Japanese Politeness Essay

3.1. Japanese politeness Before observing some results of experiments with MT between Japanese and English, it must be mentioned that Japanese has its characteristic that strongly distinguishes it from other languages, the Japanese honorifics or politeness system. Every time, when Japanese people speak or write Japanese, they have to determine which style they should apply, a “polite style” or a “flat style”, to their utterance or writing. Of course, this decision is made unconsciously and then with no time lag according to a situation they are in. There are two fundamental issues about Japanese politeness. Firstly, when an English source text is translated into Japanese, the translator should determine the target Japanese text’s

However, Google has adopted a polite style whereas Microsoft a flat style. Which is better depends on the context in which the sentence is used. The mixture of these two styles usually should not exist in one text, so if one sentence adopts a polite style, all of the other sentences should use the same style. This issue might be solved by actively conducting post-editing of target texts (referred to afterwards), pre-setting software in advance (I do not know if there is such software at the moment) or pre-editing of source texts (referred to afterwards), but MT itself could not judge which style should be used (even in the future?). The other fundamental issue is about politeness in conversation. There is a very simple example: “Good morning.” Students can say “Good morning” to their teachers as well as to their friends in English, whereas people speaking Japanese cannot. When a student speaks to his/her teacher “Good morning” in Japanese, he/she should add some words (letters) to what he/she would speak to his/her friend. “Good morning.” Google: 「おはよう。」 Microsoft:

They are very essential matters but can be revised relatively easily by translators, although this incompleteness of MT could make an undesirable impression about its usefulness. Next, I would like to think about other aspects of MT between Japanese and English.

3.2. A little complicated sentences Apart from the Japanese honorifics or politeness, I would like to observe other results of MT from English to Japanese in order to measure their effectiveness. The source text is from the website of the Foreign Ministry of Japan (2015), and it is about the relationship between the ASEAN countries and Japan (the original source text is Japanese, so this is a kind of back translation).

“In addition, State Minister Kiuchi mentioned the importance of North Korea refraining from further provocations and taking steps for denuclearization, and of all countries fulfilling Security Council resolutions, along with seeking the understanding and cooperation of the ASEAN member countries for the resolution of the abductions issue. Furthermore, State Minister Kiuchi explained the importance of achieving concrete results in UN Security Council reform this year, the 70th anniversary of the founding of the