I found a wikipedia article for Japanese language that I can’t find (it’s fine if nobody can find it, I’m mostly looking for the terminology for it and the understanding of it) where one of the example sentences were translated from (literally: “my neighbor was playing an instrument.”) to (true translation: “I was in a grumpy mood because my neighbor was playing his instrument so loudly I couldn’t get any sleep.”)
I understand that translations can never be 1:1 direct with just the words, and that japanese is more context heavy than English is, but im trying to understand how a simple sentence can mean something where even additional context can’t explain how this works.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
1 comment
Without the actual sentence in question we can’t say much but that’s probably a massively exaggerated version of the difference between like
「隣人が楽器を弾いていた。」 Rinjin ga gakki wo hiite ita. = ‘My neighbour was playing an instrument.’
「隣人が楽器を弾いてやがった。」 Rinjin ga gakki wo hiite yagatta. = ‘My neighbour was playing an instrument (and I did not like this).
The -yagaru auxiliary verb is a somewhat crude way of indicating you don’t like whatever the action is.