不开就不开

[Pedroski]

日子是上个月就定好的，总不能说不开就不开吧。

 

'The day (of the meeting) was set last month, I can't just say I am not coming and then not go.'

 

Does this catch the sense of the Chinese sentence?

 

总不能 = in any case I can't ??

[ZhangJiang]

My understandings, hope it helps. (or "they help"?)

 

Here “开”的 is 会 (the meeting), so it concerns whether the meeting will be hold or not, rather than whether I will go or not.

 

"The day (of the meeting) was set last month, now we can't just decide not to hold it at will/arbitrarily, right?"

 

总 here doesn't mean "all/in any case". It means "after all", so 总不能 means something like "after all, we can't", which is a way to suggest something or politely decline other people's suggestion.

[陳德聰]

Also might be useful to see the structure "说...就..." as a pattern. I think the translation will depend on context because if I don't go, can the rest of the people still hold the meeting? I'd say probably yes, but here seems like speaker is admonishing someone rather than saying "I can't go", like "we already set the date, so we can't just call it off (on a whim/because someone says so)".