Translation of Reported Discourse in Japanese : A Case Study of Snow Country Translated by E. Seidensticker

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  • 日本語の話法の翻訳 : Seidensticker訳 Snow Countryを事例に

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Abstract

There are two types of quotative construction in Japanese language: Quotative construction I and II. The former quotation has syntax that a reported clause with a quotation marker to specifically conveys utterance or thought content of a predicate in a reporting clause; on the other, the latter one is that utterance or thought in a reported clause with the markers is, simultaneously at the same scene, depicted alongside a predicate in a reporting clause. The language, thus, theoretically contains four types of reported discourse; however, it remains unclear how the Quotative II is translated into English. In this paper, therefore, I shall use a case study to investigate how the two quotative constructions in a Japanese novel are grammatically shifted in its translation into English, and present a descriptively accurate methodology for the analysis of Japanese reported discourse. The results show that the Japanese discourse basically tends to retain its original form even in English translation, but almost all of the data in the Quotative II are translated as an isolated form of both reporting clause and reported clause, whose structure looks like a combination of Free Direct Discourse and Free Indirect Perception. This also suggests that Edward Seidensticker, the translator, may have reproduce d more overt vividness and immediacy in his translation than in the original. I conclude that the Japanese discourse is essentially translated as the isolated form, except that it has met certain formal conditions. The findings could provide researchers of contrastive studies between Japanese and English with a new direction for discourse analysis.

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  • 国際文化学

    国際文化学 36 43-67, 2023-03-20

    神戸大学大学院国際文化学研究科

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