En la parte izquierda de mi estómago.¡En el páncreas!

Japanese is frequently said to be an ambiguous language. If the language is really so ambiguous, then one would think that communication in Japanese would be the scene of frequent misunderstandings. Misunderstanding does occur in Japanese speech communities, but they seem neither overwhelmingly numerous nor any more frequent than miscommunication in English speech communities. In this fi nal section of Chapter 5, let us reconsider the concept of ambiguity as it pertains to the act of translation.

All natural languages by necessity tolerate ambiguity to a great extent. Consider the California Vehicle Code examined in Exercise 5.12b or the defi nition of nezumi-kD translated in Exercise 5.13. Legal documents are

ら食事をする機会をできるだけ持つよう日頃から心を配る、時には ハイキングなどの野外活動を子どもと一緒に楽しむなど、形は様々 に考えられよう。大事なことは、こうした機会を持つということで ある。このような親子の活動を通して、地域における保護者同士の 情報交換や様々な連携も期待でき，ひいては地域を挙げての取組に もつながるものと考える。（文部省審議会答申書）

written in an elaborate style designed specifi cally to minimize ambiguity. However, such painstaking effort ironically can make documents very diffi cult, even impossible, for ordinary readers to comprehend. The way humans process language is based on information accumulation. Therefore, if infor- mation has already been supplied to the reader, repeating that information is not only unnecessary but also may hinder the reader’s comprehension of the other parts of the content being transmitted. Each language omits already supplied information in different ways, and this is familiar terrain to the translator.

When we discussed the nature of ambiguity in Section 3.7.1, we identifi ed six categories: lexical, grammatical, pragmatic, cultural, metaphorical, and referential. These are all universal characteristics, not specifi c to Japanese or English. Nevertheless, Japanese is said to be more ambiguous than English, for example in identifi cation of the subjects of clauses, and critics cite the possibility of multiple interpretations.

Sampling dozens of literary texts to obtain illustrative examples of ambi- guity caused by implicit subjects in preparation for writing Section 5.3 above (Argument recovery), however, I found only extremely rare cases of genuine ambiguity. Based on that survey of texts, I conclude that Japanese sentences are no more ambiguous than English sentences. The cues for subject recov- ery are scattered everywhere, implicit though they may be, as discussed in Section 5.3.

In recent decades, meaning is considered diffuse “in the sense that it is not located in the word or grammatical category but is signaled by a variety of means which cross the traditional boundaries of word, phrase, clause, sentence, and even text” (Baker 2000: 22). Rather than searching for and anticipating a specifi c piece of information at an identical location as in English prose, Japanese-to-English translators train themselves to be alert to the detection of many subtle cues diffused throughout the text.

The alleged ambiguity of Japanese has been artifi cially created by com- paring it with English, or other languages. Jakobson (1959/2000: 116) points out that languages differ “essentially in what they must convey and not in what they can convey” (emphasis added). What is obligatory to encode varies from language to language. In English, countable nouns must be marked either singular or plural; in Japanese, the distinction is optional. In English, the conditional is customarily differentiated, whether purely hypothetical or known to be counterfactual; in Japanese, such distinctions are not expressed by specialized constructions. These and other examples make Japanese sentences appear ambiguous when attempting Japanese-to-English translation.

On the other hand, in Japanese conversation, the social relationship between the speaker and the addressee is identifi ed by honorifi cs and other linguistic means; in English, encoding such information is optional. In Japanese, when the speaker/writer is involved in the depicted event, it is frequently obligatory to indicate whether it is judged positively or negatively, e.g. Kare wa tegami

o kureta 彼は手紙をくれた (positive) vs. Kare wa tegami o yokoshite kita 彼

は手紙をよこしてきた (negative). But this aspect is normally not mentioned in English sentences. In Japanese, self-referencing expressions must be selected according to the speaker’s gender, age, dialect, and the formality and the temporal frame of the speech situation, e.g. asshi, atai, boku 僕, gusei 愚生,

jibun 自分, midomo 身共, oira, ore 俺, sessha 拙者, shDsei 小生, uchi, ware 我, watakushi, watashi 私, etc. English self-referencing, by contrast, can appear

vague (i.e. not specifi c enough) when attempting to translate into Japanese; which of the above Japanese pronouns should be chosen will be up to the translator. Inasmuch as obligatory elements are language specifi c, the challenge to translators is simply to know all of the ways that clues to meaning are provided and to make the meaning overt when it is needed by the readers of the TT.