The Reasons behind Japanese – Sinhalese Cultural Translation Errors

Abstract

Quality language translation aims to share the knowledge and bridge the communication with world. Recently the language translation has become one of the most in- demand job opportunities for foreign language learning students. Responding those job opportunities, Japanese Language section in the University of Kelaniya added Japanese Language translation method unit for the special degree program from 2013. Though it has passed nearly 3 years, students make many errors in their translations and still they are not competent enough to do a successful Japanese-Sinhalese translation. Especially most of the errors can be seen in Japanese - Sinhalese cultural translations. Therefore there is an urgent need to clear the common errors made in Japanese - Sinhalese cultural translations. Thus, this study aims to identify the common errors made by the Japanese learning students in their cultural translations. The main focus will be on the errors based on the meaning of cultural word translations. Data were collected by reviewing cultural translations of the first year students reading special degree in Japanese language at the University of Kelaniya. Mainly the errors can be categorised as, source language writing errors, target language understanding errors and transmitting errors from the source language to the target language. The findings highlight the fact that, transmitting errors from the source language to the target language are the vastly found and the target language understanding errors are the second. The particular study is effective in the field of Japanese - Sinhalese and Sinhalese - Japanese translation methods to make the Japanese learning students more aware of the field of translation.