Alice in Idiomland: Dealing with Idiomatic Expressions in Japanese Documents

Idiomatic expressions and figures of speech add color and richness to any language. They also emphasize shared knowledge. After all, a writer only uses an idiomatic expression if the writer believes that the reader will recognize the idiom as a unit of meaning, rather than focusing on each individual word separately. These expressions are deeply embedded in context, because context helps the reader determine which of many possible interpretations was intended by the writer. All of these features of idiomatic expressions and figures of speech make these forms challenging for translators. In this presentation the speaker will present guidelines for dealing with idiomatic expressions and figures of speech in Japanese-into-English translation and he will discuss examples from a variety of fields to illustrate the use of those guidelines.