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The staff ate it later

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477 points gyomu | 1 comments | 02 Sep 25 15:24 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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wk_end ◴[02 Sep 25 17:29 UTC] No.45106277[source]▶
Quick and very fussy question I'm hoping someone with native-level Japanese could comment on.

My inclination (as a non-native learner) would be to translate 美味しくいただきました as "the staff enjoyed it later". It's both slightly more formal and elegant-sounding than the comparatively coarse "ate", and captures the pleasure implied by 美味しく ("deliciously"). I would expect plain old "ate" if they used 食べました.

Of course, I'm not a professional translator or native speaker! It’s possible I'm over-indexing on the textbook knowledge I have of the language and in practice, to native Japanese eyes and ears, the things I think I'm seeing aren't really there.

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1. fenomas ◴[03 Sep 25 02:27 UTC] No.45111666[source]▶
You're not wrong - "the staff ate it later" is a word-for-word translation, so it's kind of weird to leave out 美味しく. (among other things a meaningful translation would say "crew" instead of staff)

But the nuance of the JP here is that it's using a polite set phrase, not describing whether people enjoyed the food or not. A bit like how "a good time was had by all" is used to wrap up a story, not really to describe what kind of time people had.

tl;dr, 美味しく is there because the JP would sound weirdly flat without it, and you're right that "enjoyed" would probably be a better.