Sorry for the question that will certainly be trivial, but for me Japanese is
totally unknown territory. I should translate this sentence into Japanese:
"The Girls and the Heron" (it would be a title, so without verbs or anything
else).

女の子とサギ

This should be a correct translation, since in Japan you can not indicate the
plural right? But this can also be translated as "The Girl and the Heron". How
do I signal to readers that it is a plural? Can it be okay like this?

女の子 **達** とサギ

Or like this?

女の子 **三人** とサギ

In the latter case, however, the correct translation would be "The Three Girls
and the Heron", if I have not misunderstood. I wanted to ask if everything is
correct or if I'm doing something wrong. Thanks and sorry!
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2023-08-29T20:28:41.670
100834
2023-08-30T05:39:47.760
57410
question
grammar plurals
Translation and plural - girl and girls!
> in Japan you can not indicate the plural right?

There is no grammatical plural form in Japanese, but of course there is a way
to indicate whether the number of something is one or more than one. Please
take a look at this great answer: [What is the difference in usage between a
plural using (a) the kanji repetition character 々, (b) a plural using -たち, and
(c) the singular?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/8105/5010)

> In English (and in many other languages), every noun _must_ be marked as
> singular or plural. In Japanese marking plurality for a noun is not
> mandatory. This does not mean that Japanese speakers can't convey the idea
> that a noun is singular or plural if they want to, it only means they don't
> _have to_ — and indeed in most cases Japanese speakers will not explicitly
> specify if whether a noun is singular or plural.

Even if there are many girls, something like 少女とサギ is not at all unnatural as
the title of a Japanese story. Even in [a manga like
this](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailor_Moon), where multiple girls appear
as main characters, it's completely normal not to explicitly add a word/affix
to specify the plurality.

Therefore, the question here is "Do you **really need to** indicate there is
more than one girl? If you believe that not indicating the plurality will hurt
the meaning of your title, perhaps the simplest approach is to add たち or to
explicitly state the number like this:

  * 少女たちとサギ
  * 3人の少女とサギ

(Here I used 少女 because it's usually preferred in literary works, but YMMV.
See [this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/72209/5010).)
CC BY-SA 4.0
2023-08-30T05:39:47.760
100841
2023-08-30T05:39:47.760
5010
100834
answer