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Japanese "Everything is as it seems." | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| XellKhaar Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5719 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 1 of 5 14 April 2009 at 1:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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I came across this sentence in a video game. "nani ka arisoude nani mo nai". Which apparently translates to "Everything is as it seems".
Wouldn't literally this be "something seems what also not"? Yes I know Japanese doesn't literally match up with English at all, but usually it matches more than this. I've been able to translate every other sentence in this game fine, this one just seems odd to me. I understand the individual words but together this just does not seem to make sense. Could someone explain how this works? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Yukamina Senior Member Canada Joined 6262 days ago 281 posts - 332 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean, French | Message 2 of 5 14 April 2009 at 5:32am | IP Logged | |||||
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To me it sounds like "it seems like something is there, (but) nothing is there". Hopefully someone who knows for sure can verify...
What is the context for the sentence? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| XellKhaar Diglot Newbie United States Joined 5719 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese | Message 3 of 5 14 April 2009 at 5:41am | IP Logged | |||||
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Looking at a well.
"ido desu. nani ka arisoude nani mo nai ido desu." "It's a well. Everything is as it seems.. it's a well." Or at least that's what the translation is in the English version. Edited by XellKhaar on 14 April 2009 at 5:42am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| ericspinelli Diglot Senior Member Japan Joined 5781 days ago 249 posts - 493 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: Korean, Italian | Message 4 of 5 14 April 2009 at 9:48am | IP Logged | |||||
Just as 何+か is a single idea, so is 何+も. In the case of 何も (and 誰も) the question word + も usually goes with a negative and means nothing (or nobody). Keep in mind that ない is literally "does not exist," even though it may sometimes translate more naturally as simply "not."
井戸です is "It's a well." 何かありそうで、何もない is a relative clause that, as a whole, modifies the second occurance of 井戸. 何かありそうだ expresses an impression, "It seems something is there" and 何もない says "nothing is there." So we have a well that gives an impression of something there, but there isn't actually anything there at all. If you're dealing with space constraints or the fact is not important enough to devote a lot of time to, it's not hard to imagine changing the meaning slightly to get an equally short English sentence. The English seems to loose the feeling of something unusual, but that's OK because it's just a feeling. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| KakikataEmpits Diglot Newbie Japan Joined 5700 days ago 3 posts - 3 votes Speaks: Japanese*, English | Message 5 of 5 15 April 2009 at 2:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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"nanika arisou de nanimo nai." is that "nanika arisou" but "nanimo nai"
Here, "nanika arisou" can be interpreted in several ways. "nanika aru" is "something is there" or "something happens". I think it can be translated rigorously as "There is something which deserve your attention" so, "nanika arisou" can be "There seem to be something which deserve your attention". Thus entire phrase is translated as "There seem to be something which deserve your attention, but actualy nothing worth attention is there" related example: "Kanojo niwa nanika arisoude nanimo nai" "She seems mysterious, but she is actualyu a ordinary person" 1 person has voted this message useful |
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