What I Thought About “What If I Forget My Password?” 2
- 127
- 7
- 1
This is the continuation of the previous entry.
The previous entry is below.
http://lang-8.com/183044/journals/1408540/What-I-Thought-About-%25E2%2580%259CWhat-If-I-Forget-My-Password%253F%25E2%2580%259D-1
I’ll mess it up from now on, but let me try.
So let’s think again about “What if I forget my password?”
I thought the phrase off and on today and I think I found the answer for me.
When I was reading a book for killing time today, I came across a conversation below.
“Things usually work out in the end.”
“What if they don’t?”
I read the book many times before, but until then, I hadn’t noticed the grammar.
That’s because I read the book without translating into Japanese.
I wondered about “What if I forget my password?” is because I translated it into Japanese.
I have to think, “English is English. Japanese is Japanese.”
OK, you must be rolling your eyes now saying, “Is that the answer?”
I have to think, “What if I forget my password?” is that the condition of what I’m forgetting keeps going.
However, if I translate the phrase into Japanese, I should translate as “もしパスワードを忘れたら” (I say the subject to be omitted in Japanese in this case.)
A present tense“もしパスワードを忘れるなら” sounds weird.
Also I should translate “What if things don’t work out?” into “もし物事が上手く行かなかったら” as past tense in Japanese.
“もしパスワードを忘れたら” sounds like to me a conditional sentence.
If I say it in a conditional sentence in English, it’ll be “What would I do if I forgot my password?”
Well, are “When I forget my password” and “When I don’t remember password?” also used in this case?
I wrote what I thought randomly, so it might be difficult for you to read.
If I make mistakes about English, please free to tell me about them.
The previous entry is below.
http://lang-8.com/183044/journals/1408540/What-I-Thought-About-%25E2%2580%259CWhat-If-I-Forget-My-Password%253F%25E2%2580%259D-1
I’ll mess it up from now on, but let me try.
So let’s think again about “What if I forget my password?”
I thought the phrase off and on today and I think I found the answer for me.
When I was reading a book for killing time today, I came across a conversation below.
“Things usually work out in the end.”
“What if they don’t?”
I read the book many times before, but until then, I hadn’t noticed the grammar.
That’s because I read the book without translating into Japanese.
I wondered about “What if I forget my password?” is because I translated it into Japanese.
I have to think, “English is English. Japanese is Japanese.”
OK, you must be rolling your eyes now saying, “Is that the answer?”
I have to think, “What if I forget my password?” is that the condition of what I’m forgetting keeps going.
However, if I translate the phrase into Japanese, I should translate as “もしパスワードを忘れたら” (I say the subject to be omitted in Japanese in this case.)
A present tense“もしパスワードを忘れるなら” sounds weird.
Also I should translate “What if things don’t work out?” into “もし物事が上手く行かなかったら” as past tense in Japanese.
“もしパスワードを忘れたら” sounds like to me a conditional sentence.
If I say it in a conditional sentence in English, it’ll be “What would I do if I forgot my password?”
Well, are “When I forget my password” and “When I don’t remember password?” also used in this case?
I wrote what I thought randomly, so it might be difficult for you to read.
If I make mistakes about English, please free to tell me about them.
"Would" is only used when something is a hypothetical possibility.
"What would I do if I forgot my password?" is a correct translation of the sentence using 「（もし）パスワードを忘れたら」.
I asked you when you wrote about this before how you would translate "What will I do if I forget my password?" or "What should I do if I forget my password?" These are different questions from "What would I do if I forgot my password?" How would you express that difference in Japanese? You say that 「もしパスワードを忘れるなら」 is wrong. What is a correct translation of either of these two sentences?
“What should I do if I forget my password?” もしパスワードを忘れたら、どうすればいい？
Is there no way of asking either of these questions with 「忘れると」？
I thought about the phrase off and on today and I think I found the answer for me.
When I was reading a book for killing to kill time today, I came across a conversation below.
I wrote what I thought about randomly, so it might be difficult for you to read.
“What if [things] don’t [work out in the end this time]?”
The grammar in these two sentences is indeed the same. In both cases the speaker is expressing worry about a possible future event. If we expanded the sentences to make them significantly more verbose, they might come out something like this...
"What will happen to me if I forget my password? Will I ever be able to access my account again? Will I lose all my data forever? Is there any provision to allow me to recover my files? How much red tape will I have to go through to get them back?"
"What dire consequences may overtake us, and how can we possibly survive, if things don't work out all right in the end this time? Will it be the end of the world as we know it?"