Japanese essays often have a rhetorical element where an assertion is made indirectly by turning it into a question with ～じゃないでしょうか, じゃありませんか, and other variations.
What I’ve started second-guessing myself about is whether it’s better to render these in English as rhetorical questions, or as simple affirmative assertions. The former stands out more and could distract the reader, while the latter diverges more from the original in structure, which can have knock-on effects in the grammar and structure of the sentence as a whole.
Thoughts? (And should I post this in the form of a poll?)
5 comments
They’re all context sensitive, just like inverted statements in English, are they not?
Tho じゃないでしょうか specifically is a fairly strong assertion that something is true, akin to “surely isn’t it actually the case that…”, regardless of the negative nature.
Difficult question as they don’t map 1:1 onto English expressions, and also the cultural expression strategies are very different.
I think most of the time I would not translate them as a rhetorical question, unless I wanted to go very literal and didn’t care about the text sounding weird in English. Instead depending on the sentence I’d use something like “Surely, …” “It’s reasonable to assume that …”, or even not translate them at all and instead just show a piece of evidence followed by the conclusion that the author suggests to draw from it.
This is really a translation question, not a question about learning Japanese.
The answer to any question like this (what is the best translation?) is entirely subjective and depends on *what* you are translating, for what audience/purpose, etc.
Is it an academic paper trying to make a strong argument? Then yes, a skilled translator would probably tone down some of the excessively rhetorical or couched language (～のではないでしょうか？、～ように思われます, etc. etc.), because the point is to put forth a confident hypothesis and native-speaking scholars writing a similar paper would most likely write with a more confident tone.
Is it an English gloss of an example sentence being presented in a textbook or grammar reference? Then you’d almost certainly leave the rhetorical question in there because you want the learner to see what is (grammatically/syntactically) going on in the Japanese sentence.
Is it a character speaking in a fictional work? Then you’d have to make a judgment call as to how important the rhetorical question was to the author in striking a certain tone, or conveying that character’s personality.
Basically, a skilled translator is always considering things like this, because there is almost invariably no one, single correct answer to “what is the best translation”? (unless you’re talking about a very technical, straightforward sentence with no room for interpretation — but even then there can be acceptable variation)
(I’d just like to point out that strictly speaking, I consider this question beyond the scope of this sub, but I’m answering it because I think it’s thought-provoking, and also to demonstrate basically *why* it’s beyond the scope of this sub. Literally no learner who is not aiming to be a professional translator needs to concern themselves with this. If you understand what these rhetorical questions are doing when you read/see them in Japanese, then there’s no need to even worry about what the best way would be to express them in English.)
Hi, a japanese who is learning English here. I think I would translate them with “I believe ~”or “I think~”. Maybe affirmative, if it is clear that writer is 100％ sure about it.
Is x not happening? literally, lacking context of course. Sounds like it means “is that not the case?” in a way.