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みちに だんさが あるだろ!

I am a pretty early beginner in japanese, and after mastering hiragana, katakana, and some conversational basics, I have jumped into trying to slowly play through an imported pokemon game for practice, needless to say, I have spent several hours getting through the first part of game, having to look up and translate as much as I can. Which, while time consuming, has been pretty easy with all the resources available online. With the exception of this sentence which I haven't been about to find a coherent translation using my usual resources.

Google translate returns: 'Will there is a step on the road!' which is obviously a bad garble of words. All I know out of my own knowledge is 'みちに' is saying the road is the location. (The character speaking this is located on the games Route 1)

Any help is appreciated, and I would also like to see the reasoning behind the translation. (And sorry if basic translation requests are a little trite for this site)

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みちに だんさが ある

just means "there is a step in the road", where だんさ means "step" as in "difference in height" and not "stair". だろう (だろ is a colloquial spelling) is the colloquial variant of でしょう, which when used in questions usually can be translated with ", right?", as in

みちに だんさが ある だろう?
There is a step in the road, right?

But as an exclamation it's better translated as

みちに だんさが ある だろ(う)!
Can't you see [that] there is a step in the road ?

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  • Thanks, I guess I was really stumped because I was thinking of 'step' as a verb and not as a noun. I appreciate it!
    – The Emortal
    Commented Mar 11, 2015 at 17:20
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Google Translate is not that far off in this case. だんさ (段差) means a "step" or "a difference in level". So it's saying something like "Hey, the road is uneven!"

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