Thanks so much for such a detailed reply regarding my question about J to E translations. I caught your blog while I was searching for tips for J to E translation- a part of my current job. I found your blog to be very intersting since the topics you talk about are stuff that come into my mind while living in Tokyo.
Oh, to breifly introduce myself, I am Mariko Ishida, 24, working in Tokyo at a American consulting company as a executive assistant. I love dancing and music (perfom occasionally) and would love to spread true love and peace through this form of art. I lived in NY during elementary school and spent my high school days in Melbourne, Australia. I have visited Canada twice- Niagara falls and the Rocky Mountains (family trip with a camping car, was great!). Since I went to Sophia University my educational background is more Western than Japanese, although I am fully Japanese by blood.
It would be great if you could tell me about your background, are you a freelance translator? Would love to go freelance one day when I get more experience in this field. Do you live in Japan or in Canada?
Ok, don’t wanna load you too much with my questions, so anyway thanks so much for your kind responce regarding my question, and hope to hear from you soon!
Have a great evening! (if you are in Japan)

Regards,

Mariko

Great question!

I think that those three expressions can be used in a very wide variety of situations in Japanese. There is no direct translation that works perfectly in all of the same situations in English, and in some cases, there is no equivalent at all. What I mean is that there will be some situations where 「よろしくお願いします」 is used in Japanese, but if the same situation took place in English, nothing would be said, or something completely different might be said.

For example, as you know, 「よろしくお願いします」 can be used as a general salutation when you are saying goodbye to someone to whom you are indebted in some way. That debt may be a specific favour that you have asked that person or it could be something quite general, for example, in the case of a parent saying goodbye to a teacher or a doctor who is caring for her child. In that case, in English, there is no good way to convey the same sentiment that 「よろしくお願いします」automatically conveys in Japanese. The sentiment embedded in 「よろしくお願いします」is something like, “I have asked you for something and I recognize that I am now indebted to you and I hope that you will help me — and continue to help me in the future”. Of course, no one would actually say all of those things in English, and furthermore, the same feeling of indebtedness might not occur to the English speaker. So, if the same exchange were to happen in English, the parent might say “Thank you” (if she feels some sort of indebtedness), or just “Goodbye”, or even say nothing at all if she feels that she has said what she needs to say.

I think that this is a very important difference between Japanese and English because there are a lot expressions in Japanese that are the exact right thing to say in specific situations and almost all Japanese people will recognize that THAT EXACT EXPRESSION is the correct and acceptable thing to say in that situation. For example, 「お大事に」is what you say as a departing salutation when you are talking to someone who is sick. There are, of course, other ways to say goodbye to sick people, but most Japanese people will (in my experience) generally stick with the standard 「お大事に」. In English, we have the expression “get well soon”, but I would say that that is more of a thing that you write in a greeting card, and not so much something that you would say out loud to a sick person. Other native English speakers might disagree with me — but that is exactly the point. There is no one completely acceptable way to say goodbye to a sick person in English. You might say, “I hope you are feeling better soon” or “I hope you can get over that cold soon” or “Get lots of rest” or you might not address the illness at all. Every person will probably have a different opinion on what would be the best thing to say in this situation, and every person will probably say different things to different people at different times of the day, or at different times in their own lives.

This poses a serious challenge to people who translate and interpret between Japanese and English, and even more of a problem for people who are studying the languages. There are a lot of set expressions in Japanese, so if you are a learner of Japanese, you are quite lucky because you can just try to learn what the right expression is for the particular situation you are in. English, however, has fewer expressions, so the English language learner is left to her own devices in trying to figure out what to say when going to a funeral or a wedding, talking to a sick person, or asking for a favour.

So, to summarize, I agree completely that the expressions that you mentioned are extremely convenient. Unfortunately, they are also completely impossible to translate without knowing the context that they are being used in. Furthermore, the translation will depend on my understanding of the context rather than a steadfast rule that “this expression in Japanese” is equivalent to “this expression in English”. Translation is tricky, isn’t it!