This week, I will continue to look at the translation of relative clauses that are used in a different way. As shown in the (1a) sentences below, 「～のは～だ」is a frequently found sentence structure in Japanese. What precedes「の」is a relative clause, and when this is directly translated into English, it becomes “The one which/that/who (relative clause)…” as shown for example in (1b) below.

In some contexts, a direct translation may work while in other cases it may not. (1b) shows that if we do a direct translation, we will end up with a long modified subject that makes the sentence difficult to process, and the reader has to retain a lot of information in memory before getting to the essential part.

One way of getting around this problem is to use “it” to return the focus to “a woman” as shown in (1c) below. 

Note that the relative clause that follows “the one” in (1b) now modifies “a woman” in (1c). 

Of course, this is not the only strategy that can be used for improving the translation of 「～のは～だ」. As shown in the next example, depending on the context, it may be better to do away with the relative clause and just use a simple sentence structure.

(2a) is found towards the end in a newspaper article comparing the performance of different convenience stores. We should try to avoid the direct translation in (2b) because it sounds awkward and unnatural.

The version in (2c) uses a simple sentence structure. I avoid using the “it” sentence structure like (1c) above because it adds an unnecessary emphasis in this case, and sounds as if we are making a comparison between convenience stores that are doing well in dessert sales and those that are not.

In the next example, (4b) is a direct translation of (4a). Again, the direct translation sounds extremely awkward even though it is grammatically correct.

In (4c), “the actual crisis” becomes the subject instead of “one”. Note also that “is whispered”, a direct translation of 「ささやかれている」, is changed to the active voice. The rest of the sentence remains unchanged.

Finally, I will leave you with an example for practice. (5b) is a direct translation of (5a). How would you improve on (5b) to make it sound more natural?