I recently tried machine translated the following:

> **This** is amazing. This **is** amazing.

And was surprised when the result was:

> **これ** は素晴らしいです。これ **は** 素晴らしいです。

I kind of expected the second example to come out as

> これは素晴らしい **です** 。

Since "is" and "です" serve the same function in the sentence. Similarly I would
expect,

> This **was** amazing.

to become

> これは素晴らしい **でした** 。

Is there any kind of general consensus on whether formatting like bold should
follow the topic marker or the copula in this case?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-03T23:16:14.143
59861
2018-07-04T03:42:29.960
30489
question
particle-は copula
Should emphasis follow the copula or move to the topic marker?
It's not that simple. Machine translation often makes mistakes, and it's
particularly bad at grasping the subtle nuances expressed by emphasis.

* * *

> **This** is amazing.

This English sentence usually implies "This is the one that is amazing,
nothing else.", right? In Japanese, you usually use [exhaustive-listing
が](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/51/5010) to express this nuance, and
that's the equivalent of this "emphasized _this_ ". If you want to emphasize
the sentence rally strongly, you can actually pronounce が with a stress, but
that's not necessary.

> これ **が** 素晴らしいです。

* * *

> This **is** amazing.

This English sentence usually implies "(Despite your statement) This one is
actually amazing, not bad.", right? Unfortunately, in Japanese, this is not
something that is easily expressed by simple stressing. To convey the same
nuance in Japanese, you have to do something else, like using an ordinary
adverb, choosing a suitable sentence-end particle, or use explanatory-の.

> これは本当に素晴らしいのです。／いや凄いんだって！

Likewise, it's often difficult to directly translate English sentences with
emphasis such as "I **do** like him", "I **was** there", "He **did** kill
her", etc.

* * *

Stressing です is actually something I sometimes hear from children or childish
characters in fiction, but I don't remember when I spoke like this last time.

> 素晴らしい **でーすー** ！
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-04T03:42:29.960
59866
2018-07-04T03:42:29.960
5010
59861
answer