Rethinking Translation: The Role of Word Systems in the Translatability of Texts into Japanese

A major but underlying issue in understanding Japan is linguistic, in particular, the problem of translation of texts. The problem of translatability in Japanese texts is usually dealt with on a micro-textual level, i.e., specific lexical items, non-equivalence in cultural or grammatical elements (Miner 1961, Seidensticker 1963, Cho 1973). ¹ This paper views a text as an integral whole (Aphek and Tobin 1983) and as a system for communication in the Saussurean sense (Saussure 1959). It is the contention of this paper that textual translation must involve more than ‘accurate and adequate representations’ of the original text (Miner 1961) or fluent equivalences of individual lexical items.