Allergen Recall in Japanese: Apology Register Versus the Client's “Confident” Brief
JA into EN: a 420-character recall notice for a Tokyo confectionery, due in six hours to a US public-relations team. Source: 「お客様には大変なご迷惑をおかけしましたことを深くお詫び申し上げます。原因については現在確認中でございます。今後このようなことが二度と起こらないよう、全社を挙げて再発防止に努めてまいります。」 A junior translator's draft reads: “We deeply apologize for the great inconvenience this may cause. We are currently confirming the cause and will strive to prevent recurrence.” The US client wants a tone that is “confident, not groveling,” and asks you to delete the cause sentence because it “sounds like we don't know what happened.” Two SKUs and 12,000 units are affected by an undeclared milk allergen.
1. Assess the draft's first two sentences against the source. Which changes are stylistic and which are fidelity errors?
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Two of the draft's moves change meaning.
“this may cause.” The source is 「おかけしました」 - past, completed, an assertion that inconvenience has already occurred. The product has been recalled; customers have already been inconvenienced. “May cause” downgrades an admission into a hedge. That is not a register choice, it is a different proposition, and in an allergen recall it reads as evasive precisely where readers are looking for accountability.
“deeply apologize for the great inconvenience.” Defensible. 「大変な」 is an intensifier; “serious inconvenience” is the more idiomatic collocation in English recall notices, but “great” is not wrong.
「現在確認中」 is legitimately rendered “is still being confirmed” or “remains under investigation”; “currently confirming” is acceptable but slightly flat.
Revised: “We sincerely apologize for the serious inconvenience this recall has caused. The cause is still under investigation. Company-wide, we are working to prevent any recurrence.” The client's “confident, not groveling” brief is satisfied by concision, not by weakening the admission.
2. The client asks you to delete the sentence about the cause being under investigation. How do you respond, and what do you actually deliver?
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I decline to delete it as a silent edit, and I explain why in writing rather than in a chat message.
The sentence is source content, and it is content with regulatory weight: in an undeclared-allergen recall, the state of the investigation is information the public and the retailer are entitled to. Removing it does not make the notice more confident; it makes it omit something the manufacturer chose to disclose. I am not the client's counsel and I say so, but I am the person who can see that the deletion changes what the document asserts.
What I deliver: the full translation, plus an alternative phrasing if length is the real concern - “The cause is under investigation” - and a note setting out the options and their consequences. If the client, after being informed, instructs the deletion on the record, I note that the deletion was made at client direction and keep the full version in my file. What I do not do is make the decision look like mine.
3. 「全社を挙げて」 and 「二度と起こらないよう」 - how literally do you carry these into English, given the client's tone brief?
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「全社を挙げて」 is “company-wide” or “across the company.” The literal “lifting up the whole company” is dead in English. “Company-wide” is compact and matches the corporate register; “all of us” is warmer and slightly less formal. Either is fine.
「二度と起こらないよう」 is the harder call: literally “so that this never happens again.” English-language corporate notices often avoid “never” because it is an unlimited public commitment. But that commitment is the manufacturer's to make or not make - it is in the Japanese source, signed off by the company. Softening it to “help prevent future occurrences” would be me managing their risk exposure without being asked, which is a fidelity failure dressed as style advice.
So I keep “so that this never happens again,” and I flag to the client that the English reads as a stronger promise than they may intend. If they want it changed, that is a source-side revision, and I will translate the revised source.