Translator here. By "I think it would be better if we slept at night" she means "I think that sleeping during the night is preferable" (as opposed to doing something else), except that the action performed at night happened in the past. There was some ambiguity I couldn't figure out how to get rid of while still sounding natural. I hope everything makes sense at least after reading this.
Translator here. By "I think it would be better if we slept at night" she means "I think that sleeping during the night is preferable" (as opposed to doing something else), except that the action performed at night happened in the past. There was some ambiguity I couldn't figure out how to get rid of while still sounding natural. I hope everything makes sense at least after reading this.
"I think it would be better if we slept at night" also sounds lacking in common sense. It is assumed most people sleep at night, or it is at least fairly easy to discern if they don't, so it automatically leads to the question "so when do you sleep now?".
Remove ambiguity to time and place with specifying adverbs. These are "now", "just", or "right away".
"I think it would be better if we just slept at night."
Unfortunately, it is a little more difficult to negate the perverted social connotations of a woman saying she wants to sleep at night to a man. In such a case, she might consciously or unconsciously use additional specifying adverbs to turn the suggestive verb in question into something more absolute.
"I think it would be better if we just slept at night from now on."
Those would both help eliminate the ambiguity of a statement that could otherwise be a little quirky or suggestive when said aloud.
That makes sense. Thank you for the ideas! Translating something truly well (especially if it's for entertainment purposes) often requires the skill level of a professional writer in the language being translated to, which is something I certainly don't possess.
The semantics of my translation which you think sound "lacking in common sense" come from the artist's original dialogue in Japanese. In other words, my translation is weird that way because the original Japanese is weird that way. For what it's worth, I agree that it sounds unusual, but I think it's accurate to the artist's intention.
Blindga said:
Unfortunately, it is a little more difficult to negate the perverted social connotations of a woman saying she wants to sleep at night to a man.
Fortunately, in this particular case, Japanese makes translating this very easy. The verb used here, 寝る, can mean "to sleep" (nonsexual), "to sleep with" (sexual), or to lie down. Because the primary usage of both words is to just sleep normally, and slight differences in wording are usually included in both cases to clarify that the sexual meaning is intended, translating this word is usually trivial. Using this case as an example, it would be a bit of a reach to interpret "I think it would be better if we slept at night" as sexual, but the potential to do so exists. The original Japanese is the same way.