Publications

Publication details [#8153]

Wienold, Götz. 1990. Typological aspects of translating literary Japanese into German: lexicon and morphology. Target 2 (1) : 1–21.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English
Source language
Target language
Journal DOI
10.1075/target

Abstract

Typological distance between languages gives rise to a huge number of translation problems. The present article takes up 20th century Japanese novels and their translations into German. As areas of typological differences, movement verbs and causatives in describing human bodily reactions have been selected. Japanese lexicalizes the path a movement takes in a monomorphemic verbal base, whereas German lexicalized the manner of movement. It is shown that this typological difference creates a tendency to substitute German manner for Japanese path verbs. As a morphological example a specific use of causatives is discussed. In descriptions of bodily reactions Japanese causatives tend to be ambiguous as to an intentional or unintentional interpretation. German, having few morphological causatives and no similar ambiguous expression, tends to level the ambiguities towards an objective description. In a second installment syntax and narrative technique is considered.
Source : Based on abstract in journal