Japanese Language Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for students, teachers, and linguists wanting to discuss the finer points of the Japanese language. It only takes a minute to sign up.
Sign up to join this community
I would like to ask about the interpretation of the sentence below:
美しいと思ってしまったのだ
If I were to interpret it literally, it would mean
The thing of unintentionally thinking that it is beautiful
However, the translation given is
Struck me as profoundly beautiful
I am finding it difficult to draw the link between the literal meaning and the given meaning. Is my literal interpretation of the sentence wrong?
美しいと思ってしまったのだ。
I think the しまった here means "unintentionally", or "unexpectedly" with a nuance "although you might not think that way in normal circumstance" (related: Verb in ている form ends with しまう), or maybe "wind up/end up" (related: 「しまう」 as an auxiliary verb).
As for the のだ, it could be used to add an emphasis, add an explanatory tone, or to mean "Actually, ..." "Surprisingly..." etc., depending on the context. These threads might be of help:
～てしまう also has the meaning of 'completely', as in carrying out an action to its completion.
In this case, the 'thinking' is what is being done completely. A literal translation would be "I completely thought "it is beautiful". However, that is a rather uninspiring translation. I would say that "struck me as profoundly beautiful" better captures the idea of being so completely taken with the thought.
Another example:
私は持っていた切手を全部友達にあげてしまった。I gave all the stamps I had kept to my friends. (I completed the action of giving all the stamps to my friends)
