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16:42 Mar 11, 2008
Japanese to English translations [PRO] Law/Patents - Government / Politics
Japanese term or phrase:Sentence structure question
I have sentences with the same repeated structure, describing area that belong to a certain jurisdiction.
I want to make sure I get the structure of the sentence right, so I need your help with this.
Here is the typical sentence pattern (using codes for place names, because that's not the point):
I think it means "XY Prefecture areas, except the areas of A city (limited to B-ku, C-ku and D-ku), E city, F city (except G-machi), H-gun and J-gun"
What bothers me is the exclusions and limitations listed within an exclusion type list. It is like double negation, and I just want to make sure I understand this right.
So, am I correct with the above interpretation - in other words is it true that:
B-ku, C-ku and D-ku of A city are excluded (but other ku-s of A city are included), E city is excluded as a whole, G-machi of F city is included but the rest of F city is excluded, and H-gun and J-gun are both excluded, and all other areas of XY prefecture that are not mentioned here are included.
Is there a better way of putting this into English to make it straightforward?
Explanation: You are quite correct in your reading. (machi is read as "cho.")
I would probably put it like
(... covers XY Prefecture) except the following areas: B, C and D ku of A city; E city; B, C and D ku of F city; H gun and J gun.
I think putting "except" near the front makes the reader ready to follow which areas are excluded.
A Japanese told me once that generally, 町 that are standalone 市町村 are usually read as "machi" while 町 that are the subdivisions of 市 are usually read as "cho". There are exceptions, such as when smaller towns agglomerate into a city, etc
The above has nonthing to do with how you pronounce the kanji. I don't know if there is any logic in calling some as cho and others as machi. Anybody knows?
Sorry, I take back the "cho" part: There are 町 read as machi. incidentally, there are two different 町 - one under a city and the other kind under "gun." See the following. http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/市町村
Since this came up, is there a website to check the correct English transliteration of various 町 - I have found many of these 町 with their own website and they did call themselves as "machi", so I want to be sure. Does the postal service have any helpful website for this - I do not have postal codes, only names.
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
50 mins confidence:
perhaps switch to different formatting
Explanation: I agree with your interpretation of the sentence structure but am not sure if much can be done to the sentence structure to make it more clear other than abandoning sentences and changing to a table or delimited format: such as:
Excluded areas of XY prefecture:
A City (only B, C, and D wards included)
E City
F City (only G -cho included) (note that this is almost always pronounced "cho", not "machi" when used as a subdivision of a city)
H county and J county
Other areas not mentioned are included
Of course, if you can't use line returns, you can use colons or semicolons...
-------------------------------------------------- Note added at 51 mins (2008-03-11 17:34:19 GMT) --------------------------------------------------
(using semicolons you can get rid of the all of the 'and's for instance)
Kurt Hammond Japan Local time: 20:27 Native speaker of: English
Explanation: You are quite correct in your reading. (machi is read as "cho.")
I would probably put it like
(... covers XY Prefecture) except the following areas: B, C and D ku of A city; E city; B, C and D ku of F city; H gun and J gun.
I think putting "except" near the front makes the reader ready to follow which areas are excluded.
Yuki Okada Local time: 23:27 Native speaker of: Japanese PRO pts in category: 16
Grading comment
Thank you very much for all the help. I used this solution.
The translation workplace 
peer agreement (net): +1
