748
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
748 points (99.5% liked)
interestingasfuck
9627 readers
1128 users here now
For exceptionally interesting content
Rules:
- Posts must be interesting
- Posts must be based in reality
- No hateful content
- No harmful content
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
I've often wanted a direct literal translation in the subtitles.
Like, I want my subtitles to read
Because then at least I can learn to understand "Watashi" is self-reference, and match up the phonetics with the words.
I love this idea!
The translation isn't as direct as the lines in the image imply though. "Watashi wa" becoming "I" hides that "wa" is a grammatical marker for the topic, kind of, of the sentence. More complete it's like, "I, as the topic of this sentence". You end up with a direct in place translation of "I, as the topic, a hotel's across the street, as a location, a shop, as a setting, exists, saw a suit, to which, wearing as a desire, is true"
Transliteration of individual characters is a surprising good way to understand/learn Chinese. A colleague of mine once read the whole Tao Te Ching this way.