Here are two sentences containing the し particle:

> このアパートは綺麗だし、安い。  
>  This apartment is clean and what's more it's inexpensive.
>
> 今日はお客さんも来るし、夕食も作らなくてはいけないし、エアロビクスにいけません。  
>  I've got visitors today and I have to cook dinner so I can't go to
> aerobics.

(Not sure if there are other types of し sentences but this is two that I know
of.)

I feel that these two sentences aren't translated in the same way. For
instance if I were to translate the first sentence like the second sentence
was it would become "This apartment is clean so it's cheap". Of course this
doesn't even make sense, but do you see what I mean?

This brings me to the question I'm hoping someone can answer for me:

How do you know which way し sentences should be translated? Is there any way
to know how a sentence with し will be translated without trying both ways and
seeing which makes sense?
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2016-04-24T22:35:23.093
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2016-04-25T06:20:03.570
2016-04-25T06:20:03.570
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question
grammar translation particles
Translating sentences containing し
Think about it in terms of context.

If you are in a space without any language, what are the traits and qualities
you want to convey?

Read the Japanese and try and emulate the context, then from the context go to
English.

Trying to find one-to-one corollaries is interesting and good for word-by-word
translating, but for conveying meaning correctly, we must strive for a common
cultural context from which to express our human situation in words.

し can be translated many ways. In general, it's like a comma for situational
lists. し is very poetic in this way -- it can string together many related
events to depict a scene.

In English, however, there is no true _し_ in the same way for flexibility and
versatility of use in one letter, character, word, or term. So we must make
some compromises:

し can be rendered as

  * _additionally,_
  * _what's more_ (like above)
  * _on top of that,_
  * _and_
  * but that's not all,
  * this and also this

You'll have to consider the tone of a message before translating し, as that
will largely impact which direction is chosen for contextual-transposition
that is culturally aware.

Happy translating!
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2016-04-24T23:46:24.407
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2016-04-24T23:46:24.407
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answer