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We all know that there are two main components to translation: understanding the source text and expressing that meaning in the target language. And we know that a little field-specific knowledge is indispensable in this—in enabling the translator to understand what the source text is really saying and in enabling him/her to express it in terms that will resonate with the target-language reader.
That is all well and fine, but what does it mean for teaching J2E translation? Am I supposed to teach Japanese? Am I supposed to teach English? There are elements of both, but they are not core. Instead, I operate on the assumption that the people who enroll in my class already have a reasonably good command of Japanese and are native-level writers of English. Am I supposed to teach field-specific knowledge? Perhaps a quick introduction to international finance or Japanese politics or nuclear physics? Hardly. Even if I were qualified to teach these things, there isn't time.
So what do we do? Two things. One is to focus on the relationships. Our source texts are not that specialized. They are the sort of thing that can be understood by the alert lay reader who makes an effort to figure out who is doing what to whom and why. We read a lot of different things to make sure people know a little bit about many different things—essential characteristic for any translator—well as having their own specialties. We spend considerable time talking about what is happening in the source text—not analyzing the grammar or the vocabulary but analyzing the events to discern patterns and relationships. This is the first core focus. You cannot know everything ahead of time, but you can develop the kind of analytical mindset that lets you puzzle the pieces out and helps things fall into a coherent pattern. And once you understand what is going on— the author is coming from and where she wants to go with this essay - then you are ready to make it happen in the target language.
This is the other focus: making it work in the target language; making our translation read equivalent to the source text. In most cases, the source text has a style. Some are breezy. Some legalistic. Few are awkward in the Japanese context. So we work on producing target text that has the same style in English. Breezy. Legalistic. Smooth. Making it an equivalent text with equivalent elan or force.
Of course, doing so means getting away from literalist word-for-word renderings that slavishly reproduce the source text structure in the target language. Each language has its own conventions, and the purpose of translation is not to transplant conventions but to transfer content seamlessly from one set of conventions to another. "Is that how you would normally say this in English?" is thus a recurring question. Because if the wording is not the way we would normally say that in English—it is jarringly awkward—is a bad translation for something that reads naturally and smoothly in Japanese. The translator is not expected to add content. Why should she add awkwardness—especially when that awkwardness will detract from the text's intended impact?
People already know how to read Japanese. They already know how to write English. I concentrate on linking these two skills so that neither suffers—that both are enhanced and the translation works the same way in English as the source text does in Japanese. That, I submit, is the defining characteristic of a good translation, and that is what I focus on.
With more than three decades' experience as a commercial translator, Fred Uleman teaches a course in J2E translation for native speakers of English at Simul Academy in Tokyo. He may be reached at fmu@gol.com.