p.55 - "Do we have anything to eat here right now?"
"Did" is the wrong tense and "again" is just not right here. I'm just guessing that the original means to convey something more like "right now."
Is English perhaps not your native language? "Did we have anything to eat, again?" is a perfectly normal sentence, and your 'correction' changes the intended nuance. I'm not sure I can explain it very well, though. The original sentence is much more natural-sounding than what you proposed.
I guess if I were to try to explain... the "again" signifies that the speaker is trying to recall something they should already know. As in, "you already told me, but can you tell me again?". And "did we" is past tense because your question is technically about that past information, not about the current state of affairs, even though the former is also the latter. I'm not sure this explanation makes sense, but anyways, it's a common conversational phrase and the nuance is completely different because it puts emphasis on trying to remember something rather than simply asking outright.
Nope, it's very very much my native language. Is English perhaps not YOUR native language?
They're coming home and she's trying to remember if they have anything to eat in the house, because as you see from the rest of the scene they haven't been going shopping or stocking up on anything lately. The sentence as written implies that she can't remember whether or not they ate food already, which would make no sense. And "again" either implies it's happened before (which would add to the strangeness) or it's a word meaning something like "tell me again whether X is true," X being the preceding phrase, but this would be very conversationally stilted in this context. You would use it more in a context like, "What's that guy's name, again?"
I can't imagine any native speaker ever using this sentence in this context, and the fact that you think it's common makes even less sense to me. I have never, ever heard anyone say "Did we have anything to eat?" meaning "Is there any food in the house?" "Do" is the only appropriate conjugation here because you are talking about the present state of the pantry/refrigerator. Otherwise "did" needs another verb to make it work. You could say "Did we buy anything to eat this week?" or "Did we keep those leftovers" or "Did we remember to stock up on produce?" but you can't say "Did we have anything to eat?" That sentence can ONLY be about having already physically consumed food.
Looking at the original manga, this translation is certainly correct. The Japanese text is also past-tense and uses 「っけ」, indicating that she's trying to remember.
Different languages can express different ideas in different ways, and utilize different conjugations sometimes to make the point. Part of translation and localization is not just literally transcribing the phrase but knowing enough about both languages and cultures to make the proper adjustments.
last edited at Aug 30, 2022 8:59AM