"I don't want to go all the way to New York only for her to end up being with someone else"

Question

"I don't want to go all the way to New York only for her to end up being with someone else"

I've been trying to translate this sentence from a book as practice and I am at a loss on how to translate the grammatical nuances

"I don't want to go all the way to New York" may somewhat correspond to わざわざニューヨークへ行ってしまうとはやりくない

I'm not sure how to phrase "end up" in "end up being with someone else" besides てしまう. Also in this case I've been eyeing the phrase 交際中 as "being with someone else" but I don't really have a native speaker's perspective on this.

I also can't figure out how to link the two phrases because of the linking word "only" in English. An equivalent literal translation might be something like "If I go all the way to New York and she is already in a relationship, that won't be good," in which case わざわざニューヨークへ行ってしまったら彼女はもう交際中だとまずいなー would be my attempt.

How would you guys translate the nuances of this sentence?

Answer 1

My best attempt is:

わざわざニューヨークまで[行]{い}って[結局]{けっきょく}[彼女]{かのじょ}は[他]{ほか}の[人]{ひと}と[付]{つ}き[合]{あ}ってましたなんてのは[御免]{ごめん}だ。

Note that it is a kind of casual wording, which I think perhaps is what you want.

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I used 「御免だ」 to express "I don't want to". I think 「御免だ」 is stronger than 「嫌だ」. The words 「のは」 and 「御免だ」 often come together in casual speaking, so 「～のは御免だ」 sounds a bit more natural than 「～のは嫌だ」.

Your word choice of 「わざわざ」 for "go all the way to" is good. Also I said 「ニューヨークまで」 instead of 「ニューヨークへ」. Using 「まで」 emphasizes the whole path from here to New York, which matches the English phrase "all the way."

I put the nuance of "only" and "end up" into 「結局」. More literal meaning of 「結局」 is something related to "result". So the nuance of 「結局」 here is "all what I found is the fact that...".

The point of 「彼女は他の人と付き合ってました」 is the word 「ました」. Actually this part forms a standalone sentence. So 「なんての」 after that is taking a whole phrase. 「の」 is a nominalizer. The effect of 「ました」 instead of simply 「た」 is to make the sub-sentence sound more objective. Here, actually the nuance of 「と分かる」 ("I find that...") is hidden after 「ました」. But I think it is more natural when it is omitted.

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So the literal meaning of the sentence above is like:

I don't want to end up only finding her being with someone else after travelling all the way to New York.