ブログの説明

法政大学・波戸岡景太の公式ブログです。主に、自身の研究成果をお知らせします。

2/28/2020

Lost in Translation?

I don't like the title, but I can't help admiring the elaborate examples of English sentences in it. What I'd like to recommend today is a study aid book titled English Sentences Japanese People Always Get Wrong [Definitive Edition], whose author is the famous translator Toshiya Echizen. While the adverb "always" is a little bit exaggerated, the average marks for quizzes I've made with the example sentences in this book and carried out at several English classes at universities are less than 50. More or less, it is ALWAYS difficult to translate from one language to another, but Echizen's choices help you to find some structural differences between English and Japanese. Actually, the title is not so sensational in English. However, once it is arbitrarily translated into Japanese as seen below, its stress of the meaning will be put on "Japanese," and you'll find the connotation meaning "it can't be helped that you'll fail to read English correctly because you are Japanese." I like the contents of this book, but I dislike the Japanese title all the more. If you could rename it yourself, what it would be in Japanese?