Novel translations and tense; showing and telling moods in Shiki and Gyakuten Saiban

As most of what I've translated to this point has been dialogue, I had a bit of a conundrum when translating a work with a non-character narrator. Fidelity to the given verb tense changes the tone to either an unintelligent error-ridden one at worst or a conversational one at best, when this isn't necessarily the tone of the original text. However, this change must mean something and if it isn't noted, something is lost in translation.


( Lotta linguistic babble in here. Need to condense the conclusion section. )

Shiki Novel Translations - 2.5.0

Chapter Links

Chapter 5 - 1
Chapter 5 - 2
Chapter 5 - 3
Chapter 5 - 4
Chapter 5 - 5
Chapter 5 - 6



We have no cultural notes again this chapter, and discussions in the comment sections had turned towards inconsistent verb tense in the translations of Ono's other work, Ghost Hunt. In English narrative fiction, short of certain situations which we'll detail, this is seen as an unprofessional error. It's excusable and common enough in conversational English. In Japanese, it's the historical present that is not as common in conversation, usually replaced with the infinitive, but tense switching does occur very frequently in narrative text. For the very long run down on why I'm translating Shiki in standard consistent past tense narration, consider this monster of an essay. It has an excerpt from chapter 5 -6 keeping the original Japanese tenses.