Translating On ne voit bien qu'avec le cœur into Japanese: Exploring Variation
4. Omitting the object
This covers all translations
The French original doesn't supply an object for the verb voir, and among the English translations only Cuffe uses an object, the very general noun 'things'.
Among the Japanese translators, however, omission of the object (I will call it the object, although with the intransitive verb 見える mieru it is actually the subject) is practised only by a minority -- three out of 15 translations. The great majority use an expression meaning 'things' to indicate what is seen. The different translations are shown in the following table:
ものごと (物事) monogoto 'things' もの mono 'things' Zero (omission) なにも nani mo 'nothing' TOTAL
Eleven translators use an explicit object.
The most common is ものごと monogoto 'things, matters' (7 occurrences), which refers to もの mono and こと koto, i.e., both physical objects and abstract matters. (One translator writes this in Chinese characters as 物事 monogoto, but simple, commonly-used words like this is tend to be written in hiragana, which is cleaner and simpler.)
Slightly less numerous is もの mono, which tends to refer to physical objects. In combination with the word 見る miru 'to see', もの mono is probably the more commonly expected object.
If anything,ものごと monogoto tends to convey a more 'philosophical' flavour, as though the fox were pontificating on the nature of things and the universe. もの mono is more related to physical vision.
Finally, one translator uses なにも nani mo, which in combination with a negative verb means 'nothing'. Unlike translations using ものごと monogoto or もの mono, this cannot be elevated to topic of the sentence.
| Translating voir 'to see' |
| The choice of conditional |
| Translating 'things' |
| Word order: Placing the topic |
| Translating bien |
| Framing the sentence -- ということさ to yū koto sa |
|