meaning of だけ in 分だけ

Question

I'm confused in 「分だけ」　in the following sentence. As far as I can understand "The more you lack on magic energy, the more incomplete(?) distance(path) becomes." But I'm having doubts about it.

「魔力が足りていたら、望む場所に辿り着く」 「では、足りなかったとしたら」　 「目的の場所と、遺品を使用した場所の間、途中の空間に繋がるわね。魔力が足りない分だけ距離が半端になる。」

Thank you very much for help!

Answer 1

I think of this だけ as meaning "to the extent that". The intuitively more easy use for me to understand and adopt was 「〜できるだけxxxください」、which can means "Please do the best you can to " or "To the extent that you can, please ___". As this sentence shows, the word だけ can take this sense with nouns aswell as verbs.

"To the extent the magic power is lacking, the distance will be odd (off)"

[半端 is usually translated as "odd" but the skill of translation is not just to understand but to put these things things into natural English (in other words, my translation is still falls a bit short but the more you practice...)]

Answer 2

This is just 分+だけ; the 分 goes with the preceding part - 魔力がたりない分 - and means "amount".

This だけ seems to be the definition where it means "more"/"along with". It says something like "The more you lack (the) magical power, the more incomplete the distance becomes."

Here are some other examples of this usage of だけ:

• 安ければ安いだけよい　→　The cheaper, the better. Could be replaced with ほど and have the same meaning.
• 生活水準が高くなるだけ出費もかさむ　→　Expenses will increase as the standard of living rises. Could be replaced with something like 〜につれて or 〜にしたがって and have the same meaning.