The feeling that I want to stand up to something with a blade--From last night to such a feeling, many times my body .It will be disgraceful.
Yuuko put one hand into the fishbowl and grabbed the goldfish like a hateful thing.
He said, " Look at him.」
While I thought of it, I took off the gold pin that matched the collar of the clothes I wore in plain clothes, and poured the goldfish that I had drenched into the water
I was raised from. The water in the glass bowl swells like the lines of platinum are disturbed and weeping.
When I aim under the eyes like a sesame grain and poke the tip of the pin, the goldfish just at the wrist
The caudal fin was flapped a splash of fishy water hit Yuuko's wisteria-rat-colored obi. Of pin goldfish
When I put it in the back, Yuuko poked the tip of her index finger at the tip of the pin on the fingernails, rubies.
Thank you so much. The translation makes so much more sense and I could read this in less than 10 min. Translating the first page took me 5 hours. So if I had more time I'm might be able to do it, but reading three pages a day, is not yet possible. Like some others I had to look up almost everything and even than making sense of it all was really difficult. Seeing this translation does makes me being able to connect the sentences more. So thank you.
Page 7 sort of...Akiji went out to wash his face. Yuko is screaming while listening to the footsteps.
I stood vaguely on the porch. The hem of a single garment squeezed with purple crepe wraps the heel nicely and uses it
It's screaming and flowing.
The red in every corner of the garden under the light of the sky that I still can't peel off the thin things that I covered when I went to bed last night
White flowers are fascinatingly mesmerizing the eyelids.
From the edge of Yuko to the sole of the foot, the wind like silk that blows from the tent
Saturday
I gently touch it as if I sneak up.
Yuko saw the fishbowl at her feet. When I suddenly made a face that seemed to be exciting, I crouched down there and eyelid??
I will be very honest with you, being only at N5 level, this was so very very hard. Many kanji I feel I should know but don't, sentences structures I don't yet understand, words I feel I have never heard of. Somehow Murakami is easier. I tried to analyse see link:https://we.tl/t-yLeCcmPY4Z the first page (page 7) and then do the same with page 8 and 9. Then I tried to make a very rough translation, but it doesn't make sense. I will post them in a second comment.
Hi Bunsuke! I finally wasn´t able to start the project on time due to incoming PhD deadlines, but I´m hoping to finish reading and posting all my questions and thoughts by Friday (If, as it happened with Murakami, the thread is still open :) )
Going through the first two pages, what´s actually being extremely time-consuming for me is having to find the unknown kanji the "traditional" way. Is there any text-searchable version online? Maybe in Aozora Bunko or somewhere? I tried using the OCR program a fellow language learner provided for Murakami but it´s not working
Hi Daniel, no worries, just go through it at your own pace. I'm sorry to say that this hasn't been picked up by Aozora yet. But in the end, taking it slow and looking everything up is the best way to make progress, even if it's time consuming. I think OCR would only get you so far here due to the prewar usage of kanji.
The threads will stay open, so you can post whenever is convenient for you :)
thank you but no, no, if I take my time I always get it eventually but it takes a lot of time and effort. I don't think I can manage the 3 pages a day with work. I have the joker of asking my japanese signifcant other but I like to challenge myself to do it alone.
What takes time is looking up the old kanjis just to notice that they are just the kanjis for small words like そう、しかし、よう which you normally don't see a lot anymore.
You certainly aren't alone. I had the same in looking up the old kanjis like you mentioned and felt a bit silly for not knowing this. Once you know it, is easy, but it's hard to get there. Still I feel like I'm very much a beginner in comparison to some, although Bunsuke, taught us not to compare, somehow you do. But everybody start of as a beginner, don't they. Maybe next time Bunsuke a children's story (N5 level) though that might be too easy for some. To be honest I found Murakami easier than some of the children books a tried to read. We will get there in the end. Like you Bemme I also take my time. As mentioned before I needed 5 hours for the first page of this short story.
I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds this challenging, though seeing the translation Bunsuke posted those really help. I will study it in more detail later.
This is certainly a colorful writing style! Lots of unusual compound words and (these days) uncommon kanji usage (然う思う). Some words I went down some rabbit holes chasing down (eg ひきかずく, which I *think* is essentially an old form of 引っかぶる). I'm fascinated to see where this story goes! I also took the opportunity to see if 田村俊子 was related to the Japanese actor 田村正和 who sadly died this year - I always liked him because he was the star of the first Japanese TV program I used for language practice, 古畑 任三郎 (ふるはたにんざぶろう, a kind of Japanese Sherlock Holmes). But ... not at all; in fact 田村俊子 was a pen name!! So much for interesting literary connections ...
Wauw, I wish and hope I can one day give an answer like yours, being able to plunge into the unknown with Japanese literature. Some of the knowledge you have amazes me. Although I'm glad I'm not the only one who find this challenging. How long have you been studying Japanese Jonathan? if I may ask.
Well, that's very nice of you to say! Thank you. This is a challenging piece for anyone, I think - which is what makes it worthwhile. I suspect even Japanese natives would find the language more 'effort' - think say Henry James vs P.D. James. But learning from sophisticated sources is a good think (I think!), so the effort is worth it. As for me - well, it's been a long time since I started! But it's not been a continuous effort. I go through phases of reading Japanese novels, and even after all this time I still get a tremendous kick out of it. For me, at least, it is most definitely worth persevering! And I resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that I would never truly be 'finished' learning - but when you really think about it, that's also true in your native language; it's just a question of degree (of unknowns vs knowns)!
You're absolutely right. If you're at that level, it must be fun to be challenged and worthwhile. Go for it, good luck and have fun reading. I will keep reading all your posts as much as I can and keep following this project, because I think it's wonderful Bunsuke that you give us this opportunity. One day I will come back to these posts and hopefully also enjoy the challenge. For now it's a bit over the top for me.
This was way more difficult than what I expected. I know that some people enjoy looking up a lot of words, but I have to look up virtually everything in this one and that takes a lot of energy. With the first immersion reading I could just look up some words here and there... I'm sorry, I think I have to drop off this one...
Best of luck to the ones that will try to read it!!
It's been so much fun so far! This i pretty much the first time since uni, over a decade ago, that I've read a pre-reform text - I could remember the iteration marks, but had to go on a mini-research spiral to find out their formal names, since I could not for the life of me remember that. It's a pretty nice break from my usual fare of news articles and technical stuff - the language is pretty poetic, so it kinda seems like it's more important to feel what's being described rather than looking up every nuance of the word in a dictionary to try to understand it, if that makes sense?
What a great start! Some vivid writing here. It was also my first time to see some of those vertical repetition marks... always learning something! This is my first attempt in the immersion reading projects here, and my training method so far (to make sure I get it all) is to transcribe the text as I read it. This forces me to look up kanji which I have a feeling about but can't remember the exact spelling of, and seems to helps with overall comprehension. Reading is still definitely a weak point for me... Oh, and 3 pages per day of a book this size seems to be a perfect length -- not too short and not too long.
Hi brmc, welcome to the project! Good to know you like this pace...it's always difficult to guess what number of pages per day people are willing to put up with :) And writing sentences out is great. It takes longer that way, but it is how you spend the most time with the text. Keep up the good work!
Well, this is definitely harder than Murakami Haruki, but... Challenge accepted ! I could ask someone to basically translate the whole thing at this point, but i'll keep it focused in single-topic comments...
Question #1 : what are these punctuation signs in these pictures ?
Generally, the "giant く" means reduplicate the previous two syllabes, e.g., if you have ちり with the symbol, it means "read ちりちり". If there's a rendaku symbol next to it, you add it to the reduplicated part. In this particular example tho, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to reduplicate the previous *three* syllabes, making the word 一とつ一とつ, because it doesn't make much sense otherwise.
The second symbol is similar, but means "repeat the syllabe directly before it"; same rules apply for rendaku (making the phrase in your example たたかれながら.
i'm not very good at Japanese, so for me the text is not that easy :D especially the words about colours and clothes, and I would appreciate if somebody explained to me what 'あられごもん' means T_T the grammar doesn't seem too difficult so far and that's a relief. as for the plot, the beginning is intriguing, i wonder what's next! i feel sorry for the fish tho, poor thing :(
Yeah, that one required some research! But I'm pretty sure it's a name for pattern type - tiny dots surrounded by even tinier ones. Image search for あられこもん should give you some examples.
Hi Bunsuke! Tough schedules along the way, but I´m almost halfway through. I just wanted for the moment to congratulate everyone for the simple fact of tackling this reading, because it really is a challenge. I checked the Fowler translation myself at a certain point to confirm I was not misreading.
I have noticed so far, alongside the vividness of the descriptions and the extensive poetic use of the language that other fellow readers have pointed out, that the cadence and rhythm of the sentence is almost like a brush that is little by little painting a picture. I can´t adequately express it myself, but it seems as if the story was being constructed not horizontally but vertically.
Just some (almost) philosophical thoughts here, nothing to take seriously :)
p 8 and 9 sort of, I'm very very sorry but I think I will also give it a pass.
I named the goldfish with one finger. The morning sky is reflected in the bowl, and the white light is the place
The surface of the water is flickering as if silver leaf was dropped. the scarlet deer's child broke out of the water
I ran.
Yuuko picks one of the purple Sinelaria flowers that were arranged beside the pot and spills it into the water
It was when a bright red goldfish, who had not yet given his name, touched a small pot mouth on a piece of flower, he was immediately surprised
The large caudal fin is shaken to sink towards the bottom. The silver leaf shakes here and there it was.
Yuuko put her left arm on her knee, put her right arm on it, and held her forehead with her palm.
The wrists seem to be lost so as not to bear the weight of the head. There is a finger at the corner of the eye
"I'm not going to be able to do that," he said.
―- A woman is crying while biting the hem of a scarlet crepe mosquito net. A man is blown by the wind on his shoulder in Iyo
He looked at the lights of the town from the window. The man laughed and then ... 、
"It can't be helped.」
Hi
oh, my god.
Yosudare
oh, my god.
I said.
The smell of fishy goldfish was blurred.
Yuuko inhaled the smell quietly without knowing what it was. Always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always, always
It's not like that.
"The smell of a man.」
Suddenly, Yuuko was horrified and then, when you touch it from your fingertips to your toes, something is transmitted
I shivered.
"No.no, no, no, no, no.no, no, no, no, no.」
The feeling that I want to stand up to something with a blade--From last night to such a feeling, many times my body .It will be disgraceful.
Yuuko put one hand into the fishbowl and grabbed the goldfish like a hateful thing.
He said, " Look at him.」
While I thought of it, I took off the gold pin that matched the collar of the clothes I wore in plain clothes, and poured the goldfish that I had drenched into the water
I was raised from. The water in the glass bowl swells like the lines of platinum are disturbed and weeping.
When I aim under the eyes like a sesame grain and poke the tip of the pin, the goldfish just at the wrist
The caudal fin was flapped a splash of fishy water hit Yuuko's wisteria-rat-colored obi. Of pin goldfish
When I put it in the back, Yuuko poked the tip of her index finger at the tip of the pin on the fingernails, rubies.
It's not like that one thing.
Hi Koppa I just posted a translation, hope this helps. This allows you to compare your notes against the English interpretation.
Thank you so much. The translation makes so much more sense and I could read this in less than 10 min. Translating the first page took me 5 hours. So if I had more time I'm might be able to do it, but reading three pages a day, is not yet possible. Like some others I had to look up almost everything and even than making sense of it all was really difficult. Seeing this translation does makes me being able to connect the sentences more. So thank you.
Great! I'm so glad this helped. Reading the translation and the original side by side will also help you learn a lot I think :)
Page 7 sort of...Akiji went out to wash his face. Yuko is screaming while listening to the footsteps.
I stood vaguely on the porch. The hem of a single garment squeezed with purple crepe wraps the heel nicely and uses it
It's screaming and flowing.
The red in every corner of the garden under the light of the sky that I still can't peel off the thin things that I covered when I went to bed last night
White flowers are fascinatingly mesmerizing the eyelids.
From the edge of Yuko to the sole of the foot, the wind like silk that blows from the tent
Saturday
I gently touch it as if I sneak up.
Yuko saw the fishbowl at her feet. When I suddenly made a face that seemed to be exciting, I crouched down there and eyelid??
I will be very honest with you, being only at N5 level, this was so very very hard. Many kanji I feel I should know but don't, sentences structures I don't yet understand, words I feel I have never heard of. Somehow Murakami is easier. I tried to analyse see link:https://we.tl/t-yLeCcmPY4Z the first page (page 7) and then do the same with page 8 and 9. Then I tried to make a very rough translation, but it doesn't make sense. I will post them in a second comment.
Hi Bunsuke! I finally wasn´t able to start the project on time due to incoming PhD deadlines, but I´m hoping to finish reading and posting all my questions and thoughts by Friday (If, as it happened with Murakami, the thread is still open :) )
Going through the first two pages, what´s actually being extremely time-consuming for me is having to find the unknown kanji the "traditional" way. Is there any text-searchable version online? Maybe in Aozora Bunko or somewhere? I tried using the OCR program a fellow language learner provided for Murakami but it´s not working
Thanks again for setting all this up!
Hi Daniel, no worries, just go through it at your own pace. I'm sorry to say that this hasn't been picked up by Aozora yet. But in the end, taking it slow and looking everything up is the best way to make progress, even if it's time consuming. I think OCR would only get you so far here due to the prewar usage of kanji.
The threads will stay open, so you can post whenever is convenient for you :)
I see. Then I´ll get on with it the traditional way, trying to enjoy the actual searching process! I´ll post as soon as I can :)
This is really is a challenge
Hi Bemme, I believe you're not alone. This is a tough text! Please let me know which parts you find difficult so I can help out.
thank you but no, no, if I take my time I always get it eventually but it takes a lot of time and effort. I don't think I can manage the 3 pages a day with work. I have the joker of asking my japanese signifcant other but I like to challenge myself to do it alone.
What takes time is looking up the old kanjis just to notice that they are just the kanjis for small words like そう、しかし、よう which you normally don't see a lot anymore.
You certainly aren't alone. I had the same in looking up the old kanjis like you mentioned and felt a bit silly for not knowing this. Once you know it, is easy, but it's hard to get there. Still I feel like I'm very much a beginner in comparison to some, although Bunsuke, taught us not to compare, somehow you do. But everybody start of as a beginner, don't they. Maybe next time Bunsuke a children's story (N5 level) though that might be too easy for some. To be honest I found Murakami easier than some of the children books a tried to read. We will get there in the end. Like you Bemme I also take my time. As mentioned before I needed 5 hours for the first page of this short story.
yeah i completely get it. Hopefully you can stlll enjoy the translation I posted this morning. Hope you join in again next time!
I eventually got through Murakami (the pace I could manage was only one page a day) but this one is too hard…
I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds this challenging, though seeing the translation Bunsuke posted those really help. I will study it in more detail later.
Hi Renee! You can do it!!! Let me know if there is something I can do to help you get through this text.
This is certainly a colorful writing style! Lots of unusual compound words and (these days) uncommon kanji usage (然う思う). Some words I went down some rabbit holes chasing down (eg ひきかずく, which I *think* is essentially an old form of 引っかぶる). I'm fascinated to see where this story goes! I also took the opportunity to see if 田村俊子 was related to the Japanese actor 田村正和 who sadly died this year - I always liked him because he was the star of the first Japanese TV program I used for language practice, 古畑 任三郎 (ふるはたにんざぶろう, a kind of Japanese Sherlock Holmes). But ... not at all; in fact 田村俊子 was a pen name!! So much for interesting literary connections ...
Wauw, I wish and hope I can one day give an answer like yours, being able to plunge into the unknown with Japanese literature. Some of the knowledge you have amazes me. Although I'm glad I'm not the only one who find this challenging. How long have you been studying Japanese Jonathan? if I may ask.
Well, that's very nice of you to say! Thank you. This is a challenging piece for anyone, I think - which is what makes it worthwhile. I suspect even Japanese natives would find the language more 'effort' - think say Henry James vs P.D. James. But learning from sophisticated sources is a good think (I think!), so the effort is worth it. As for me - well, it's been a long time since I started! But it's not been a continuous effort. I go through phases of reading Japanese novels, and even after all this time I still get a tremendous kick out of it. For me, at least, it is most definitely worth persevering! And I resigned myself a long time ago to the fact that I would never truly be 'finished' learning - but when you really think about it, that's also true in your native language; it's just a question of degree (of unknowns vs knowns)!
You're absolutely right. If you're at that level, it must be fun to be challenged and worthwhile. Go for it, good luck and have fun reading. I will keep reading all your posts as much as I can and keep following this project, because I think it's wonderful Bunsuke that you give us this opportunity. One day I will come back to these posts and hopefully also enjoy the challenge. For now it's a bit over the top for me.
Yeah I think a lot of people are finding this one a bit challenging!! Hope some will stick it out until the end though…
I am passing this one out too, but it would be helpful if someone could still post a translation eventually.
Hi Anne, I completely understand, this one is very tough. I'll pick a more accessible text time!
This was way more difficult than what I expected. I know that some people enjoy looking up a lot of words, but I have to look up virtually everything in this one and that takes a lot of energy. With the first immersion reading I could just look up some words here and there... I'm sorry, I think I have to drop off this one...
Best of luck to the ones that will try to read it!!
Understood! I'll try something else next time. Admittedly, this is a tough one…
It's been so much fun so far! This i pretty much the first time since uni, over a decade ago, that I've read a pre-reform text - I could remember the iteration marks, but had to go on a mini-research spiral to find out their formal names, since I could not for the life of me remember that. It's a pretty nice break from my usual fare of news articles and technical stuff - the language is pretty poetic, so it kinda seems like it's more important to feel what's being described rather than looking up every nuance of the word in a dictionary to try to understand it, if that makes sense?
That definitely makes sense! This demands a different kind of engagement. Really glad to see you're enjoying the story.
What a great start! Some vivid writing here. It was also my first time to see some of those vertical repetition marks... always learning something! This is my first attempt in the immersion reading projects here, and my training method so far (to make sure I get it all) is to transcribe the text as I read it. This forces me to look up kanji which I have a feeling about but can't remember the exact spelling of, and seems to helps with overall comprehension. Reading is still definitely a weak point for me... Oh, and 3 pages per day of a book this size seems to be a perfect length -- not too short and not too long.
Hi brmc, welcome to the project! Good to know you like this pace...it's always difficult to guess what number of pages per day people are willing to put up with :) And writing sentences out is great. It takes longer that way, but it is how you spend the most time with the text. Keep up the good work!
Question 3 :
What does "とちろ" mean in this contexte :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ozWr9liUxNOcLvUtoNd62mDcuu7Zfw3X/view?usp=sharing
is it the verb "とちる", if so, would someone be brave enough to provide meaning for the sentence ?
Good luck, everybody !
Great question, but I see it was already answered splendidly!
You didn't separate the words correctly - it's 銀箔を ・ あちこちと ・ ちろちろと (see my note about the "big ku" symbol) ・ 揺れた
Now it should make more sense!
Basia, you are on fire, all your replies are spot on! :)
Ah yes! Thank you so much, Basia. It's a very evocative sentence, I like it!
Question 2 :
Can anyone get me the reading and meaning for the "除" kanji in this context?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ABQOH9ov8ltp9ZnHDzQs5GviyjFBfV7v/view?usp=sharing
It's your comment has a different kanji than the one in the text - not 除 but 険 ( けわしい) - https://jisho.org/word/険しい
Of course ! I should have zoomed in more. 😅
Well, this is definitely harder than Murakami Haruki, but... Challenge accepted ! I could ask someone to basically translate the whole thing at this point, but i'll keep it focused in single-topic comments...
Question #1 : what are these punctuation signs in these pictures ?
The giant "く" - like thing here :
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12u8-2eGaPLfJOHa3tOAOQl8cG8tJicWV/view?usp=sharing
And that inverted "、" here between た and か : https://drive.google.com/file/d/1koTzFnKoUcGJtlZAQnVkSx7Ma2htXZhA/view?usp=sharing
To be continued...
Generally, the "giant く" means reduplicate the previous two syllabes, e.g., if you have ちり with the symbol, it means "read ちりちり". If there's a rendaku symbol next to it, you add it to the reduplicated part. In this particular example tho, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to reduplicate the previous *three* syllabes, making the word 一とつ一とつ, because it doesn't make much sense otherwise.
The second symbol is similar, but means "repeat the syllabe directly before it"; same rules apply for rendaku (making the phrase in your example たたかれながら.
Thank you very much!
Correct, the larger ones reduplicate as many syllabes as you want (within reason) and repeats the set of characters that precedes it.
Spot on again, Basia! たゝ is たた; and たゞ is ただ.
i'm not very good at Japanese, so for me the text is not that easy :D especially the words about colours and clothes, and I would appreciate if somebody explained to me what 'あられごもん' means T_T the grammar doesn't seem too difficult so far and that's a relief. as for the plot, the beginning is intriguing, i wonder what's next! i feel sorry for the fish tho, poor thing :(
Yeah, that one required some research! But I'm pretty sure it's a name for pattern type - tiny dots surrounded by even tinier ones. Image search for あられこもん should give you some examples.
correct! it refers to a type of design of a fabric pattern. In kanji you would write this as 霰小紋, which can be read both as あられこもん and あられごもん.
thank you for providing the kanji, i always love to include them in my notes too! ^^
thank you so much! image search did help me a lot while reading those pages!
Hi Bunsuke! Tough schedules along the way, but I´m almost halfway through. I just wanted for the moment to congratulate everyone for the simple fact of tackling this reading, because it really is a challenge. I checked the Fowler translation myself at a certain point to confirm I was not misreading.
I have noticed so far, alongside the vividness of the descriptions and the extensive poetic use of the language that other fellow readers have pointed out, that the cadence and rhythm of the sentence is almost like a brush that is little by little painting a picture. I can´t adequately express it myself, but it seems as if the story was being constructed not horizontally but vertically.
Just some (almost) philosophical thoughts here, nothing to take seriously :)