Abstract
This paper will revisit nominalization in Japanese-English translation from the systemic functional
perspective. Nominalization has been a recurring topic among Japanese translators as well as
grammarians, especially since the 1970s. They posit that this issue is attributable to a language
typology based on different ways of thinking between Japanese and English: the former is a
verb-oriented language and the latter noun-oriented. It is true that a number of Japanese (abstract)
nouns were borrowed from Chinese in ancient times or coined for the sake of translating foreign
languages, including Dutch and then English, in more modern times. Therefore, nominalized
expressions are likely to sound somehow foreign per se, in particular when placed as a point of
departure or a theme in the clause. Having said that, translation is a process mediated by the
translator so that unpacking of nominalization is also presumed to be a result of understanding or
interpreting of the translator, irrespective of ST-TT language combinations. This paper attempts to
examine functionally the phenomenon of nominalization as a grammatical metaphor in relation to
lexical density and textual meaning.
https://ror.org/00x194q47 
