Conclusion.

When faced with sense segments that do not have an obvious English equivalent, or that refer to objects and concepts that lie outside domestic readers' experience, the translator must make choices, both about which meanings to include, and about which to exclude. A translator cannot reasonably be expected to consistently account for each and every one of the meanings buried in the original author's text, and literal translation is certainly unlikely to achieve this. As Newmark (1988:xi) wryly observes, "you only deviate from literal translation when there are good semantic and pragmatic reasons to do so, which is more often than not." In reality, the translator will normally be forced to settle for accounting for only those meanings in the original that can be considered most relevant to his readers, as to do any more than this may place an unacceptable burden of mental processing on the reader. Gutt (1985, in Venuti, 2000:386) explains:

"Sometimes it is possible to achieve a higher degree of resemblance but only at the cost of a decrease in overall relevance because it involves an increase in processing effort that is not outweighed by gains in contextual effects."

When looking at a translation of a text rooted in a foreign culture, it may often be possible to find gaps, or to suggest changes that will produce a closer semantic resemblance to the original, but it will never be possible to produce a translation that accounts for each and every one of the features that made the original text worthy of being read. To say that the translator's work is finished suggests only that no more can be done to improve the translation. In essence, the translator strives to bridge the cultural gap between readers and the foreign text that lies beyond their reach. When the original text throws up objects and concepts that have no obvious counterpart in domestic readers' experience, the translator must ask the question: "Which meanings and connotations are most relevant to the Japanese reader, and how can they be conveyed in English?" This may require the translator to settle on a text that both fails to account for some aspects of the original text and adds features that were not present originally; while the conscientious translator always aims for perfection, this will rarely, if ever, be achieved.

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