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1. Quotation Marks
Quotation marks are used very differently in Japanese than they are in English. At ALS, we frequently see translations that use quotation marks in English, but with Japanese rules. Quotation marks are also used differently in British and American English. We use American English at ALS unless otherwise requested, so we will list and discuss three basic American rules here.
A. All punctuation goes inside the quotation marks.
Example: Aaron said, “To quote or not to quote, that is the question.”
B. Quotation marks giving information need to say where the information comes from.
Example: “Beginning writers tend to overuse quotation marks when they want to emphasize.”
(“Aaron's Grammar,” p. 73.)
Note in the example above that a full citation is required for “Aaron's Grammar” in the references section. Also note that there are quotation marks around the title “Aaron's Grammar” because this newsletter does not support italics. Before the computer era, quotation marks were often used for book titles and magazine and newspaper names. Typewriters did not have italics. Computers do.
C. Quotation marks can be used to imply doubt. If you question whether the president of a country was elected in a truthful election, you might say that someone is the “president.” The implication is that the individual was not actually elected in a fair contest.
2. Continuously
The word continuously often appears in Japanese to English translations in ways that do not look natural to us at ALS.
Awkward Example: Companies A and B will cooperate continuously.
It is usually not that difficult to find the correct word when you write in your native language, but it can be difficult when you write in a second language. At ALS, we have difficulties when we see English words like continuously used in an awkward manner. It does not sound correct to us, but at first we are not sure what other word might be used. Finally, the correct term, or what we hope is the correct term, comes to us.
Corrected Example: Companies A and B will cooperate on an ongoing basis.
3. Obesity in the United States II
Aaron Says Volume 13 discussed the increasing problem of obesity in the United States. In this issue, we would like to talk about a recent study that appeared in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to the JAMA article, coming to the United States poses a significant threat to your health. Body weight for immigrant subgroup obesity is directly related to the number of years lived in the United States. After ten years of life in the United States, subgroups begin to have a higher body mass index (BMI) than they had when they arrived. BMI is measured as weight in kilograms that is then divided by the square of height in meters.
After fifteen years of living in the United States, immigrant obesity is about the same as obesity for those born in the United States. Even though the new Americans come from countries that have less obesity, acculturation to American life brings obesity to them. The only exception to such weight gain is black immigrants. For some reason that has not yet been researched, they do not gain weight as other immigrant subgroups.
The immigrant population in the United States is more than 11 percent of the total United States population. It is also the fastest growing section of the populace.
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