|Territory of information
||[Jul. 10th, 2006|11:51 am]
Practice translating from Japanese to English
Wow, it's been like forever since we've had an update here. I guess that's what happens when conventions roll around. So, hello everyone! We're back! Glad to see no one trashed the place while we were gone!|
Anyway, we thought it would be a good idea to explain some of the stuff we learned about in our crazy Japanese linguistics course (I think it was Japanese 325 at BYU, but it might have been 326) that's helped us some in our translating. So today we'll start with territory of information.
The way the Japanese language works is that they have special ways of ending a sentence to indicate whether what you just said is something you know about, something the person you're talking to knows about, something both of you know about, or something neither of you knows about. You know how it's frustrating when somebody tells you what you yourself are thinking without indicating that it's something you'd know more about than them? I think it's to avoid stuff like that. The Japanese are very conscious of relationships.
Knowing about territory of information helps in translating manga, especially, because it helps you to know who's talking, so you can make sure it's worded in a way they would say it, and who the subject of a sentence is when they use the zero-pronoun. So let's see if I can explain this without being too confusing.
First, if you're talking about something in your territory of information, you can just end it normally, or add a "yo" at the end to be a little more emphatic. For example, if you're talking to someone on the phone, and they're on the other side of the country, and they ask, "How's the weather over there?" you could say, "暑いです
(atsui desu)," which is just a casual, "It's hot," or you could say, "暑いですよ!" to add kind of a, "Man, it's hot!" kind of feeling.
If what you're talking about is something that the person you're talking to would know, then you would want to use a "deshou" or a "darou" (both of which are usually taught to mean "is probably"). So after you've told your friend what the weather is like here, you might want to ask what the weather is like over there. Then you would say, "And how's the weather over there? 暑いでしょう(atsui deshou)" (only you'd probably not mix languages like that, unless both of you are at least partially bilingual). And that would mean, "And how's the weather over there? It's probably hot (I wouldn't know because I'm not there)."
If you and your friend are in the same place, and you both know that it's hot, you would add a "ne" at the end: 暑いですね(atsui desu ne). This would mean, "It's hot isn't it (this is something we both know)," at which point your friend may agree, or they might say, "私はあんまり暑くないですよ(watashi wa anmari atsuku nai desu yo)," to say "(I don't know about you, but as for me) It's not very hot." But I think that's another lecture. But notice the "yo" at the end to indicate that it's new information, which belongs to the speaker and not to you.
Then say you and your friend are talking about another friend who's vacationing on the southern hemisphere (I forgot to mention that all the previously mentioned friends are on the northern hemisphere, where it's summer). And since it's winter there, you're speculating about what the weather might be like for your mutual friend. But neither of you knows for sure. It's not in your territory of information, so you add a "deshou," but since the friend you're talking to doesn't know for sure either, you add a "ne," because you're both in agreement that you don't know for sure. So you say, "寒いでしょうね(samui deshou ne)," meaning, "It's probably cold, don't you think?"
And that's our brief lecture on territory of information. Of course it applies to more than just talking about the weather, but we hope you get the idea. Also there's more to it for when you're talking about someone else's opinion, or when you're talking about something you heard about, but I think that's enough for now. I hope it wasn't too confusing.