One of the first things I was taught at school about the art of translation is that if you can tell a piece of writing is a translation, it is not a good translation. I remember one excellent French teacher in particular who took us through a published English translation of Flaubert's Madame Bovary, pointing out where the translator had taken liberties with the original French. He also pointed out, of course, that these "liberties" were entirely justified in the interests of producing a translation that read like a well-written English novel.

In many cases, then, (1)the question for translators is not so much whether a proposed translation is "accurate" as whether it would actually be used in a similar context in the language they are translating into. A poor translator might argue, for example, that "I will receive this meal" is a perfectly accurate translation of "Itadakimasu." as used in Japanese before you start to eat. But this argument would not do him much good from any practical point of view: it would be absurd to insist on a translation that no English speaker would use in that situation.

This observation about situation-appropriate translation is just as relevant to English-Japanese translation as it is to Japanese-English translation, of course. For example, a literal translation of "Get off my back" into Japanese would be entirely inappropriate for the situations $\fbox{A}$ this idiom is generally used: except in the unlikely event that someone is standing on your back and you want them to get off, you would probably use it to tell someone to stop criticizing you and giving you unwelcome advice. An appropriate Japanese translation might, therefore, be something like "$\fbox{1}$."

Let's return to the problem of translating "Itadakimasu." Traditionally, Christian English speakers would precede a meal with a short prayer, one of the most common of which, interestingly enough, is "For what we are about to receive, may the Lord make us truly thankful." But few people do that these days, except in certain formal or institutional settings, and even then the issue is further clouded by the PR-inspired necessity to respect other people's religions or, indeed, lack of them. It is a sad fact, then, that many English speakers don't say anything before they start eating in company; many don't even wait until everyone else is ready to start! If anything is said at all, it is more likely than not to come from the host or the person who cooked the meal. There are no set expressions, but something along the lines of "Let's start" would be common, $\fbox{B}$ the response, if any, might be "Thanks. This looks great."

French and German speakers, on the other hand, do have set expressions available: "Bon appétit" and "Guten Appetit," respectively. However, these differ from "Itadakimasu" in that they express the wish that other people will enjoy their meals rather than gratitude for what the speaker is about to eat. This means that the expressions are actually closer to "$\fbox{2}$" than to "Itadakimasu." They are also regularly used by people who are not personally participating in the meal-waiters use them, for example.

These French and German expressions provide another good example of the difficulties translators can face: in English, both literally mean "Good appetite," as you can easily recognize, but this would be a hopeless practical translation, because no English speaker would actually say it. Faced with translating "Bon appétit" or "Guten Appetit" into English, a good translator would consider both the context and who the speaker is. He might decide simply to use the French, even if he were translating from German into English, as "Bon appétit" (but not "Guten Appetit") is fairly regularly used by certain groups of more cosmopolitan English speakers. If the expression were being used by a waiter, or perhaps by the person who cooked the meal, the translator might settle for "Enjoy your meal." Otherwise, he would probably just have to fall back on "Let's start," etc.

Given that such translation problems exist among languages as closely related as French, German, and English, (2)it is easy to appreciate how much more serious they are when it comes to translating between languages as unrelated as Japanese and English.

• 問1 下線部(1)を日本語に訳しなさい。
• 問2 下線部(2)を、このパラグラフ内でtheyが指し示すものを明確にして、日本語に訳しなさい。
• 問3 $\fbox{A}$と$\fbox{B}$に入れるのに適切な表現を、英語2語で書きなさい。なお、andは用いないこととする。
• 問4 $\fbox{1}$と$\fbox{2}$に入れるのに適切な日本語表現を、日本語表記で書きなさい。
• 問5 次のa～fから、本文の内容と一致する英文を2つ選び、記号で答えなさい。
  • a. The main point of the story related in the first paragraph is that mistakes can be found even in published translations of well-known literary works.
  • b. Making sure that a translation is appropriate to the situation is more important when translating from Japanese into English than the other way around.
  • c. The main problem with using "I will receive this meal" to translate "Itadakimasu" is that the English translation does not accurately convey the meaning of the Japanese.
  • d. Using a short English prayer to translate "Itadakimasu" would not be a sensible option for a translator to consider if the Japanese expression were used in the context of a typical modern family setting.
  • e. Use of the French expression " Bon appétit" to translate "Guten Appetit" in an English translation of a German text would not be inappropriate in certain contexts.
  • f. The writer's chief concern is to impress on translators that they should, above all, make sure that individual expressions are translated accurately.
• 問6 本文に含まれている単語について、次の(1)と(2)のそれぞれで、左の単語の最も強く発音される音節の母音は、ア～エのうちの1つで最も強く発音される音節の母音と同じである。その語の記号をそれぞれ選んで書きなさい。
  • (1) practical
    • ア. advice
    • イ. appetite
    • ウ. appreciate
    • エ. appropriate
  • (2) precede
    • ア. participate
    • イ. receive
    • ウ. relevant
    • エ. response