0

一つの時代の積み重ねが新たな伝説を生み、ここにまた一人のヒーローが誕生した。ロックマン (source)

Here are two translations I have:

The culmination of one era gives birth to a new legend, and here again another hero is born.

The efforts of an era gave birth to a new legend, and here again another hero is born.

I'm not sure if を生み is supposed to be を生み出した. Nor do I know what tense it could possibly mean exactly.

Is it "gave birth", "gives birth", "will give birth", "has given birth", or "produces a new legend", "created a new legend"?

Improve this question
6
  • Not your question, but 誕生した is "was born".
    – A.Ellett
    Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 18:16
  • Thanks for the reply! Any help is better than no help. I was wondering this too, since the second translation was given to me by a member in another website forum.
    – SomaRise
    Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 18:19
  • 1
    Generally verb in a form like 生み could be translated with the same tense as the main verb. But, you could also avoid dealing with tense completely and translate it using a participle "giving birth to".
    – A.Ellett
    Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 18:19
  • @SomaRise Just a quick tip: you don't have to post comments to thank helpful answerers and commenters. If you find an answer helpful, you should consider upvoting and/or accepting it. You have asked some 50 questions here on Japanese SE, but have rarely accepted any answers. Upvoting and accepting answers are the ways we express appreciation on SE. :)
    – Eddie Kal
    Commented Nov 25, 2021 at 0:37
  • Oh ok. I'm just always on Wordreference and Reddit so I never noticed this until you pointed it out to me. Thanks for the helpful information.
    – SomaRise
    Commented Nov 25, 2021 at 1:35

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

As Japanese, を生み has no tense at all. Tense for this only exists when translating into a language that requires a tense.

In your given context, を生み occurs within a longer statement that ends with 誕生した -- past tense, and the only tense in the entire sentence. So if we were forced to translate を生み here into an expression that has tense, the past tense might be appropriate. That said, I personally like @A.Ellett's suggestion of side-stepping the issue, and using "giving birth to", a construction in English that itself doesn't really have tense.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks for the detailed reply. But: "The efforts of an era giving birth to a new legend, and here again another hero is born.", doesn't make much sense.
    – SomaRise
    Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 20:13
  • The part before the comma can be analyzed as a kind of stage-setting, a way of establishing the context. That kind of rhetorical feature in English is sometimes carried out using a clause like "With XYZ being the case, ...". The sample sentence could be translated as "With the events of one age giving rise to a new legend, ..."
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Nov 24, 2021 at 20:40

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .