The GITS Blog

I believe that the translator's job is to recreate the effect of the original in the target language, rather than just "translate the words." In some cases, accurately producing the effect of the original means leaving things out.

Glosses for abbreviations

One example is glosses that explain abbreviations that are common in the English speaking world, but don't have the same recognition in Japanese, such as "IT," as shown on this web page.

経済産業省は、[...]IT（情報技術）産業の国際競争力向上に取り組んでいる。

Initial translation: METI is working to make the IT (information technology) industry more internationally competitive…

Here, it seems to me that there's no need for the parenthesized gloss, so it can be safely deleted for a more readable translation: METI is working to make the IT industry more internationally competitive…

Glosses for English loanwords

Japanese writers like to use lots of English loanwords to show how worldly they are, even if there's not much chance that their readers will understand them. This trend is particularly egregious in the tech world. To get around the comprehension problem, authors will often put a Japanese gloss after the first use of an obscure English loanword. I suppose it wouldn't have been cool enough to simply use that gloss instead of the obscure loanword, but I digress.

In most cases, you can simply ignore the gloss, and translate the loanword. So コンバージョン(変換) ("conversion (conversion)") would simply be translated as "conversion."

Things get a little trickier when the author puts in a more lengthy gloss, especially when that gloss diverges from the word's meaning in English. Sometimes the gloss and the way the word is used in context show that the author is actually using the wrong word. That often causes problems because the author wants the same "English" word so show up in the translation, even though the wrongness of the term will be very apparent to the reader.

Sometimes, however, the extra gloss adds something and should be in the translation. Here's a good example from this blog post:

歴史を刻んだ古い建物を取り壊すことなく、その良さを生かしつつ、
リノベーション（革新・改善＝再生する）し、
新しい商業施設として、コンバージョン（変換・転換＝別の用途として機能させる）して
街全体が生き生きしているように感じます。

Here, the two glossed loanwords of interest are:
リノベーション（革新・改善＝再生する）
and:
コンバージョン（変換・転換＝別の用途として機能させる）

The gloss for the first one (renovation) essentially includes various ways the concept can be expressed in Japanese, so I think the gloss can be dropped in this case. In the second case (conversion), however, the gloss adds this tidbit: 別の用途として機能させる ("make function for a different purpose," i.e. "repurpose"). I think that this is valuable information to put into the translation. I'd thus translate the sentence as follows:

Rather than tear down historic old buildings, I feel we should renovate them in a way that retains their good qualities, converting ("repurposing") them into new commercial facilities. This has the effect of vitalizing the entire neighborhood.

Be smart about it

Things can get pretty bizarre when the author insists on you translating superfluous glosses and footnotes. One time, I was translating a document with the word スマート ("smart"). スマート was originally adopted into the Japanese language with the meaning of "slender" (I suppose from definition 12 here: "socially elegant; sophisticated or fashionable: the smart crowd."). A few years ago, however, the MBA crowd began using スマート in the more common English-language sense of being a clever/quick witted businessperson.

The document I was translating had the word スマート, along with a footnote: "Here, the word 'smart' is being used in the sense of 'clever' rather than 'slender'." I told the client that they should drop the footnote altogether, but I was told to shut up and "just translate the words." Which I did — and subsequently found myself "too busy" every time that client contacted me with work. Life is too short to deal with idiots.

Hierarchically deep titles

A final category of information I'll mention that can be left out is what I call "hierarchically deep" titles. If you've read many press releases from Japanese industry, you'll have seen many quotes like this (made up) one:

"We have improved the contact efficiency by 10%," said Tanaka, Section Manager, Sprocket Contact Section, Second Sprocket Department, Third Sprocket Division, Sprocket Assembly Group, Sprocket Industries Ltd.

As far as I can tell, the only function of such lengthy titles is to inform the reader of how massive Sprocket Industries' bureaucracy is. This isn't likely to impress the English-speaking reader much. I'd thus be inclined to translate a passage like the above in this way:

"We have improved the contact efficiency by 10%," said Taro Tanaka of the company's sprocket assembly group.

Significant editing like this, however, needs to be done in coordination with the client.

You might note that I also added Tanaka's given name, which wasn't in the original. This touches on the topic of adding information to a translation, which I plan to cover in a future post.