Featured Translating into Japanese

I thought it might be interesting for me to discuss what it is like to translate into a language like Japanese. We faced many problems of exegesis and semantics, in particular, but occasionally also grammatical problems. Here is an overview of the language. My goal is by no means to garner praise, so please don't do that. I just want people to know what it is like to translate.

Here is an overview of the language.

1. There are two alphabets, each with 46 characters. The hiragana alphabet is for Japanese words and word endings. The katakana alphabet is for all foreign words and names, though it is sometimes used for emphasis, such as in advertisements.
2. The language also uses thousands of Chinese characters called kanji (漢字). The official government list of what they call the Toyo Kanji, approved for common usage, is 1850 characters. (About the same number of characters there are here on the BB! ) Beyond that, there are many place names not on that list. These characters can be as simple as just one stroke, such as the one for "one": 一. Or, they can be up to 20 or more strokes. The character for "righteousness" is 14 strokes, for example: 義.
3. The language is verb final, thus: subject, object, verb. Sometimes after the verb there is a particle (a word showing grammatical construction) such as ka (か) for questions, etc.
3. Perhaps the most difficult aspect of the language to learn is the honorifics, also called respect language. Japanese has a very complicated system, wherein you would talk completely differently (even using different verbs) to a child, an equal, your boss, and the emperor. Many foreigners never do master this, and end up sounding like a child. I'll talk later about the difficulty of handling the honorifics in the Bible.

It took me two years of fulltime Japanese language study (35-40 hours a week), from a tutor and then at the language school, to get to somewhat of a professional level (The Naganuma School). Even after that, I continued studying on my own for years. But I loved every minute of it! If I had not become a missionary, I would never have known the extent God had gifted me in the area of language.

 

And use the KJV, of course!

 

There is a secular translation theory called skopos theory, with the word skopos being the Greek word for "goal" or "target." It occurs in the New Testament in only one place, Philippians 3:14, translated "goal."

In skopos theory, the translator must carefully set out the goals of the translation. Our skopos was
1. To produce the first ever NT translation into modern Japanese from the TR Greek text. There has been a NT translation into classical Japanese, but never one into modern, colloquial Japanese. Translating from the TR meets the ministry need of many young missionaries nowadays who prefer that Greek text.
2. To produce a public domain version that could be used by anyone without cost or permission. This is partly because of the way the Lockman Foundation and their Japanese counterpart is so strict on using their version (analogous to the NASB). The Lockman Foundation even sued their Japanese counterpart to force them to pay for the copyright to their own translation.
3. To produce a soul-winning NT. Our translation can be freely printed and passed out for evangelism.

 

Here are some general difficulties in translating the Bible into Japanese.

1. There are a ton of homonyms, because of the vast number of loan words from Chinese. The Japanese did not even have an alphabet until the 8th century, and until the early 20th century if not later, probably, all education included the Chinese classics (Confucius, etc.). So, for example, there are several words pronounced kyohkai. Here are just three, so you can see the difficulty: 教会 (church), 協会 (organization), 境界 (border).

2. As mentioned, Japanese has a complicated system of honorifics. So, how do you decide what level to use? When Jesus talks to Satan, would He be polite? Or speak equal to equal? Rude? Talk down to him?

3. You have to be very careful using pronouns in Japanese, because some of them have unexpected extra meanings. For example, "son" can be a euphemism for a body part in some contexts, and "she" can mean girlfriend," as in ぼくは彼女がいる。(I have a "she," a girlfriend.)

4. Japanese has a classical version, in which all written documents were written until after WW2 ended. My translation partner, Uncle Miya, loved the classical lingo, so sometimes we inserted classical renderings that mystified some of our young correctors and proofreaders.

5. Japanese also has a literary version. Do you use literary Japanese in poetry? Narrative discourse? What level of the literary do you use in epistles? And so forth.

 

You are quite welcome!

 

Choosing a translation methodology is extremely important. Even before beginning the task I had picked up several of Eugene Nida's books, which got me started. Particularly helpful were two early books, God's Word in Man's Language (1952), and Bible Translating (1961), with their stories of difficulties in translating into various languages.

Nida's theory of dynamic equivalence, later called functional equivalence, was not that helpful I felt. The main principle I objected to was reader response theory. In Nida's thinking, the way the reader absorbs the message is more important than the original speaker. In general, I hold to authorial intent instead.

Ultimately, I often say we used the optimal equivalence theory of James Price, my old Hebrew professor. Since few people know what that is, it gives me the freedom to carefully explain our method rather than giving a false impression, such as "We are like Young's Literal Version."

I have to admit, though, that there is one area in translating into Japanese where reader response becomes important, though not replacing authorial intent. That is in how the honorifics are added to the base translation. Using the wrong word or phrase can totally turn off the reader, making them reject the translation.

I remember hearing about an American who got in a taxi in Tokyo, and commanded (rather than asking) the driver to take him to a certain location. The taxi driver then demanded that the man get out of his cab! The American equivalent might be saying to the driver something from kids' language, like, "Take the nice man to the itty bitty gas station on Main Street."

Another danger in using honorifics in Japanese was taught me by Uncle Miya. When overused, the effect is insulting rather than honoring. An English example might be if your wife says, "Get me a Coke from the kitchen," and you, being busy with your computer game say, "Yes, your Majesty!" Not wise!

So let's say we are translating an past action Jesus took. Say we use the verb yaru (やる) for "to do." We can make it yarareta (やられた), passive form with active honorific meaning. However, that can also mean, "clobbered!" Let's not use that. Let's use oyari ni natta (おやりになった), extremely polite, adding the honorific prefix o- (お) and the past form of naru (なる). Hmm. That's actually too polite for the context. Oh, shucks, let's use the passive form of another verb, suru (する), which would be sareta (された). See how complicated it gets pretty quickly?

 

Maybe I could explain it this way. The classical version of a language often has the attraction of being dignified in a way that the reader may believe adds gravitas. Perhaps this is one reason why the KJV is so popular to this day. I have been told that, though there are many dialects of Tibetan, the line of communication between speakers of the different dialects is classical Tibetah.

A Japanese salesman once knocked on our door in Hokkaido, and we had a very interesting conversation about the Japanese Bible. He was a convinced Buddhist, but had read a Japanese Bible version and felt that it was not serious enough. He believed that a holy book is seriously lacking if it does not have the Japanese version of gravitas.

In our NT translation, we sometimes kept Uncle Miya's more classical renderings, but if the young correctors could not understand what they read, we often updated the language, unless the classical style was more faithful to the original.

 

Yes, the classical version is quite different, often using quite different word endings, spelling (in the "ruby" pronunciation marks), and even vocabulary. It is quite harder to understand for a Japanese than 1611 British English is for an American.

Here are some brief examples for the phrase "God is love."
Colloquial: 神は愛です。The spoken verb for "is."
Literary: 神は愛である。Same verb, but a different form.
Classical: 神は愛なり。A completely different verb and verb ending.

 

In beginning a Bible translation, it is extremely important to understand the culture and society of the target language. Here are several areas of necessary research for the translator, and of course this is not all.
1. Cultural mores--The translator must investigate the meaning of moral and ethical customs.
2. Taboo words--words that are rejected for polite usage
3. Religion--The translator must not use value laden religious words.
4. Leadership--What structure does societal or cultural leadership take? (For example, Confucian cultures have quite different concepts of leadership than tribal cultures.)
5. Relationships, both familial and congenial.

 

First of all, consider the cultural mores of Japan. The normal marriage pattern is monogamy, but it mistresses are common. Fortunately, there are appropriate words for sexual sin, but the translator still has to be careful in this area. It would be easy to use taboo words in this area, which has been defined as “a word known to speakers but avoided in some, most, or all forms or contexts of speech, for reasons of religion, decorum, politeness, etc.” (P. H. Matthews, Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics, 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, 400.)

Unfortunately, some of American "woke" culture, has been seeping into Japan. However, same-ςεχ relationships are not much of an issue, and have long been fairly common going back to the samurai culture. Οne famous militia on the side of the Shogun during the Meiji restoration was known for such relationships.

 

Since I've already mentioned and defined taboo language, I should deal with that in Japan. The unwary missionary translator can quickly run into trouble here. I once used a seemingly innocent particle (word with grammatical but not lexical meaning) in a sermon that I had heard on a commercial with little boys, of all things, only to be told by one of our ladies never to use that word again!

This is one area in which the translator, if he or she is not a native speaker, must depend on sources in the target culture. Due care simply must take place to avoid the translation being rejected by the target people group. Eugene Nida wrote, "In one instance the unwise use of such terms made it necessary to recall a translation by buying up all copies from the people and burning then. The translator had not been sufficiently careful about the connotation of some words" (Nida, Bible Translating, rev. London: United Bible Societies, 1961, 17-18).

Let me say here that, contra Daniel Wallace (normally a careful scholar), there are no taboo words in the Greek New Testament. He claims that skubalon (σκύβαλον) is a vulgar word: A Brief Word Study on Σκύβαλον | Bible.org. However, what he misses is that the word was a medical term in the first century. Doctors do not use vulgar words in their literature! Here's a good essay on that: Obscenity in Paul? The Question of σκύβαλον

 

That would have been a good approach. At least he was reading the Bible, though.

I once had a runaway Buddhist priest come to the service. Our saved Yakuza gangster Usuki found him in the bar district, homeless, took him in and brought him to church. He listened carefully to the Gospel, accepted a NT, and later went back to his father the head priest. (He had run away because Dad was trying to force him into an unwanted marriage.)

 

Translating religious vocabulary can be problematic. You may have heard of the KJV-Only translator working in Spanish who, wanting to stay true to his English source, translated "Holy Ghost" as Santa Fantasma. (Someone who knows Spanish or the particular case can correct me if needed.) Fantasma does mean an actual "ghost" come back from the dead, not a "Spirit" in the sense of God's spirit.

The term "Holy Ghost" appears in 89 verses in the KJV, and was not problematic in 1611. "Holy Spirit" only occurs only 7 times, but in the 21st century it is a much better rendering. Our popular culture has too many "ghosts" in it--ghost stories, scary movies, Halloween costumes, cartoons, and the like.

Translating "spirit" into Japanese is also problematic. "Holy Spirit" is easy, two Chinese characters in one word, "holy" and "spirit": Seirei (聖霊). The problem comes when "spirit" (Greek pneuma, πνεῦμα) is translated into Japanese without "Holy." Then the Japanese Bibles add an honorific character, mi-, making it Mitama because of a different pronunciation of "spirit" (御霊). In that case, the real problem comes when "spirit" in the Greek is ambiguous. The translator must make a decision, then, which rendering to use. In English we capitalize it when "Spirit" is the Holy Spirit, but they don't have capital letters in Japanese.

Check out 1 Peter 4:14, where the KJV chose a lower case letter, thinking the spirit not to be the Holy Spirit: "If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified."

Thus, ignorance of the religion of the people group one is translating for can result in disaster. A problematic rendering in the Japanese Bible is the word "understanding" in Proverbs, usually translated as satori (悟り). However, that is a Buddhist term for "enlightenment." With Uncle MIya's guidance we went with rikairyoku (理解力), "power to understand."