Which way writers express their intentions

Introduction

The ways which writers express their intentions vary depend on their expected readers even in the same language and culture (Baker 1992). By this strategy, the audience will readily understand the content. Likewise, translators also have to bear the variation in the knowledge and expectations of the target readers in their mind (Baker 1992). With acceptance on this point, the source language (SL) words should be substituted for the target language (TL) words which provide the similar contents to the TL culture.In addition, for making the target text (TT) acceptable in the TL culture, translators should be fully aware of not only the meaning of words and phrases but also the interpretation of the content both in SL and TL culture (Bassnett 2002). If translators fail to interpret the ST precisely, the target text (TT) might also fail to communicate the ST writer's intention to the TT readers; consequently the readers in a given language are confused and required their efforts to understand the contents (Nida 2001). This commentary will examine the translation problems and solutions with regards to the semantic, cultural and pragmatic equivalence between SL and TL, through the translation from English into Japanese.

The place of publication and function in source culture

The source text is a column uploaded on 5th of October in 2009 on the website of Guardian. co.uk. This website was embarked in January of 1999 (Guardian.co.uk 2002), which has a variety of contents such as news, sport, comment, culture, business, financial, life style, travel, environment, and job (Guardian.co.uk 2010). In addition, the website also provides pod cast services, blogs and video news (Guardian.co.uk　2010). In 2001, Guardian website became one of the most popular UK newspaper website holding 2.4 million readers (Guardian.co.uk 2002).

Text type

This article is one of the series of the column if you only do one thing this week…written by several writers aiming to suggest the way of efficient time management in the office (Guardian.co.uk 2009). The chosen source text for this essay describes the disadvantage of multitasking based on scientific researches conducted by the University of California and Stanford University in California, and the comment by the author of the myth of Multitasking. According to dictionary definition (Collins COBUILD 2009), multitasking is to do more than one thing at once by a computer or a person. In this text, multitasking indicates that of by human beings. Although multitasking tends to be considered as an effective way of spending time for a busy businessperson, the results from the studies showed that multitasking affect negatively on the ability of solving problems as well as switching tasks. On the ground of this result, the writer recommends avoiding multitasking in order to work with scrupulous efficiency.

This text consists of some paragraphs and supported by some valid research evidences, employing the informal expressions and a metaphorical sentence can be seen. Sentences are cohered each other and thus text is readable.

The STReadership

Guardian is regarded as a serious newspaper which readership has relatively high levels of education in higher social class (Seale et al.　2007), and 52% of Guardian readers use the internet daily (Guardian News and Media 2004). Taking above into consideration, the readership of the Guardian website might be similar to those who are the readers of its newspaper. Besides, this column is provided the useful information of time management in the office, thus the main target readers can be predicted as the busy business people along with relatively high educational background.

Target readership

Although Guardian is not published in Japan, there is some websites organized by the Japanese newspaper companies which readership seem to be similar to Guardian's. Thus these websites were consulted regarding the writing style and register, in order to avoid the unnatural translation. Amongst the newspaper website, asahi.com operated by The Asahi Shinbun Company, which is one of the major newspaper companies in Japan, was regarded. The reason of this is the fact that Katsuma Kazuyo no jinsei o kaeru kotoba (Tips for life, offered by Kazuyo Katsuma) serialized in asahi.com, seemed to be similar to the source text in terms of the concept, since this column iscategorised as one of the business and financial columns on this asahi.com website.

Translation problems and solutions

There were some difficulty in translation into Japanese because of less simirality between Japanese and English, such as culture and grammar. In this commentary, semantic, cultural and pragmatic non-equivalences will be discussed.

Semantic non-equivalence

One of the problems was whether employing a loanword such as multitasking, IQ, and switching cost. According to Baker (1992), a loanword or a loanword with explanation are often employed especially in concerning “culture-specific-items, modern concepts, and buzz words (Baker 1992 p.34)”. On the other hand, she also notes that using loanwords in the ST often causes problems due to the different usage in the TT (Baker 1992). Therefore, it is important to identify whether using a loanword or not. Regarding this point, multitasking, IQ, and switching cost were examined as follows.

The terms of multitasking which is a key word appeared several times in the ST and IQ which can be seen in the fourth paragraph. For these terms, the internet search was conducted in order to know whether these loanwords are common in Japan. The number of references of loanword of multitasking and IQ were found on Google, 9820 and 1.44million, respectively. Although these numbers included some different usages from that of in the ST, most of them were the same meaning of that of the ST. From this result, multitasking and IQ were considered as loanwords which will be recognized by readers, written in katakana form. (Katakana form is commonly used to transfer foreign words into Japanese (Baker 1992)).

Contrast to these two words, switching costwhich can be seen in the seventh paragraphwas different from above three terms; the usage as a loanword was not shown on Google search. In the ST, an explanation of this term followed by the term switching cost. Regarding such a case, Baker (1992) suggests that using the loanword with an explanation is the effective way, and once it is explained, loanword can be employed alone because readers already know its meaning, in particular it is repeated in the text. Therefore, switching cost was adopted as a loanword with its explanation.

Cultural non-equivalence

In the standfirst part, there is a sentence including the writer's name in the end of the sentences; So stop what else you're doing and concentrate, says Giles Morris. In Japanese articles, a writer's name usually is not clearly mentioned in the sentence; add a writer's name at the beginning or the end of the article in square brackets. In terms of this tendency, it can be assumed that Japanese consider that writer's name may interrupt the flow of the story when reading. On the other hand, it is common that the writer's name is included in the sentence in English articles. In order to fulfil the expectation of the TT readers, the writer's name was omitted from the sentence in Japanese translation and added it at the beginning of the article in brackets.

Another example of cultural non-equivalence, the term of Latte in the second paragraph is described as an example. Latte is a common term in Japan as a loanword. However, coffee seemed to be the most appropriate for the context of the ST, because coffee is often considered as a drink which busy business persons prefer to drink in Japan and the target readership was a business person. Baker (1992) mentions that since whether a text is acceptable for the readers depend on the reader's expectation and experience. Therefore latte was replaced to coffee in the TT.

Pragmatic non-equivalence

As a pragmatic non-equivalence, a metaphorical sentencein the third paragraph; …technology grants us the ability to do 17 things at once doesn't mean we can do those 17 things well, was considered.This kind of metaphorical sentence seems to be made by the writer since any culture specific term or concept is not included here. Newmark called this sort of metaphor as an original metaphor (Newmark 1988). He (1988) suggests that unless the original metaphor contains the important meaning in the context of the ST, and if it is obscure to sense, the original metaphor can be changed to the more depictive metaphor or eliminated it, so that readers do not experience some difficulties of interpretation. In this ST sentence, the writer intended to demonstrate the many things at once by the expression of do 17 things at once. ST readers will readily predict the writer's intention when they read it. However, this metaphor seems to be a roundabout expression for Japanese. Thus as Newmark suggests, this sentence was translated as technology grants us the ability to do many things at once, but whether we can do those thing well or not is the different matter (back translation).

Conclusion

There were three types of problems in translation process (semantic, cultural and pragmatic non-equivalence). In order to overcome these problems, two steps were conducted along with some translation strategies suggested by some theorists. On the first step, the knowledge and experience of the TT audience was considered, such as the degree of common usage in TL, and whether the audience of the TT will not be confused or experience discomfort when reading the translated text. On the second step, whether the readers of TL culture can understand the content of the text in the same manner as that of SL culture. Taking these translation processes into account, it is concluded that considering how the content of the ST will be interpreted by the TT audience is crucial, even though it is also important to examine the meaning at word and phrase level.