Re: Fascinating book ...

From: Sean (seanpantsholland_at_telus.pants.net)
Date: 01/10/05 

Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:13:02 GMT

Marc Adler wrote:
> Roy wrote:
>
>
>>Frankly, I blame the teachers - especially the ones who write the
>>textbooks. In your first year of Japanese, you learn that "sensei" =
>>"teacher" and you are fortunate if, later, someone puts you right on this.
>
>
> I think the discussion so far has missed the point. The utterance $B;d$O@h(B
> $B@8$G$9(B is unnatural because it's so rarely used. In the normal flow of a
> conversation, it wouldn't be used.
>
> Example:
> "So, what do you do, Fred?"
> "I'm a teacher."
>
> $B%U%l%C%I$5$s$O$*;E;v$O!)(B
> $B@h@8$G$9!#(Bor maybe $B@h@8$r$d$C$F$$$^$9!#(B

You're probably right about the pronoun thing, but I wonder if calling
oneself a $B@h@8(B isn't also a little odd. I wouldn't do it myself. $B65;U$G(B
$B$9(B or $B9b9;$G!A$r65$($F$$$^$9(B or something of the sort seems more
comfortable. But then that could be just me, a famously modest and
reserved sort of dude.

>
> What the author is complaining about is the mechanical addition of
> personal and other pronouns (among other unnaturalnesses) that most
> Japanese translations from English are riddled with. The mark of a
> really despicable translation is a slavish inclusion of every "it" in
> the original as "$B$=$l(B".
>
> In English, nouns that are understood are replaced with pronouns. In
> Japanese, they're just left out, but too many novice or simply
> incompetent translators can't bring themselves to leave out words that
> exist in the original.
>
> Another area is possessives - if "his hand" is translated as "$BH`$N<j(B,"
> you know there's a problem.
>
> $B$5$F!"LdBj$G$9!#(B
>
> Without excluding the possibility that in some situations "$BH`$N<j(B" may
> be a natural translation, what is the *most common* way of saying "his
> hand" in Japanese?
>
> Marc

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