As the title suggests.
Some more context: I was provided this statement –
「XXさんは、相変わらず、適当にごまかして、翻訳をするので、厳しいです。」
recently about a coworker’s work from my Japanese colleague. I understand the words individually but, this set of words seems like an expression with a somewhat standard usage. If there are any natives or near-natives on here, can you please help me out?
How am I to understand just the expression 「適当にごまかす」?
Bonus question:
適当 seems to have two rather contradictory meanings:
1: appropriate, fit, suitable, adequate
2: perfunctory, half-minded, sloppy, lazy, careless
…in the dictionary. How can we know which meaning to use in a particular case? Is context the only way to distinguish the meanings? Are there standard expressions where one or the other meaning is used?
5 comments
id read it as nonchalantly here. usually if it means approapriately, its written in kanji, and hiragana if its sloppy. in this case, the negative connotation of ごまかす gives it away though. because you wouldnt “appropriately deceive”, but you can deceive nonchalantly. negatively connotated words basically always lead to the sloppy meaning of the word. whereas direct demands usually mean its the appropriate meaning. another sign is often, whether keigo is used or not. but that one is really more of a light indication, as you can see in your example.
hope this helps. maybe someone as an easier rule though 😀
It means to play something off. To bluff your way through with some bullshit.
The whole sentence could be translated to something like:
“As usual, XX-san always made up things/lies for the translation, it’s difficult (situation)”
So it seems XX’s translation results are gibberish/inaccurate.
If you look up “tekitou” in the dictionary it will probably say “appropriate, suitable,” but it is almost 100% of the time used to mean “half-ass” or “going through the motions.”
Basically ”bullshit/bluff your way through” (I’m native)
For instance if someone asked me about something I didn’t want to reveal or wanted to be private about, I would 適当にごまかす