In search of TEOKU

While cleaning my old room at my parent's house, I found my four disc set of the Final Fantasy X soundtrack. I never listened to it though, because I honestly only bought it because I liked the song of praise（祈りの歌). That's right. I bought a four disc cd set because of a thirty-second song.

Intelligent.

In any case, I ripped them onto my computer (which I will probably regret when the Blitzball music comes on my shuffle in between truly rad songs like Ziggy Stardust and Sam's Town), and the first track really caught me off guard.

It was the first line of the Japanese version of the game. I must confess that I listened to it more than a few times because I was struck by the beauty that lay in its simplicity.

最後かもしれないだろ。。。だから全部話しておきたいんだ。
Saigo kamoshirenai daro... dakara zenbu hanshite okitainda.

• Game Translation: Listen to my story... This may be our last chance.
• Literal literal literal translation: Maybe this is the end... Because of this, I actually want to prepare telling you everything.
• The translation is: This looks like it might be the end, so I want to tell you everything.
• A less literal, more beautiful translation, and probably more accurate in terms of feeling is: I guess this is the end... so... I'll tell you everything.

* EDIT : In retrospect, though the English game translation has very little to do with the vocabulary of the Japanese, it may be the most correct in that it addresses a very general subject. The subject in the sentence is inferred, so it may be incorrect for me to assume it is a "you". That being said, I still stick my final translation.

Which bring us to today's grammar point: ておく or teoku.

Teoku is hard to translate, because while it has intrinsic meaning, it makes for an awkward English sentence.

The kanji for oku is 置く, which means to put or place something somewhere. Though it's not necessary to the definition, it usually insinuates there is a reason for why that something was placed somewhere.

Example:

私の弁当を例倉庫に置きました。

I put my lunch in the refrigerator.

When placed with another verb in its te form, it means that the subject is doing something to prepare, or for a reason.

How to form a sentence using teoku:

• te form of verb + teoku

In this case, Titus is telling you his story for a reason (the reason being the implication that he is going to die). Sadly, that small nuance doesn't translate very well.

// IMPORTANT NOTE: The kanji I noted before is never used when used as teoku. It will always be written in hiragana. I think that this probably because Japanese people, when they skim, use kanji as their landmarks. Since the kanji by itself means something different, it would seem like it would throw one off. \\