Global Japanese-English Composition of Mind and Language (7) Procedure 1: Preparation of the Original Japanese Manuscript (1)

From here on, I will explain each of the work procedures for "Global Japanese-English Composition."

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Procedure 1: Creation/Acquisition of the Original Japanese Manuscript

First, prepare an original manuscript written in Japanese.

The original manuscript is either created by yourself or used from one created by someone else.

In either case, it is called "Global Japanese-English Composition."

Note that a portion of cases where you use a Japanese manuscript created by someone else is called "Global Japanese-English Translation."

Here, I will prepare the original manuscript, "Kyoto, an ancient capital of Japan with a history of over 1,200 years, has many temples and shrines," and use it as a base to explain the subsequent procedures.

[Original Japanese Manuscript]

Kyoto, an ancient capital of Japan with a history of over 1,200 years, has many temples and shrines.

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Procedure 2: Creation of Atomic Proposition Expressions in Japanese

Next, from the created or acquired Japanese manuscript, I will create expressions corresponding to Japanese atomic propositions.

An "atomic proposition" in the "Mind and Language Model" refers to the "smallest unit of a coherent thought." It is not the linguistic expression itself, but here, we select and use appropriate ones from among multiple linguistic expressions that correspond to it.

For explanations regarding "atomic propositions," please refer to the text on the "Mind and Language Model."

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The work of creating atomic proposition expressions from an actual Japanese sentence is, metaphorically speaking, the same as filleting a fish for cooking.

When filleting a fish, you cut off the head, remove the scales, take out the internal organs, and then fillet it into three pieces, right?

We perform this kind of "preparation" for atomic proposition expressions as well.

Specifically, it is as follows.

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Performing the Preparation

1) Removal of Modality and Stylistic Elements

Strip away as many modality and stylistic elements contained in the original Japanese expression as possible, leaving only the propositions and information structure.

Japanese is a language with extremely strong modality expressions.

For example, the 'desu/masu' style used in this text is also a form of interpersonal modality expressing 'politeness toward the listener'.

On the other hand, English is a language where modality expressions are very weak.

Therefore, it is extremely difficult to express the interpersonal modality of 'politeness' represented by 'desu/masu' in English.

That is why, as a 'preparation' step, we change 'desu/masu' to 'de aru/da' [1].

We also change the style to be as neutral as possible.

[1] However, in the case of Japanese, changing the 'desu/masu' style to the 'de aru/da' style results in the expression of an interpersonal modality in the opposite direction of 'desu/masu', namely 'lack of politeness toward the listener'.
In this way, Japanese is essentially a language that cannot escape modality expressions.
Even so, by changing from 'desu/masu' to 'de aru/da' and shifting from a colloquial style to a written style, the 'modality odor' that the original Japanese possessed is significantly reduced.

[2] For a detailed explanation regarding 'wa', please see 'Japanese Grammar of Mind and Language'.

[3] In Japanese grammar for teaching foreigners, these are called 'noun + da' constructions, verb constructions, i-adjective constructions, etc.

(Continued below)

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