48467
In the previous part of the text the author says that a taxi driver picked up
a young girl. While he was driving, he looked at the rear mirror but he could
not see the girl. Then there is this sentence: おや、変だぞと振り返ると乗っている。 What does it
mean?
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-16T21:19:09.020
48464
2017-06-17T03:14:57.253
18269
question
translation meaning
I don't get the meaning of this sentence おや、変だぞと振り返ると乗っている。
[This is very similar to a question you asked the other
day](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/48405/4875). So, I will assume
you're having difficulty parsing the complexity of the grammar.

First let's break the sentence down into its three main parts:

> おや、変だぞ
>
> Whoa! That's strange!
>
> 振り返る
>
> Looking to the back (technically, "turning back")
>
> 乗っている
>
> She was riding [there].

If you can see the meaning of those three parts, then all you need to figure
out next is the nature of the two と's, which function quite differently
grammatically here. But they're the glue that join these parts together into a
meaningful unit.

The first と is quotative. The implicit verb omitted here is おもって, "thinking".
So the first portion can be translated (a bit freely)

> Thinking to himself, "whoa, that's weird!"

The second と is a conditional, which here means "when" or "upon".

> When he looked in the back (or, upon looking in the back seat)

And then you're just left with,

> There she was (technically, she was riding [in the back seat])

I'll presume that he's picked up his fare (the young lady) and then he doesn't
see her in the rearview mirror. At that point, the sentence should make quite
reasonable sense. (I fill in a few details that are either suggested by the
Japanese or suggested by implied context.)

> "Whoa! That's weird. [I thought just picked up a passenger]" But, as soon as
> he looked in the backseat, there she was.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2017-06-16T23:46:50.870
48467
2017-06-17T03:14:57.253
2020-06-17T08:18:27.500
-1
4875
48464
answer