So I say, apropos of nothing, 「電車｛でんしゃ｝を降｛お｝ります。」 With no other context, and no topic established, who do you assume is the person that gets off the train? Is it me? Is it whomever I'm speaking to? Would it be hasty or incorrect to translate this sentence as "I get off the train."? Or is it impossible to even make a default assumption, because you have to know the situation before understanding the sentence?
I ask because, I inevitably practise grammar and vocabulary a lot with sentences like these, without context or topic, and I'm curious how you would interpret them on their own.
Please use furigana for any kanji you introduce.
Answer
In this specific "(電車を)降ります" case, I know the phrase like this is actually frequently used in a crowded train, and it means "I get off!". If the subject is "I", explicitly adding a subject ("私は降ります!") in such a case is very unnatural in Japanese. If the subject is not "me" but someone else, I know that people would usually say "降りる人がいます!" (lit. "There is a person getting off!").
So, even if I have to translate this without any context, what I was doing is to imagine the most common background context and infer the natural subject. In this case, although it is easy to think of some exceptional examples, I think assuming the implicit subject "I" is usually safe. Likewise, I hear "買います" or "行きます" very often in daily conversations, and the implicit subject is almost always "I".
But that does not mean that "I" is always the default subject, grammatically, in Japanese language. For example, if I have to translate "2つに割れます" or "青色に光ります" without any context at all, I feel "I" is probably not the natural subject here.
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