Long Sentences Giving You A Headache?
Everyone loves easy. A simple sentence to tell a simple point. Once you see the dreaded Japanese comma 、your head starts to spin. With each subsequent comma, your head spins that much faster until the period. Where does the sentence start and end? Who is saying what? What is the subject, object, and the point?
One Jalup user put it well:
I’m not sure how to get used to longer sentences/monologues/whatever you call them. The ones that could be like a paragraph, but it gets fit into what seems like a really long line? The kind where if you remembered the start point and the end point you wonder if you fell into a black hole or coma during the interval? I can’t think of an English equivalent. Maybe like something out of a David Foster Wallace book where he packed so much information into a single sentence you get thrown because it seemed like a normal if slightly verbose sentence and you wonder why your ears are suddenly bleeding.
You are going into a higher level dungeon than you should be.
And then this happens.
For an idea of these kinds of sentences, here’s a quick excerpt (ignore the heavy topic) from the Wall Street Journal Japan:
中国と東南アジア諸国連合(ASEAN)の外相会議に出席した中国の王毅外相は記者団に対し、現在行われている紛争解決のための協議を「妨げ」、中国と近隣の東南アジア諸国の「共通の利害を損なう」として、フィリピンの提案は受け入れないと述べた。
王外相は「中国は南シナ海についてあらゆる関係者から善意の提案に耳を傾ける用意がある」と述べる一方で、「提案は新たな問題を引き起こしたり、思惑に駆られたりしたものではなく、客観的で公正、建設的であるべきだ」と指摘した。
フィリピンはASEAN会議開幕を前に、「緊張を高める」可能性のある活動の一時停止、南シナ海での行動規範についての早急な結論、国際法に基づく調停を通じた紛争解決を求める3段階の行動計画を推進することを明らかにしていた。
Long Japanese sentences can be brutal
They make extensive uses of commas, and the order of all the parts is nothing like English. One sentence that is 3 lines long can feel like a giant puzzle. This happens until you reach a high level.
A simple solution
The best way to handle this is to increase sentence length slowly. Some material will have longer sentence length. Stick with 1 or maybe 2 lines max when you are low level. Going above that just adds a lot of frustration that you don’t need right now. If you see a long sentence, fight it another day.
Founder of Jalup. iOS Software Engineer. Former attorney, translator, and interpreter. Still watching 月曜から夜ふかし weekly since 2013.
I don’t get the joke? Did I miss something?
There is no joke. The message of this post is that when you are lower level, you are better off avoiding the struggle and fight with long sentences.
As a warmup, people can practice on light novel titles or this AKB48 song title.
I’d expect nothing less of AKB48.
Kyon constructs a lot of these as the narrator of The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi light novels, starting with the very first sentence of the first novel. Might be worth a look if you’re struggling with Japanese run-ons.
Are they at least less complex long sentences?
サチ!。・゚゚・(>д<)・゚゚・。
心の中で生きている!
My translation for the first sentence is:
China’s Foreign minister Wang Yi, who attended China and The Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) foreign minister meeting, told a group of reporters that, as the Philipines suggestion “hinders” the deliberations for dispute resolution presently being carried out, and is damaging to China and it’s various east asian neighbours common interests, it will not be accepted in he expressed.
It certainly could be better English but I believe this translation preserves much of the original sentence structure without becoming too awkward.
Well thank you for your translation!