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> そしてその後部座席は水に冷たく濡れていたのである。

I was reading a story when I found this sentence. Why did the author use the
adverb 冷たく? When I translate can I just skip it?
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2017-06-14T15:09:01.323
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question
translation adverbs
The adverb 冷たく in そしてその後部座席は水に冷たく濡れていたのである
The story was a horror story, and the sentence was a punch line, wasn't it.
Japanese people feel chilly when listening to horror stories, and to emphasize
it, the author used 冷たい (chilly or cold; adverb form 冷たく) in the line, I
think.
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2017-06-14T15:23:27.783
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answer
Simply put, you shouldn't skip descriptive words like adverbs and adjectives.
Adverbs, like this one you're asking about, add to the atmosphere and
environment in the story much like how adverbs and adjectives add detail to a
story in English. They're crucial in fully understanding what happened, as
well as why people do what they do.

冷たく is the adverb form of
[冷たい](http://jisho.org/word/%E5%86%B7%E3%81%9F%E3%81%84), [which was formed by
replacing the い with a く](http://www.guidetojapanese.org/adgobi.html). If you
clicked on the link for 冷たい, you would find that it meant cold, chilly, icy,
or freezing. The second definition (coldhearted, unfeeling) doesn't really
work here.

冷たく is modifying the verb
[濡れる](http://jisho.org/word/%E6%BF%A1%E3%82%8C%E3%82%8B), which was conjugated
to 濡れていた, or translated into English as "(something) was wet." Put together,
冷たく濡れていた means that "(something) was cold and wet."

By now, you probably know that the (something) that I referred to in the last
paragraph is the 後部座席{こうぶざせき｝ (back seat), so without further ado, let's
translate that sentence.

> そしてその後部座席は水に冷たく濡れていたのである。
>
> Then the back seat became cold and wet from the water.

So can you skip the adverb in translation? Sure, **but you miss information**.
I don't know the context of the sentences before this particular sentence, so
I am going to assume that they drove off a bridge into a body of water (river,
瀬戸内海、etc.) What if the passengers were so cold that they could not move, and
ended up drowning? What if the desperation of the passengers was dramatically
increased because of the cold water? If you don't explain that the seats were
cold as well as wet, you could miss out on why the passengers reacted the way
they did. I highly recommend that you avoid skipping translation on adverbs.
They are just as important in English as they are in Japanese.
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answer