Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics:
A Corpus-Based Study of Contemporary Japanese Translationese

Yukari Fukuchi Meldrum
Modern Language and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta

1. Introduction
There is almost no descriptive research done on contemporary Japanese translationese infiction. Translation scholars who study Japanese translationese tend to focus on the Meiji, Taisho
and early Showa periods and their influence on the Japanese language (e.g., Furuta, 1963;
Morioka, 1968, 1999; Sugimoto, 1983; Yoshioka, 1973). Since there was a great deal oftranslation activity during these periods due to the need to translate Western materials, scholarlyinterest in translationese of that time period is understandable.
I believe, however, that study of the current situation of translationese in popular fiction
will contribute to a better overall understanding. I have chosen to focus on only one genre of
popular fiction because there exists too great a variety of genres to render a coherent and effective
study. In addition, fiction potentially draws on a wider variety of styles including its narrative
strategies and representation of speech. This is because other genres of texts 1 tend to haveprescribed styles that translators must follow.
Descriptive studies of contemporary Japanese translationese in fiction are an almost
untouched area in Translation Studies. There is much to be done that may be important fortranslations’ practice, education, and publication. The research findings will also contribute totheoretical discussions. For example, they may provide more information for Toury’s notion oftranslation as a norm-governed activity (1978/2004, 1995, 1999) and for Polysystem Theory(Even-Zohar, 1979, 1978/2004 2; Dimic & Garstin, 1988).
Scholars have argued that the following are some of the characteristics of translationese:
1) use of overt personal pronouns (Yanase, 2000; Miyawaki, 2000; Nakamura, 2001); 2) more
frequent use of loanwords (Yanabu 1982, 1998; Yoshioka, 1973); 3) use of female specificlanguage (Ohmori, 2006; Kono 1999); 4) use of abstract nouns as grammatical subjects oftransitive verbs (Morioka, 1988, 1997, 1999; Yoshioka, 1973); and 5) longer paragraphs
1

For example, specific styles are prescribed for writings in business, technical, legal, and institutionalized
texts such as newspaper articles; therefore, translators have to follow the prescribed style according to thegenre that they are working in.
2
This essay was originally written in 1978, and revised in 1990.

105

『翻訳研究への招待 3』(Miyawaki, 2000). For the examination of features of translationese in this paper, the features
mentioned above are considered. The comparative corpora can reveal evidence for these featuresof translationese or prove otherwise.
2. Features of Japanese Translationese
2.1 Personal Pronouns
A number of books on translations suggest that third person pronouns such as kare ‘he’and kanojo ‘she’ are used more often in translation (Yanase, 2000; Miyawaki, 2000; Nakamura,
2001; Tsujitani, 2004; and Anzai, Inoue, & Kobayashi, 2005). Since Japanese does not require
the use of these third person pronouns, Miyawaki (2000) writes, “it is not favorable to overuse
personal pronouns such as ‘she’ and ‘he’ when one translates a novel” (p. 20; my translation) 3.
Saito (2007), in the chapter entitled “Using Natural Japanese,” recommends that avoiding third
person pronouns is one of the ways to translate into natural Japanese.
The example below shows one passage from an original text and one from a translated
text. In the first, there are no third person pronouns used in reference to a person. The passage isabout a person whose name was brought up in the previous paragraph. When I translate thepassage into English, on the other hand, five personal pronouns need to be supplied due togrammatical constraints 4.
1. A passage from Shitsurakuen (Paradise that was Lost) 5:
Romanized Japanese:
Buchoo no toki ni wa shuu ni ichido no wari de itte ita noni, hima ni nattekara nohoo ga kaisuu ga hette iru. Muron shigoto-joo no gorufu ga hetta sei mo aru ga,
ichiban no mondai wa, taishite shigoto mo shite inai noni gorufu o yattemo, ima

3“小説を翻訳するとき，「彼女」「彼」といった人称代名詞を多用するのは好ましくない，といわれている．”(Miyawaki, 2000, p. 20)
4In other words, English requires grammatical subjects indicated in order for a sentence to be grammatical.
For example, “He gave me the candle.” is a complete sentence while “Gave me a candle.” is not considered
grammatical.
5This two-volume novel is entitled Shitsurakuen 失楽園 (Paradise that was Lost) written by Watanabe
Jun’ichi. It was a serialized novel on Nihon Keizai Shimbun (The Nikkei) and was published in 1997. It
made the bestseller list of the same year. This novel was made into a movie and a TV series. The story
deals with a love affair between a middle-aged male editor and a slightly younger female character.
In Japanese:
部長のときには週に一度のわりで行っていたのに、閑になってからのほうが回数が減っている。むろん仕事上のゴルフが減ったせいもあるが、一番の問題は、たいして仕事もしていないのにゴルフをやっても、いまひとつ楽しめないからである。やはり遊びごとは、忙しい仕事の合い間にやってこそ、面白いのかもしれない。(Watanabe, 2000, p. 59)

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Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

hitotsu tanoshimenai kara de aru. Yahari, asobigoto wa, isogashii shigoto no aima
ni yatte koso, omoshiroi no kamo shirenai. (Watanabe, 2000, p. 59)
English translation (my translation):
When he was a section chief, he went [golfing] at the rate of about once a week;
however, the number of times has decreased since he gained more free time. Of
course, it is because of the decrease of golfing opportunities related to work, theprominent problem is that he cannot really enjoy golfing when he isn’t reallyworking all that hard. After all, diversions make one feel the fun only during
spare moments from work.
The passage from the translation, Madison-gun no Hashi (The Bridges of Madison
County), on the other hand, shows four explicit personal pronouns (kare “he” and kanojo “she”)
which are underlined.
2. A passage from Madison-gun no Hashi: 6
Romanized Japanese:
Kare ga mi o kagamete guroobu-bokkusu ni te o nobashita toki, ude ga kasukani kanojo
no hiza ni fureta. Nakaba furonto-garasu o, nakaba guroobu-bokkusu o minagara, karewa meishi o toridashite, kanojo ni watashita. “Robaato kinkeido, shashinka/raitaa” to ari,juusho to denwa-bangoo ga insatsu shite aru. (Waller, 1992/1997, p.58)
English original:
6

The Bridges of Madison County, written by Robert James Waller and published in 1992, was translated by

Matsumura Kiyoshi and published as Madison-gun no Hashi マディソン郡の橋 in 1993. This translation
was on the bestseller lists of both 1993 and 1994. The story deals with a love affair between an Italian war
bride in Madison Country, Iowa, and a traveling photographer who works for National Geographic. The
English novel was made into a movie in 1995. In this sense, the Japanese readers read the translation before
they watched the movie. The books Madison-gun no Hashi (The Bridges of Madison County) and
Shitsurakuen (The paradise that was lost) have many similarities. The main characters in each are a
middle-aged man and woman who engage in extramarital relationships. The stories involve muchdescription of feelings and narrations of what a man and a woman in love go through.
In Japanese:
彼が身をかがめてグローブボックスに手を伸ばしたとき、腕がかすかに彼女の膝にふれた。なかばフロントガラスを、
なかばグローブボックスを見ながら、彼は名刺を取り出して、彼女に渡した。（ロバート・キンケイド、写真家＝ライター）とあり、住所と電話番号が印刷してある。(Waller, 1992/1997, p.58)

107

『翻訳研究への招待 3』

He 7 leaned over and reached into the glove compartment, his forearm accidentallybrushing across her lower thigh. Looking half out the windshield and half into thecompartment, he took out a business card and handed it to her. “Robert Kincaid, WriterPhotographer.” His address was printed there, along with a phone number. (Waller, 1992,
p.36)
2.2 Katakana Loanwords
More frequent use of loanwords is also thought of as one of the characteristics oftranslationese (Yanabu 1982, 1998; Yoshioka, 1973). In Japanese, as with any other of thelanguages in the world, various loanwords have made their way into the language. Most of thetime, when the loanwords are from languages other than Chinese, the words are written with a setof characters called Katakana in modern writing conventions. In the example passages fromShitsurakuen and Madison-gun no Hashi above, loanwords are shown in italics. They are all
loanwords from English. In addition, some examples of other Katakana loanwords include thefollowing.
3. Examples of Katakana loanwords:(a) king (English) Æ キング kingu(b) tacos (Spanish) Æタコス takosu(c) Energy (German) Æエネルギ ー enerugī
Miyawaki (2000) points out the difficulty of dealing with loanwords written in Katakana
since what is accepted by the readership at a given point in time keeps on changing. In examplesof translations with too many Katakana loanwords, he gives a few pointers such as “not using
Katakana loanwords that are verbalized” 8 and “try not to use words that are Katakana loanwords
in case for adjectives as well” 9 (p. 33). In other words, translators are discouraged to use
loanwords in verbs and adjectives because readers are more accustomed to reading nouns in
Katakana but not verbs and adjectives 10.

7

The underlined pronouns in the original are translated explicitly in Japanese as kare “he” and kanojo“she.”
8“動詞化したカタカナの外来語は使わない” (Miyawaki, 2000, p. 33)
9“形容詞の場合も，できるだけカタカナ外来語形の言葉は使わないようにする．” (Miyawaki, 2000, p. 33)
10
In Japanese, nouns do not have any grammatical declensions due to its case system. On the other hand,
Japanese verbs and adjectives both conjugate. In other words, nouns do not change the forms while verbs
and adjectives do. This may be the difference that affects the comfort levels of the readers in terms ofaccepting noun loanwords.

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Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

2.3 Female Specific Expressions
In Japanese, there are variations in expressions depending on the gender of the speaker(Shibatani, 1990). Translation is criticized for overuse of female-specific expressions (Ohmori,2006; Kono 1999). Female-specific expressions include many different aspects; for example,
female speakers tend to use specific first person pronouns and to “assume a higher politenesslevel than men in that they use more polite language than men to describe the same situation”(Shibatani, 1990, p. 374). Some prominent characteristics that are targets for criticism intranslation are sentence final particles such as shown below (Shibatani, 1990; Kinsui, 2003).
4. Examples of female-specific sentence final particles:
Verb/Adj-wa (～わ)Verb/Adj -no (～の )Verb/Adj -wayo (～わよ)Noun-yo (～よ)Verb/Adj -teyo (～てよ)Verb/Adj -noyo (～のよ)In other words, when sentences end with these final particles, the speaker of the sentence
is most likely be a female or a male who wants to present himself as a female. Below are someexamples of actual uses in translations.
5. Examples of sentences with female-specific sentence final particles (SFPs):
(a)
Sugu
soba
yo.
right
close
SFP
‘(It’s) right there close by.’ (Waller, 1992/1997, p. 56)(b)Watashiniwa
dekinaiwa.
I
tocannot do
SFP‘(To me) I can’t do it.’ (Forsyth, 1979/1982, p. 185)(c)
Anata no
Your
11

ie
o
house OBJ 11

sagasusearchOBJ = direct object (accusative) marker

109

noyo.
SFP

『翻訳研究への招待 3』‘Look for your house.’ (Sheldon, 1990/1992, p. 98)
Kono (1999) cautions those who are training to become translators against stereotyping
the way conversation is carried out depending on a character’s race, occupation, sex, and age (p.
189) 12. Additionally, Yanase (2000) states that one of the basics of translation is to avoid the useof -wa, -yo, and -no at the end of sentences in conversations, and he goes on to say that if one
comes across a translated book with many of these sentence-final particles, it is best not topurchase the book (p. 128) 13 . Nornes (1999/2004) also warns that the use of female-specificsentence final particles can alter the representation of female characters in translations of movie
subtitles.
2.4 Abstract/Inanimate Nouns as Agents of Transitive Verbs
Another characteristic of translationese is the use of abstract or inanimate nouns as
grammatical agents of a transitive verb (Morioka, 1988, 1997, 1999; Yoshioka, 1973). In
Japanese, there is a rhetorical device of personification in which a simple comparison is achieved
by making the agent of an intransitive verb inanimate. However, in translation, abstract nouns andinanimate nouns are made into agents of transitive verbs as well. Below is an example from
Morioka (1999).
6. An example of an abstract/inanimate noun as the grammatical agent of a transitiveverb:(a) Original English sentence:“Nature has given him wonderful strength and beauty.”(b) Translation into Japanese:kare ni odorokubeki
Shizen wa
Nature TOP 14 him to wonderful(Morioka, 1999, p. 151)

chikarastrength

to
and

bi
beautyO
OBJ

ataetari.
gave

In this sentence, shizen (nature) is the agent of the transitive verb ataeru (to give). While
this construction is natural in English, it is rather questionable in Japanese. Yoshioka (1973)

12“登場人物の人種・職業・性別・年齢などで、会話の調子を画一化してはいけません。” (Kono, 1999, p. 189)
“会話の語尾の「わ」と「よ」の氾濫を避けるのが翻訳技法の初歩であることはさきにちらりとふれた。書店で翻訳小説を開き、会話語尾に「わ」と「よ」と「の」が目立ちすぎたら、買わないほうがよろしい。” (Yanase, 2000, p. 128)13

14

TOP = Topic marker

110Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

argues that this use is already integrated into Japanese but Suzuki (1995) claims that it is nottotally accepted as Japanese and encourages staying away from this sentence structure 15.
2.5 Longer Paragraph Length
Yet another characteristic of translationese is that paragraphs are longer than in nontranslation (Miyawaki, 2000; Ohmori, 2006) 16 . Longer paragraphs in Japanese translation
originate from the tendency of translators to adhere to paragraph structures from the original text.
This is perhaps because of the idea that the translation should be as literal as possible. In addition,
Honda (1982) mentions that even Japanese fiction editors, as a rule, do not change the length ofparagraphs and the paragraph structures 17.
While Miyawaki (2000) treats longer paragraph length as just another characteristic oftranslationese and advocates adhering to this tendency, Ohmori (2006) has a rather negative
attitude toward long paragraphs in translations. In his discussion of Science Fiction translation
into Japanese, Ohmori points out a decrease in the number of fans who read translated Science
Fiction in recent years. He attributes this decrease of Science Fiction translation readership to thecurrent translators’ tendency to keep the original paragraph length as opposed to a few decades
ago when the translators freely changed the paragraph length 18.
3. Methods
Since translated texts need to be compared with non-translations (i.e., texts originally
written in Japanese), comparable corpora are useful. In order to identify and substantiate specificcharacteristics of translationese in English-Japanese translation, linguistic features deemed to be
characteristic of translationese should be checked in both the translation corpus and the nontranslation corpus (e.g., Baker, 1993; Laviosa-Braithwaite, 1995).
If one wishes to test the hypothesis that third person pronouns are used more frequently
in translationese, one needs to compare the corpora in order to extract the frequency of thepersonal pronouns in question. The investigation would be easier if corpora of translated literatureand non-translated literature were already available, as in similar projects in English (Baker, 1996,15“…外国語の直訳調や英語の無生物主語が日本語のスタンダードな表現として定着したとは、まだ言い切れないと思います。” (Suzuki, 1995, p.37)
16“改行が少なく，ひとつの段落が長い，というのは翻訳小説の特徴の一つで，場合によっては，改行なしに２ページぐらい黒々とひとつの段落がつづくこともあり，本を開いただけで，日本の小説とはだいぶ印象が違う．” (Miyawaki,

2000, p. 57)

17“どういうわけか小説家の文学作品の場合は、段落を勝手に編集者がいじらぬ常識がけっこうゆきわたっている。”(Honda, 1982, p. 192)18

“かつて、ＳＦファンと言えば日本のＳＦも翻訳ＳＦも分けへだてなく読んでいたものだが、いまやソノラマ文庫や角川
スニーカー文庫の読者で、翻訳ＳＦを読もうという人はごく少数。出版点数の飛躍的増加など、理由はいろいろあるにせよ、ぎっしり字のつまった翻訳ＳＦの読みにくさがその一因であることは間違いない。” (Ohmori, 2006, p. 88)

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『翻訳研究への招待 3』

1999, 2004) and in Finnish (Tirkkonen-Condit, 2002; Puurtinen, 2003a, 2003b). However, inJapanese, there are currently no ready-made corpora that fulfill the needs of this type of research.
As a result, such sets must be developed.
For the corpus of this study, I have compiled and digitized a corpus. As anyone who hascreated a digitized corpus knows, this is a time-consuming process which involves scanning,processing with the OCR (Optical Character Recognition) program and editing. I have scanned
10% of each book contained in the selections of translated books and books originally written in
Japanese. I could scan only 10% of each book for two reasons. The first is because of quantity.
There are a total of 34 books in the selection. The second is that copyright law imposes
restrictions on the amount of reproductions that can be made for research purposes. The numbersof pages, therefore, varies from book to book depending on their length. The next step involved
using an OCR program 19 to digitize the text. Although OCR technologies have advanced in recent
years, there still occurs a considerable amount of errors in conversion from the image files to thedigitized text files. This necessitated another step in the creation of a digitized corpus since every
page of the digitized file had to be checked for any possible errors and, then, manually corrected.
In the corpora used for this investigation, texts from bestsellers (1980-2006) were chosen.
As previously stated, the texts are from contemporary popular fiction. The translation corpus
includes texts from 16 books, containing 377,591 characters, or approximately 944 Japanesewriting sheets with 400-character spaces 20. The non-translation corpus contains texts from 18
books with 282,369 characters which is about 706 Japanese writing sheets with 400-character
spaces. Tables 1 and 2 show the titles used for compilation of the corpora used for this study 21.
Table 1 Texts used for the translation corpus:
Ranking
for theYear
Original Titles
year
shown
1980
8
Shogun1980
8
Shogun1980
8
Shogun
1980
5
The Devil’s Alternative
1980
5
The Devil’s Alternative
1984
7
The Fourth Protocol
1984
7
The Fourth Protocol
1992
4
Memories of midnight

Authors

Number ofcharacters

James Clavell
James Clavell
James Clavell
Frederick ForsythFrederick ForsythFrederick ForsythFrederick Forsyth
Sidney Sheldon

38112
35250
32895
22576
19202
19949
20340
13376

19

The program I have purchased for this study is called “One Touch OCR Ver. 3 for Excel and Word (ワンタッチ OCR Ver. 3 for Excel and Word)” by A.I.Software, SEIKO EPSON Conrporation. This software

allows the user to import processed data directly into a Micrsoft Word or Excel file.
20

400 字詰原稿用紙

21

Refer to Appendix A for the Japanese versions of the tables.

112

Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

1992
1993/4
1995

4
1
2

Memories of midnight
The Bridges of Madison County
Forrest Gump

2001

1

Who moved my cheese

2001
2002
2002

7
1
12

Twelfth Angel
Harry Potter and the Goblet of FireThe Great Blue Yonder

2004

5

La Buena Suerte

Table 2 Texts used for the non-translation corpus:
Rankingforthe
Titles
Year
year
shown
1981
9
Jūmanbun no Ichi no Gūzen
1983
3Tantei Monogatari
Mikeneko Hōmuzu no Bikkuri
1984
4
Bako
1985
2
Toyotomi Hidenaga I
1985
2
Toyotomi Hidenaga II
1985
5
Shuto Shōmetsu I
1985
5Shuto Shōmetsu II
1989
9Ippai no Kakesoba
1989
9
Gokyu Shōsetsu
1995
5
Parasite Eve
1997
1
Shitsuraku-en I
1997
1
Shitsuraku-en II
1997
3
Poppoya2001
10Battle Royal I
2001
10Battle Royal II
2003
2
Sekai no Chūshin de Ao Sakebu
2004
10
Ima Ai ni Ikimasu
2006
10
Kagami no Hōsoku

Sidney Sheldon
Robert J. Waller
Winston Groom
SpencerJohnson,KennethH.
Blanchard
Og Mandino
J. K. RowlingAlex ShearerAlex Rovira &Fernando Trias de
Bes

17582
11969
16767
40407
13758
59975
11654
3779

Authors

Number ofcharacters

Seicho Matsumoto
Jiro Akagawa

18786
10457

Jiro Akagawa

10340

Taichi Sakaiya
Taichi Sakaiya
Sakyo Komatsu
Sakyo Komatsu
Ryoichi Kuri
Kenichi Sakami
Hideaki Sena
Junichi Watanabe
Junichi Watanabe
Jiro Asada
Koushun Takami
Koushun Takami
Kyoichi Katayama
Takuji Ichikawa
Yoshinori Noguchi

16978
17587
21035
24793
4405
15244
26146
15360
15283
14684
23659
21224
10530
12927
2931

All of the translation books in bestseller lists from 1980 to 2006 were included in the
corpus. In order to choose the books to include in the non-translation corpus, non-translation
books were categorized by their contents. These categories were based on categories and reviews113『翻訳研究への招待 3』

by on-line bookstores and reviews posted on various on-line bulletin board posts and blogs by
Japanese readers 22. Below are tables showing the titles and categories for both corpora.
Table 3 Translation texts and categories:
TitlesAuthors
ShogunJames Clavell
ShogunJames Clavell
ShogunJames Clavell
The Devil’s Alternative
Frederick Forsyth
The Devil’s Alternative
Frederick Forsyth
The Fourth Protocol
Frederick Forsyth
The Fourth Protocol
Frederick Forsyth
Memories of midnight
Sidney Sheldon
Memories of midnight
Sidney Sheldon
The Bridges of Madison County Robert J. Waller
Forrest Gump
Who moved my cheese

Winston Groom

Categories
Historical
Historical
Historical
Thriller
Thriller
Thriller
Thriller
Mystery
Mystery
RomanceLifeadventure 23

drama/

Spencer Johnson, Kenneth H.
Self-help 24
Blanchard
Og Mandino
Self-help

Twelfth Angel
Harry Potter and the Goblet of
J. K. Rowling
FantasyFire
The Great Blue Yonder
Alex Shearer
FantasyAlex Rovira & Fernando Trias deSelf-help
La Buena Suerte 25
Bes
Table 4 Non-translation texts and categories:
TitlesAuthorsJūmanbun no Ichi no Gūzen
Seicho Matsumoto
Tantei Monogatari
Jiro Akagawa
Mikeneko Hōmuzu no Bikkuri
Jiro Akagawa
Bako
22

Categories
Thriller
Mystery
Mystery

Amazon Japan, BK1, Japanese Wikipedia on books, Yahoo Japan Bulletin Boards, and various personal
websites and blogs by Japanese readers were chosen to determine the categories of the books. Sometimes
overlapping categories were observed, but most of the time, they were consistent.
23
The category “adventure” is chosen here because of the explanation given by the publisher. The
explanation of this story reads, “It is a delightful tale of adventure that has become a social phenomenon (世界中に社会現象を巻き起こした痛快な冒険談。)” (Groom, 1986/1994, on the cover). This novel was firstpublished by Winston Groom in 1986 in English and was made into a movie in 1994 in the United States ofAmerica. The novel was translated into Japanese in December, 1994 before the movie was made available
in Japan in February, 1995. In other words, this novel was translated because a movie was being made.
24
These self-help books are not presented as a textbook but they provide clear lessons for life in the formsof fiction.
25
This book was originally written in Spanish by Spanish authors, but the Japanese translation was madefrom the English translation of this book.

114

Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

Toyotomi Hidenaga I
Taichi Sakaiya
Toyotomi Hidenaga II
Taichi Sakaiya
Shuto Shōmetsu I
Sakyo Komatsu
Shuto Shōmetsu II
Sakyo Komatsu
Ippai no Kakesoba
Ryoichi Kuri
Gokyu Shōsetsu
Kenichi Sakami
Parasite Eve
Hideaki Sena
Shitsuraku-en I
Junichi Watanabe
Shitsuraku-en II
Junichi Watanabe
Poppoya
Jiro Asada
Battle Royal I
Koushun Takami
Battle Royal II
Koushun Takami
Sekai no Chūshin de Ai o
Kyoichi Katayama
SakebuIma Ai ni Ikimasu
Takuji Ichikawa
Kagami no Hōsoku
Yoshinori Noguchi

Historical
Historical
Thriller
ThrillerSelf-help
Historical
Thriller
Romance
Romance
Fantasy
Thriller
Thriller
Romance
Romance / Fantasy
Self-help

In addition to using computer technology for compiling the corpora for the study, othercomputer assistance was required in this project. First of all, a concordance program called
ConcApp was used to extract those expressions and words in question. For example, if one islooking for the word “he” in a corpus, ConcApp creates a list of instances called KWIC (KeyWord in Context) concordance. ConcApp is a freeware program downloadable at
http://www.edict.com.hk/PUB/concapp/. ConcApp was chosen for this project after manydifferent programs were tried out. With regards to Japanese characters, ConcApp provided themost easy-to-use system with Unicode. In order to feed the data to ConcApp, the corpus, firstcompiled in a MicroSoft Word document format, had to be converted into a text format.
ConcApp was satisfactory because it could perform word searches. Therefore there was no needto purchase expensive concordance programs for this purpose.
Secondly, strings of words written in Katakana characters had to be extracted. Thisinitially posed a problem. With the concordance program mentioned above, I could look for a setof words (or a string of characters) by typing the exact word in a search box. However, theconcordance program could not produce a list of all the strings of characters that were written in aparticular character set, in this case, Katakana. I searched for programs that would extract
Katakana from a given corpus online but to no avail. After consulting a few colleagues, a friend
volunteered to develop a program that would extract the string of characters written in Katakana
and their frequencies 26.
In addition, it was necessary in some cases to rely on human eyes for analysis because
there is a limit to what computers can do effectively. For example, to search the vaguer categoryof abstract/inanimate nouns acting as agents of a transitive verb, two set of eyes, mine and a
26

I would like to thank Mr. V. Prosolin for helping me with development of this program.

115

『翻訳研究への招待 3』

friend’s, performed the searches throughout the entire corpora. This involved reading every lineof each corpus and taking note of the sentences containing abstract/inanimate nouns as agents of atransitive verb. Since my friend used to be a teacher of Japanese, she understood my instructions
readily to perform the searches.
In order to measure the length of paragraphs, Microsoft Word’s “word count” function
was used. In other words, I highlighted the paragraph and used the “word count” function to notethe number of characters in each paragraph of the corpora. Microsoft Excel and a calculator werealso used to keep track of and calculate the basic statistics of the data collected by the use of
ConcApp and the Katakana extracting program. Raw data produced by these programs need to be
manually checked and corrected for errors. Sometimes finding out whether or not a suitable
program exists and taking necessary steps in obtaining and learning the program, if it exists, canbe more time and energy consuming than it is worth not to mention the financial burden
associated with it 27.
4. Results and Discussions
The results of the investigation indicate that some of the claims about the features ofJapanese translationese are indeed true and that others were not quite so. In the following sections,
I show and discuss the results for each feature.
4.1 Third Person Pronouns
Third person pronouns were shown to occur more frequently in translated texts than intexts originally written in Japanese. This is shown below in Table 5. Since the sizes of the corpora
are different, the figure shown first is standardized as the number of occurrences per 10,000
characters. The figure in parentheses is the actual number of occurrences, or the number of eachtoken.

Table 5 Comparisons of occurrences of third person pronouns:
Translation
8.1 (305)
kare 彼 (he)kanojo 彼女 (she)karera 彼ら (they)

19.4 (733)
1.9 (70)

Non-translation
5.5 (154)
0.3 (7)0.4 (12)

27

There were some programs that I sought on the Internet and obtained. However, many of them were notable to function due to technical difficulties such as incompatibility in fonts and the operation systems.

116

Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

Unit: per 10,000 characters; () token
As can be seen in the table, all of the third person pronouns occur much more frequently
in translations than in non-translations. This may be attributed to interference from the original
texts. Simply put, it was probably the case that the third person pronouns were translated justbecause they were in the original text. In other words, source-based translations that are common
in Japan tend to have all words in the original translated.
Kare ‘he’ is used about 50% more often in translation compared to the uses in nontranslation. On the other hand, kanojo ‘she’ and karera ‘they’ are used much more frequently intranslation than in non-translation (i.e., 19.4 vs. 0.3 and 1.9 vs. 0.4 respectively). This difference
may be accounted for in a couple of different ways. The first explanation is that newer words areused more often in translation because the translators are more fascinated with them
unconsciously. The second is the translators’ conscious avoidance of kare ‘he’ but not of kanojo‘she’ and karera ‘they’ due to the fact that they are aware that kare has been the target ofcriticism.
Criticism of kare can be explained from the history of the word. Kare is older than its
derivatives, kanojo and karera. Kare is written in the character 彼, while the derivative forms
have another character added to them: kanojo 彼女and karera 彼等. 女 is the character for‘woman, female’ and 等 is a suffix denoting plurality. The pronoun kare, in fact, existed before
the importation of Western materials; however, it was used in a slightly different meaning.
Morioka (1999) provides a more detailed explanation for the development of the pronoun kare 28.
It did not have the meaning of a male third person pronoun but rather two main meanings of theimpersonal pronoun “it” and the demonstrative “that” as opposed to “this.” The meaning of thethird person male pronoun is thought to have been assigned due to the influence of translation.
The female pronoun kanojo, however, became established in Japanese later on (Kindaichi, 1988;
Morioka, 1999) 29. Morioka (1999) estimates that kare was established in the early 20s of the
Meiji Period (around 1887) and kanojo in the 30s of the Meiji Period (1897-1906) 30.
Translators may be avoiding the use of kare more consciously than the other two third
person pronouns. Translators may have been taught at a translation school, or by a textbook, to28“「彼」には，第一に指示代名詞（it）の用法があり，第二に「我」にたいする「彼」の用法があり，意味的にはコチラとアチラの対応なので，仮に人称・指示代名詞としておいた。… おそらく he と同様の第三人称代名詞として「彼」が定着するについては，欧文翻訳の影響があったのではなかろうか。” (Morioka, 1999, p. 161)
29“「彼女」という第三人称単数女性代名詞の定着は，「彼」にくらべると相当に遅れる。” (Morioka, 1999, p. 163)
“いま三人称につかっている「彼」というのは、古い遠称指示代名詞であり、「彼女」は、明治になって she の翻訳語として急に作った早成の単語だった。” (Kindaichi, 1988, p. 167)30
“筆者は，これらの人称代名詞が，欧文の訓読によって生じたことを認めるとともに，用例の現れ具合から見て，「彼」は，指示代名詞の用法を退けて，明治 20 年代初めにほぼ三人称男性代名詞の地位を獲得し，「彼女」は 20 年
台の後半から使われ，30 年代になってほぼ一般に三人称女性代名詞として公認されるようになったということで満足したいと思う。” (Morioka, 1999, p. 167)117

『翻訳研究への招待 3』

avoid kare which is the older, more representative form of the third person pronouns. Thus, at thesame time, they neglect to pay attention to the other forms, kanojo and karera.
Since personal pronouns are used more often in translation than in non-translation,
especially kanojo and karera, a higher degree of “naturalness” may be achieved by reducing theuse of pronouns, as has been suggested by Miyawaki (2000).
Another interesting point to consider is the degree of incorporation of the third person
pronouns into the Japanese language. The use of kare was less frequent in non-translated texts
compared to kanojo and karera. This may indicate the extent of language change in Japanese. In
other words, the form kare is not as fresh in the Japanese language but the other two forms are.
Native Japanese writers are employing kare 5.5 times per 100,000 characters, while they used theothers less than once per 100,000 characters. This may suggest that kare is more natural to use inJapanese. In order to claim this with more confidence, an extensive study on the use of kare overa long period of time is required.
4.2 Frequent Katakana Loanwords
Loanwords written in Katakana are considered a negative feature of translationese. Whenthe total of Katakana words is presented, it is clear that Katakana loanwords occur more intranslation than in non-translation (Table 6). There are about 2.7 times more Katakana words intranslation than in non-translation.
Table 6 Comparison of total Katakana words:
Translation
Katakana words
224.7 (8481)
Unit: per 10,000 characters; () token

Non-translation
82.4 (2297)

However, when the Katakana words categorized and counted, a different picture emerges.
Four kinds of Katakana words were identified in the analysis: loanwords, proper nouns, various
onomatopoeic words, and plant/animal names. Below are examples of these four kinds of
Katakana words that appear in the corpus.
Table 7 Examples of the most frequent Katakana words in each category:Translation
Non-translation
ドア (door)
ホテル (hotel)
ビッグ (big)
ドア (door)
チーズ (cheese)
ベッド (bed)
Loanwords
マダム (madame)
クレーン (crane)
テーブル (table)
メートル (meter)
テープ (tape)
テーブル (table)118

Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

Proper nouns

Onomatopoeic words

Plant/animal names

ハリー (Harry)
ブラックソーン (Blackthorn)
キャサリン (Catherine)
イギリス (England)
アメリカ (America)

ニッコリ(smiling)
クスクス (chuckling)
スーッ (the way something moves
smoothly, etc.)
イライラ (irritated)
ネズミ (mouse)
トカゲ (lizard)
バラ (rose)
スイレン (water lily)

セシャーミン (Seshamin)
イヴ (Eve)
アメリカ (America)
ニューヨーク (New York)
ワシントン (Washington)
シ ー ッ (shoo, to bring aboutsilence)
パチン (snapping)
ス ー ッ (the way something
moves smoothly, etc.)
ポッポー (choo choo, the soundof a train)
ペンギン (penguin)
カラマツ (larch, a kind of tree)
ゴ ボ ウ(burdock, a root
vegetable)
ネギ (green onion)

Noteworthy was that loanwords which occur frequently in both translation and nontranslation are sometimes the same words. In the table above, Japanese loanwords for ‘door’ and‘table’ both occur frequently. Other examples of loanwords that occur more than ten times in theboth translation and non-translation include the following words: ‘hotel’, ‘meter’, ‘bed’, and‘class’. Proper nouns of the main characters are expected to occur frequently, which is indeed thecase in both translation and non-translation. Also, the names of countries and well-known cities
are among the most frequent in the category of proper nouns. Onomatopoeic words differ
between the translation corpus and non-translation corpus.
Overall, occurrences of loanwords do not differ greatly between translation and nontranslation. While the translation corpus has 72.9 loanwords per 10,000 characters, nontranslation has slightly more at 74.4 loanwords per 10,000 characters. Larger differences arefound in the occurrences of proper nouns and onomatopoeic words. This is shown in Table 8
below.
Table 8 Comparison of three kinds of Katakana words:
Translation
Loanwords
72.9 (2751)
Proper nouns
146.2 (5520)
Onomatopoeia
5.6 (210)
Plant/animal names
1.53 (19)Unit: per 10,000 characters; () token

119

Non-translation
74.4 (2072)
6.7 (189)
1.3 (36)
0.67 (58)

『翻訳研究への招待 3』

Since proper names in the original texts are usually maintained as loanwords in Katakana,
it is understandable that there are many more Katakana proper nouns in translation than in nontranslation 31. However, grouping together both kinds of loanwords and criticizing translations
because of a more frequent use of loanwords is unreasonable since the actual loanwords wereused only slightly more often in non-translation than in translation.
Another phenomenon that stands out is the use of onomatopoeic words scribed in
Katakana 32. There are more than four times as many onomatopoeic words written in Katakana intranslation than in non-translation. “In comparison to English, many Japanese verbs have very
general meanings. … This lack of specificness of the verb meaning is compensated by thepresence of onomatopoeic words” (Shibatani, 1990, p. 155). As a result, it is technically difficult
to translate English verbs that have more specific meanings into Japanese without the use of
onomatopoeic words. According to Kono (1999), as a rule one should avoid onomatopoeic words
in translation, and he goes on to show an example with numerous onomatopoeic words to criticize
the translation 33. In his opinion, onomatopoeic words can be used where they are really necessary
but should be avoided so as to avoid making the translation sound “cheap” 34 (Kono, 1999, p.
138).
Also, names of plants and animals tend to be written more in Katakana 35. Tobita (1997)
instructs translation learners to write the plants and animal names in Katakana. Along withonomatopoeic words, most names of plants and animal are of Japanese origin (with some
exceptions), so they do not qualify as loanwords. In light of this information, translation critics
and educators need to reconsider their criticism of the overuse of loanwords written in Katakana.
4.3 Overuse of “Female” Language
Another mixed result is obtained from the analysis of the use of female expressions.
Many translation textbooks encourage translation learners to refrain from the use of female
31

There is a set of guidelines, the Notation of Borrowed Foreign Words (外来語の表記), and it provides
information on how loanwords can be written down. This is a current Cabinet notification by the Japanese
Language Council (文化審議会国語分科会) within the Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁) set in June
1991 (http://www.konan-wu.ac.jp/~kikuchi/kanji/gairai.html). This notation is only a guide, and it does notprescribe the way these words are written. However, one cannot ignore its potential for setting the norms inusing Katakana to transcribe loanwords.
32
Onomatopoeic expressions are Japanese words and are not loanwords; however, they tend to be written
in Katakana. There are no guidelines set by the Japanese Language Council (文化審議会国語分科).
33“原則として、日本語に数多い擬声語・擬態語のたぐいはできるだけ使わないようにすることが大切です。” (Kono,
1999, p. 137)
34

“じかに読者の感覚に訴える表現ですから、要所要所に使えば効果的な手法なのですが、擬声語・擬態語を多用
すると、とたんに安っぽい浮ついた調子の文章になってしまいます。” (Kono, 1999, p. 138)

35

This is because of the convention adopted to write words related to natural sciences. For example, theMinistry of the Environment encourages the use of Katakana for names of plants, animals and otherbiological creatures (http://www.env.go.jp/nature/yasei/hozonho/transfer/tebiki_rev0710.pdf).

120

Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

specific expressions, particularly the sentence final particles chosen for this analysis. As can beseen in Table 9, four out of the six sentence-final particles chosen for this study were used more
often in non-translations than in translations. For the use of Verb/Adj-wa and Verb/Adj-wayo, theuse was slightly more frequent in translation, but overall, one can say that non-translations exhibit
more occurrences of female specific sentence-final particles.
Table 9 Comparisons of female sentence-final particles:
Translation
2.2 (81)
Verb/Ajd-no (～の)1.4 (52)
Verb/Adj-wa (～わ)0.19 (7)Verb/Adj-wayo (～わよ)0.2 (8)Noun-yo (～よ) 36
0.13 (5)
Verb/Adj-teyo (～てよ) 37
0.9 (35)
Verb/Adj-noyo (～のよ)Unit: per 10,000 characters; () token

Non-translation
5.3 (150)
1.2 (35)
0.18 (5)0.7 (20)
0.25 (7)
1.3 (36)

This finding is contrary to the common perception of translation’s overuse of female
language. Why is translation being blamed for overt female language use? This could perhaps be
explained by the concept developed by Kinsui of “Role Language” or “yakuwarigo” 38 (Kinsui,2003). Translation critics have ignored or are unaware of this phenomenon of Role Language
which is a role-specific language used by characters in Japanese fictional works (including novels,
comics, movies, and so on) that enables the reader/viewer to imagine the type of character interms of his/her age, sex, occupation, social class, historical era, appearance, or personality 39.
While warning about the ideological problems 40 that Role Language can pose, Kinsui states that
Role Language is so naturally used that Japanese readers do not question anything about it.
36

The following cases were eliminated from the count:• masu/desu+yo (This can be used by both male and female speakers in polite forms.)• da+yo (The word “da” here is a copular verb in its plain form. This can be used by both male andfemale speakers in casual conversations.)• When the speaker is obviously a male speaker. (Verb/Adj+yo can be used in different intonations
by males. Such as Iraneeyo. いらねえよ。 ‘I don’t need it.’)• Verb/Adj+noyo and Verb/Adj+wayo (These are separately counted as individual variables.)37
Verb/Adj-teyo was used only in imperative such as the following:• Ii kagen ni shiteyo. いい加減にしてよ。‘Enough already’•
Nee, yameteyo, futari tomo. ねえ、やめてよ、二人とも。‘Hey, stop it, you two.’38

役割語“ある特定の言葉づかい（語彙・語法・言い回し・イントネーション等）を聞くと特定の人物像（年齢、性別、職業、階層、時代、容姿・風貌、性格等）を思い浮かべることができるとき、あるいは特定の人物を提示されると、その人物がいかにも使用しそうな言葉づかいを思い浮かべることができるとき、その言葉づかいを「役割語」と呼ぶ。” (Kinsui, 2003,
p. 205)39

40

For example, a type of Role Language used for Chinese people in pre-WWII time in Japan may beconsidered to reflect the prejudice and discrimination that was and has been present in Japanese people’s
mind (Kinsui, 2003, 203).

121

『翻訳研究への招待 3』

Knowledge of Role Language is part of Japanese readers’ reading competency. In other words,
Role Language is used without being questioned in non-translation written by Japanese writers.
The translation critics or educators may need to reconsider the role of Role Language once more.
In a more recent publication, Ohmori (2006) shows his awareness of that the Role
Language; however, he cautions against overuse of this type of language. On the other hand, there
is a positive side for the female specific language: it can help identify characters in the story
especially when the conversation is complicated (Ohmori, 2006, p. 10).
At the same time as Ohmori (2006) warns against the overuse of female language, he also
notices that the “real” conversation cannot be written down to represent conversations in fiction,
because it really does not make any sense. In other words, a conversation that is written down isnecessarily a representation of the real conversation and not the conversation itself 41. Since it is,
in fact, impossible to make conversation in fiction “authentic,” perhaps use of female language
for the sake of convention is not completely negative.
In light of the above discussion, it is necessary to mention the possibility that the results
could have been influenced by the gender of the authors and translators. In the corpora used inthis study, there are three female translators out of eleven translators, while the authors of nontranslation are all males (fourteen authors in total). Female translators may have been more awareof this tendency of female Role Language, thus paying more attention to avoid over-stigmatized
female specific expressions. This cannot be concluded without further studies with more samplesof female translators’ texts.
Another point 42 should be considered as a possibility in future research. Ihara (2008)
points out the different ways by which discourse, or conversations, are expressed in Japanese andEnglish novels. While English tends to utilize “indirect discourse” and “free indirect discourse”,
Japanese relies more on “direct discourse” (Ihara, 2008). In other words, Japanese fiction tends toinclude character’s voices or lines more directly using verb endings and sentence final particles
compared with English fictions where indirect quotes are used more frequently 43. Therefore, it
41

For example, Banfield (1982) deals with the types of language used in fiction. She focuses on free direct
discourse which she calls ‘represented speech and thought’ and claims that ‘represented speech andthought’ as well as direct quotation are products of fictional composition. Fiction writers representcharacters’ speech using techniques such as direct/indirect quotes and free direct discourse. In thisrepresentation, what is reflected is what the writer perceives as speech of the characters.
42
I owe my sincere thanks to Dr. N. Ihara for bringing this to my attention at a JAIS Annual Conference in
September 2008. This point was not considered when the analyses were made; in other words, anassumption of this portion of the project was that there were no differences in numbers of turns inconversations that characters utter. This is a point for future research since it involves more than merely
checking the corpus with a computer program. Because of the size of corpora used in this project, it is noeasy task to check individual instances of speech representations in both corpora of translations and nontranslations.
43
The examples are provided by Ihara (2008): “i) The small boy could not understand. He said to himself,“Why is Mommy always working? It’s my birthday today. – 直接話法 [direct discourse] ii) The small boy
could not understand why his mother was always working. He complained to himself that it was his

122Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

appears natural that there are fewer female sentence-final particles in translations. This is indeed
supported in the findings of this study; however, more detailed investigation is necessary to makeclear the nature of the findings.
4.4 Abstract Nouns as Grammatical Agents of Transitive Verbs
In order to analyze this so-called feature of translationese, I asked another person 44 to join
me in reading through the corpora to extract the incidents of abstract nouns used as grammaticalagents of transitive verbs. This is because there are no computer programs that can detect theparts of speech in my untagged corpus. A tagged corpus, as opposed to an untagged corpus,
contains information for each word that appears in the corpus. The information contained can begrammatical information such as parts of speech or functions of the word. There is a program
called ChaSen that was developed by Nara Institute of Science and Technology and is available
for free distribution for researchers 45. This program separates Japanese sentences, which normallyare written without word breaks, and add tags (parts of speech). However, using this program
takes time to set up, and it is not always 100 per cent accurate. Therefore, with rather small
corpora such as mine, it is more time efficient to rely on human eyes and brains to extract theexamples.
The results of counting show that abstract nouns used as grammatical agents for transitive
verbs actually occur more frequently in non-translations than in translations.
Table 10 Comparison of abstract nouns used as grammatical agents of transitive verbs:
Translation
Non-translation
0.48 (18)0.78 (22)
Unit: per 10,000 characters; () token
The reason non-translation uses more abstract nouns as grammatical agents of transitive
verbs may be that this type of sentence construction has indeed become “natural” in modern
written Japanese. Because translators are aware of being criticized for using this type of structure,they may be refraining from using it more often, compared to Japanese writers.
There is a difference in uses found in abstract nouns as grammatical agents. Abstract
nouns appear to be used with causative verbs in non-translation more often than in translation.
This may indicate that this grammatical structure developed so that the use of abstract nouns asagents of a causative verb is more common. Some words are shown to develop their own
birthday today. – 間接話法 [indirect discourse] iii) The small boy could not understand. Why was mommyalways working? It was his birthday today. – FID [free indirect discourse]” (p. 156)
44
I would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Y. Kazuhara for spending time reading through the entire
corpus for this portion of the study.
45
This program is available at http://chasen-legacy.sourceforge.jp.

123『翻訳研究への招待 3』

meaning (Yanabu, 1982, 1998). For example, words now used for translation of ‘he’ and ‘she’
also contain the meaning of ‘boyfriend’ and ‘girlfriend.’ If translationese can gain a specificmeaning in the words, or at the lexical level, it is possible that additional uses can be gained ingrammar of sentence, or at the structural level, as seen in this case. Table 11 shows the number ofoccurrences of abstract nouns used as grammatical agents of causative structures.
Table 11 Comparison of abstract nouns used as grammatical agents of causative verbs:
Translation
Non-translation
Occurrences
2 out of 18 (11%)
6 out of 22 (27%)
hassei-saseru ‘relieve one from ~’zōfuku-saseru ‘to make somethingkanji-saseru ‘make one feel’ 46
amplified (to amplify something)takabur-asesu
‘make
one
excited/nervous’
shizumikom-aseru
‘make
one
dipressed’
Exampleshakyū-saseru ‘make an influence on~”
shikujir-aseru ‘make one fail’
anshin-saseru ‘make one feelrelieved’ 47
Note: A hyphen indicates a break between a verb and an auxiliary verb that make up a verb.
4.5 Longer Paragraph Length
The feature of longer paragraphs in translation is supported by the results. In other words,
paragraph length was overall longer in translation than in non-translation. The paragraph lengths
were measured using a “word count” tool in a word processing program that determines thenumber of characters in a selected area. The counts were based on the number of characters in aparagraph. As can be seen in Table 12, showing the average length of paragraphs, the differenceis clear.
Table 12 Comparisons of average paragraph length:
Translation
Overall
138.3
Narrations
232.2
Dialogues
43.7
Narrations & Dialogues
87.27
Unit: characters
46

The examples in Japanese are as follows:47

The examples in Japanese are as follows:

発生させる
増幅させる

Non-translation
79.95
123.1
32.2
66.31

感じさせる
高ぶらせる

沈みこませる

波及させる

124

しくじらせる

安心させるTranslationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

The overall result is a total average of paragraphs of translation and non-translation
where no distinctions were made between narrations and dialogues. Translation paragraphs areabout twice as long as paragraphs in non-translations. In paragraphs where only narrations are
made, the result is very similar – translation paragraphs are about twice as long. Translators tend
not to change paragraph structures in contemporary fictional works (Ohmori, 2006, p. 88). The
longer paragraph length may also be accounted for by the tendency of translations to be longer
than the original that has been noted as a tendency of translation (Berman, 1985/2004; Baker,
1996) 48 . However, this claim cannot be clearly supported by the results shown in this study,
because no original texts were analyzed to compare the length. A future study can investigate thispoint thoroughly in conjunction with a parallel corpus of source language and target language.
“Dialogues” in the table show the length of each turn of dialogue or conversation, which
reveals that even the dialogues or conversations are longer in translation than in non-translation.
A “turn” is a conversational convention defined as “a single contribution of a speaker to aconversation” (Crystal, 1987); in other words, the alternating participation of each speaker in theconversation (Levinson, 1983). Conversational turns have been studied mostly in the linguistic
fields of Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, and it has been argued that turn-taking patterns candiffer depending on the language of the conversation (Tanaka, 2000). The length difference
between translation and non-translation may be a result of the differences in turn-taking patterns
between Japanese and English.
Also, as seen in example number 8 below, dialogues are often embedded in paragraphs intranslation (shown underlined), rather than beginning a new line for each conversational turn as inexample 7, a non-translation. In other words, these variations may point to differences in speech
representations in literature between translations and non-translations. This may have caused thedifferences in the length of the paragraphs, shown in the row “Narrations & Dialogues” above,
which is another aspect that needs further investigation.
7. A passage from non-translation, Shitsurakuen: 49
48

For example, Berman (1985/2004) speaks of “expansion” in which “every translation tends to be longer
than the original” (p. 282). Baker (1996) terms the similar concept “explicitation” that is “an overalltendency to spell things out rather than leave them implicit in translation” (p. 180). In addition, she claims
that many people have mentioned this tendency without empirical evidence.
49
A passage from non-translation, Shitsurakuen, in Japanese:「とにかく、いまはなにをやっても難しい。それにくらべて、お前は気楽でいい」 / 「そんなことはない……」閑職は閑職なりに辛いこともあるのだが、それをいってはただの愚痴になる。そう思って黙っていると、衣川がひとつ溜息をついて、「会社ってところは、あくせく働いても暢んびりしていても、給料はあまり変らない」
たしかにそれは事実で、久木も以前とくらべて役職手当が減っただけで、総額としてはさほど減ったわけではない。
「でも、こちらは好んで閑になったわけではない」(Watanabe, 2000, p. 63)

125

『翻訳研究への招待 3』

Romanized Japanese:“Tonikaku, ima wa nani o yattemo muzukashii. Sore ni kurabete, omae
wa kiraku de ii.” 50“Sonna koto wa nai…”
Kanshoku wa kanshoku narini tsurai koto mo aru no da ga, sore o ittewa tada no
guchi ni naru. Soo omotte damatte iruto, Ikawa ga hitotsu tameiki o tsuite,“Kaisha tte tokoro wa, akuseku hataraitemo nonbiri shite itemo,
kyuuryoo wa amari kawaranai.”
Tashika ni sore wa jujitsu de, Hisaki mo izen to kurabete yakushoku teate ga
hetta dake de, soogaku to shite wa sahodo hetta wake dewa nai.
“Demo, kochira wa kononde hima ni natta wake dewa nai.” (Watanabe,
2000, p. 63)
English translation (my translation):“In any case, right now, everything is hard to do for me. On the other
hand, I’m envious that you seem happy enough.”“Not necessarily so…”
Being a victim of downsizing and having not much work to do has its own
difficulties; however, if he talks about them, it will only become complaints.
Thinking like this, he kept his mouth shut. Then, Ikawa sighed and said,“A workplace. No matter how much you work or how little, your salary
really does not change all that much.”This indeed was true. For Hisaki, even though he did not receive his executive
allowance any longer, the total amount of salary is not very much less than
before.
“But, I didn’t ask for any free time at work.”
8. A passage from Madison-gun no Hashi (The Bridges of Madison County): 51
50

In Japanese print conventions, a paragraph is indicated with one full empty space for a character.
However, a conversation paragraph is often offset by a half-size blank followed by a quotation mark (「)that signifies the beginning of the paragraph of dialogue. To show clear examples of change of theparagraph, these examples are shown with a full-size tab here. A footnote just above this footnote shows
the Japanese paragraphs with this printing convention.
51
A passage from non-translation, Madison-gun no Hashi, in Japanese:
土埃を巻き上げ、クラクションを鳴らして、車が通りすぎた。シヴオレーの窓からフロイド・クラークが褐色の腕を突き出し、フランチェスカはそれに応えて手を振ってから、見知らぬ男のほうに向き直った。「すぐそばよ。ここからその橋までは、せいぜい三キロくらいね」それから、二十年も閉ざされた生活をしてきたあと、田舎の文化の要求に合わせて行動
を慎み、感情を押し殺して暮らしてきたあと、自分がこんなふうに言うのを聞いて、フランチェスカ・ジョンソンは驚いた。
「よろしかったら、わたしが案内してあげましょうか？」(Waller, 1992/1997, p. 56)

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Translationese-Specific Linguistic Characteristics

Romanized Japanese:
Tsuchibokori o makiage, kurakushon o narashite, kuruma ga toorisugita.
Shiboree no mado kara Furoido Kuraaku ga kasshoku no ude o tsukidashi,
Furanchesuka wa sore ni kotaete te o futtekara, mishiranu otoko no hoo ni
mukinaotta. “Sugu soba yo. Koko kara sono hashi made wa, seizei 3 kiro kuraine.” Sorekara, 20 nen mo tozasareta seikatsu o shite kita ato, inaka no bunka no
yookyuu ni awasete koodoo o tsutsushimi, kanjoo o oshikoroshite kurashite kitaato, jibun ga konna fuu ni iu no o kiite, Furanchesuka Jonson wa odoroita.
“Yoroshikattara, watashi ga annai shite agemashoo ka?” (Waller, 1992/1997,
p.56)
English original:
A car went past on the road, trailing dust behind it, and honked. Francesca waved
back at Floyd Clark’s brown arm sticking out of his Chevy and turned back to thestranger. “You’re pretty close. The bridge is only about two miles from here.”Then, after twenty years of living the closed life, a life of circumscribed behavior
and hidden feelings demanded by a rural culture, Francesca Johnson surprised
herself by saying, “I’ll be glad to show it to you, if you want.” (Waller, 1992,
p.29)
5. Conclusion
In the West, translationese in general has traditionally been regarded as a sign of badtranslation. However, a more neutral view has appeared in the works of Baker (e.g., 1993, 1996,
1999, 2004) and Toury (1995) that translationese is a natural part of translation products and isworthy of description. On the other hand, Japanese translationese has followed a different path.
Japan’s long history of documented written materials provides valuable data in understanding
how different types of translationese over the centuries have influenced the Japanese language atvarious times. It is only recently that we hear more about the notion of more fluent ordomesticated translation. Furuno (2002, 2005) has made the very first step toward further
understanding by analyzing the changing attitudes of Japanese readers toward translationese innon-fiction writings, while Yanabu (1982, 2003) made his contribution by proposing a translation
theory based on the phenomena of words in translationese. This study adds to the previous
efforts: it provides concrete findings on what are regarded as features of translationese, utilizing
corpora of translations and non-translations.
Although only small-scale comparative corpora, this study nonetheless revealed somedifferences in the language used in translation and non-translation. Some features (third person
pronouns and longer paragraphs) are proven to be characteristic of translationese, while others

127『翻訳研究への招待 3』

were proven otherwise or questionable (loan words, female language, abstract nouns as subjectsof transitive verbs). The findings in this study can shed light on what is happening in the languageof translation and in modern Japanese. For instance, the findings may indicate incorporation of“translationese” forms into modern Japanese in the third person pronoun kare (he) and abstract
nouns as subjects of transitive verbs. The results of this study suggest that Japanese critics or eventranslation textbook developers may need to reconsider what is actually “translationese” and“natural” Japanese.
To conclude, as demonstrated above, it was possible to substantiate some features oftranslationese. I believe that this study has contributed to descriptions of translation phenomena inJapanese. This is one of the first attempts to carry out Descriptive Translation Studies in Japanesecontemporary popular fiction.

Acknowledgements: I would like to express my gratitude to the support of Doctoral Fellowship (No.
752-2007-1341) from Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. As well, my special thanks
go to Ms. S. Josey and Dr. A. Malena for constructive reviews.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------著者紹介：Yukari Fukuchi Meldrum (メルドラム由香理) She is a Certified Translator (Canada) and a

Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Modern Language and Cultural Studies at the University ofAlberta. She also teaches Japanese-English translation courses at the Department of East AsianStudies. Her main research interest is the Japanese language that is used in translation. Contact her atymeldrum@ualberta.ca.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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