Can a verb be modified too many times?


Several years ago, I was taking a Japanese course and was given an assignment
to translate an English sentence of my choosing. (There was probably more to
the assignment than that, but I don't recall.) I chose a joke to translate:

"If God didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them taste so good?"

Attempting to translate the first part of this sentence, I rephrased it
slightly as "If God didn't want animals to be eaten" and tried to work it out
in steps:

eat - 食べる

be eaten - 食べられる

want to be eaten - 食べられたい

not want to be eaten - 食べられたくない

did not want to be eaten - 食べられたくなかった

if did not want to be eaten - 食べられたくなかったら

I was pretty proud of the result, but my (native Japanese) teacher didn't
understand it. He laughed after I explained in English, but didn't offer to
provide a correct translation--and I didn't press him for one since I felt a
bit silly in front of the class.

Ever since then, though, I've been wondering exactly what language rule(s) I
broke that made my effort incomprehensible. Can someone explain what the
problem is? And what would be a correct translation of the joke?




I think your mistake is that

> "If God didn't want animals to be eaten"

and

> "If God (or animals) didn't want to be eaten"

don't mean the same thing at all.

The latter case is how we would translate the sentence you gave.

If you wanted to say "A doesn't want B to 〜" you would have to say something
like:  
・AはBに〜してほしくない  
or  
・AはBに〜しないでほしい  
with the latter having a stronger feeling associated with it.

So,

eat C - Cを食べる

not eat C - Cを食べない

not want B to eat C - BにCを食べないでほしい

didn't want B to eat C - BにCを食べないでほしかった

if A didn't want B to eat C - AはBにCを食べないでほしかったのなら

and plugging in for A, B, and C:

> If God didn't want us to eat animals - 神様は我々人類に動物を食べないでほしかった(の)なら

Additionally, as @naruto points our in his/her comment, there is nothing wrong
with the phrase 食べられたくなかったら, if used in the proper context.




I think your mistake is that

> "If God didn't want animals to be eaten"

and

> "If God (or animals) didn't want to be eaten"

don't mean the same thing at all.

The latter case is how we would translate the sentence you gave.

If you wanted to say "A doesn't want B to 〜" you would have to say something
like:  
・AはBに〜してほしくない  
or  
・AはBに〜しないでほしい  
with the latter having a stronger feeling associated with it.

So,

eat C - Cを食べる

not eat C - Cを食べない

not want B to eat C - BにCを食べないでほしい

didn't want B to eat C - BにCを食べないでほしかった

if A didn't want B to eat C - AはBにCを食べないでほしかったのなら

and plugging in for A, B, and C:

> If God didn't want us to eat animals - 神様は我々人類に動物を食べないでほしかった(の)なら

Additionally, as @naruto points our in his/her comment, there is nothing wrong
with the phrase 食べられたくなかったら, if used in the proper context.

