Translating On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur into Japanese

6. Placing of the topic:

Starting point

[On] ne peut voir bien les choses qu'avec le cœur

ものごとは心で見なくちゃよく見えない monogoto wa kokoro de minakucha yoku mienai

Finally, we'll follow the majority of translators in placing the topic ものごとは monogoto wa. That is, instead of placing it at the start of the sentence, we'll place it later on, at the beginning of the B clause.

A			B
Instrument	Verb (Conditional)	Topic	Adverbial	Verb (negative)
心で kokoro de 'with the heart'	見なくちゃ minakucha 'if not look'	ものごとは monogoto wa 'thing' (topic)	よく yoku 'well'	見えない mienai 'not able to see'

With that we have our final sentence.

There is one important difference from the French. Because Japanese uses the intransitive verb 見える mieru 'can see, be visible' (see Step 3), the subject of the verb, on 'one', has disappeared quite spontaneously. But the object of seeing, ものごと monogoto 'things', remains. While it can be deleted, most translators using this sentence construction retain it.

Result

[On] ne peut voir bien les choses qu'avec le cœur

心で見なくちゃものごとはよく見えない kokoro de minakucha monogoto wa yoku mienai

GO TO.... next: Adding bien 'clearly' | Where we started

VARIATION .... in placing the topic