Japanese-to-English and English-to-Japanese Meaning Transfer
Meaning transfer asks you to carry a sentence across languages without losing or adding information. The Japanese-to-English item usually gives one Japanese sentence with a hint or a starting phrase; the English-to-Japanese item gives a short English sentence to render in natural Japanese. Accuracy of meaning matters more than elegance.
Rules that hold
- Decide the subject first. Japanese often omits it; English usually needs it, so choose the subject the situation implies and keep it consistent.
- Convert particles into word order, not into words. は and が rarely become English words; に may become to, for, or at depending on the verb.
- Handle giving and receiving verbs by pattern: 〜てもらう becomes have something done or have someone do; 〜てくれる becomes someone does something for me; 〜てあげる becomes I do something for someone.
- Fix tense and number from context markers such as きのう, もう, たくさん.
- For English-to-Japanese, keep the polite です・ます register used in the paper and translate the whole proposition, not word by word.
Worked example
「私は母に部屋を掃除してもらった。」 Reasoning: the speaker receives the benefit, and the thing acted on is the room, so the English pattern is have plus object plus past participle. Answer: 'I had my room cleaned by my mother.' The tempting 'I had my mother clean my room' means the speaker ordered her to do it, which adds an idea the Japanese does not state.
Traps that cost marks
Subjectless English sentences; missing articles (a room, the room); translating できる as can when the sentence means something is possible rather than that someone has ability; and in English-to-Japanese, writing stiff literal Japanese instead of the です・ます style the paper expects.