Hey guys. I'm going through 中級から学ぶ日本語 (Chuukyuu kara manabu
nihongo) and on this blog I'm going to upload the translations for every single
chapter. When i finish, I'll probably start translating New
Approach:Intermediate, as well as 上級で学ぶ日本語
(Joukyuu de manabu nihongo.)
Here's the first text #1
Original text coming from the "Chuukyuu kara
manabu nihongo" textbook:
忙しくて忙しくて、だれでもいいから一人でも多くの人に手伝ってもらいたい。そんなとき、日本語では「猫の手も借りたいほどだ」とたとえて言います。たとえ猫が手伝ってくれてもそれほど役に立つとは思えませんが、何か口に出して言いたいと思って、こう言うのです。
また、「私の家には庭があります。でも、狭いですよ」と言いたければ、これも「猫」を使って、「猫の額ほどの庭があります」と言います。猫にも額の広い猫と狭い猫がいると思うので、日本語の分かる猫に聞かれたら、「失礼じゃないですか」と怒られてしまいそうです。
まだまだたくさん「猫」のお世話になる便利な言い方はあるのですが、「猫に小判」という言い方ほど面白いものはないでしょう。小判は昔のお金ですから、今なら「猫に一万円」と言えば、意味が分かるでしょうか。高い辞書を持っていても、全然使わずに本棚に並べておくだけの人に、「猫に小判だね」と言うのです。
猫だけではなく、犬、牛、馬など、人と昔から生活をしてきた動物たちを使った言い方がたくさんあります。皆さんの国の言葉にも「猫の手」や「猫の額」、そして、「猫に小判」などと同じような言い方がありますか。あれば是非それを紹介してください。
And here's my translation:
Being really busy, we want to get help from people,
even if there's only one person to help us. In times like these, in Japanese,
people say that they would even accept help from a cat. It's not that help from
a cat would make a big difference, but it's just a way to put our need for
help.
What's more, if we want to say that we have a garden,
but it's really small, we also use a saying that consists of [a cat] = "I
have a garden as tiny as a cat's forehead". There are cats with big heads
and there are cats with small heads, so if a cat that understands japanese
heard us, it would probably get mad at us thinking we're not very polite. There
are more useful proverbs that use [cat], but probably the most interesting one
is "gold coins/koban to a cat" ("to cast pearls before
swine"?). Koban is a coin from old times, which nowadays can be understand
as 10000 yens. If a person has an expensive dictionaru, but it lies unused on a
bookshelf, we call that situation a koban for a cat.
It's not only about cats. Dogs, cows, horses and so on
are all animals that live among us since long time ago and we have a lot of
different proverbs that consist of them. Do you have similar expressions like
those in your languages? Please let us know if you do!
That's it for today. If you're having any questions or
suggestions, just let me know!
No comments:
Post a Comment