感慨深く呟いてから

[MeitanteiJesus]

Trying to translate this sentence:
自分に向けたかのように感慨深く呟いてから、明美は席を立った。

Attempt:

自分に向けたかのように
As if to face towards me

感慨深く呟いてから、
Because I was deeply emotional and murmuring to myself,

明美は席を立った。
Akemi stood up off her seat.

Did I get that right? At first I thought 感慨深く was deep in thought, but a dictionary search on wwwJDIC says it means "deeply emotive; moving". Although deep in emotion doesn't really make sense in the sentence to me...

[NileCat]

The subject is Akemi and the first clause modifies Akemi’s action like “she stood up AFTER she murmured to herself ～”. The absence of the subject in the clause is same as in the participle construction in English.
Although I’m not confident about the English nuance, “she feelingly murmured” or “she murmured with a feeling” will do, I guess. Sounds weird?

[MeitanteiJesus]

Ahh I see, it all makes sense now that you mention Akemi is the subject. And to be honest, even as a native English speaker, WITH a bachelor of science, I have never even heard of the words "participle construction" lol. I'm amazed you are so knowledgeable in both English and Japanese.

I think it confused me because the preceding two lines are:
【大輔】いやぁ……親父にはまだまだ子供だって良く言われますよ。
【明美】親っていうのは、みんなそうなのよ。
自分に向けたかのように感慨深く呟いてから、明美は席を立った。

and it seemed odd she would randomly start muttering to herself.

---

So から in this case can mean "After" and not "because"?

Also, as for the translation, "feelingly murmured" does feel off. I wonder if maybe in English it would be happily murmured? In the proceeding lines its said the reason she gets up is to make tea. Intently murmured? Or maybe it's a Japanese-only expression, to murmur with feeling

Edit: Giving it some more thought, maybe earnestly murmured to herself?

[Ongakuka]

When I read it I translated in my head as 'meaningfully' （感慨深く） but I think translating this part can vary according to interpretation.

てForm＋から　Always means 'following the action of the verb' as oppose to 'because' (if there are exceptions to this I'm yet to come across them)

Nilecatさん、お久しぶりです

[NileCat]

Hi Ongakuka. And, thank you, MeitanteiJesus.

感慨深い is an adjective to describe your feelings that something touches you and makes you think/remind of something, in emotional senses. Reading your own old diary, for instance, would make you feel 感慨深い with a kind of feeling of nostalgia. Watching your daughter that is in wedding attire would be 感慨深い, being filled with a sense of...well....joy? 感慨深く is the adverb form.
In the context, Daisuke’s words made her feel/think something at the back of her mind. To me, it seems like the author implies that she might have had a complex relationship with her own father. She only murmured it because she didn’t want to explain about it to him. Well, just my two cents.

[MeitanteiJesus]

Thanks for the explanation, I'll definitely keep that in mind whenever I see it in literature!