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I'm not quite sure if this is right.

彼女は私の人です
Kanojo wa watashi no hitodesu

I'm a little confused on the word for "she" as it can also translate to "girlfriend." I've read that it can depend on the context, as well as preference. I'm a little confused. Could someone explain and check?

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    What do you mean by "she's my person"?
    – Leebo
    Sep 10, 2020 at 22:01
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    Yeah, that doesn't even make sense in English.
    – istrasci
    Sep 10, 2020 at 22:07
  • it makes sense but it’s highly idiomatic. first time i heard it it was on greys anatomy. for example, both meredith grey and cristina yang refer to the other as “my person”. it essentially means the person i can rely upon in a crunch or a crisis, the person who will be there for me no matter what happens. but i have no idea how to translate this into japanese. perhaps 彼女は私自身の菩薩だ. i don’t know whether that even really makes sense.
    – A.Ellett
    Sep 10, 2020 at 23:54
  • I've heard the phrase before from an old schoolmate on Facebook. She announced that, "I finally married my person!" It makes me think of this old animated movie from my childhood, where a goofy, lovable cartoon dog goes up to some human and says like, "Hello! Are you my person?!" Basically I think the dog was a stray and he was looking for a new owner to love him and take care of him.
    – peacetype
    Sep 11, 2020 at 21:45

2 Answers 2

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The phrase you are using, to say that someone is "your person", is essentially an expression in English. Expressions can be difficult to translate directly between languages. I might take a direct approach and say 私には彼女だ which literally says, "For me, it is her". But that doesn't really make sense. You could expand that a little and say 私には彼女がいいんだ which is literally, "For me, she is good". Which is basically trying to communicate the sentiment that, "She's the one for me."

In general, I find that it's best to approach language from a native perspective. That is, instead of starting with an English phrase and then trying to figure out how to translate it into Japanese, I prefer to start with a Japanese phrase in the beginning. Try to feel out the sentiment that you want to convey from an emotional or abstract sense. Then immediately use the Japanese parts of speech that you know in order to express the sentiment. The more Japanese you know, the better you will be able to express yourself.

I find that it's best to pull directly from things that native Japanese speakers say in normal, everyday life. I'm reminded of something my sister-in-law said when she started dating a guy (whom she eventually married). She said that she was really happy they were dating now because he was "私の憧れの人". You can look up 憧れ in a dictionary if you need to. Basically, she was saying that this guy is someone that she had liked for a long time (and also someone she had respected and admired). So she was really happy that they had become a couple.

So, you might choose to use that phrase to describe the sentiment of someone being "your person": 彼女は私の憧れの人。 While it doesn't translate the English phrase directly, the sentiment behind the two phrases is basically the same. And this would definitely sound like a more natural thing to say in Japanese. When translating between languages, you often lose some of the nuance in meaning. A well-translated phrase is about conveying the closest possible meaning while still sounding natural in the target language. It does no good to make a direct translation that sounds strange or unintelligible in the target language. There is a reason why the phrase "lost in translation" has become a cliche!

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I don't know that I would consider this an answer so much as a reflection and suggestion about how to approach this idea in Japanese. (If the moderators feel this is unsuitable as an answer, then please let me know, I will remove it.)

As I mentioned in a comment to your post, "to be someone's person" is a highly idiomatic phrase made popular to some extent by--perhaps even coined in--Shonda Rhimes' Grey's Anatomy.

"My person" is the person I can rely upon in a crunch or a crisis; it's the person who will be there no matter what happens, no questions asked, no judgment. It's certainly not synonymous with "best friend" or even "BFF"; neither really do "soul mate" and "kindred spirit" capture this feel either. I mention these other notions of friendship since they have been around a while and can probably be reasonably translated into Japanese (though off the top of my head right now, I don't how best to translate these concepts either).

In my comment, I mused about capturing this notion through the idea of a bodhisattva, 菩薩{ぼさつ}. But, almost from the moment I made that comment, I felt it missed the mark. It seems to me that in English, in circles where folks understand the concept of a bodhisattva, we use the word much more casually than Japanese perhaps do 菩薩. (I certainly welcome feedback on this point.) 菩薩 somehow, to me at least, has a more technical or stiff or formal feel about it; whereas in English, bodhisattva has a much easier feel to it. But even with that said, bodhisattva doesn't exactly capture the feel of my person either.

I don't think you're going to find a good single expression in Japanese to capture this. I would recommend that you identify for yourself the quality of your person which best captures this feeling and express that instead.

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