Thursday, July 27, 2017

kanji - Kana causing translation difficulty: 「きれている」


Ok, so I've been having trouble with a passage. It's mostly written in kana, and I can get most of it, but because of the kana, I have no idea what a certain word is. At the beginning of the music video for the Gorillaz music video for Clint Eastwood, it says a line from Dawn of the Dead in Japanese and then in English. Here it is:



すべての死体は死にきれているわけではない。人々はそれらを殺し、そしてまた起きあがって殺す。



In English, of course, it is:



Every dead body that is not exterminated gets up and kills! The people it kills get up and kill!



Of course, I understand the general meaning of the Japanese version, because I have a translation. The last part is easy:




人々はそれらを殺し、そしてまた起きあがって殺す。When people kill them, they get up again and kill.



But the first part I don't understand. I know すべての死体は, and I know 訳ではない, but since it's written in kana, I can't tell at all which きれて is being used. Is it the 〜て form of 切れる? Is it the potential form of 切る? I don't know why you'd be cutting them, and I don't think it's 着れる (because zombies don't spend much time picking out clothes). Secondarily, I'm unsure of the use of 死に here. Is it being きれて'd towards death, or is it 死に as in the other word for death?



Answer



In this context, きれる does not mean "to be cut", but rather attaches to the 連用形 (-i form) of a verb and means "to be able to completely [verb]". cf. the EDICT entry for 切れる:



(suf,v1) (16) to be able to do completely



When used in this sense, きれる is typically written in kana rather than as 切れる.



So, we have 死にきれる (that's the verb 死ぬ, not the noun 死 + particle に) = "to be able to die completely" or, more or less equivalently, "to be completely dead", which maps onto "to be exterminated" pretty well.


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