by Gaël Malin
Earlier this month, I wrote a blog post highlighting some of the difficulties one will likely face when learning Japanese. This time, I will dive into some of the things that might prove tricky when translating Japanese, which is quite another matter. Translation involves a complex set of skills, after all.
As a reflection of a culture where hierarchy and titles are very much ingrained, the Japanese language relies on a range of honorifics and several levels of politeness, which are frequently used both in conversation and writing. Formal honorific suffixes are attached to a name to address someone and either serve as tokens of respect or marks of affection between the speakers. The most commonly used formal honorific suffixes are sama (さま), san (さん), sensei (先生), and senpai (先輩), while the more informal include the gender-based kun (くん) and chan (ちゃん).
However, honorific suffixes are one of the many ways to pay respect in Japanese, as you might come across three whole honorific languages with their own words and verb forms. These are teineigo (丁寧語), the most basic polite honorific language, sonkeigo (尊敬語), the most respectful towards others, and kenjōgo (謙譲語) used to display humility. Honorific languages are particularly standard in customer service and communication within companies. Some translators may feel like they fall short of ways to properly translate those in their native language. As unique and complex Japanese politeness is, honorifics ought to be translated somehow.
Honorifics are a prerequisite when learning Japanese at an advanced level (gogonihon.com).
Japanese is a very context-based language. Grammar-wise, this is epitomised by the key distinction between the two particles that are ‘は’ (ha read as wa) and ‘が’ (ga). Particles are one syllable or two syllable-long words, written most of the time in hiragana and attached to the words they modify, i.e. indicating the grammatical functions of these words within a given sentence. There are about a dozen commonly used particles often used, each serving a different purpose ‘は’ can either introduce a new theme in a discourse, indicate the topic of a sentence, or indicate the subject. On the other hand, ‘が’ always indicates the subject, thereby focusing more on who or what is performing the action. This requires careful reading and full attention on the part of the translators who might lose track of themes and subjects when translating especially long texts.
Those are some of the potentially problematic features of the Japanese language, which can result in inexperienced translators being inaccurate or, in worst cases, failing to convey the original meaning of the source text. With enough experience and focus on those issues, Japanese translators manage just as fine as any other translators. Translation is a skill, meaning there is always room for improvement; and that is also part of what makes it such an interesting field.