Help with translating/understanding "hot air"

Japanese
#1

I was going through the んだって grammar point and came across this example sentence:

あの博士は凄い事言っているように聞こえるけど、実は言っていること全部適当なんだって
" It sounds like that scientist is saying some amazing stuff, but I heard that everything he says is hot air."

What I don’t get is which part of the sentence is meant to mean “hot air” (or “totally random” as google translate puts it)
I tried looking up “全部適当” because that sounds like it should mean “entirely appropriate”.
I’m guessing its an expression/idiom hidden somewhere in there.

#2

I believe the word 適当 has two meanings. the first, as you said means appropriate. However, the second meaning is kinda the opposite in that it can also be used to mean sloppy/careless/unreliable/irresponsible
I remember seeing someone explain the reason for this second, often counterintuitive, meaning somewhere. Unfortunately I have forgotten where I saw it. In most cases the context will make it clear which meaning is intended.

I’ll take on the risky task of wading through my browser history to see if I can dig up where I saw the explanation.

edit - my browsing history was too painful. I think I saw it in one of the articles I read on Satori reader. Unfortunately my subscription is no longer active so I couldn’t check which article it was. The ones I remember reading at the time I saw the explanation were 聞き耳ラジオ and John and friends in Tokyo. If you (or a friendly neighborhood reader) happen to have an active subscription, you could try checking there since the explanation was quite well worded.

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#3

There’s another recent thread related to this topic, in the sense that there are times the BunPro team takes liberties in how they translate sentences, which I think creates more confusion, and this is a prime example of that.

Here’s the thread in case anyone is curious:

Like I said over there, I think it’s better to have more literal translations that still sound natural in English precisely because translations like this one can cause confusion.

And yes, this word’s meaning is more obvious with context, since it does have opposite translations as mentioned.

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#4

Ahh I see, so it’s kind of like いい加減 where depending on the context it can be quite the different meaning (though the underlying meaning of “adjustment” is still preserved, Kaname-san explains it great in his recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6zh7g25cyY)

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#5

I do prefer more direct translations, not just for lessening confusion, but I also kind of prefer the “soul” that it gives to the translations (like “it can’t be helped” etc, idk, hard to explain why I prefer it)

#6

It’s exactly like いい加減. Japanese dictionaries even define it using いい加減 for this use case.

I think “hot air” is a fairly good translation here. This 適当 means the things that person is saying are not based on sincere, careful consideration. They’re just empty talk.

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#7

Honestly, my bad for not looking a bit harder into a dictionary for “適当”.

Additionally, I’m guessing that if I caught this or a similar sentence in the wild, the “けど” would hint at the B part of the sentence is in opposition to the A part, thus giving context to expect 適当 to have the meaning of hot air/negative meaning etc?

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