安定。うん。要するに、何だろう。その会社が、安定しているかどうか。別に給料はめちゃくちゃ高いとか、そんなのは別に俺どうでもいい。とにかく、職を失わずにいたい、うん。それが一番。

Antei. Un. Yōsuruni, nandarō. Sono kaisha ga, antei shiteiruka dōka. Betsu ni kyūryō wa mechakucha takai toka, sonnano wa betsu ni ore dōdemo ii. Tonikaku, shoku o ushinawazu ni itai, un. Sorega ichiban.

Stability. Yeah. In short, what would be. That company, whether being stable or not. Particularly salary is way high or not, that, particularly I don’t care. Whatever, job want not to lose, yeah. That number one.

Stability. Yeah. In short, how’d you say, whether the company is stable or not. I don’t care if the salary is way high or not. Whatever, I don’t want to lose my job, yeah. That’s number one.

(Thirty-year old male, High School graduate, worker at a waste combustion facility.)

Involvement in two American-based research projects in sociology in Japan has offered me the opportunity to interview over seventy native “informants.” These projects aimed to gain information about contemporary social issues, such as family relations and youth employment. Field work involved extensive interviewing of “informants” in Japanese, transcribing audiotaped interviews (the “source text”), and, ultimately, translating (into the “target language”). Personal accounts gained from the interview process reveal how individual experience is both unique and general. The interview brings a realization of the power and weight of the human voice, as does the transcription and translation necessary for scientific analysis.

Spoken language is often incomplete, ambiguous, and contradictory. Translating the spoken word (la parole) naturally poses both structural and contextual complexities. First, Japanese tolerates much greater ambiguity than English. Words—even phrases—are frequently omitted in conversation (the prime example being the subject) without leading to incomprehension in Japanese. Second, informants understandably make continual cultural references in dialogue. Given that the “target” text is to be analyzed in an American academic context, it is imperative for the translator to interpret native knowledge, which, though freely spoken, lies deeply rooted in the speaker’s “source” culture, and can thus be elusive to the reader. A further complexity has to do with the degree of vagueness (sometimes deliberate), informality and inconsistency of spoken Japanese. Since the spoken language is often a reflection of the social conditions of an individual (class, education, gender, etc.), an effort to retain the nuance of the informant’s “voice” is necessary for sociological analysis.

In going through reams of transcriptions, I have adopted three strategies which have proved useful in approaching the challenges in this kind of linguistic/cultural transmission. The first is to correct and refine the vague passages of the “source” into a coherent text in English. This becomes necessary when faithful, word for word translation produces an incomprehensible passage. The second strategy is to leave words or phrases as they are actually spoken. In this case, retaining the original may be judged best because of cultural specificity or significance. In such cases, I would either transliterate the original Japanese, or translate literally and include a translator’s interpolation to explain the background. The third approach—which I employ less frequently than the first two—is to omit minor words or phrases (such as unclear utterances or sentence constructions in the original) with the aim of achieving clarity for the English-speaking reader. The three approaches should be balanced within the translation, but clearly require creativity and selection in the production of the “target” text.

The art of translating social data resides in the balance between “making sense” and maintaining culturally specific meanings in the target text. Translation may be viewed as instrumental or simply as a means to convey pragmatic information from one language to another. But the act of translation is as creative and enriching as the act of writing. In transmitting information, the translator recreates the worldview constructed by a person in the “source” culture within the “target” language—while remaining as true to the person as possible. Indeed, the practice of the interview as a social research method should be an effort to get beneath both the clichés we use to express ourselves and the way we view others (Bourdieu [1993]1999). The translator of social data aims to reproduce the original voice—conveying the emotions, values, and prejudices of individuals—while shedding light on other cultures and histories. The process is fulfilling because it is a communicative exchange that is deeply human.

Reference

• Bourdieu, P. (1999). Understanding. In Bourdieu, P., et.al. The Weight of the World (1993). Stanford, CA. Stanford University Press.