A big thank you to readers who wrote in to share their ideas on how the sentence I gave for practice in the last session should be translated. Here is my version:

The most important thing is to change the structure of the original Japanese and supply a subject and a main verb. The only candidate for the subject is of course “Suntory”, and since it has been used in the first sentence, “it” or “the company” can be used instead.

The hint for the main verb comes from “方針”, which may be translated as “plan” or “consider” as a reader has suggested. Another thing to note is that “受けて” in the middle of the sentence should not be translated directly as “receiving”. Besides “due to”, “in response to” is also acceptable. 

Now, the focus this week is on subject or topic noun phrases that are modified by relative clauses. When such noun phrases are translated into English, the head noun gets separated from the main verb by a relative clause. In some cases, this makes the sentence difficult to process.

(1a) is extracted from the first paragraph of a newspaper article. In (1a), the head noun of the modified noun phrase is marked by a double underline and the relative clause modifying it is marked by a single underline.

 (1b) shows the translation of (1a) with the original structure followed closely. Note that due to the presence of the relative clause, the subject, “Aeon”, and the main verb, “wants”, get separated.

The relative clause contains new information necessary for understanding the article that has not been mentioned in the preceding context. It is more difficult for readers to process sentences in which the subject gets separated from the main verb by one or more relative clauses.

(1c) is an improved version of (1b) with the relative clause rewritten as a separate sentence.

(2a) is also taken from a newspaper article. If it is translated directly as shown in (2b), the main noun, “turnover”, gets separated from the main verb, “has been improving”, by a rather long relative clause. The reader has to process and keep a lot of extra information in memory before getting to the main verb.

If (2b) is split into two sentences as shown in (2c), the reader will have an easier time.

In (3a), “岡田元也氏” is mentioned for the first time in a newspaper article about Aeon. (3b) is a perfectly grammatical translation that retains the original structure of (3a). However, it sounds rather abrupt to introduce “Okada Motoya” suddenly.

A different version is provided in (3c) with the relative clause changed to an adverbial clause. Note that Okada Motoya’s name is preceded by his title, which makes this sentence fit in more naturally as new information is not introduced abruptly.

Please be careful when translating relative clauses. Even though the original structure can be reproduced in English, it may not always be contextually appropriate.