some grammatical confusion (a translation question)
meredeth
across a sentance whose meaning eludes me. my question involves the
very first part of the following sentance, which is found in a section
describing an ancient war between the gods and the ancient dragon
lords.
doragon wo kami to shinjiru shisai tachi no densetsu de ha, doragon ha
saisho kara kami wo korosu tame ni umaretekita ikimono dearu to mo
tsutaeteimasu.
(sorry no kana/kanji, my work computer doesn't speak japanese (^_^) )
now, the second clause i get (it is told that the dragons were born in
order to kill the gods from the start), and i get most of the first
clause (in a/the legend told by the priests that believe...
something), but it's here that my understanding wanes. i'm a little
unclear on what exactly these priests believe. do they believe in both
dragons /and/ gods (although i thought that would use [wo] instead of
[to])? do they believe the gods did something to the dragons (if so,
shouldn't there be a verb there between [kami] and [to])? as i said,
my understanding wanes. explainations requested. (^_^)
thank you kindly in advance,
~meredeth.
Bart Mathias
meredeth <meredet...@gmail.com> wrote:
> [...]
>
> doragon wo kami to shinjiru shisai tachi no densetsu de ha, doragon ha
> saisho kara kami wo korosu tame ni umaretekita ikimono dearu to mo
> tsutaeteimasu.
> (sorry no kana/kanji, my work computer doesn't speak japanese (^_^) )
>
> now, the second clause i get (it is told that the dragons were born in
> order to kill the gods from the start), and i get most of the first
> clause (in a/the legend told by the priests that believe...
> something), but it's here that my understanding wanes. i'm a little
> unclear on what exactly these priests believe. do they believe in both
> dragons /and/ gods (although i thought that would use [wo] instead of
> [to])? do they believe the gods did something to the dragons (if so,
> shouldn't there be a verb there between [kami] and [to])? as i said,
> my understanding wanes. explainations requested. (^_^)
I don't see how "doragon wo kami to shinjiru" can mean anything other than "doragon-wo kami-de aru-to shinjiru."
That leads to an uncomfortable logical paradox: The priests are passing on the notion that dragons, gods, are here to kill gods. Some kind of shinjuu?
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>
muchan
I think the original author of the sentense didn't thought about that
odd logic.
In my reading, "kami to agameru" just implies "worship".
Or, in other logic, God who are to be killed by dragons is "the God
everybody worshops", and these priests worship dragons
instead of that God, believing the dragon is stronger being the that
God. in other word, if "God" means almighty being,
for them (the priests), the dragon is God (= almighty being), stronger
than the (for-them-false) God (that everybody worships)
So, my reading is simply:
According to the legends of priests who worship dragons...
muchan
meredeth
> So, my reading is simply:
>
> According to the legends of priests who worship dragons...
>
> muchan- Hide quoted text -
that's what i was kind of leaning towards, but i guess that lack of
'dearu' was tripping me up. (^_^) thanks everybody~
Bart Mathias
I don't know where muchan dug up the "agameru," but if it had been "kami-to agameru" then no "-de aru," more "-to (shite)" and "worship as gods."
That suggests a second possible interpretation to me that I didn't think of when I could only get "kami-de aru-to" (quote adverbial) out of it: "doragon-wo kami-to (shite) shinjiru shisai" (manner adverbial?) might be "priests who trust in dragons as gods." I don't really think so, though, without an explicit "shite."
--
Bart Mathias <mat...@hawaii.edu>
Shimpei Yamashita
> On Dec 23, 1:39 am, Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu> wrote:
>> On Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:24:53 -0800 (PST)
>> meredeth <meredethbeck...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > [...]
>>
>> > doragon wo kami to shinjiru shisai tachi no densetsu de ha, doragon ha
>> > saisho kara kami wo korosu tame ni umaretekita ikimono dearu to mo
>> > tsutaeteimasu.
>> > (sorry no kana/kanji, my work computer doesn't speak japanese (^_^) )
>>
>>
>> That leads to an uncomfortable logical paradox: The priests are passing on the notion that dragons, gods, are here to kill gods. Some kind of shinjuu?
The US Marines are "born to kill," but that doesn't imply they go
around killing all their comrades and then commit suicide. Same thing
with dragons, presumably. It looks like a pardox only because you
choose to dispense with semi-obvious assumptions.
>> Bart Mathias <math...@hawaii.edu>
>
> I think the original author of the sentense didn't thought about that
> odd logic.
> In my reading, "kami to agameru" just implies "worship".
> Or, in other logic, God who are to be killed by dragons is "the God
> everybody worshops", and these priests worship dragons
> instead of that God, believing the dragon is stronger being the that
> God. in other word, if "God" means almighty being,
> for them (the priests), the dragon is God (= almighty being), stronger
> than the (for-them-false) God (that everybody worships)
>
> So, my reading is simply:
>
> According to the legends of priests who worship dragons...
Grammatically, the original passage only implies that the priests
consider the dragons to be gods, not that they actually worship them.
As an example, the same construct can also be used like this:
Watashi ha muchan wo hannnin to shinjiru.
(I believe muchan to be the offender)
which in no way implies worship.
Having said that, The implication is indeed that these priests worship
the dragons rather than the normal god(s), but since you have to read
between the lines to get that in the original Japanese, you should
write the English translation in the same way, namely:
"Among those priests who consider the dragons to be gods, there is a
legend that the dragons were born from the start in order to kill
gods."
Shimpei.