Translating: "一人でも多くの方にコメントしていただけたら嬉しいので "


I have about a semester of Japanese under my belt, so my ability to read the
language is 'not great,' especially when it comes to getting any kind of
nuance out of a statement. At the moment, I'm working on translating:

> 一人でも多くの方にコメントしていただけたら嬉しいので

My current attempts to parse this:

  * 一人 でも 多くの - One person, but, many, (no) -- "But many individual's..." Maybe? Perhaps the de is part of the first word: 
  * 一人で も 多くの - By oneself/voluntarily, more/again, many (nominalized) -- "In the future, voluntarily [do something repeatedly]..."
  * 方 に - From what I can tell, the likely candidates are for 方 are for it to be pronounced 'hou' and to mean 'direction,' or for it to be pronounced 'kata' and either mean 'direction' or possibly be a way to say 'lady' or gentleman.' The latter seems likely enough, given that the person who wrote this is apparently prone to such word uses.
  * コメント して いただけたら 嬉しいので - comments, by/as, to be good/exquisite or 'potentially receive', happy

So my feeble attempt to read this settles on something like: "I would be happy
if you ladies and gentleman were to voluntarily leave more comments in the
future."

If anyone more seasoned can offer their translation, I'd be much obliged. Any
commentary on how to parse the original statement would surely be
enlightening.




"Even it were just one (that'd be OK, but), Because I'd be happy if I can get
a lot of people to (make a) comment..."

  * 一人でも → Even if just one
  * 多くの方（かた）→ many people (polite form for people)
  * にコメントしていただけたら → make comment for me / get them to make a comment (for me); 〜ていたたく is humble speech for someone higher than yourself doing something for you and always uses に (for @phoenixheart6's confusion). いただけたら is the suppositional of the potential form -- if I can have it done by someone higher than me
  * 嬉しい → (be) happy
  * ので → XのでY means "because of X, Y"; I ended my translation in an ellipsis because there's no proceeding clause, so we don't know what they're going to say.

By the way, I think this is a very good example of a "translation question"
done right. You showed your research, tried to break down each part, but had
trouble connecting the overall meaning. Good job!




Here is my attempt at translation.

> 一人でも多くの[方]{かた}にコメントしていただけたら嬉しいので  
>  Because I would be happy if as many people as possible make comments,

I will focus on 一人でも多くの方, because it seems tricky to interpret it correctly.
The other parts are explained in other answers.

一人でも多くの方 means “as many people as possible.” As you correctly guessed, 方 here
is read as かた and it means a person, with respect. Because I do not think that
there is a corresponding word in English, I dropped the nuance of respect.

As phoenixheart6, istrasci, and yadokari wrote, the literal meaning of 一人でも is
“even if it is only one person.” Therefore, you may wonder why 一人でも多くの方 means
“as many people as possible.” In 一人でも多くの, 一人でも describes the difference in
comparison just like 一人 in 一人多い. Therefore, 一人でも多くの方 means “more people (even
if the difference is only one person).” This expression describes that the
author is desperate to increase the number of people, hence “as many people as
possible.” This construction is not limited to this particular expression. For
example:

> 1センチ高く跳びたい。 _I want to jump one centimeter higher._  
>  1センチでも高く跳びたい。 _I want to jump higher even if the difference is one
> centimeter._ > _I want to jump as high as possible._

By the way, you may know this, but either your example is part of a sentence
or it contains
[ellipsis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsis_%28linguistics%29). In the
translation above, I interpreted it as part of a sentence.

