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I am currently learning ~たことにする but I am not so sure how to translate it.

The example sentence is:

私が日本にいる間に、家族がドイツへ旅行に行ったなんて、きかなかったことにしたいなあ。

chocolate
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1 Answers1

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According to jisho.org, the meanings of にする include:

  1. to decide (on something)​
  2. to place, or raise, person A to a post or status B
  3. to transform A to B; to make A into B; to exchange A for B​
  4. to make use of A for B; to view A as B; to handle A as if it were B
  5. to feel A about B

where definitions 2-5 have the form "AをBにする"

We can apply these definitions by splitting your sentence into an "A" and a "B", then thinking about which of the 5 definitions seems the most plausible. You can split the sentence into an "A" and "B" as follows:

A：私が日本にいる間に、家族がドイツへ旅行に行ったなんて、

B：きかなかったこと

にしたい

Thus, interpreting the sentence literally, the speaker is saying that they want to "transform/make/view/handle" the fact that their family went to Germany while they were in Japan into something that they didn't hear.

My interpretation is that the speaker wants to go to Germany too, so hearing that their family went without them was painful, and therefore the speaker wishes that they had never heard about it.

Nicolas Louis Guillemot
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    Why the -1? If I made a mistake, I would really like to know what it is. Please give constructive criticism so I can know if I need to fix or even delete my answer. – Nicolas Louis Guillemot Oct 18 '18 at 00:43
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    "The speaker wishes that they had never heard about it" is certainly true in this case. However, what ことにしたい itself means is "I want to imagine/pretend that I didn't hear". – user4092 Oct 18 '18 at 06:34