Saki's Pre-Departure Email and Translation
Saki will stay with the Brown family in Shiga for two weeks. Her school gives three rules for the pre-departure email: write 25–35 words; use 'look forward to' once; ask one question about dinner. Saki writes: 'Hello. I am Saki. I will arrive at 6:30 p.m. on August 2. I look forward to meet you. Do you eat dinner at 7:00? Thank you.' She counts 31 words and checks that all three rules are present. The teacher writes 'needs revision' but does not explain. Saki is confused, because she thinks a correct email only needs to follow the rules and be understandable.
1. Find the error in Saki's email and explain the grammar rule behind it.
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The error is 'look forward to meet'. It should be 'look forward to meeting'. In this expression, 'to' is a preposition, not the beginning of an infinitive. A preposition must be followed by a noun or a gerund (-ing form). So 'meet' changes to 'meeting'. Saki followed the three rules, but the sentence still breaks a grammatical rule, which is why the teacher wrote 'needs revision'.
2. Rewrite the email to meet the 25–35 word rule and fix the error. Count your words.
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One corrected version is: 'Hello. I am Saki. I will arrive at 6:30 p.m. on August 2. I am looking forward to meeting you. Do you eat dinner at 7:00? Thank you.' Counting: Hello1 I2 am3 Saki4 I5 will6 arrive7 at8 6:309 p.m.10 on11 August12 2.13 I14 am15 looking16 forward17 to18 meeting19 you.20 Do21 you22 eat23 dinner24 at25 7:00?26 Thank27 you.28 - 28 words, inside the 25–35 range. It uses 'looking forward to' once and asks one dinner question.
3. Translate 'I am looking forward to meeting you' into natural Japanese. Explain why a word-for-word translation sounds unnatural.
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A natural translation is 「お会いできるのを楽しみにしています。」 A word-for-word version such as 「あなたに会うことを前方に楽しみにしています」 is unnatural because Japanese does not use a literal 'forward' here; the idiom is expressed with 楽しみにする. The honorific form お会いできる also fits a polite email to a host family better than 会う. Translation should preserve the polite feeling, not the individual English words.