Advice to Native Checkers

To the Native Checker;

Re: Fisheries

A. Fishery of Japan Today

I cannot quite understand your comment about ﾒfisheryﾓ needing an article. First, the noun is uncountable, which precludes the rule of adding articles to countable nouns. Secondly, as you say, ﾒfisheryﾓ is an industrial category, so that it is usually not added the article. Other examples: agriculture, forestry, mining and manufacture, finance and insurance. Of course, if you are going to say ﾒthe fishery industry,ﾓ the article is required because ﾒindustryﾓ is countable. However, the term ﾒthe fishery industryﾓ is basically not used because it is tautological as ﾒfisheryﾓ means the industry of fishing. (Moreover, this paper maintains that the fishery industry as Japanese used to know (large-scale, distant water, such as whaling) has now declined or vanished, and fisheries in Japan will have to rely on small-scale coastal fisheries (not as an industry but as an act of fishing). For this reason also, I do not like to add the article.

P.1 ﾒ1-1-2 Catch by main marine fishery.ﾓ The original Japanese says ﾒCatches by each of the main categories of marine fisheries.ﾓ Inserting the article before ﾒmainﾓ will change the meaning.

The ﾒforﾓ way off to the left is probably a result of the translating company's MS-Word ruler settings. This kind of problem should be addressed to the companyﾕs editorial department.

P. 3 The ﾒ!!!ﾓ mark was attached by the author. I presume he wanted to draw attention. I think starting the sentence with a dot is enough in drawing the attention. If you think that ﾒ!!!ﾓ is useless in drawing attention, please strike them out.

When saying A, B and C, you put a comma after B. I usually donﾕt, unless the comma is believed to make the sentence more readable, such as when the items A, B and C are long. This also seems to depend on the writer. So, here again, you should leave the style as it is unless you think that it is absolutely inappropriate or misreading given the context.

P6. ﾒKatsuwoﾓ You are correct that ﾒKatsuoﾓ is the correct spelling. However, as you can read on page 5 ﾒ1-2,ﾓ the author says that this is the official FAO name. So, unless you are sure that this author has misspelled the name, which is unlikely, you should leave the matter as it is.

P7. Your comment at the bottom of this page is correct. However, since this paper is obviously designed for those concerned with fisheries, I think that the readers will instantly know that the weights here do not mean how heavy a ship is but its displacement. If this passage was designed for ordinary people, we will have to write such as ﾒships with displacement from 10 to 19 tonsﾓ which will be redundant in this case.

P.9 ﾒThe number employedﾓ of course means people, and is an established phraseology in economic papers.

ﾒmarked withﾓ vs. ﾒmarked by.ﾓ I personally prefer ﾒmarked byﾓ as you recommend. But the dictionaries that I have say to use ﾒmarked with.ﾓ I would like to know what your big English-English dictionary says.

P10

I canﾕt understand why you have to pluralize ﾒfishﾓ here. It can be pluralized, but treating it as singular also seems correct. If both are correct, you should not re-write, in order to save time and labor (of the computer operator)

P12 ﾒEutrophicateﾓ This is a word used by this author. Since he is using it, and since his English is not so poor as far as I can tell by looking at the two manuscripts, I think it's safer to assume that this verb has become a standard jargon in this industry. The same applies to ﾒbioturbationﾓ on the next page. Ideally, as a native checker, you should read (or at least look at) the original manuscript for specification of technical terms. This is because academicians such as this author is often highly proficient in English, and tend to specify the use of otherwise strange-looking words because they want those words used as they have become technical terms in their fields.

P13 ﾒsupplied oxygenﾓ I donﾕt see any problem.

B. Japanese International Cooperation for Fisheries

P3 AfDB, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). These are all official titles. Be careful when dealing with UN and other international organizations because they use British English like ﾒprogramme,ﾓ ﾒlabour."

P5 ﾒJapan Overseas Cooperation Volunteersﾓ is the official name. Of course, as you say, ﾒCooperativeﾓ is correct. However, JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency, funded by M of Foreign Affairs and MITI) decided it, and we are in no position to change their decision. The name of the program by the way is Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers Programme. So, in addition to UN names, watch out for Japan-made names and titles that sound funny but are officially used.

P6 Your comment: As you point out, ﾒGlobal shortageﾓ and ﾒDeath of pregnant womenﾓ are out of place here. Perhaps the former should be changed to ﾒMitigation of global shortage of...,ﾓ and the latter, ﾒPrevention of death of ....ﾓ However, my guess is that the author included these items merely as concepts. In that case, it is impossible for the translator to determine if they comprise a part of the policy or the contents of the cooperation in this case in reality. Also, if words such as ﾒmitigateﾓ are to be added, it is impossible to determine if the appropriate word is ﾒmitigate,ﾓ ﾒreduce,ﾓ ﾒprevent,ﾓ or ﾒeliminateﾓ in the extreme case. Therefore, it is advisable that these are left as they are.

shortage of capital...: Donﾕt you invest capital? By ﾒcapital,ﾓ I think the author wants to say not just money, but ﾒentities capable of investing.ﾓ In Japanese, ﾒcapitalﾓ is often used in this sense. Anyway, I replaced ﾒcapitalﾓ with ﾒfunds.ﾓ

World Commission on Environment and Development: This title is also supplied by the author. I could not find it in my data. My guess is that ﾒtheﾓ is not necessary

P9 ﾒCooperativeﾓ is as is. Be careful because these training programs related with JICA have established English names (which may sound funny). It is not advisable for translators to change these names. The same applies to ﾒSeminar on Planning and Management...ﾓ and ﾒShip Training for ....ﾓ

(ii) ﾒHeld over several yearsﾓ means that the training program extends for several years. Perhaps ﾒforﾓ was missing. I added it.

P13 Bottom ﾒbalance between artery and vein.ﾓ Iﾕm not sure what this means either. But I can imagine a contrast between development and underdevelopment, activity and inactivity, wasting of resources and conserving of the same. And I think these are the things that the author wants to say. But again, as a translator, it is not possible (or advisable) to determine which contrast is to be selected.

ﾒProtein-rich Foodﾓ vs. ﾒProtein-Rich Foodﾓ Both are correct. My policy is not to capitalize if the second word is short.

Based on my career as a translator for over a decade and experience with native checkers of over ten translation companies, I would like to give you the following advice:

1. With cases such as ﾒthatﾓ vs. ﾒwhichﾓ or ﾒProtein-richﾓ vs. ﾒProtein-Rich,ﾓ unless you think that the usage is absolutely incorrect, do not re-write. This is a waste of time because ﾒstyleﾓ depends on the person.

2. You seem to overuse ﾒthe,ﾓ semicolons and commas.

3. Familiarize yourself with the word processor the company is using. Some of the corrections that you made are software or software-handling errors.

4. Japan has been the top ODA donor in the world for the last decade. And the area of its cooperation has shifted from facility construction to primary industry infrastructure development. This has increased foreign-aid related translation jobs. The English used in relation to foreign aid is somewhat different from American English as it is a mixture of US English, UK English and many other strains of non-native Englishes. So familiarize yourself with technical cooperation-related terms.

5. Always keep in mind (or try to guess) who will be reading the translation. In the case of Japanese-English translation, the customer is usually not the client but specific/unspecified readers. So, if you find terms that sound funny and you cannot find them in dictionaries, consider the possibility that they are technical terms used in specific industries, countries, etc. The basic principle here is that Japanese-English translators should make the translation readable for the readers. In extreme cases, they should sacrifice clients' claims for the sake of the readers, or even sacrifice ﾒfaithfulnessﾓ to ﾒreadability.ﾓ The latter is because even if a translation is faithful to the original, if the original is unreadable and its faithful translation is also unreadable as a result, the translation will have no value as a product, because readers will not read, or skip, passages that are difficult to read. Donﾕt you? I do. In contrast, in the case of foreign language-Japanese translation, the readers (customers) are usually the clients, so that whatever the clients say must be followed.

6. The fact that you cannot read Japanese is a great burden on your capacity as a native checker. Translation companies that I know often have the mistaken idea that any native speaker proficient in English can do the work of ﾒnative checking.ﾓ However, if you find a passage that sounds funny, the chances are that the passage has been mistranslated to begin with. In this case, you must go back to the original Japanese and re-translate.

7. If you know that the particular translator is good but has written a passage that is ﾒunclearﾓ to you, like ﾒartery and veinﾓ in this case, you will have to read the original Japanese and re-write it into Japanese that makes sense to you, and translate that into English. This however is probably impossible because the passage was unclear to that translator to begin with, and impossible for you in particular since you cannot read Japanese. Simply commenting that a passage is ﾒunclearﾓ is virtually meaningless because that will necessitate the translating company to ask the client what the passage actually means. This usually gets the answer ﾒPlease translate faithfully to the originalﾓ as the client is not the author in many cases and cannot make any sense out of the passage anyway, or it may get the same answer from the author himself. Or the translating company wonﾕt do anything because it knows by experience that inquiring for a matter such as this is usually nonproductive. So, as in 1. above, you should leave the thing as it is unless you can read the original and can guess for pretty sure what it exactly means. Also, from another angle, and as mentioned above, in the case of Japanese-English translation, the ﾒcustomerﾓ is usually not the ﾒclientﾓ but the general or specific public who read the produced English translation. So, if the passage is unclear, I think the client (author) should be held responsible instead of the translator or the translating company. ﾒInterpretingﾓ and re-writing the unclear passage could be dangerous because the author may not have meant it, and may be held responsible by the readers for the interpreted and translated passage. In this case, the client will blame the translating company for ﾒunfaithfulﾓ translation. If the unclear passage is left as it is and the client is blamed for it, the client will not blame the translating company, because he can tell that the passage was ﾒfaithfullyﾓ translated.