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Joshua Crison
5th July 2001, 00:49
Im trying to make a relatively close translation to `compassion through strength` but about as close as I can get without making the japanese sound to funny is, `a man who masters himself does not look down on others`. Can anyone give me abit of help is really starting to make my head smoke :burnup:

Jeff Hamacher
5th July 2001, 01:27
if you take the words and translate them literally you get:

compassion “¯?î (doujou)

through ?`‚ðˆÈ‚Ä (?`wo motte)

strength —Í (chikara)

there are several variants of "strength" in japanese, but in this context "chikara" seems to cover physical and mental or emotional nuances at the same time. now comes the tricky part: do we simply use the expression

—Í‚ðˆÈ‚Ä“¯?î

or is that just a silly sounding anglicized mess? you may have to add some kind of verb at the end to make it grammatically complete. hope this helps.

cheers, jeff hamacher

Joshua Crison
5th July 2001, 02:50
I was in(and am) class when I recieve your reply, my teacher said that has no sensible meaning in japanese, anyone else wanna try a shot?

Jeff Hamacher
5th July 2001, 04:10
Originally posted by Joshua Crison
... my teacher said that has no sensible meaning in japanese ...
i'm not surprised; it's difficult to take a pithy quote or proverb from english and translate it into a similarly eloquent expression in japanese. usually you have to forget the original words themselves, unlike what i tried, and go for the sense of expression. to be honest, i'm not certain if i understand what you're trying to say with "compassion through strength", but you can still use those words to create literal, sensible translations:

—Í‚ðˆÈ‚Ä "by means of strength/power"

“¯?î?i?S?j‚ÍŽÀŒ»‚³‚ê‚é?iŽÀŒ»‚·‚é?j "compassion is realized"

how you take that feeling and turn it into a pretty phrase might better be left to a native speaker.

and since we're on the subject, why don't you just ask your japanese teacher? if you've managed to make a translation, surely your teacher (and i assume it's a japanese person) can render it in a more poetic form. best of luck.

later, jeff hamacher