Sunday, November 27, 2005

What makes translating so difficult?

Hi viewers!
Today, I'd like to mention about translating. Well, I've been translating Japanese to English for several times which were written in Japanese in the first place. Well, my view of translating into other language, I can bring up two things that are difficult to handle it.

First, both English and Japanese are quite different one from the other when you make structures. As you already know, Japanese sentences start from subject, next go to object, and finally end with verb, while English structure should be put in different order like, subject, verb, and object. You know what I mean?

Take the simple sentence for instance;
《I go to school》

In Japanese you say like;
《Watashi wa gakko e iku 》

If you write in English in same order, how would it be? It is supposed to be like;
《I school to go》, doesn't it sound really strange?

As you can figure out, for us local Japanese, sometimes it's hard to write in English correctly because of this.

Second, English has its own characteristics, which means to describe thoroughly when writing structures, whereas Japanese tends to abbreviate some pronouns or words themselves. I think it comes from ambiguousness of Japanese and Japanese language which is peculiar to our own.
What's more, you tend to use a lot of function words in English, while in Japanese, you need not care too much about those, and it does function grammatically as well. Also there are numerous phrasal verbs in English that are unfamiliar to non native English speakers.
Judging from all this, it is still hard for us Japanese to deal with writing in English correctly.
Well tell us your ideas about it.
Alright, see you soon

Take393

Sunday, November 13, 2005

The way of living in New York

Hi, viewers!
This is the translated version from Yahoo geocities.

〈At first I came to New York, I got confused quite a bit, because its life style is completely different from Japan.
First, in Japan, when you come into your house, you definitely take your shoes off, while locals living out there don’t do that.
On the other hand, I hear foreigners those who are new comer to Japan, are likely to get confused about the way people take their shoes off.

Second, when you take a bath, you wash your body in side a bath.
Now that it’s also popular washing inside of it here in Japan though, I think it wasn’t that much popular out here when I flew to the U.S in 1976.
Those two things are what it came to me as a big surprise when I first came to the U.S.

Furthermore, there are several customs in the U.S which don’t exist in Japan.
First, there is a custom of tipping in the U.S. Needless to say, when you eat out, and of course when you stay at a hotel.
It also applies to the variety of service, like when you call up a handy man to repair or replace something.

As for the manner, I can bring up the custom, so called 《Lady First》, which means women are treated as a celebrity, especially when you go in for the formal gathering.
Unfortunately, as I was a kid at the time, there was no opportunity to take part in.
I guess it took me quite a long time to get accustomed to the society in New York due to the difference of customs and languages one from the other.〉

Take393

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

Where's my English coming from?

Hi viewers!
This is the translated version from my Japanese blog which is on my webpage.

<It was originally from the class and the TV programs where I first started learning English. As I already mentioned on my previous post, I was in a Japanese school, also all the students were Japanese, whereas teachers were blended, like one third of them were Americans, and the rest of them were Japanese. American teachers teach you English, American Social Study, and Art, while Japanese teachers teach you other subjects. Most of classes were conducted in Japanese.
However, nearly the half of students were born in the U.S, grew up out there, that's why their English were better than their Japanese. Whereas their looking was definitely distinct from those of Americans, their English were so fluent, as if their languages were overwhelmingly prominent like English native speakers. You could hear it all around the class as well, like when you are having breaks, or even after class. I attribute my English to their great help, particularly with my pronunciation, and vocabularies. If it were not for their help, I can honestly say that I wouldn't have spoken English in such a way, like what I'm doing with my life now.
In terms of educating myself in the early phase of some learning curves, I really much appreciate for that.>

take393