救いとする

[Riccardo91]

Dear Japanese forum,

I would need your help for a (probably stupid) grammatical question about the following dialogue. In a cartoon, the bad guy (who is not openly bad yet, but the other characters suspect him) is convicing people to join his religion and pray his god. A suspicious character asks him what his intentions are, and he says "To bring salvation to people who are lost". Then the character replies:

では何を祝うの？　何をもって救いとするの？

My first translation was: "What do you celebrate, then? With what are you going to bring salvation?"
But then I got stuck in that とする. Could it be "With what are you going to make it (=the thing/god you celebrate) salvation?"

Any other ideas?

Thank you so much!

 

[Flaminius]

Ah, I see you are stuck with the construction XをもってYとする. This is a calque from an Older Chinese construction and it means make/regard X as Y. In short, the suspicious character is saying, "What do you mean by salvation?" or "What is your salvation?"

 

[NyMedic1960]

XをもってYとする may be broken down to that X is the condition or prerequisite to reach or establish condition Y, such as in 何をもってよしとするのか。(What is necessary in order to be able to say Y is acceptable/good.), and so on. Either "What is your salvation?" or "How do you reach salvation?" should be acceptable. I hope it helps.

 

[Riccardo91]

I had no idea such a construction existed. You never stop lo learn.

Thank you so much!