Translation and Paraphrase
Translation and Paraphrase checks whether you can carry meaning across languages and restate an English sentence without changing its proposition. Accuracy in grammar, tense, negation, and modality matters more than elegant wording.
Translate the structure, not the words
First identify the subject, verb, and object of the English sentence, then build the Japanese or English version around them. English often puts a long modifier after the noun; Japanese puts it before. Do not leave a relative clause attached to the wrong noun.
Keep the sentence's commitment
Modal verbs carry the writer's position: 'may' is possibility, 'must' is obligation or strong inference, 'should' is recommendation. 'The results may be explained by ...' is not the same as 'The results are explained by ...'. Preserve the scope of negation: 'not all students' differs from 'no students'.
Worked example
Original: 'The experiment failed to produce the results the team had expected.' Paraphrase: 'The results were not what the team had anticipated.' Reasoning: 'Failed to produce' is a negative result, so the paraphrase needs 'not'. 'Had expected' is an earlier expectation, carried by 'had anticipated'. The paraphrase keeps the same proposition without copying the original words. A version saying 'The team expected the experiment to fail' reverses the meaning.
Paraphrase strategies
- Change word class: 'the rapid growth of the city' becomes 'the city grew rapidly'.
- Use a synonym that keeps the same register.
- Combine or split sentences only if the logic survives.
- Keep technical terms unchanged when no exact equivalent exists.
Traps
- Literal translation that produces unnatural word order.
- Dropping a negative or a modal.
- Translating idioms word for word.
- Adding information to make the sentence sound smoother.