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I would like to translate this pattern "I wish I had/hadn't done XXX",
precisely within this context: I went somewhere and I wish I actually hadn't.

I could come up with:

> 行かなければ良かったです

Whereas Google Translate says:

> 私はそこに行っていなかったことを願っています。

Who's right and are there different ways to express this?
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2014-08-04T01:45:15.040
18107
2014-08-04T04:19:33.480
664
question
translation
I wish I hadn't gone there
From my experience, the results of Google Translate for sentences in Japanese
to English are rarely correct.

You might find that a single word is sometimes correctly translated, however
there is no one-to-one mapping between the Japanese and English vocabularies,
and depending on the context you might need to use a different word than the
one provided by Google.  
Remember that while English language is usually classified as a low-context
language (it is "easier" to makes sentences that completely describe a
situation), Japanese is more of a high-context language (a single sentence
taken out of its context can have many different interpretations).  
This makes it extremely hard to translate sentences one by one, which is I
think the only way Google Translate can operate.

As for the grammar, the structures returned by Google Translate are often
awkward.  
While your example does not sound that wrong to my ears (I am not a native
speaker so I can't be 100% positive about that), it does not sound natural
neither. In a conversation you would typically drop of the `私は` and `そこに`, and
I think you would prefer the `-なければ良かった` form to the heavier/longer
`-なかったことを願う`.

So in conclusion I would suggest that you put more trust in yourself than in
Google Translate, the service has still a long way to go to provide a
satisfying support for the Japanese language.  
Of course the best would be to ask a (native) human speaker, instead of a
computerized service. However you might not always have access to one, so your
reflex to turn to Stack Exchange was a good one.
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2014-08-04T02:11:49.330
18108
2014-08-04T02:11:49.330
1319
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Like @wil said, neither sound wrong, just stilted and not what most people
would likely say. Try these:

> 行くんじゃなかったなぁ。  
> 行かなかったらよかったのになぁ。  
> 行かねばよかったものを。

An explicit "wish" verb isn't needed to express this feeling in Japanese and
IMO feels unnatural especially for something that has already happened.
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2014-08-04T03:33:29.867
18109
2014-08-04T03:33:29.867
6841
18107
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Most naturally, it would be:

> 「行かなければよかった。」

Colloquially and naturally,

> 「行かなきゃよかった。」

The Google Translate has given you gibberish this time as it usually does. It
makes little sense as it means:

"I pray that I did not go there."

The speaker does not even know if he went or not.
CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-08-04T04:19:33.480
18110
2014-08-04T04:19:33.480
18107
answer