Posting another one of those translation essays I wrote for some people on the JET Program:
“Can you look over this translation to make sure it’s correct?” This is the sort of request you might hear from time to time. What does correctness mean in this case, though? There are many ways to measure how good a translation is—its accuracy, its effectiveness, and even its beauty might be yardsticks to use. But the yardstick you choose depends on context. And context, as we have seen, means more than just words on the page.
Let’s start with this short statement from the website of the Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum:
江戸東京たてもの園は、1993年（平成5年）3月28日に開園した野外博物館です。都立小金井公園の中に位置し、敷地面積は約７ヘクタール、園内には江戸時代から昭和初期までの、27棟の復元建造物が建ち並んでいます。当園では、現地保存が不可能な文化的価値の高い歴史的建造物を移築し、復元・保存・展示するとともに、貴重な文化遺産として次代に継承することを目指しています。
This is fairly straightforward information. We’ll begin by putting together a similarly straightforward English version along these lines:
The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum is an outdoor museum that opened on March 28, 1993 (Heisei 5). Located in Tokyo Metropolitan Koganei Park, the museum is about 7 hectares in size; on its grounds are 27 restored buildings dating from the Edo period to the early Showa era. Historical structures with high cultural value that cannot be preserved on their original sites are moved to the museum, where they are restored, preserved, and displayed, with the goal of handing them on to the next generation as a precious cultural heritage.
This translation adheres closely to the original Japanese in the order in which it presents the information. Does this make it the correct translation? . . . Maybe.
What is the purpose of this translation?
If your boss asked you to translate this site because he wanted a quick look at what it says, your job is done at this point. You’ve provided all the relevant information, and your translation is a correct fit for the task at hand.
If, however, your job is to create an English version of the site to inform potential visitors who don’t read Japanese, you need to work on this text some more. You aren’t just laying out information; you’re advertising the museum, and that means making your translation more attractive. Present the place as exciting, educational, and worth a trip to Koganei.
The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum, located in Koganei Park, features 27 restored buildings dating from the Edo period to the early Showa era. These culturally valuable structures were moved to the museum when they could no longer be preserved on their original sites. Here they are carefully restored, displayed, and preserved as a precious cultural heritage to be passed on to future generations.
It’s shorter now, and we’ve lost some information. But that wasn’t likely to motivate people to come see the preserved structures—readers won’t care so much when the place was established, and “Heisei 5” is particularly unhelpful; the full name of the park is similarly unneeded here. It’s no longer an exact match for the Japanese, but for our advertising purposes this might be a correct translation.
What do the readers need?
Above we took out the Heisei year designation. Japanese readers may appreciate that information, but foreign readers aren’t apt to count years according to imperial reigns. We need to consider what our readers will want from the text, and provide them with a translation that serves their needs.
Perhaps the English website will help direct visitors to this place. In that case we’ll need some geographic pointers. Perhaps the visitors would benefit from additional historical background—not everyone knows when the “Edo period” was, for instance. Here we go again:
The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum opened in March 1993 in Koganei Park, north of Musashi Koganei station in western Tokyo. The expansive outdoor museum contains 27 restored buildings dating from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. Historical structures from around the Tokyo area that cannot be preserved on their original sites are restored, preserved, and displayed on the museum grounds, with the goal of handing these precious cultural properties on to the next generation.
Note also that not all readers will be familiar with the hectare as a unit of area, and the exact size of this place isn’t vital information in any case. This isn’t a history essay, so we don’t need to give the precise years for the Showa era. A quick look around the website lets us know that the buildings date from the middle of the Edo period to the early postwar era; we use that information here.
What does the client want?
In addition to thinking about the sort of text you’re writing and the needs of your readers, you have to consider what the client wants to see in your translation. Japanese bureaucrats often prefer to see a particular flavor of English writing—a “governmentese” that isn’t necessarily natural, but is a very straight translation with which they are comfortable. (The first draft above might be a good fit for them.)
Maybe this client wants to put together a pamphlet for kids. You’ll be asked to write for younger readers in this case:
The Edo-Tokyo Open Air Architectural Museum was founded in 1993. This large museum in Tokyo’s Koganei Park contains 27 historical buildings. Some of these are very old, dating all the way back to the middle of the Edo period—that was hundreds of years ago! When these important buildings from around Tokyo were about to be torn down, people worked to save them, bringing them all the way to this museum. Here these cultural structures are preserved so people can continue enjoying them today, and into the future.
The sentences are shorter. The vocabulary is simpler. And the text is more energetic, to hold the children’s attention. (We might also note that some of the buildings here inspired Miyazaki Hayao’s art in Spirited Away.) If the client comes to you with a request for a certain kind of language, it’s your job to produce that. Stay flexible!
In its most basic form, translation requires you to include all the information in the original, adding nothing and taking nothing away. But translators are called on to do jobs closer to copywriting much of the time. The examples above show some very different approaches to the same paragraph in Japanese, but depending on the kind of writer you are, the needs of your readers, and the demands of your client, they might all be correct.
