this is not the time for…
far from
out of the question
Structure
- Phrase + どころではない
This is another grammar point that would probably be better off if it were split into two (like in Shin Kanzen Master N2, or like here).
This example sentence:
出産は痛いどころではないらしい。
They say childbirth is far from painful.
Is weird. It makes it sound like the sentence means childbirth is not painful at all which sounded really weird to me so I put the Japanese sentence through deepl and sure enough it gives me: “Childbirth is apparently far more than just painful.” But duckduckgos translator gives me exactly the translation thats currently in the lesson.
Looking at other sites about this grammar point, I found one stating that its a strong negation while the other says Ａどころではない means something is more than A (in this case the “far more than just painful” translation).
So whats the correct translation in this case? What does どころではない actually stand for? Is the “far from” translation in this lesson meant as higher than A instead of the “not even close to A” I would think of when hearing “far from”?
Edit: I think I got the answer already. In the lesson the sentence:
“These translations appear when the actual situation is considered to be even more remarkable than the phrase that どころではない is attached to.”
basically confirms my suspicion about the “far from” meaning “way more”. So どころではない marks things that are more [a phrase explaining a sensation/situation etc.]. Still, I find the “far from” translation pretty weird. It might just be because I’m not a native English speaker but I associate “far from” with “not even close”.
Edit 2: I’ve thought about the “far from” part a bit more and realized that of course I know a situation where it means “more than” and that is if its used together with “just”, so “far from just painful” for example. “far from” on its own also possibly meaning “more than” is still weird to me though
1 Like
I’d say, don’t try to force translations of どころではない into their literal English equivalents.
Literally, it roughly means “it is not the place (for X)”, where “place” refers to a situation, level, or stage.
Rather than thinking of it as having multiple meanings like “now is not the time” or “far from”, it’s easier to see it as expressing that something isn’t in the same conceptual place, category or level as something else, usually with a negative nuance.
In your example:
出産は痛いどころではないらしい。
Literally: “Regarding childbirth, it is not in the place of painful, they say.”
That is, painful is not on the same level as childbirth. We infer it’s beneath due to the negative nuance; so childbirth is beyond/above whatever “painful” is.
You can apply the same idea to other translations without having to think about what exactly is “far from” what. Instead, just think that the two things are not on the same conceptual level.