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second, called consecutive interpretation, is more typically used in courtroom and grand jury settings. The consecutive interpreter listens to a complete thought of the speaker--often several

sentences. Then, while the speaker waits, the interpreter

converts the sentences into the second language. Translation, as used in this declaration, also refers to the conversion of one. language into another, but with more opportunity for reflection and reference to dictionaries. Translation may be done either from a tape-recorded statement or from written materials.

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4. The consecutive interpretation from one language to another is a task of great difficulty. The apparent fluency of a handful of the best interpreters may well disguise the perils which faced the interpreter who acted for the grand jury. noted by Farb, most people assume that a text in one language can be accurately translated into another language so long as the translator uses a good bilingual dictionary, but that is not so because words that are familiar in one language may have no equivalent usage in another." (Peter Farb, Word Play: What

Happens When People Talk (New York: Knopf, 1973), 224.) Although a large number of examples of words which do not translate easily from one language to another may be found, this does not really get at the heart of the difficulty.

Typically, languages code

grammatical information and thought processes in different ways. For instance, the Japanese verbal system requires only a distinction between past and non-past tense or between completed and non-completed aspects rather than the three-way system of English which requires past, present, and future. The expression benkyoo suru, for instance, may be translated as either "I will study" or "I study (habitually)," depending on context. Additionally, subjects and objects are frequently omitted from an utterance if the speaker assumes the listener can tell who and what is being spoken about. While this system works reasonably well, there are large number of expressions in which the speaker may have misjudged the listener's ability to comprehend a subject

or object (See John Hinds, Ellipsis in Japanese (Alberta: Linguistic Research, Inc., 1982).)

5. Farb sums up the situation when he says, "No matter how skilled the translator is, he cannot rip language out of the speech community that uses it. Translation obviously is not a simple two-way street between two languages. Rather, it is a busy intersection at which at least five thoroughfares meet, the two languges with all their eccentricities, the cultures of the two speech communities, and the speech situation in which the statement was uttered."

(Farb, Word Play, 226.)

6. This difficulty in translating one language into another with a high degree of accuracy has been recognized for some years by linguists. Benjamin Lee Whorf, a noted linguist, has stated: "Actually, thinking is most mysterious, and by far the greatest light upon it that we have is thrown by the study of language. This study shows that the forms of a person's thoughts are controlled by inexorable laws of pattern of which he is unconscious. These patterns are the unperceived, intricate systemizations of his own language, shown readily enough by a candid comparision and contrast with other languages, especially those of a different linguistic family. His thinking itself is in a language, in English, in Sanskrit, in Chinese. And every

language is a vast pattern of systems different from others in which are culturally ordained the forms and categories by which the personality not only communicates but also analyzes nature, notices or neglects types of relationship and phenomena, channels his reasoning, and builds the house of his consciousness." (Benjamin Lee Whorf, Language, Thought, and Reality, Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf, ed. J. B. Carroll (New York: Wiley, 1956), 252.)

7. We are thus capable of finding any number of works which deal with the general problem of interpretation or translation from one language to another. When the situation is such that precision of expression is required, it becomes extremely

important to look at all of the nuances which exist between the two versions of a given thought which occur in the original and translated languages.

8. In addition to general problems of translation or interpretation that may exist between any two languages, there are a number of specific problems which exist in the interpretation from Japanese into English or from English into Japanese. Saito discusses the specific difficulty involved with conference

interpretation. "It is believed by some that anyone who has a facility in two languages, Japanese and English, can easily succeed as a conference interpreter. This is not the case. Interpretation requires many communication skills for interpreting involves social interaction. Of course, he must have a knowledge of languages, but this in itself is not enough. He must also be able to understand the content of what is being said. He must know the semantic aspects of language, and he must have an awareness of himself as a middleman between persons of different cultural background. Thus, he must understand that behind

differences in language are differences in thought patterns, value systems, customs, and ways of responding to symbols and people." (Mitsuko Saito, "International Conference Interpretation," in Intercultural Encounters With Japan, eds. John C. Condon and Mitsuko Saito (Tokyo: Simul Press, 1974), 100-01.)

9. It is appropriate, then, to inquire into the background and qualifications of a court-ordered interpreter. It has been noted that in 1975 there were fewer than a dozen universities in the world which teach interpretation and translation. (John C. Condon and Fathi Yousef, An Introduction to Intercultural Communication (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1975).) The scarcity of training programs stems from the mistaken idea that interpretation is simply the transfer of words in one language to the words in another. Accurate interpretation is an extremely difficult endeavor, and Condon and Yousef spend most of a chapter attempting to demonstrate that precise interpretation requires the highest

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degree of skill. The specific difficulty of translating from Japanese into English or English into Japanese has been recognized by a number of linguists. Professor Komatsu, the Executive Director of Simul International, Inc., in Japan, has stated: feel the differences between English and Japanese may be much wider and greater than those between, say, English and French or English and German, making our job between English and Japanese much more formidable than that among European languages." Intercultural Encounters With Japan, 220 (comments of Tatsuya Komatsu). Perhaps the greatest problem in interpreting between Japanese and English is the difficulty involved with vagueness. Seward discusses what he terms the virtue of vagueness in Japanese. He states that "a major difficulty with 'yes' and 'no' answers in Japan is that the Japanese are fundamentally against them. They regard vagueness as a virtue." (Jack Seward, Japanese in Action (New York: Weatherhill & Co., 1973), 36.)

10. This propensity for vagueness has been investigated from a number of linguistic perspectives. The topic is discussed, for example, in Hinds, Ellipsis in Japanese. This work demonstrates and elucidates the high percentage of subjectless sentences in Japanese and the fact that many utterances simply do not have an overt, discernible subject.

11. In searching for an explanation for the matter of vagueness in Japanese one is struck by the fact that there are certain organizational parameters in Japanese that are

considerably different from organizational parameters in English. The realm of activity in which such matters are investigated is termed language typology. Typically, language typologists investigate whether a language prefers subject constructions or topic constructions; whether it is a verb final language, like Japanese, or a verb medial language, like English. One particular typological parameter that has been investigated is the matter of "situation-focus" languages as opposed to "person-focus"

languages. Tazuko Monane and Lawrence Rogers, "Cognitive Features

of Japanese Language and Culture and their Implications for Language Teaching," in Japanese Linguistics and Language Teaching: Proceedings of the Second HATJ-UH Conference on Japanese Language and Linguistics, ed. John Hinds (University of Hawaii at Monoa, Honolulu: Hawaii Association of Teachers of Japanese and Department of East Asian Language, 1977). Monane and Rogers additionally discuss two further parameters, the first being "existence focus, as in Japanese, as opposed to possession focus, as in English. The third parameter is "indirect expression" versus "direct or specific expression."

12. In order to illustrate the distinction between situation focus and person focus, they ask us to reflect on what is done when one hears shouting. In English, the typical way of expressing this is to say "I just heard some shouting," in which the person-focus construction is required. That is, the subject "I" is required. In Japanese, on the other hand, the typical expression is sakebigoe ga shita yo, which may be translated as "The shouting occurred." Another example is what happens when one sees a mountain from the window of a train. Typically, English

speakers say "I see a mountain," whereas in Japanese the expression is yama ga mieru, literally "the mountain can be

seen."

Their point is that English normally requires a person to be the subject of a sentence, whereas in Japanese, such requirements do not exist. It is enough simply to postulate the existence of a situation.

13. The second distinction they discuss is between existence focus in Japanese and possession focus in English. Their examples include the fact that in English we say "I have a fever." In Japanese, the corresponding expression is netsu ga aru, literally, "A fever exists." In English, we say "I have some money. In Japanese, the corresponding expression is okane ga aru, "Money exists." A final example: In English we say "He's got no education" (possession focus), as opposed to Japanese,

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