Abstract

This paper attempts to provide a theoretical foundation for some of the translation strategies to be taken when translating head-initial language (English) into head-final language (Japanese), focusing on the cognitive experience of readers of translation. After critically reviewing relevant studies in translation studies, linguistics, psycholinguistics, and cognitive psychology in terms of the role of storage component of working memory in sentence comprehension, the paper highlights the ‘compensatory strategies’ for sentence comprehension (Ueno and Polinsky 2005). Drawing on the ‘compensatory strategies’, the author suggests that when translating into Japanese, translators should try to reduce the number of arguments preceding the grammatical head so that readers of translation can be spared of cognitive overload of holding too many arguments in their working memory.