Differences in Japanese and English Expressions Due to Differences in How Events are Construed : Examples from Translation

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  • 出来事の認識の違いに起因する英語と日本語の言語表現の違い : 翻訳における例
  • デキゴト ノ ニンシキ ノ チガイ ニ キイン スル エイゴ ト ニホンゴ ノ ゲンゴ ヒョウゲン ノ チガイ : ホンヤク ニ オケル レイ

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In this paper I examine three sentences from Ruth Benedict's unpublished manuscript, 'The Story of My Life', in which the first person singular appears as the direct object, and a third person singular appears as the subject. When translated into Japanese, these sentences become unnatural unless the first person singular is moved to the subject position. I explain why this is so by using Langacker's Cognitive Grammar framework and argue that in Japanese, the speaker is normally construed as the most prominent participant in the situation and therefore coded as the subject of the sentence. This fits with previous studies in which linguists have argued that the speaker is assumed to be the center of epistemological perspective in Japanese. The paper demonstrates how "unnaturalness" in translation can be explained and also shows the restriction imposed on what can be said in Japanese due to the way Japanese speakers construe the world around them.

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