Is this topical tangent really as abrupt/unconnected as it feels to me?


Okay, so I'm attempting to translate the text from an obscure Japanese Super
Famicom game (for fun/general posterity). ( **This is not a translation or
proof-read request of course - those are against the rules.** ) The game is
"Olivia's Mystery" (オリビアのミステリー). The format of the game is a picture puzzle -
you grab square cut-outs from a looping-animation picture (only mild
animation, no sweeping changes across the frame), rotate them, and place them
appropriately relative to the other pieces. When you've completed a level,
some (Japanese) text scrolls across the screen, providing a narrative story to
go with the images you're unveiling.

Here's the full text for the 8th level (which I'm working on), for context,
with the pertinent paragraph emboldened. The broader context is, there's a
water shortage on earth, this guy shot himself out of a human cannon (at a
circus) trying to aim for a nearby country to get water to bring back to
relieve the situation, but... overshot and wound up shooting himself to the
moon (which has a breathable atmosphere somehow) (yes, this story has gotten
absolutely bonkers). He's in some ancient, abandoned lunar civilization's
city, and found a way to solve his water problems, but now needs to find a way
back to Earth.

> さて、いろいろさがしたすえにやっとつかえ  
>  そうなものをみつけた。  
>  みるだけで、空を飛ぶためのものであること  
>  はわかる。  
>  なにしろ、とりのかたちをしているのだ。こ  
>  れが飛ぶためのものでなくして、なんであろ  
>  うか？  
>  ただし、学者モジャイスキーがつくった飛行  
>  機とはちがって、はばたくようになっている  
>  のがとくちょうであった。  
>  **なお、この機械はナスカ地方にいくとでっか  
>  いイラストがあるので、ひまな人はみにいっ  
>  てみるとよい。だいぶディフォルメされてい  
>  るが、イメージはつかめるでしょう。だれが  
>  かいたかしらないが。**

> しばらくパタパタと飛びまわったころには、  
>  水くみもおわっていた。とりあえずはすこし  
>  あればいい。  
>  これはこれで皇帝の娘にあげちゃって、あら  
>  ためて水道パイプでもひけばいいさ。月に水  
>  があるなんてだれもしらないだろうな。  
>  さ、それではいそいそと、かえりますか。

Now, here's the translation that I'm going with (for now anyway) up to and
including the bold passage (extra emphasis added to final line) (some of my
line breaks have been eaten):

> Well, after a lot of searching, I finally found something that looked to do
> the trick. Just by the sight of it, it was obvious that this was a thing for
> flying. The reason being, it was shaped just like a bird. If this thing
> isn’t for flying, then what the heck is it for!? However, this machine was
> different from any airplane that aviation pioneer Mozhaysky might have
> designed, its wing-flapping design being a notable distinguishing feature.
> **If you go to the land of the Nazca people, there is an enormous
> illustration - those with the leisure to do so should go there and see it of
> themselves. They are fairly distorted drawings, but the images are still
> fairly recognizable. Whoever drew them is a mystery.** _The machine I found,
> it could be compared to those illustrations, in its representation of a
> bird._

As you may have noticed, I added that final sentence pretty much in its
entirety, based on little else than that the Nazca stuff did at least begin
with 「なお、この機械は」. I must confess that this passage really baffles me - it
begins with この機械は, and then absolutely nothing else in that section connects
things back in any way (that I can tell) to that supposed topic that we just
marked with は.

So now, finally my actual question - is this Japanese passage (the bold one)
as strange and awkward to native Japanese readers (and any of you with lots of
experience with the language) as it strikes me as being? Or is that initial
「なお、この機械は」 really enough of an introduction to the paragraph to more-or-less
imply the "made up" sentence (or something much like it) that I made up and
tacked on at the end because of how incredibly awkwardly it would read in
English without it?

If it _is_ really awkward, it wouldn't be the first instance. In the last
level, when he's searching for water, it spends the whole time talking about
how he's in an abandoned lunar city and how if he had more time he'd love to
explore it, etc, and then wraps up with a terse "Anyway, finding an atomic
water collector, I then set about the task of finding a way back - after all,
he certainly wasn't going to find a return cannon back to earth!"
(アトミック水くみ機をみつけた私は、水くみをまかせて、自分はかえる方法をさがすことにした。なにしろ月に大砲は、ない。). That one, I'm
quite certain is just really awkward writing... but even so, this one feels so
much more so!

Honestly, this whole project is such a weird mix. It often sounds kind of
scholarly and sophisticated in spots, like the brief reference (before the
emboldened section) to Mozhaysky (学者モジャイスキー) (apparently just assuming the
reader knows precisely who that is), and in general some of the wording... and
then lately this really bizarre stuff with overshooting himself with the
cannon and winding up on the moon (so suddenly cartoonish a plot!), and the
story itself kind of rambles around.




In the sentence

> この機械はナスカ地方にいくとでっかいイラストがあるので、ひまな人はみにいってみるとよい。

ナスカ地方にいくとでっかい is all modifying イラスト, so in its most basic form it says

> この機械はイラストがあるので...

Roughly translating to

> There is an illustration of **this machine**

So there is nothing unnatural about the grammar, just a lot of modifiers that
make it harder to see the underlying sentence.

Once you can see the basic grammar, you can see that the author is not
referencing the Nazca picture because it happens to be similar to the machine
he's talking about, he's saying it IS a drawing of the machine. Tying
something from the real world into his fantasy world. Like the ancient
civilization saw the bird-machine flying through the sky and were amazed and
drew a huge picture of it.




In the sentence

> この機械はナスカ地方にいくとでっかいイラストがあるので、ひまな人はみにいってみるとよい。

ナスカ地方にいくとでっかい is all modifying イラスト, so in its most basic form it says

> この機械はイラストがあるので...

Roughly translating to

> There is an illustration of **this machine**

So there is nothing unnatural about the grammar, just a lot of modifiers that
make it harder to see the underlying sentence.

Once you can see the basic grammar, you can see that the author is not
referencing the Nazca picture because it happens to be similar to the machine
he's talking about, he's saying it IS a drawing of the machine. Tying
something from the real world into his fantasy world. Like the ancient
civilization saw the bird-machine flying through the sky and were amazed and
drew a huge picture of it.

