English Translation
He was greatly praised, while I was as much scolded.
Can 然りに be used in the same way as ながら?
@ericaw
然るに is unnatural in this sentence structure. It’s a broken parallelism. Also, we rarely say 然るに. You may probably find 然るに in a judicial verdict or other very professional context. The tone is like a “whereas clause” of legal contract in English.
然るに as a conjunction basically means 1)“despite” to highlight a contradiction and it is usually followed by a negative situation; or 2) “by the way”, “well…” or “then” when it’s put at the beginning of sentence in order to move the talking forward.
The original Japanese sentence suggests that I (the speaker) deserved to be praised as much as he was, but I was actually scolded. In this context, the Japanese sentence is incomplete.
彼は非常に褒められた。然るに私だけが叱られるのは「納得がいかない」= He was highly praised. Despite the fact, I was the only one who was scolded. It doesn’t make sense and unfair.
is a more natural parallelism.
But the English sentence doesn’t tell anything about whether the speaker deserved to be praise or scolded. The English just tells you he and I were treated in completely different ways. I would translate the English sentence as:
彼は大いに称えられたが、私はこっ酷く叱られた。(かれはおおいにたたえられたが、わたしはこっぴどくしかられた)
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