Differences Between Japanese And Chinese Expression Reflected From The Chinese Translation Of Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Chase

Lin Shaohua and Haruki Murakami are almost of the same times, so LinShaohua has translated a lot of Haruki Murakami’s works. His translations arevery popular in China. But, Chinese readers also give a lot of negativeevaluations on his translation. I am thinking about, for such a famous translator,why there are so many queries? After all, where do the problems arise from? Thisis what has motivated me to write this paper. Of course, there are not onlynegative but also a lot of positive evaluations.There are many Haruki Murakami’s works and Lin Shaohua’s translations.Among Lin Shaohua’s translations, I chose Haruki Murakami’s first feature-length work A Wild Sheep Chase, which is the last one of the trilogy of “I andMouse” series, and attempt a comparative study of similarities and differencesbetween Chinese and Japanese expression and of characteristics of the author andthe translator.The reasons for choosing this work are as follows. Firstly, it containscomparatively many conversations (spoken language). Secondly, spokenlanguage is modernistic. Thirdly, I am interested in Haruki Murakami’s firstfeature-length work.The analyses of this paper are of several categories. If we attempt thecomparative study, I think there are three main factors. The first is characteristicsof the author and the translator. The second is linguistic features. The third istranslation technology. Characteristics of the author and the translator are exactlypersonal styles.For investigation of the first two factors, I classify and analyze the thirdfactor. Adding words (method of adding), omitting words (method of omitting), and semantic change (change in expression or extension) are investigated.Adding words is that in literal translation of Japanese work, the translator addssome necessary speech where he feels inadequate, which is the performance of akind of Chinese characteristic. Omitting words is that the unnecessary vocabularyis omitted considering the custom of Chinese grammar, and the part which isoverlooked in Chinese language is conversely a Japanese characteristic. Semanticchange (extension) is that the same meaning is expressed in different expressiontechniques, and if we think this is that an expression which seems to be ofJapanese is specially changed into an expression which seems to be of Chinese, itcan be regarded as one of Chinese linguistic characteristics.In addition, we can call this the translation style of a translator rather thanone Chinese linguistic characteristic. An extensive use of idioms is found intranslations. But, due to the large amount, I will not enumerate them one by one.Moreover, idioms are not contained in semantic change as a kind of term in thispaper.On the one hand, idioms are often seen in translations, which is theChinese characteristic. Idioms are mainly of four-character, and they are far moreoften used in modern scripts (compared to the original work) than in Japanese.Chinese idioms are equivalent to those four-character idioms in Japanese, whichhowever are limitedly used in Japanese, unlike beyond count in Chinese.An extensive use of Chinese idioms is found in Lin Shaohua’s works,while Japanese idioms (phrases) are also widely used in Haruki Murakami’soriginal works, but there are great differences in both usage and frequency.On the other hand, it can said to be a Japanese characteristic that for theoriginal author to clearly express his meaning, the original work widely used alot of loanwords, which will not be illustrated here for the large amount.Then mistranslation can also be used to compare the differences betweenChinese and Japanese expression. As mentioned above, I list many examples, notjust extracts, also try comparative analysis and give examples I consider to bebetter.