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Page seven in my book has the following text, which is linked to the next sentence on page seventeen.

貫くような衝撃が顎から脳天を突き抜け、次第に目の前が真っ白になってゆく感覚に襲われる中、耳には銀髪の外国人の興奮した声が入ってきていた。

(translation: The impact reverberates to the top of my head by passing through my jaw, as my mind gradually goes blank at the resulting sensation of defeat during her attack, meanwhile I hear the silver-haired foreigner’s intrigued voice.)

Page 17:

たしか、殴られて気を失ったように思う。

I'm trying to translate the sentence in a way that the meaning of ように is incorporated into the translation, but I'm having trouble with making English sentences that sound right, and contain all the bits of the original Japanese. The closest one I can make that sounds 'right' is missing the ように part:

If I remember correctly, I recall losing consciousness to her punch.

And the one that I think is closest to the original that includes the ように part does not sound grammatically correct in English:

If I’m not mistaken, in order to remember her punch I recall blacking out.

Can someone tell me how I can improve my translation(s) of the page 17 sentence so that it is/they are as close to the original as possible?

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    You might want to fix the translation of 気を失った before moving on to the ように. 気を失った means to lose consciousness, not have a sense of defeat.
    – By137
    Commented Mar 6, 2019 at 5:20
  • @By137 I actually wrote it that way to make a direct reference to my translation of page seven for the reader to pick up on; although I don't see how that phrase can only mean "to lose consciousness".
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Mar 6, 2019 at 5:33
  • jisho.org/search/%E6%B0%97%E3%82%92%E5%A4%B1%E3%81%86 And I'm not seeing where "sensation of defeat" comes from on the page 7 part either. (assuming you are not intentionally straying from the original)
    – By137
    Commented Mar 6, 2019 at 5:51
  • "sensation of defeat"; (according to my several month old notes) I got from ゆく and 感覚. I may have mistranslated 感覚 as "sensation", and I got "defeat" from ゆく, which according to the Jisho definition of 征く; literally means "to conquer" or "to subjugate". Seeing as how atm the narrator is narrating about what is occurring to himself in real-time, I thought that "defeat" would work better as a synonym for "to conquer" / "to subjugate".
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Mar 6, 2019 at 6:40
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    I think you're parsing that incorrectly. The 'sensation' is not ゆく, but the entirety of 次第に目の前が真っ白になってゆく (-てゆく is an alternate form of the -ていく grammar).
    – ZLK
    Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 21:00

2 Answers 2

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I think the wall that you might be hitting when trying to incorporate ように in your translation of

たしか、殴られて気を失ったように思う。

is that you are incorrectly interpreting ように with a 目的（結果）meaning instead of a 推量 meaning. The phrasing you used in your second translation, "in order to remember," hints that you might be interpreting ように with a 目的（結果）meaning like it is used in the following sentence:

遅刻しないように、早く起きる

Waking up early (in order to avoid being late / so that I will not be late)

But the よう in ように思う in this context has a 推量 meaning, i.e. what precedes it is designated as a guess/inference.

Which means that your first translation,

If I remember correctly, I recall losing consciousness to her punch.

is actually quite accurate.

Here is another possible translation:

If I remember correctly, I think her punch knocked me unconscious.

Or if you would prefer a more liberal translation,

Not quite sure, but I think I blacked out after eating one of her punches.

Source: This article on the various meanings and usages of よう

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  • I love the article, it looks very informative as to the nuances of よう, except I would have to translate it in order to understand it. (I'm, unfortunately; not a native Japanese speaker, and knowing how often I use JapaneseStackExchange and a online dictionary to help translate what I read, attempting to translate the site without using a online translator (because those are faulty to be not useful at all) would create more issues than solve them). How can you tell which "meaning" to use for ように, such as "[a] (目的（結果）meaning instead of a 推量 meaning"? Doo you have simlar articles in English?
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 20:06
  • For similar articles written in English, searching for よう usage meaning yields English articles like this, but the above-linked Japanese article is still better. If you look at the table in the Japanese article, it lists the forms associated with the various possible meanings of よう. How to tell which meaning it has in any given context? Unfortunately, there's no substitute for reading/listening more to develop that understanding/intuition.
    – Setris
    Commented Mar 10, 2019 at 5:40
  • I would still recommend trying to read (note: do not try to translate) the Japanese article. I am also not a native speaker of Japanese, so I understand how you feel. It will be a challenge at first, but it will get easier the more you read. Making the transition to learning Japanese by reading resources written in Japanese (J->J dictionaries, articles, etc.) will make a world of a difference in your ability to grasp the language.
    – Setris
    Commented Mar 10, 2019 at 5:52
  • I'll try reading it in Japanese, even though I'm 九十％ certain that I will only understand the basic grammar syntax of it, and not recognize much of the kanji.
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Mar 10, 2019 at 6:04
-1

ように is "like"

"I really think it's like she knocked me out with a punch." If you want all the words.

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