"which"

Whenever a Japanese noun follows a verb in the same sentence, V + N, translate "N who V", "N which V", "N that V":

shabelu
しゃべる neko
ねこ

speaks cat

= cat who speaks|

This rule has no exceptions. When a noun follows a verb in the same manga ballon, either a "which/who/that" must be inserted, or the two words belong to different sentences and somebody forgot to write a period (most manga don't use any periods or commas at all).

Sometimes the translation has no "which":

ole no
おれの katta
かった neko
ねこ

I bought cat which

= the cat which I bought

= the cat I bought

katta かった neko ねこ

bought cat which

= the cat (I) bought

Translating English relative clauses into Japanese is much easier than the other way round. Suppose you want to translate into Japanese "the picture that the artist drew" or "the artist who drew the picture". First make the sentence "the artist drew a picture" and translate it into Japanese:

gaka gá é o káita
がかがえをかいた
the artist drew a picture

Now suppose you want to translate "the picture the artist drew". The word which in English goes first (picture), in Japanese goes last: "picture". Put the verb before this: "the drew picture". Put the remaining word, "artist", before the verb: "the artist-drew picture". This is Japanese word order. Now rearrange the Jpanese sentence above in this order:

gaka gá káita é
がかがかいたえ
artist-drew picture
picture that artist drew

To say "the artist that drew the picture", the Japanese word order is "the picture-drew artist":

é o káita gaka
えをかいたがか
picture-drew artist
artist who drew picture

When translating long sentences into/from literary Japanese, usually you get this construction three or four times in a row, so you must translate with pencil and paper begining with the end of the sentence and working backwards. Luckily for us, in most manga most sentences are less than five words long.

examples index, Japanese
How to Read Japanese Manga
assertive janai じゃない

Copyright (c) 2003-2008 Jordi Mas Trullenque.
email: jordimastrullenque at gmail dot com
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/manga/rel.en.html
Last revised: 2008-10-25