I think you just need to study grammar, in particular relative clauses. I think you kind of worked out for yourself why translating each word individually and just leaving them in that position doesn't work.
The sentences here come from Tatoeba, and usually there's a link to the sentence next to the sentence.
That's where the editing of the sentences can take place. Jisho just pulls them over.
Since anyone can add and edit sentences on Tatoeba, whether they are a non-native English speaker, non-native Japanese speaker, or any other level of anything, so there's no guarantee that what you see from there will be natural, or even grammatically correct Japanese/English.
@RAIJIN your original post ended up in this thread: jisho.org/forum/5a299b7dd5dda70e6b000326-feature-request-number-tag-suggestion-slash-completion
I replied there.
literal translation of idea
Hi I posted this before but it seems to of vanished? so I'll post it here again. I was looking up this word '“これまでにない上出来だ”' which if you translate each word in this sentence translates to this 'up until now you have not done a good job'
but the actual translation is 'you have done a good job' the 'ない' part of the sentence kind of negated the meaning. I had to post it in a fourm room to get the idea be hind the sentence. these were the first two reply's.
"Think of これまでにない as meaning “something which hasn’t existed before this”–> Your current achievement is better than any which preceded it"
This translation is 100% correct.
As for my interpretation of it, これまでに is like “before now”. In this context it refers to your past self.
無い can mean or “not had”, which applies to this sentence.
上出来 just means “good performance”
So its sorta like saying “Your past self had not had such a good performance”, implying that they have surpassed their past self. Its a weird translation, but thats the best I can explain it"
instantly I knew why the ない part was in the sentence. so rather than me having to post up to ten times a day in an online forum room spamming it and waiting for people to reply. it would be a lot more convenient for a website like Jisho which has pre posted sentences to implement a system, where by it shows a translation of the idea behind the wording and clears up why a certain word or particle in that sentence, that may throws the whole sentence of or seems to negate it in some way. i don't know how the sentences are made on here, but if they written by users, maybe there could be a box next to the translation for people to write the direct idea meaning of the sentence? If you could make this I would greatly appreciate it. I have not found a website with this feature, but if you know of any please let me know.
Thank you :)