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I have the following sentence to translate.

だれが来てもいいですが
少なくても
一人は
必ず
来させて下さい

So far I have the following.

Anyone can come but
even if there is few/little
1 person
definitely
please let me come/please make them come.

I just don't get what the translation is suppose to be saying. Can any think of a good translation?

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    Have you thought about NOT translating the little "lines" one by one all by themselves? Those little lines are randomly chopped off to start with. By translating them one by one in the order they appear, you will NOT be able to understand the sentence many of the times, believe me.
    – user4032
    May 4, 2014 at 1:14
  • Yeah, I just don't understand the sentence as a whole. I would essentially be in the same spot as I am. "Anyone can come but ever if there are few, 1 person please definitely let me come". Doesn't make sense to me.
    – Snowy Coder Girl
    May 4, 2014 at 1:17

2 Answers 2

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Let me just improve on your attempt.

だれが来てもいいですが
少なくても
一人は
必ず
来させて下さい

Anyone can come, but
at least
1 person
definitely
please make so. come

This illustrates the drawback of translating from an SOV language to an SVO language word by word as well as the difficulty of translating a word out of context (少なくても).

Strung together as is, this would give something like

Anyone can come, but, please, definitely make at least one person come.

A bit better would be

Whoever comes is fine, but please make sure that at least one person comes.

I don't know where you got this sentence, but "at least" is also written 少なくとも (see 大辞泉 and 大辞林).

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だれが来てもいいですが

First it is not written 誰か、but 誰 which is someone so:

Someone may come but,

The rest could follow with:

even if few
one person
definitively
have it come

translated this way with each peice is rather unmeaningful so in one go, I would correct your translation to:

Someone may come, but even if few, have at least one person come please.
Or
Someone may come, but even if few, make sure that at least one person come please.

Or with similar wording. Hope it answered your question.

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  • 1
    I think "Someone may come" means 「誰か来るかもしれない」
    – user1016
    May 9, 2014 at 16:46
  • You would be right, but here I was trying to answer the question with what I was given. If a mistake in the question was made in the first place, then it becomes another story.
    – Yakobu
    May 13, 2014 at 18:46
  • I don't think OP made a mistake; the Japanese sentence in her question doesn't particularly sound wrong or awkward to my native ear.
    – user1016
    May 14, 2014 at 5:31

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