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I am trying to dissect a sentence from a manga page. I am a beginner in all aspects of Japanese, though grammar is my weakest point.

逃げ出した　先に　楽園　なんて ありゃ しねえ のさ

The licensed English translation of this page says "There's no paradise for you to escape to". I am having trouble getting to a meaning like this on my own.

Google translate is giving me "There is no paradise on the way I ran away."

The non bolded part I think I am okay with, it reads to me like "(something) such as paradise doesn't exist".

The bold part I am having trouble with.　逃げ出した looks like past tense to me (ran away) and 先に (previously) being there would make sense with a past tense verb. This doesn't really make a lot of sense to me in the context of the scene though. The girl wants him to take her away from a bad place/situation and he is showing her that coming with him will be even worse for her, as he is fated to be surrounded by death and fight for his life. I don't see why he would be talking in the past tense. I am probably making an obvious mistake here, but Google translate seems to going down the same path I am.

Obviously an online translation tool won't work 100%, and I know that liberties may often be taken in even licensed translations, but the licensed translation really is the only one that makes sense here, so if anyone could help me connect the dots to how to get there, that would be great.

This is the original source, in case I have misrepresented it somehow. enter image description here

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I believe the girl in the picture ran away from home?

逃げ出した先に

literally here means "the place you ran away to", 先に can mean previously in certain situations, but in this situation it means something completely different.

If you look up 先 in a dictionary it corresponds to the following:

  1. 行き着く所。目的の場所。(The place you arrive. Destination.)

Also, I think he is saying this to her because he wants her to take on her challenges face on rather than running away.

Here is another example of the above usage:

しかしいろいろな困難を乗り越えてたどり着く 先に は本当の幸せがあります

I will leave the meaning of the above as a challenge for the reader.

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  • Wow, thank you very much. Knowing that, would this be what the full sentence is saying: "The paradise you ran away to doesn't even exist"?
    – crucior
    Nov 20, 2016 at 3:41
  • @crucior: I should point out that this form of 先 is not really a physical place, but more a metaphorical way of saying "the place you end up in the future after you run away", since 先 represents a place in time (hence its similarity with "previously"). Also, since it is not referring to a specific place, just wherever you run away to, I think that is why the English translation uses "There's no paradise for you to escape to" since that sounds more natural than saying "Wherever you go, there is no paradise".
    – Jesse Good
    Nov 20, 2016 at 4:32
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I am not 100% sure but I think the past tense here is to indicate a counterfactual condition.

It is similar to English:
If you ran away, you would find no paradise, no matter where you go.

"If you ran away" is in the past tense because it is a counterfactual condition.
So it is impossible to run away, even if you could, you would have nowhere to go.

If you say it in the present tense 逃げ出す先に, it means that running away is possible.

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