Quote:
Originally Posted by steven
Second of all (and I think this is the most important issue), a Japanese book by a Japanese writer will be conveying Japanese thought... in other words a decidedly Japanese setting. A situation that is that Japanese will obviously benefit from being described in Japanese. The translator thusly has to not only "translate", but will have to re-paint the situation in more universal colors (if that makes sense). In doing so, a simple word or phrase that is understood at face value will suddenly have to be elaborated on in order for it to be appropriately received (with hopefully the same or similar feeling) in the new language. And Nyoroin, I know this is redundant for you so please don't take this as directed at you. It's more of a comment on the idea as a whole.
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I was actually referring to translations where the original is neither English nor Japanese. I don`t think I`ve ever bought a translated book if the original is available in a language I can read. I was speaking of comparing translations of a third language.
I didn`t really mean "shorter" in terms of length, but more expressive for the number of words used. Obviously cultural things will have to be elaborated when unfamiliar, but this isn`t what I meant. Kanji will make a written passage appear shorter, but it won`t have any effect on a spoken sentence.
What I often feel is that I can convey the meaning I want with less length and effort in Japanese than in English.
Back to the subject of which language is more expressive though... And it really is pretty much a tie in my mind. There are things that I can think of multiple ways to say in Japanese but only one or maybe two in English... And the same the other way around. This is immensely frustrating when translating as there may be five different phrases with similar/identical meanings used for literary effect... But only one way to say it in the other language, so it ends up repeating. I find that I notice it a lot more in Japanese to English, which leads me to lean in the direction of thinking that Japanese can be more expressive in many cases.