Difference and usage between こちら and 私


I would like to know the difference between the two sentences

> こちらを見ていた

and

> 私を見ていた

The translation is the same I think

> She was looking at me

is こちら and 私 interchangeable when using を after ?

EDIT: the main character can be quite rude and also uses quite a lot of slang
expressions. However, he is quite impressed by the girl in question.




I find this question interesting, as I sense some mismatches between English
and Japanese behind it.

Let me first clarify that no native speaker would think こちら in your こちらを見ていた
as a personal pronoun. こちら is indeed among words that may function as a first-
person pronoun, but only in a somewhat diplomatic context like "our side" or
"our organization"; even if in singular, "I, as a stakeholder", "I,
representing our company" etc. So the literal translation in that situation
will be "was looking at this way" which is different from 私を見ていた.

Then, can you change こちらを見ていた to 私を見ていた? Usually not recommended unless, say,
you believe she is a stalker. In English grammar, we can use a person as
destination to say "he visited me" or "I listen to her", which is impossible
in Japanese (× 私を訪問した × 彼女を聞く). In this light, 私を見ていた is certainly a valid
sentence, but not a naive equivalent of "she was looking at me". It implies
the speaker is convinced that the looker is interested to know about or
collect information from that personality by looking; that is like "watch me",
"look into me", or "look at _me_ " in the same way you "look at _a problem_ ".

To simply tell the objective fact that someone has the eyes focused on you,
you use 方 "direction" to say 私の方を見ていた. And this would be little different than
こちらを見ていた. Alternatively, you can say 私の顔を見る or 私の体を見る using externally visible
parts.




> is こちら and 私 interchangeable when using を after ?

To directly answer this question, yes, and no. It is not a one to one
conversion. The reason for this relies solely on the difference between the
words.

**こちら:** The [dictionary
definition](https://jisho.org/word/%E6%AD%A4%E6%96%B9) of this word is varied
and diverse. The definitions you will encounter are, `this way/direction;
here; this (one); I; we; me; us; this person.`

The thing about こちら is that you have a sense of vagueness about the subject
you are talking about. So when you say `こちらを見ていた`, you could reasonably
linearly translate that as, `Me (object) looked at`, or `This way (object)
looked at`. Typically though, the vagueness of the word eliminates `me` as an
option, because it is not directly clear what/who you are talking about.

The vagueness is intentional for two reasons. First, Japanese people don't
like to be direct when they are referring to themselves in a humble way. It
comes off presumptuous to assume she was looking at _me,_ when she could have
been looking elsewhere. It (very slightly) elevates _her_ in the
communication, and distinguishes _her_ as a person that is respected by the
speaker.

Second, it is altogether plausible that she wasn't looking directly at you,
but at something behind you/to your side, so looking 'this way' could
technically be more accurate than 'at me.' Unless she confirms what she was
looking at, we just don't have any way of knowing for sure.

Replace こちら with 私, and you start making strong assumptions at exactly what
she was looking at. You also remove the sense of respect (however small) that
you would have had in the other sentence.

In practice, the difference between こちら and 私 in these sentences is the same
the difference between, `looking this way` and `looking at me`, as noted in
the comments by @user4092.

