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オリバンダーの杖には一つとして同じ杖はない。
No two Ollivander wands are the same.

I'm struggling to parse this sentence.

オリバンダーの杖には同じ杖はない on its own seems to make sense -- "there are no wands identical to Ollivander's wands". Although I would expect to see と rather than に so maybe I've got that wrong.

Presumably 一つとして is "considered as a single unit".

Literally, I have "To Ollivanders wands, there are no identical wands when considered as one", which doesn't make logical sense.

Can this sentence be broken down in a meaningful way? Or else, is there a set phrase buried in here that I should learn? Could you please give other examples with a similar structure?

user3856370
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1 Answers1

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1 + counter + として (...ない) is a grammatical pattern that means "(not) even one". It's a negative polarity item, and is a more emphatic and literary version of 1 + counter + も (...ない).

  • 1人もいない。 There is no one.
  • 1人としていない。 There is not even one person.

See: JLPT N2 Grammar として～ない (toshite~nai)

"～とする" meaning "to consider as ～" has nothing to do with this.

naruto
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  • Thanks. So a literal translation would be "To Ollivander's wands not even one similar wand exists"? Or more naturally, "There isn't even a single wand like an Ollivander wand"? Would I be correct to say that this is comparing Ollivander wands to other wands rather than to each other? That's rather different from the original meaning. – user3856370 May 25 '23 at 17:17
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    @user3856370 A very literal translation is "Among Olivander's wand, not even one (wand) that is the same (as another) exists." In other words, not even one is the same as another, i.e., every wand he owns is different from each other. – naruto May 25 '23 at 17:21
  • Ah, that に is 'in' as in の中に and does not pair up with 同じ. Don't know why I kept trying to do that when I thought it should be と anyway. Makes much more sense now. – user3856370 May 25 '23 at 17:25