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https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PzAu872Fy_M?feature=share

In this short, the Japanese comedian translated the line as "I moved to the US for college". I took this "から" as the explanation usage like 大学のためだから。。。but when I asked a Japanese native, they responded with 'this is more like the 今から usage.' In that case, wouldn't the English translation be "I went to the US when I was in college."?

Is the translation of the video wrong or is my Japanese friend wrong?

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  • Is this comedian fluent in both languages? In that case, I'm not even sure it can be called translation, just two versions of the same story, told once in Japanese and once in English, in a certain sense. But even so, they're not so far apart in meaning that there's a major problem or anything. Comedy requires a certain economy of language and rhythm, so it's easy to imagine why someone would choose an expression that isn't the literal grammatical equivalent of the other language's expression.
    – Leebo
    Commented Nov 23 at 21:54
  • Firstly, I probably wouldn't translate it as "I went to America when I was in college." Second, I just don't see the Japanese version and English version in the video as mutually exclusive. They're both valid ways to describe the same situation depending on what happened.
    – Leebo
    Commented Nov 23 at 23:50
  • Perhaps it would help to think of 大学 not as the place, not as a physical school, so 大学から is not "from the school (as a place)" but "from the time of entering university." And 行く isn't simply "went." She's talking about attending university in the US in the rest of the bit.
    – Leebo
    Commented Nov 24 at 0:01
  • I wouldn't, no. I don't think the Japanese sentence needs rewriting. All I'm saying is "went" might typically give the impression of a short trip, but I don't think that's the case.
    – Leebo
    Commented Nov 24 at 0:11
  • I'm saying something like "moved to America" or "left for America" is probably closer than "went to America" but that doesn't involve parsing it differently.
    – Leebo
    Commented Nov 24 at 0:29

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Your friend is correct. This から means "from" or "since". She is saying she was somewhere else but moved to America when she started university.

EDIT: In this case, "I went to the US when I was in college" is actually a bad translation, because it means she moved to the US after entering a college (in Japan). 大学からアメリカに行った means she moved (from Japan) to the US after graduating from a high school in Japan and before entering a college in the US. And this usually also implies she moved for (the purpose of entering) college, right?

Interpretation of 大学からアメリカに行った

To generalize this discussion a bit, let's consider this example. Which is the more natural translation of this perfectly natural Japanese sentence?

彼は来月からドイツに行きます。

  1. He will go to Germany from next month.
  2. He will move to Germany next month.

You would say Sentence 2 is clearly more natural than Sentence 1. (Sentence 1 may be okay if it refers to repeated business trips, but the Japanese sentence refers to a one-time movement.)

In Japanese, AからBに行く is a perfectly valid construction that means starting a stay/life in B beginning at time A, but a literal translation using "from" simply doesn't work well in English. Assuming she is fluent in both languages, this explains why she used から in the Japanese version but rephrased it differently in English.

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  • Thanks for replying. Can you provide a more detailed answer? Like I asked, if it means (From the time when I started university) (I moved to America), wouldn't a more accurate translation be "I went to the US when I was in college" instead of what the comedian translated it as? Why did the Japanese comedian use (I moved to the US for college) for translation? Those two lines have different nuances and the comedian is Japanese as well. You can explain to me in Japanese as well if it's easier for you.
    – hello me
    Commented Nov 23 at 18:47
  • @hellome Please see the edit.
    – naruto
    Commented Nov 24 at 2:27
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    Hello. Thank you for your detailed explanation. This was such a silly mistake on my part. When you say 来月から I had no problem with it but my brain fried with 大学から. Now I see what I misunderstood.
    – hello me
    Commented Nov 25 at 2:56

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