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「よいことをする」という気負いがない分、自然体でボランティアに関われる人も多いのです。

Can someone explain the meaning of this? From what I see:

'doing good thing' in other words NOT being enthusiastic, these type of non enthusiastic people are a lot?

A.Ellett
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fynxgloire
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    What part of the Japanese do you think corresponds to "in other words"? – A.Ellett Nov 07 '21 at 18:04
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    「よいことをする」という is a relative clause modifying 気負い: ie, describing what kind of 気負い this is. In these sorts of relative clauses という isn't really directly translatable into English, you could treat B**という**A as meaning "A **that is** a B sort of thing". – A.Ellett Nov 07 '21 at 18:06

1 Answers1

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  • という is not "in other words". Please read this and get used to how it works.
  • This 気負い means "pressure put on oneself" or "(negative) self-consciousness" rather than "enthusiasm". (The definitions from jisho.org are admittedly misleading. 気負い refers to "It's MY job" kind of eagerness/pressure, not enthusiasm in general.)
  • 自然体 is "natural stance", and 自然体で roughly means "like one's regular self".
  • 分 is "to the extent" or "the more ～ the more ～".

「よいことをする」という気負いがない分、自然体でボランティアに関われる人も多いのです。

There are also many people who are engaged in volunteer activities in a natural manner all the more because they have no self-imposed pressure to "do good things".

naruto
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  • Two things stood in my way of answering this: (1) a good understanding of 気負い. even my native Japanese dictionaries left me a bit fuzzy. (2) I've seen constructions like this before with 分 but that also left me scratching my head. jisho.org's definition just didn't work no matter how I thought about it. With a better definition of 気負い how to work with 分 probably would have fell into place. – A.Ellett Nov 08 '21 at 14:13