抄録
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.
