A question about 寧ろ and a passive form

Japanese
#1

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Can somebody please explain to me, why the second half of this sentence translates to “you both should be the ones getting insulted”?

My assumption is that it literally translates to “Together (you) are bad-mouthing, but instead (you) should be bad-mouthed”. Am I correct? Does the passive form 言われる方がいい here carry the nuance of "the action you are doing should actually happen to you?

And if any kind of “you” is completely omitted, is there any way to know that the speaker is talking about somebody else, and not about himself bad-mouthing another person?

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#2

I believe what’s happening here is that the ‘you’ in this sentence is meant to symbolize the ‘you both’ in the first part, and as the subject is shared between clauses - so too does the meaning. So since they’re talking about you both in the first half, they’re also talking about you both in the second half because the subject is implied.

But yeah, the only way to know is through context if I’m correct. You are right though, in that 言われるほうがいい means that something will be inflicted on someone (in this case, you both)

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#3

But doesn’t 一緒 just mean “together”, and not necessarily “you both”?

#4

Yes that’s correct. However , that seems to be the implied meaning, hence why the translation comes out that way. In a different context, you could likely say the same thing and mean 4 different people (though I think there are better ways to phrase it in that case)

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#5

This could be any number of people. The BunPro team decided to go with 2, but as Delta said, it’s all based on context which we don’t have here. IOW, you are right OP. Your translation would be a better one since it’s less specific.

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