Is the 2nd image (one below the google translate) more accurate? Is the のですが just completely wrong or?
Also I know the Google translate is wrong at the end because I accidentally had a new line after "call".
1 Answer
Both machine translations are not very natural. I would translate this as:
I want to call him but I'm sleep so I won't call him tonight.
- 彼に電話したいのですが、眠いので今夜はしません。
- 彼に電話をしたいのですが、眠いので今晩はやめておきます。
Either way, の before ですが is perfectly natural. This type of の is called explanatory-の, and it's perfectly natural to use it to set up a context, as in your sentence. See the "preliminary remarks" section in the linked article. See also: What is the meaning of ～んです/～のだ/etc?
Besides, you need a contrastive-は after 今夜/今晩. This is something easily forgotten by English speakers, but it's important.
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@user71207 It's still valid without の, but の is strongly desirable at least in this context. I don't know the exact rules regarding when の is optional in "preliminary remarks".– narutoCommented Mar 3, 2022 at 3:32
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Also I am curious, why do you use だめ in katakana in your user profile? Commented Mar 3, 2022 at 4:12
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