裕 and ない parts, though,
> since I was paying
> attention to this Honyaku thread.
心に余裕がないとき というのは、
周りには見えても
本人は気づかない、気づけない
(気づくことが できない）ことが よくあります。
心の取り戻し方は、人それぞれなのかな。
「心に余裕がないじゃないか」と 面と向かって
言ってくれる人は 大切なのに、
メーリングリストなどの 目先のものに
ついつい気を取られて 話も聞かず
うわの空になってしまうこと、よくあります．．．。
清水美香 Mika Shimizu Jarmusz
＠talking about the phrase, I think...
Richard Thieme
Regards,
Richard Thieme *Been there, done that (the fry pan over the head was better
than the alternative which would probably have been a demand for divorce).
Shuichi Yamakawa
original poster a few days ago, I thought the
case was closed. As always, I second Jim.
As many people already said,
*kokoro no yoyuu ga nai* simply means that a person is
too busy with his/her own problems in their mind to pay
attention to other people's concerns. Think of a PC
getting depleted of its CPU resources.
This is a bit different from:
1. negligence in caring about others, or
2. escape from the outside world.
FWIW, getting off topic,
Alan Siegrist wrote cordially:
> I was just now asking my Japanese wife what was bothering her, and she
> replied with something along the lines of あなたは人のことを話す心に余裕
> がない。
Then James Sparks wrote mindfully:
> This is getting off topic, but is that really what she said? I'm
>having trouble parsing that. I could see:
> あなたは人のことを話す余裕がない
> or something like that, but I don't see how your version works
>grammatically. Naturally, if that's what she said, then the problem is
>likely on my end, but I'd like to know which it is. Or, is her
>statement an ellipsis of some sort? (Like, あなたは人のことを話すって、
>まったく心に余裕がない.)
At gut level, I feel the following to be more grammatical.
あなたは人のことを話す[心の]余裕がない。
あなたは人のことを話す余裕が[心に]ない。
あなたは[心に]人のことを話す余裕がない。
By definition, a person who has lost *kokoro no yoyuu*
may speak less grammatically.
Shu
Adam
>
> James Sparks writes:
>
>> > I was just now asking my Japanese wife what was bothering her, and she
>> > replied with something along the lines of あなたは人のことを話す心
>> に余裕
>> > がない。
>>
>> This is getting off topic, but is that really what she said? I'm
>> having trouble parsing that. I could see:
>> あなたは人のことを話す余裕がない
>> or something like that, but I don't see how your version works
>> grammatically.
>
> Well, we were having a somewhat emotionally charged conversation, so it
> certainly could be that my recollection of her exact words is a bit
> fuzzy. I
> am certain about the 心 and 余裕 and ない parts, though, since I was
> paying
> attention to this Honyaku thread.
>
> But she may have actually said something more like
> あなたは人のことを聞く心の余裕がない。
I don't really see the problem with either one of these. 話す in the
first case and 聞く in the second both modify 余裕, not 心, which itself
*also* modifies 余裕. I agree it's a somewhat obtuse word order since
the noun and its modifier are separated by another noun phrase, but no
other interpretation makes sense...unless we're suggesting we have
multiple kinds of 余裕s in our 心s?! (Were I to say this to someone, I
might put it: あなたの心に人のことを聞く余裕がない, but I am not a
native speaker, and this might have a different ring to it.)
On the other hand, modifying 余裕 with 心 is entirely necessary (from
the speaker's point of view), since otherwise she could be talking about
something else. Absent another modifier, I would assume the speaker
meant 時間の余裕 or something similar, and the ever-nebulous 心 had
nothing to do with it.
Adam
Wolfgang Bechstein
the 二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた situation might be to say that they
became "emotionally unavailable" to each other. (It's an expression I
just came across in a newspaper column.)
Wolfgang Bechstein
bech...@netprisma.com
Warren Smith
-----Original Message-----
From: hon...@googlegroups.com [mailto:hon...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf
Dougal Phillips
Wolfgang Bechstein napisał(a):
> As a late footnote to this thread, another possibility for expressing
> the 二人とも心に余裕が無くなっていた situation might be to say that they
> became "emotionally unavailable" to each other. (It's an expression I
> just came across in a newspaper column.
Lovely!
D