Sentence Translation Help.

[Takanori Nishikawa]

I need help again. I'm still somewhat unfamiliar with longer, complex sentences. I'd like to translate the two sentences in my signature.

"Music has the power to inspire people to change the world around them. I want to create a song which influences everyone in this way."

So far what I have is this;

音楽に人々をそれらのまわりで世界を変えるように促す力がある。僕は歌を作成したいと思うこうすればの皆に 影響を及ぼす。

Any corrections would be helpful. I know this kinda sounds wrong to me somehow.

共ありがとうご座居ました!

[AzureDark]

First you need to construct the topic.
「音楽は・・・」
'wa' is the topic marker. "Music" is clearly the topic.

*runs away to make way for others*

[Rinoa Iam]

One timid suggestion direcly after AzureDark's....

Perhaps it would be better to use 「それぞれ」 as opposed to 「それら」. それぞれ carries the meaning that the 人々 can each change the world around them respectively. Does that make sense? それら to me carries more of a feeling of "those (things) over there." I think それぞれ would be more appropriate.

*walks timidly away*

[AskrJun1]

音楽は人々をそれらのまわりの世界を変えように促す力がある。僕は皆をこう影響する歌を作りた い。

Just my 2 cents.

[tetekmakhang]

this isn't really the place for u to ask this kind of question (eng --> jap translation) the reason is that none of us here are native japanese speakers. if u want a good natural japanese translation, you'll have to ask a japanese native speaker. we can give u a good natural ENGLISH translation of some japanese text, but not the other way round.
luckily for u, my japanese buddy just dropped by my house just now and i asked him what's the most ＮＡＴＵＲＡＬ way (not just direct translation) to translate that sentence. and he said:

音楽には世界を変える力がある。そんな歌で人に影響を与えたい。

[AskrJun1]

Well I wouldn't say that's wrong but it's not as good a reflection of the original line. If that line was trasnlated back into English it'd come out like:

Music has the power to change the world. (I) would like to influence people with a song like that.

[tetekmakhang]

Well I wouldn't say that's wrong but it's not as good a reflection of the original line.

when i first saw the english sentence, witout looking at your version, i translated it as

音楽にはその人の周りの世界を変えるように促す力がある。僕は人にそのような影響を与える歌を作りたいもの だ。

as you can see, it's roughly the same as yours.

but then when i showed it to my japanese friend, he said it sounds "so translated". in other words, it's not what a japanese native speaker would ever say.

he proceeded to say that 人の周り is redundant in that sentence and he cancelled out the 促す as well. then i asked him, "why did you cut out 'inspire'? it's such a good word in english." and he just said that in japanese, 促す does not have such an emboldening nuance as the english version and that it just sounds weird.
continuing to the 2nd sentence, he said the 僕は is redundant. and then he rephrased the rest of the sentence.

what im saying is, translating between languages (especially something so different as japanese and english) is difficult. you can't just translate the words and put them into some grammar that you've learnt at school and expect it to work as well. if you do that, it will sound really weird and it'll be so obvious that it's translated. some phrases can be said in a language, but can't be said in another language. a very easy example that i always use is: try and translate いただきます　into english.

yes, my friend's translation deviated slightly from the original meaning, but sounding natural in the translated language is far more important in my opinion. the best kind of translation is the type where a person reading the translated version doesn't even realise that s/he is reading a translation.

but anyway, you (takanori nishikawa) are just using this for your signature so it doesn't really matter what you put there coz:

1. few people bother to read someone else's signature
2. almost all the people in this forum can't speak fluent japanese so you can write any japanese sentence there and no one will know its meaning anyway ;-p

[AskrJun1]

I wasn't so much translating it as taking Takanori's and making it sound less odd. While your line might have sounded natural, it does not reflect the original meaning, and in fact changes it.

There should be a line we draw between sounding perfectly natural and retaining the original meaning. I should point out that a good translation should as much as possible retain what the author is trying to convey and wants to be understood for rather than just making it sound natural to the native ear. I'd personally prefer to read something that doesn't run smoothly but tells me what the author was trying to, rather than something that sounds natural but distorts or doesn't wholely convey the original.

If I was to actually translate that line, can't say it'd be natural or anything, it'd look a little more like this:

音楽には人を世界を変えように励む力がある。そんな影響を与える歌が作りたい。

[tetekmakhang]

well i guess that's where we'll have to agree to disagree.
let's just leave it to takanori nishikawa to decide what he wants to do.
btw why did u change your original translation?


音楽は人々をそれらのまわりの世界を変えように促す力がある。僕は皆をこう影響する歌を作りた い。

became this:


音楽には人を世界を変えように励む力がある。そんな影響を与える歌が作りたい。

[AzureDark]

The points made by both of you have their own merits IMO...

So yea, let Takanori decide...

[AskrJun1]

well i guess that's where we'll have to agree to disagree.
let's just leave it to takanori nishikawa to decide what he wants to do.
btw why did u change your original translation?


At the start of my post...


I wasn't so much translating it as taking Takanori's and making it sound less odd.