Repairing a Japanese-to-English Relative Clause and Nominalized Claim
A Japanese-to-English item asks students to render: 「先生に勧められて読んだその論文は、データの解釈に慎重を期すべきだという点で、私が以前読んだどの研究よりも説得力があった。」 A student submits: "The paper which was recommended by my teacher and I read was more persuasive than any study I had read before in the point that we should be careful about data interpretation." The instructor circles three issues: the relative clause "which was recommended by my teacher and I read" is ungrammatical; "in the point that" is not idiomatic; and the Japanese has no explicit "we," so the English has added a universal subject. The student says the Japanese passive 「勧められて」 forces a passive English clause. The instructor replies that English can keep the passive but must make the coordination explicit, and that "should be careful" can be nominalized or recast as a claim the paper makes.
1. Repair the relative clause and the added "we." Give one grammatical English sentence that keeps the passive if possible, and explain the coordination problem.
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The problem is that "which" cannot be both the subject of a passive verb ("was recommended") and the object of an active verb ("I read"). The student has coordinated a passive predicate with an active clause under one relative pronoun. English needs either two relative clauses or a reduced structure.
Grammatical version keeping a passive:
The paper, recommended to me by my teacher and read by me, was more persuasive than any study I had read before, in that it argued for caution in interpreting data.
Or with two clauses:
The paper that my teacher recommended and that I read was more persuasive than any study I had read before, in that it argued for caution in interpreting data.
The added "we" should go. Japanese 「慎重を期すべきだ」 states a general normative claim; it does not specify a subject. English can use "one should" or, better, turn the claim into the paper's argument: "it argued for caution." That avoids inventing a universal subject and keeps the source's main predication: the paper was persuasive.
2. Replace "in the point that" with two idiomatic alternatives, and explain how each changes the sentence's emphasis.
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Two alternatives are "in that it argues..." and "because it insists..."
...more persuasive than any study I had read before, in that it argues for caution in interpreting data. "In that" means "in the respect that." It restricts the comparison: the paper is more persuasive on this specific point, not necessarily overall. This is close to the Japanese 「〜という点で」.
...more persuasive than any study I had read before, because it insists on caution in interpreting data. "Because" presents the caution as a cause of the paper's persuasiveness. It is stronger and can overstate the relation. The Japanese marks the respect in which the paper is persuasive; it does not necessarily claim that this is the sole cause.
A third option is "by insisting that data interpretation requires caution." This recasts the Japanese noun phrase 「〜べきだという点」 as a method or ground. The safest choice for this item is "in that," because it preserves the limiting force of 「点で」 and avoids turning a respect into a cause.
3. The student says the Japanese passive 「勧められて」 forces a passive English clause. Is that true? Explain with reference to the source sentence.
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No. Japanese passive 「勧められて」 marks that the writer received a recommendation. English can express that with a passive ("recommended to me by my teacher"), but it can also use an active clause ("my teacher recommended") or a nominal phrase ("at my teacher's recommendation"). The source does not require a passive main clause.
More importantly, the main predication of the Japanese is 「その論文は…説得力があった」: the paper was persuasive. English should keep "the paper" as the subject of the main clause. The recommendation is subordinate information. The student's version lets the relative clause dominate and creates a coordination error.
A clean rendering is: The paper I read at my teacher's recommendation was more persuasive than any study I had read before, in that it argued for caution in interpreting data. This keeps the source's information order and avoids adding a subject that the Japanese does not contain.