[Sashimister]

Originally Posted by Decimus

　
I'd made a minor mistake when typing; it's written as "守るは" in the original source. Guess I hit "space" and "enter" too quickly without checking what IME did to them.

That still doesn't affect the pronunciation though. Does it sound archaic because of the missing の for normalization purposes, with the contemporary form being "守るのは"?

It shouldn't affect the meaning right?

Right, it wouldn't affect the meaning.

守るは means 守るべきは or 守るべきものは. = "To be preserved are ~~"
守るのは is also grammatically correct but it sounds too colloquial to go with this passage.

To say 守るは～～～ is perfectly normal. Besides, adding letters to it would destroy the 7-5 syllable distribution.

When I stated that 守は sounded old, I didn't mean to say it was archaic. I said so because it reminded me of my grandparents writing the dictionary forms of verbs without using any kana every once in a while. Sorry if I confused you.

Any suggestions on how to make my translation flow... smoother? Should I reorder the whole thing for clarity, or is it a better idea to stick to the original sentence order? I seem to have problems with "今こそまっすぐ教師の道を 守は子供のその笑顔", as it sounds awkward in English. (even after massacring "まっすぐ教師の道" into "As a proper teacher".)

Not that I'm a translator, I've always believed that translation is an art. By that, I mean that translators would do whatever it takes to make their translations sound good to the readers of the translations. 99.99% of these readers will never read the original.

What sounds good to English-readers, you already know better than I. I can assure you, though, that most Japanese-readers would not take the phrase 今こそまっすぐ教師の道を literally in the first place. We won't picture a teacher walking straight on Teacher Road. We would take the phrase to mean "I've got to act like a real teacher now."

Also, how does "応える" compare with　"返事する"? Does the latter require an overt/direct action to be first performed on the respondee, without the action being necessarily a question?

応える has a much broader meaning than 答える or 返事する because the action of 応える can be either verbal or non-verbal. In contrast, 答える or 返事する is always verbal. There has to be a question asked first for you to 答える or 返事する to it.

In this passage's case, the students' action is giving the teacher a hat, which is non-verbal. The teacher is now determined to wear the hat in front of the students because that's what a good teacher is supposed to do, letting the kids have a kick out of it. Even though there would have to be many a word exchanged between the two parties, both actions are basically non-verbal.