Translation?
 

Hey <3

I'm wondering if there's anyone who would be willing to let me PM them, with short messages in need of translating. It would be fanmails to send to musicians, who don't speak anything other than Japanese.

I think people would be more willing to help if you just post them here. I don't have the desire to make an affirmative effort to volunteer, but if I happen to visit this page and see something short I can do and have time, I'll do it.

I think most advanced people think the same way.

Ah, thankyou very much. This first one is short, thanking a band for coming to Europe. I'd like to be able to mail them and thank them.


Thank you so much for coming to Europe! It means so much to us European fans that you are traveling so far to let us hear your music. I hope you all enjoy yourselves very much and please look after yourself.

My translation should be good enough, but I stress that I feel uncomfortable with some of the phrasing because I tried to track your English as closely as possible, which required me to learn a couple new phrases—namely the "means so much to ~" equivalent in Japanese. I also really hate writing sentences in Japanese that are as long as your second in English.

Question for a better speaker than I: is it OK to use 旅行する in this case for "travel this far"? I always felt more like that was for vacations. Is 移動する a better alternative? That sounds really standoffish and formal to me. Maybe just 遠く来る instead? That's what I'll go with.

As I continued translating it, I felt less and less sure of my translation that closely tracked your English (the second sentence was long and I felt my Japanese was getting muddied up). Might I offer a Japanese equivalent that doesn't run on like yours does in English? Also, it's less formal since you're a fan writing to a band. Judging by how I've seen artists write blogs to their fans, I'm guessing this level of informality is OK:

But I postface (opposite of preface?) this by saying that if someone comes here claiming to have a better translation than I (Sashimister, YuriTokoro, MMM, Nyororin, Delacroix, Columbine, and allhailhata might), you should go with that.

That doesn't mean they aren't able to read basic English. In fact, many Japanese are.

If I were the band, I would be happier to receive fanmail in English even if I had to use my dictionary a few times than to receive it in Japanese that was so clearly written by someone else.

This is the way I would feel about receiving fan mail in any language, even one I don't understand at all. For example, I speak zero Arabic, but it would be awesome to get fan mail from Iraq praising my musicianship (were I a touring musician).

Ah, thankyou. I'll bear this in mind in the future, and only post more complex requests here past basics.

But I'm wondering if this below is correct...I'm wanting to post it to my Ameba.

すみませ日本語は苦手なもので。。。イギリス人です。

このアメバは私の旅の日記。 イギリスとフランス人Vailaです。日本語を勉強します。

よろしくおねがいします!

It gets your meaning more or less across, but it's got grammatical flaws. All in all, it says something like "exuse [sic] me, Japanese is something I'm not good at and do not like...I am British. This Ameba my travel diary. I am Vaila England and French person. I will study Japanese. Nice to meet you!"

Are you French-British? Like British citizen of French descent? Because I don't understand "ギリスとフランス人Vailaです" otherwise. "French-British person" is フランス系イギリス人. Also, you already said you were British above, so why say it again? I know when I was first doing Japanese compositions, I would write stuff and forget I wrote it, and repeat myself later on.

Also you used 苦手, which means you are bad at something and do not like the thing. Use 下手 for just plain ol' being bad at something.

ALso, "I am studying" is 勉強している, not 勉強する, if you meant to say "I am studying Japanese."

Also after 日記 you need です. And すみませ is not correct.