あの、ちょっとお願いしたいことがあるんですけど。

Sentence Discussions Japanese
#1
English Translation

Um, there’s something I want to ask you about.

As a hint to guess the missing word, the sentence is not very good.
Maybe

“Uh, I (happen to) have a small request/favor to ask you…”

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#2

Your proposed translation is much better than the original one. The purpose of the speaker in the original English sentence is to find out a clue by throwing a question about the listener. But the Japanese sentence is used when the speaker needs a favor such as running an errand or bringing a heavy luggage on behalf of the speaker.

Let me additionally explain the connotation in a super wordy way:

Sorry but… Would you mind if I ask you to squeeze your precious time a little to take my request?

  • あの、or あのー is just a phrase to get attention from the listener.

  • ちょっと from the phrase ちょっとお願いしたいこと is a casual form of 少し（すこし）. Even if the speaker’s request is time-consuming, we often overuse ちょっと to belittle ourselves and thereby respect the listener. It’s the same as “Can I have a word with you?” in English. – You cannot explain your request in one word.

  • The sentence is ended with ですけど。It may look like an incomplete sentence, but this is the natural way we say. The complete version is ちょっとお願いしたいことがあるんですけど、お時間頂けませんでしょうか？ (= Could you squeeze time?) or ちょっとお願いしたいことがあるんですけど、宜しいでしょうか？ (= May I bring this up now? Is it the right time for you?) Those are too wordy, so they sound overwhelming. That’s why we omit the obvious part.

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