Lexical Barriers and Translation Strategies in English Translations of Modern Japanese Literature

by James Hobbs
Iwate Medical University, Morioka, Japan

1. Introduction iterary translation is a complex, controversial, and ultimately imperfect discipline. Striving to carry the original author's message across a linguistic and cultural divide, the translator faces numerous obstacles. There will be lexical items whose referents lie outside the experience of the target reader. There will be texts whose messages depend not on a literal understanding of the words on the page, but on the cultural connotations of a particular word, phrase, or action. There will be puns and other constructions that exploit the phonetics of a particular word. These issues are examined here in the context of published English translations of four contemporary Japanese novels. An attempt is made to identify both the obstacles that translators face in translating text rooted in Japanese culture, and the strategies they use to overcome these obstacles.

A translator cannot reasonably be expected to consistently account for each and every one of the meanings buried in the original author's text.

Central to the analysis is the realization that a single sense-segment can embody a range of meanings and connotations derived from the native speaker's experience of its referent. The translator must determine which meanings are relevant to domestic readers, and in doing so will often have to choose from among a range of possible translations. Hence, to observe yukata rendered as summer kimono in translation should not imply that these two sense-segments share identical meanings and connotations, nor should it imply that the same translator will necessarily make the same choice the next time this item is encountered. Ultimately, however logical, however sensitive, however insightful the decisions made by the translator, it will be impossible to produce a translation which accounts for each and every feature that makes the original text unique, while at the same time the translation will release potential new meanings through features which relate only to the domestic language and culture. This is inherent in the process of domestication of the foreign text, as explained by Venuti (1995(a):18):

"Translation is the forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text with a text that will be intelligible to the target language reader. This difference can never be entirely removed, of course, but it necessarily suffers a reduction and exclusion of possibilities—and an exorbitant gain of other possibilities specific to the translating language."

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