Relative Clause Scope in Shakudoku Translation
A second-year student translates a shakudoku passage for a Kyoto University practice set. The target sentence is: "The report that the committee commissioned, which critics said ignored rural schools, was released only after the minister, who had promised transparency, added a preface." The student's draft reads: 「委員会が委託した、批評家が農村部の学校を無視したと述べた報告書は、透明性を約束していた大臣が序文を加えた後にようやく公表された。」 The instructor marks two problems: the relative clause "which critics said ignored rural schools" has been attached to the critics' speech rather than to the report, and "only after" has been flattened into a simple sequence. The student protests that Japanese does not like long modifiers. The instructor agrees but says the fix is not to drop the modification; it is to unpack it into a main clause or a separate sentence while preserving the report as the entity criticized.
1. State precisely what the student's Japanese sentence says about who ignored rural schools, and give a corrected Japanese rendering of the clause "which critics said ignored rural schools."
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The student's 「批評家が農村部の学校を無視したと述べた報告書」 means roughly a report in which critics stated that someone ignored rural schools. The critics are presented as speakers, and the ignored entity is left vague. In the English, the critics are saying that the report ignored rural schools. The report is the object of criticism.
A corrected rendering must make the report the thing criticized, not the critics' separate statement. For example:
- 「批評家が農村部の学校を無視していると批判した報告書」
- 「批評家によれば農村部の学校を無視していた報告書」
The key is the quotative 「と」. In the student's version, 「と述べた」 reports the critics' speech as an independent proposition. In the correction, 「と批判した」 or 「と指摘した」 takes the report's conduct as the content of the criticism. The modification is not shortened; its target is corrected.
2. The student wants to split the sentence to avoid a long modifier. Show a two-sentence Japanese version that preserves "only after" and the minister's promise without implying that the promise caused the delay.
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A workable split is:
「委員会が委託した報告書は、批評家から農村部の学校を無視していると批判されていた。透明性を約束していた大臣が序文を加えた後、ようやく公表された。」
This preserves three things. First, the report remains the entity criticized. Second, 「〜した後にようやく」 carries the restrictive force of "only after": release came late, and not before the preface was added. Third, the minister's promise is background information, not a cause. The non-restrictive "who had promised transparency" is rendered as 「透明性を約束していた大臣」, a descriptive modifier.
What to avoid: 「大臣が序文を加えたので」 or 「約束したため」 would turn the promise or the preface into a cause of release. The English says only that the release followed the preface, not that the preface produced it. If the student wants to keep one sentence, the modifier can be moved after the main predicate, but the two-sentence version is clearer and still faithful.