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Trying to translate a song lyric and was caught off guard by this sentence:

雨に降られ行き場なくしなんの罰さ？と空を睨む

I feel like I get the gist of it, but uncertain that my parsing is accurate so far. Here's what I'm looking at this as:

（｛雨に降られ｛行き場なくし｝｝｛なんの罰さ｝？）と空を睨む

I know that I know the individual words but can't seem to make sense of it when translating. My bad attempt ends up with:

"What's the punishment for losing my destination to the falling rain?" I scowled at the sky.

There's a small amount of poetic license I'm applying, but nevertheless I feel like I'm actually missing the mark. Can someone help me understand the role of -られ in 雨に降られ and -し in 行き場なくし?

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I think the part you're missing is that なくし is the 連用形 of 無くす. The 降られ works like this:

降る

降られる = 降る + passive

降られ = 降る + passive + 連用形

So both 降られ and なくし are 連用形 used to connect clauses. This is how you should parse it (a bit on the liberal side for the translation):

雨に降られ、行き場なくし、「なんの罰さ？」と空を睨む

I'm rained upon and I have no place to go to. I glare at the sky thinking what is this punishment?!

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  • The source for the lyric has no quotation marks or anything except for the question mark, so this is a little tough to digest at first glance, but this makes some sense. I had the instinct that it was conjunctive phrases but couldn't make sense if it was something that is "comma-separated" in English or if it was meant to be one continuous phrase.
    – psosuna
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 22:33
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    @psosuna Nice song btw.
    – Ringil
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 22:58
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    I think the first and second clauses should be outside of the quotation marks. This 連用形 is like participle construction, not very colloquial.
    – broccoli forest
    Commented May 24, 2019 at 2:21
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I think this is in fragments... 雨に降られ is like having (or with).. the rain fall(ing) on me.. (passive of falling - here like it happened to me) 行き場なくし, losing (giving up) my place to go, なんの罰さ what did I do wrong.. (what mistake did I make)... couldn't say without more context.. but the lyric seems to be more of the speaker's train of thought.

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  • I'm sorry, I don't think I follow. It seems to me like a fully formed question, and not separate thoughts in a train of thought. But, thanks for giving it a go.
    – psosuna
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 22:15
  • I'm referring to the lyric you posted.. the speaker seems to be speaking in a train of thought (in sentence fragments).
    – Plant More Trees
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 22:19
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    Perhaps better clarification and more to the point of your question.. られ is short for 降られてand なくしfor なくしてbasically the speaker is stringing together these sentences and then finally 空を睨む (I glared/scowled at the sky)... it's all based on this mood that singer is likely trying to let you feel. My translation would thus be, With the rain falling on me, and having lost my place to go.. "what did I do wrong"? I [asked and] looked (glared) at the sky.
    – Plant More Trees
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 22:26
  • I get the mood for sure, and I know I understand the words. That further explanation makes more sense. I think Ringil shed some light on what you meant to say.
    – psosuna
    Commented May 23, 2019 at 22:34

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