In the last twenty years or so, however, Japanese translators and publishers have increasingly commented on the 'unacceptability' of much Japanese translations, arguing that translated texts should not just be faithful to the original, but should also be acceptable to Japanese audiences at large (Bekku 1985). As seen in a survey I conducted and in the articles and essays on translation by professional translators and publishers reviewed in this paper, greater naturalness in the writing of translated texts seems to be in demand and is being promoted in recent years in Japan.
In September 1978 a popular Japanese monthly translation journal, Honyaku no Sekai (The World of Translation), started a regular column called "Critique of Defective Translations" by a professional non-fiction translator, Bekku Sadanori (1927– ). In his articles Bekku not only picks on translation mistakes but also criticizes the unnaturalness of translated language, advocating acceptability in translation. This column remained popular among professional translators and students till June 2000. At the same time Honyaku no Sekai often featured round-table discussions amongst publishers and translators and conducts interviews with professional translators on translation problems. One of the round-table discussions, entitled "Finding Linguistic Errors in Translation is like a Witch-hunt" abhorred the nit-picking of mistakes in translation and concluded that, rather than just pursuing linguistic faithfulness to the original text, translation should also be discussed from the aspect of target-language expressions (Honyaku no Sekai 1983: 8–9).
A recent translation textbook called Honyaku no Hōh(huán)ō (Methods of Translation, 1997) by a group of university lecturers takes issue with the literal translation method taught at high school English classes in Japan. It advises translation students to convey the meaning of texts in natural Japanese rather than just follow the original syntax and rely on the word-for-word equivalents listed in English–Japanese dictionaries (Sugawara 1997: 35–40). It advocates free rather than literal translation.
The above examples suggest that Japanese translation norms today are moving away from a source text orientation and taking the acceptability of translated texts more seriously than before. This shift toward a target text orientation, however, does not seem to have prevented the continued popularity of transliterating English and other foreign words into Japanese.
Transliteration runs counter to the recent shift in translational norms from 'adequacy' to 'acceptability'. Even though it is the closest phonetic representation of the source language and not at all natural or authentic Japanese, Japanese people seem to accept loan words as new expressions. There are several Japanese dictionaries specializing in loan words and they need to be constantly updated because current terms are increasing every year. This dependence on transliteration bears a resemblance to the traditional kambun kundoku method of transposition (Wakabayashi 1998: 58), which required readers to attend closely to the original language.
Thus it would seem that while Japanese readers' preference today may be for a more natural style and flow of the language, individual words may still remain foreign and opaque to the audience. Does this represent a basic contradiction? To find out more about reader expectation and preferences, a survey was conducted in the reception of translationese.
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