ばかりliteral translations and explanations

Japanese
#1

The Maggie Sensei resource for ばかり includes the following sentences that I find confusing. I’m having trouble getting from the Japanese to the English. Perhaps if someone could give a more literal translation it would help.

お金ばかりがすべてではない。
Money is not everything.

This one I can kind of get to. More literally: “‘only money’ is not everything”. Though it’s still not smooth, it makes some sense.

時間ばかりかかる仕事
Time consuming work

This one I’m having more trouble with. I would want to translate this literally as “work that only takes time” as in work that would be finished given enough time. That’s obviously not the same.

Any help would be appreciated! :blush:

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#2

Perhaps it would be clearer if you were to think of ばかり as meaning “nothing but” here?

時間 - time
ばかり - nothing but
かかる - take
仕事 - job/work

So, more literally, it would sound something like: “Nothing but time-taking (consuming) work” or “Work that does nothing but take time”. This sentence does not necessarily carry the nuance of: “given enough time, a job will be complete”. The speaker is more than likely frustrated that the work/job is time consuming, even to the point of being grueling, and wants to get it over with. It might also help to think of ばかり as being associated with negative trends. Hope this helps!

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