Hello! I’m working on translating a caption from a video game art book and got stuck on this line so I’m wondering if it might be an idiom or something. In this caption, the artist talks about how the illustration was done as a frontispiece for the novel, then this line ( この小説は、身内びいきではなく、本当に好きな作品です ), and then he mentions that he hopes people enjoy the work he did for the novel before moving on to talking about the character designs he did for the interior illustrations. The conjugation/phrasing of the middle part of this line is really throwing me for a loop. Usually Jisho or JPDB have *something* if it’s an idiom but I can’t find any information about it online.
So far I’ve got two possible translations:
1. My relatives didn’t care for this novel, but I really like it
2. I don’t mean to brag/toot my horn, but I really like this novel
Thanks in advance!
3 comments
You could try googling. This is the first result if you search for 身内びいき: https://www.weblio.jp/content/身内贔屓
It’s closer to the second one. Like: “I really like the novel, and I’m not just saying that because I worked on the art for it.”
rather than memorizing this as a phrase look up 贔屓(hiiki/biiki)