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I have about a semester of Japanese under my belt, so my ability to read the language is 'not great,' especially when it comes to getting any kind of nuance out of a statement. At the moment, I'm working on translating:

一人でも多くの方にコメントしていただけたら嬉しいので

My current attempts to parse this:

  • 一人 でも 多くの - One person, but, many, (no) -- "But many individual's..." Maybe? Perhaps the de is part of the first word:
  • 一人で も 多くの - By oneself/voluntarily, more/again, many (nominalized) -- "In the future, voluntarily [do something repeatedly]..."
  • 方 に - From what I can tell, the likely candidates are for 方 are for it to be pronounced 'hou' and to mean 'direction,' or for it to be pronounced 'kata' and either mean 'direction' or possibly be a way to say 'lady' or gentleman.' The latter seems likely enough, given that the person who wrote this is apparently prone to such word uses.
  • コメント して いただけたら 嬉しいので - comments, by/as, to be good/exquisite or 'potentially receive', happy

So my feeble attempt to read this settles on something like: "I would be happy if you ladies and gentleman were to voluntarily leave more comments in the future."

If anyone more seasoned can offer their translation, I'd be much obliged. Any commentary on how to parse the original statement would surely be enlightening.

Dave
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steve_0804
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    Darn good attempt for having only one semester. And welcome to JLU :) – rurouniwallace Oct 16 '12 at 17:30
  • I should say "one semester in college (a few years ago), several hours with rosetta stone (more recently) and a ~lot~ of anime-watching in the meantime." :D – steve_0804 Oct 16 '12 at 17:37
  • I would go ahead and answer this, but there are two parts of the sentence that I'm not 100% about. 一人でも means "even if it's just one person", so saying 多くの[方]{かた} afterwards seems contradictory. And, I'm not sure why the particle に is used after 方, which makes me wonder if it's かた as in "person", or ほう as in a comparison marker. I'm interested to see what the explanation is. – rurouniwallace Oct 16 '12 at 17:44
  • please provide context for the statement (sentence b4 and after) in order to get a more accurate translation – yadokari Oct 16 '12 at 19:49

4 Answers4

12

Here is my attempt at translation.

一人でも多くの[方]{かた}にコメントしていただけたら嬉しいので
Because I would be happy if as many people as possible make comments,

I will focus on 一人でも多くの方, because it seems tricky to interpret it correctly. The other parts are explained in other answers.

一人でも多くの方 means “as many people as possible.” As you correctly guessed, 方 here is read as かた and it means a person, with respect. Because I do not think that there is a corresponding word in English, I dropped the nuance of respect.

As phoenixheart6, istrasci, and yadokari wrote, the literal meaning of 一人でも is “even if it is only one person.” Therefore, you may wonder why 一人でも多くの方 means “as many people as possible.” In 一人でも多くの, 一人でも describes the difference in comparison just like 一人 in 一人多い. Therefore, 一人でも多くの方 means “more people (even if the difference is only one person).” This expression describes that the author is desperate to increase the number of people, hence “as many people as possible.” This construction is not limited to this particular expression. For example:

1センチ高く跳びたい。 I want to jump one centimeter higher.
1センチでも高く跳びたい。 I want to jump higher even if the difference is one centimeter. > I want to jump as high as possible.

By the way, you may know this, but either your example is part of a sentence or it contains ellipsis. In the translation above, I interpreted it as part of a sentence.

Tsuyoshi Ito
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  • @ Mr. Ito, do you mean this? = By the way, you may know this, but your example is either part of a sentence or (contains an) ellipsis. – yadokari Oct 16 '12 at 22:04
  • Thanks for the explanation. It added greatly to the others answers! – steve_0804 Oct 16 '12 at 22:22
  • @yadokari: Yes, thanks for pointing it out! I hope I have corrected it. – Tsuyoshi Ito Oct 16 '12 at 22:40
  • 人-person. 方-personage? But not very common to express it in this way I suppose. – Flaw Oct 16 '12 at 22:42
  • @Flaw: No, I do not think that かた corresponds to “personage” because personage (as I understand it) means a person with high social status but using かた does not mean that the referred person has high social status. – Tsuyoshi Ito Oct 18 '12 at 14:47
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"Even it were just one (that'd be OK, but), Because I'd be happy if I can get a lot of people to (make a) comment..."

  • 一人でも　→　Even if just one
  • 多くの方（かた）→　many people (polite form for people)
  • にコメントしていただけたら　→　make comment for me / get them to make a comment (for me); 〜ていたたく is humble speech for someone higher than yourself doing something for you and always uses に (for @phoenixheart6's confusion). いただけたら is the suppositional of the potential form -- if I can have it done by someone higher than me
  • 嬉しい　→　(be) happy
  • ので　→　XのでY means "because of X, Y"; I ended my translation in an ellipsis because there's no proceeding clause, so we don't know what they're going to say.

By the way, I think this is a very good example of a "translation question" done right. You showed your research, tried to break down each part, but had trouble connecting the overall meaning. Good job!

istrasci
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  • Why is に used instead of は　or が? – rurouniwallace Oct 17 '12 at 00:11
  • @phoenixheart6: The particle for もらう・いただく (to receive) is に because に points to the source of the thing you are receiving. You can also use から, but I hear/see that a lot less frequently. Using は or が shows who is doing the receiving. 私はXさんに本をもらう　→　I will get/receive a book from Xさん. – istrasci Oct 19 '12 at 14:28
  • in this context, does でも work sort of like the ～て + も pattern ("even if") applied to the copula だ? – Axe Dec 03 '12 at 00:43
  • @ogicu8abruok: Yes – istrasci Dec 03 '12 at 15:34
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Here is my attempt at a loose translation into colloquial English. Due to lack of context, I am unable to accurately gauge the meaning of the ending ので , as it can refer to a preceding or following sentence. In my first translation I made it self-referential.

一人でも多くの方にコメントしていただけたら嬉しいので

Because even getting comments from just one person would make me happy (comments from a bunch of people would be great as well)

I'd love to get comments from a bunch of people but from even just one person would be great (because...)

Community
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yadokari
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2

I was unsure of it, too, so what I often do is Google something to find it within context of other text.

In this case below:

http://chiebukuro.travel.yahoo.co.jp/detail/1058967490.html?p=%E3%82%B0%E3%82%A2%E3%83%A0&pg=2

They are saying 「多くの方に回答いただけたら幸いです。」, which I'm gathering to mean "It would be great if I could get answers from a lot of people".

So, going back to our example, I'd infer "I would be happy if I could get comments from a lot of people or just one"

ljs.dev
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