quotation marks vs. kagikakko

[Mark Spahn]

I'm not sure if Japanese writers use "" particularly loosely;
they certainly sometimes use 「」 in a different sense from the sense in
which we use "", though.
Jonathan
---------- Jonathan Michaels Mito, Ibaraki
==UNQUOTE==

Could you please elaborate on how the English-language
quotation marks "..." and the Japanese-language
kagikakko 「...」are used differently?

In my understanding, quotation marks are used only
to report someone's exact words, in a verbatim quote.
Thus, if someone says "I am extremely displeased with
your internal organs" (in those exact words), then
to quote the speaker as having said "I hate your guts"
would simply be a false statement.

In contrast to a direct quote, marked off by
quotation marks ("I can't go"), is indirect discourse,
in which no quotation marks are used (she said she
couldn't go).

Direct quotes in Japanese are denoted by「...」,
but are 「...」also used for reporting only the
substance of what someone says?

About 20 years ago there was a court case in which
one point at issue was whether a quotation in New Yorker
magazine, one given within quotation marks, was
a verbatim quote or not. The judgment did not
-- could not -- decide what the conventions of
quotation mark usage are, but only whether putting
non-verbatim words in quotation marks constituted
malice. See
http://www.oyez.org/cases/1990-1999/1990/1990_89_1799#opinion
http://www.bing.com/search?q=verbatim+quote+New+Yorker+court&form=MSNH14&qs=n&sk=
-- Mark Spahn (West Seneca, NY)

[Karen Sandness]

In my experience, Japanese writers tend to use kagikakko the way naive writers of English use scare quotes, namely for emphasis:

Made with "real" whipped cream

In standard English usage, such a sentence would mean "We're calling it real whipped cream, but actually, it isn't."

Punctuatingly yours,
Karen Sandness

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Honyaku Mailing list.
> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to honyaku+u...@googlegroups.com
> For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/honyaku?hl=en?hl=en

[Peter Clark]

"In my understanding, quotation marks are used only to report someone's exact words, in a verbatim quote."
 

Sorry, Mark, I can't believe your understanding is that limited. Even if they are called "quotation marks", their uses are varied, and, as a "scholar", I am pretty sure that these other uses fall within your understanding.
"The Chicago Manual of Style Online" should be able to help refresh your understanding.
Peter Clark

[Benjamin Barrett]

On Feb 8, 2012, at 7:54 AM, Mark Spahn wrote:

> I'm not sure if Japanese writers use "" particularly loosely;
> they certainly sometimes use 「」 in a different sense from the sense in
> which we use "", though.
> Jonathan
> ---------- Jonathan Michaels Mito, Ibaraki
> ==UNQUOTE==
>
> Could you please elaborate on how the English-language
> quotation marks "..." and the Japanese-language
> kagikakko 「...」are used differently?
>
> In my understanding, quotation marks are used only
> to report someone's exact words, in a verbatim quote.
> Thus, if someone says "I am extremely displeased with
> your internal organs" (in those exact words), then
> to quote the speaker as having said "I hate your guts"
> would simply be a false statement.

When reporting speech, this is certainly the conventional understanding, but even so, memoirists, biographers and other book writers take great liberties with that. Even fiction writers, it can be argued, take liberties with this.

If you take a careful look at any dialog in any novel, you will see that as natural as it reads, it bears no resemblance to actual speech. Not only are the umms, huhns and other stumbles taken out, places where people backtrack, use odd grammar, make odd word choices and other obstacles are taken out. Also, the conversations are constructed so as to facilitate understanding, not to maximize fidelity with the original rambling conversation.

> Direct quotes in Japanese are denoted by「...」,
> but are 「...」also used for reporting only the
> substance of what someone says?

As any translator knows, Japanese certainly plays even more loosely than English does with quotation marks, whether kagikakko, American quotation marks, English quotation marks, Italian quotation marks or whatever.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

[Jeremy Angel]

On 9 February 2012 00:54, Mark Spahn <mark...@verizon.net> wrote:

Direct quotes in Japanese are denoted by「...」, 

but are 「...」also used for reporting only the
substance of what someone says?

I've found this to be the case more often than not, particularly, say, in articles by Japanese reporters attending major trade shows like CES and quoting keynote speeches.

I've had to translate many such articles for which transcripts of the original keynotes are available online, and so I can attest to the fact that much of what is contained inside kagi kakko is paraphrase, and the reporter's interpretation of what has been said is also quite often mistaken, probably owing to insufficient grasp of English.

FWIW

--
Jeremy Angel
Nagano, Japan

[Mika J.]

I can offer no good explanation for all the mistranslations, honestly, but this phenomenon may have something to do with the nature of our language.

Written words are just that; written words in Japanese.  They are widely different from how we speak, as many of us are keenly aware. 

So, it's become second nature for us to apply the necessary conversion when writing, utilizing the brackets to showcase 「what」 was being said, not necessarily "how"  it was phrased.   That's my observation.

Mika Jarmusz 清水美香
        English to Japanese Translator
        http://inJapanese.us

[Fred Uleman]

People who watch television in Japan will have noticed that even when the broadcast (e.g., news) is subtitling a Japanese speaker in Japanese (presumably for the hearing-impaired?), the text is flatter than the actual speech.

- -- --- ---- ----- ---- --- -- -
Fred Uleman, translator emeritus

[Mika J.]

> the text is flatter than the actual speech.

Exactly.  It would be painful to have to read whatever-gets-said verbatim. 

[Jens Wilkinson]

I think it's fairly clear that kagikakko are used more loosely in
Japanese than quotation marks are in English. In Japanese, they are
used both to mean quoted text, and to mean "so-called" as in English.
But I think there is a third usage, and it's hard to put my finger on
it, but I think it stems from the fact that there is no such thing as
an italic font in Japanese. So I think that at times, Japanese writers
will use kagikakko for emphasis, in the same way that we would use
italics.

[Susan Yoshimura]

The issue of kagikakko being used more loosely, in my opinion, also has something to do with less fear of being accused of plagiarism, or less awareness of problems that may arise from innacurate reference to other sources in general. In some of the academic work I have translated, I'm amazed at the frequent use of kagikakko without proper referencing or page numbers, or the omission of parts of a quote without noting the omission, etc. 
 
And I agree, they are also sometimes used the way italics are in English.
 
Susan Yoshimura
 
 
 

[David J. Littleboy]

From: "Jens Wilkinson" <jenswi...@gmail.com>

>I think it's fairly clear that kagikakko are used more loosely in
> Japanese than quotation marks are in English. In Japanese, they are
> used both to mean quoted text, and to mean "so-called" as in English.
> But I think there is a third usage, and it's hard to put my finger on
> it, but I think it stems from the fact that there is no such thing as
> an italic font in Japanese.

Exactly. More generally, brackets are used to highlight and emphasize
things, not deprecate or have them seen as commentary. Which is exactly the
opposite of English. (Brian Chandler pointed this out here many years
ago...)

> So I think that at times, Japanese writers
> will use kagikakko for emphasis, in the same way that we would use
> italics.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

[Fred Uleman]

No such thing as italics and no such thing as capitalization.

[Mika J.]

日本語文章に使われているかぎ括弧を英文でそのまま引用符に置き換えることは
根本的に無謀なのではないでしょうか。
「」と""のそれぞれの役割は、あまりにも違いすぎるので。

My cursory look at Honyaku Archive found this, wrote by David, and I agree:
"Brian chandler pointed out that whereas English uses brackets
largely to downplay information, Japanese uses them to highlight the
important stuff. Struck me as being spot on. "

Brackets in Japanese can also serve as markers, similar to capitalization in English:
http://blog.z-abc.com/?eid=332842

Another purpose is to aid parsing in Japanese.  I find myself using brackets when I suspect a key phrasing might not parse well.  The following examples would become hard to parse without the brackets. 

http://z-abc.com/sippitu.html
■字句
　否定表現・肯定表現
　なくてもよい「と思う」
　なくてもよい「が」
　「～が、」を置き換える
　なくもいい「も」
　重要・必要・大切という表現
　「の」の重複を避ける
　「行う」という表現
　「行う」という表現 ２
　「前者」「後者」という表現

■僕・私・私たち
　「僕」から「私」へ
　作文の「僕」と「私」
　論文の「私」「私たち」

[Tom Donahue]

Mika writes:

> So, it's become second nature for us to apply the necessary conversion when
> writing, utilizing the brackets to showcase 「what」 was being said, not
> necessarily "how"  it was phrased.   That's my observation.

Right. You can see this working itself out over a number of days
whenever a cabinet minister has to resign over something he said
back home to a group of supporters.

It may never be clear exactly what he said. But it doesn't matter
because within a day or two it settles into a canonical form, with
everybody reporting it as the "baby making machines" 発言.

In a sense this is more accurate than a literal quotation. It tells you
why business comes to a halt in the Diet -- over the idea itself,
as opposed to just another poorly phrased sentiment.

--
Tom Donahue

[Benjamin Barrett]

Italics are used. Not often, but I've certainly encountered them.

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

[Brian Chandler]

Benjamin Barrett wrote:
> Italics are used. Not often, but I've certainly encountered them.

Mild protest required here, I think. The context is not exactly
crystal clear, but I think it's the idea of "italic" kanji-kana. Well,
strictly there is no such thing -- "Italic" is an alphabet of
different forms from the Roman alphabet, not just a sloping of Roman.
Any sort of 斜体 can only be what's properly referred to as "machine-
sloped". And it's certainly common for things like newspaper headlines
to be sloped, but at more or less any convenient angle. I suppose it
must be possible for a book designer to decide to slope some bits of
text to make them stand out, but I really think it's inappropriate to
call these "italic".

Brian Chandler


Top-poster droppings:

[Victoria]

JTF has released its style guide and the explanation for かぎかっこうis:

引用、参照先、入力する文字を表す場合、語句を強調する場合に使用します。

http://www.jtf.jp/jp/style_guide/pdf/jtf_style_guide.pdf

Victoria Oyama
victor...@gmail.com

[Spencer Walle]

This topic seems to have died down, but it has increased my awareness of this peculiar feature of Japanese punctuation. Many jobs I get that are being translated for submission to an academic journal use kagikakko to mark what could be described as keywords for the article at hand. An example from a translation that I'm proofreading at the moment-

思春期までに最大骨量を増加させるためには「運動」と「栄養」が極めて重要である。

No one is being quoted here, and I'm not sure these could be said to be analogous to scare quotes. The effect is, I think, similar to if the words were to be bolded in the English. I'm debating how to handle them in the translation - it sounds strange to say

, ... "exercise" and "nutrition" are extremely important.

 

(To me, at least). I suppose this is a case of 語句を強調する場合 from Vicoria's style guide citation. As this article will be reviewed by a copy editor later, I think I will simply leave a note for their consideration.

Spencer Walle

[Mika J.]

思春期までに最大骨量を増加させるためには「運動」と「栄養」が極めて重要である。

 ... "exercise" and "nutrition" are extremely important.
 

なるほど、上記のように英文に引用符を付けてみると、
まるでふざけているみたいですね。

わかる人がチェック担当者ならいいのですが、
「引用符がないではないか」と、変なところで律儀に目くじらを立てられるのもつまりませんから、
注釈の内容には、何らかの方向付けをした方がいいかもしれません。

 「かぎ括弧は日本語では必要だが、英文には不要である、なぜなら・・・」

Mika Jarmusz 清水美香
        English to Japanese Translator
        http://inJapanese.us

2012/2/12 Spencer Walle <swa...@princeton.edu>

[Jens Wilkinson]

2012/2/13 Spencer Walle <swa...@princeton.edu>:

> This topic seems to have died down, but it has increased my awareness of
> this peculiar feature of Japanese punctuation. Many jobs I get that are
> being translated for submission to an academic journal use kagikakko to mark
> what could be described as keywords for the article at hand. An example from
> a translation that I'm proofreading at the moment-
> 思春期までに最大骨量を増加させるためには「運動」と「栄養」が極めて重要である。
> No one is being quoted here, and I'm not sure these could be said to be
> analogous to scare quotes. The effect is, I think, similar to if the words
> were to be bolded in the English. I'm debating how to handle them in the
> translation - it sounds strange to say
>

To me, the most natural way to handle those in English would be with
italics, not bold. My subjective impression is that bold is used in
government reports and stuff like that, but not in proper academic
writing.

--
Jens Wilkinson
Neo Patwa (patwa.pbwiki.com)

[Claire Debenham]

If I were translating that phrase in a paper for journal submission, I
would simply omit the quotes altogether as unnecessary in English. I
don't think italics are used for emphasis in that way in academic
papers any more than bold is, at least not in the medical field. The
emphasis can be added by the way the sentence is worded.

Claire Debenham
Osaka

[Mark Spahn]

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this topic.

To summarize, kagikakko are used in various ways:

 

* For verbatim quotes of someone's spoken or written words.

 

* To refer to a word or phrase rather than what it means.  See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction

Compare:  Cheese comes from milk.

                 "Cheese" comes from the Latin "caseus".

 

* To refer to a term the writer disagrees with, so-called

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scare_quotes .

This usage conveys a sense of -- to quote Mika Jarmusz verbatim --

「まるでふざけているみたいですね」.

If I refer to Saint Gregory "the Great", the quotes

indicate skepticism or disagreement about this

assessment of this saint. 

 

Side remark:  Sometimes "great" is not an assertion of

greatness but just a way to make a distinction, the way that 

"Senior/Junior" or "41/43" is used with names. 

I understand that the term "Great" Britain was not

meant in praise of England, but to distinguish it

from "Little" Britain, i.e., Brittany.

 

Is that the case with St. Gregory the Great?

Maybe "the Great" is just to distinguish him from

a different St. Gregory who has gone overshadowed

for centuries. 

http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=54

is a propaganda site for this St. Gregory "the Great",

who did not even invent a Gregorian calendar.

Why does _he_ hog all the glory?  Where are

all the churches and schools built in honor of

St. Gregory the Not-So-Great?

 

* To highlight a term.

One type of highlighting is to signal an unusual usage. 

Example:   Crystals somehow "know" which shape to grow into.

 

Another type of highlighting seen in Japanese with kagikakko

is illustrated by Spence Walle's example

思春期までに最大骨量を増加させるためには

「運動」と「栄養」が極めて重要である。
In English such emphasis might be denoted with italic or

bold lettering, or (better, in my opinion) by

emphatic wording and punctuation like:

    The two biggest factors that give younsters strong bones

    are exercise and nutrition.  [sentence-final position]

or

   What gives youngsters strong bones?  Exercise and nutrition.

or

   Most important for building strong bones in children:

   exercise and nutrition.

 

* (Have I forgotten another important usage of kagikakko?)