CALL Research Journal #11

This week I’ve read an interesting thesis from Hong Kong University. The author aimed at investigating the differences between Japanese and English anphoras and metaphors. He argued that anaphoras are the syntactic devices that render the logic and coherence of the text; while metaphors are the semantic devices that portray two things with similar image or concept. Therefore, knowing the conventional usage of anaphoras and metaphors in source and target language could help translators produce natural and sophisticated translation. He shown numerous excerpts from journals, newspaper and fictional works to illustrate how to mend the grammatical and cultural gap between English and Japanese anaphoras and metaphors, which I think is very valuable to translators. Japanese and Chinese have a lot in common. For instance, both languages don’t use genitive pronouns (his/her/their) a lot. Hence I believe it might be helpful to take a further look at this thesis, and indeed it’s no disappointment. The thesis is well-organized with strong and creative argument. I’ve collected a list of theories about anaphoras and metaphors in the literature review chapter. Also I’ve learned the structural and organized way to make comparisons between two languages. Most important of all, the thesis shown me several useful strategies of analyzing translated text and how to deduce a reasonable conclusion from the analysis. A masterpiece!