This is a close examination of the English translation (2005) of Miyuki Miyabe’s Crossfire (1998) so as to show how the Japanese mystery is translated into English. It will be helpful for future translators to know some rules and methods revealed in this paper. By following the painful efforts of the two translators, Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi and Anna Husson Isozaki, I have generalized such know-how. While evaluating the two women’s work, I point out their careless mistakes. Whether on purpose or not, some omissions seem to be rather serious defects. Of course, other seeming weak points are not necessarily their faults. There are definite limits of translation, especially from Japanese into English: The nuances of some Japanese words like ofukuro and obasan are impossible to express in English. The young waiter’s distinctive way of talking also cannot be translated; his funny tones completely disappear in the English version, but that is an exact example of the impossibility of translation.
The paper consists of seven sections: Introduction: a summary of Crossfire, 1) the opening dream (contrary to the original, the English version cannot hide that the dreamer is a woman), 2) various ways of using italics (effective for emphasis, especially in inner monologues), 3) English counterparts of police terms (because of Captain Ito, the original "Captain" is changed into "Skipper"), 4) Chinese characters (in most cases, the meanings of kanji are just ignored, yet the ironical, literal meaning of Kei-ichi, the name of a criminal, is explained properly; Seika-Gakuen, a proper noun, is even translated as Essence Academy), 5) the limits of English translation and some countermeasures (literal translation is often meaningless to foreign readers, so English substitutes will be useful like cake for sekihan), and Conclusion: examples of bad omission and good translation (although several impressive scenes and words are carelessly removed, most of the thematic lines are duly translated). The best thing about the English version is that it includes the key word "crossfire," because it is not found in the original text, and most Japanese readers do not know what it really means even though it is the title of the novel they have enjoyed.

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This paper is a minute study about Majutsu wa sasayaku written by Japan’s most popular mystery novelist Miyuki Miyabe, and its 1980s’ background. The novel was published in 1989, at the peak of the “bubble” economy in which the nation flourished more than ever, and many girls enjoyed luxurious lifestyles dating handsome boyfriends and sometimes some of them met other men for money or fun without conscience, more freely than ever. A keen observer, Ms. Miyabe critically described such tendency, focusing on the loneliness and suffering of the unfortunate who were not popular with girls; the serious but ignored problem was to be at last dealt with in 1999 by the male literary critic Atsushi Koyano in his bestseller Motenai otoko (A Man Unpopular with Girls). Therefore, Majutsu wa sasayaku deserves a wider recognition that it is not so much an interesting mystery novel of a hypnotist-killer as a precious document about Japan in the 1980s.
The English translation of Majutsu wa sasayaku came out under the title of The Devil’s Whisper in 2007. Considering the fact that it was 18 years after the publication of the original, the release seems a bit too late. Maybe that was the reason that "198X," the very first word of the Japanese text in Prologue, was intentionally eliminated. Unless the readers of this English version know that it is the translation of the old book, they will tend to start reading it as a story of Japan in this 21st century. But of course, they will notice sooner or later that the scenes are those of the 1980s because there are neither cell phones, not to mention smartphones, nor the Internet, and the 1987 movie The Last Emperor (directed by Bernardo Bertolucci) and American actresses such as Brooke Shields and Phoebe Cates are mentioned in the novel.
In conclusion, The Devil’s Whisper would have been a much better book if it had included "198X," actually, either 1988 or 1989 according to the conversation about The Last Emperor, which was released in Japan in January, 1988. The English translator should have made it clear with both exact translations of proper nouns (like Almond Roppongi) and their explanatory notes that the novel vividly describes the so-called bubble period of Japan.

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Ziel der vorliegenden Arbeit ist es, empirisch zu zeigen, dass der psychisch-kognitive Prozess, der von dem kognitiven Grundprinzip: „je näher, desto direkter wahrnehmbar” stammt, verschiedenen Spracherscheinungen auf heterogenen Ebenen zugrunde liegt und diese steuert. Der psychisch-kognitive Prozess wird im Folgenden kurz beschrieben: Je psychisch-perspektivisch näher der Sprecher dem Objekt ist, desto direkter kann er es wahrnehmen und damit Kenntnisse über das Objekt gewinnen. Das Objekt wird somit dem Sprecher vertraut, i. e. sprecher-orientiert thematisch. 　
 Untersucht werden Spracherscheinungen wie (1) die psychische Deixis anhand des Demonstrativpronomens der, (2) indefinites Bezugswort+appositiver Relativsatz und (3) personale (figurenperspektivische) Erzählweisen im Erzähltext. Falls es gelingt, diese heterogenen Spracherscheinungen mit dem psychisch-kognitiven Prozess einheitlich zu erklären, dürfte sich insofern dem Prinzip eine „Universalität“ zuschreiben lassen. In Kapitel 2 wird zuerst Folgendes dargestellt: Der Sprecher ist imstande, zu einem ihm gut bekannten Objekt, d.h. zum sprecher-orientiert thematischen Objekt im psychischen Raum, mit dem sprachlichen Zeigefinger (dem Demonstrativpronomen der) <starke Emotionen> zu äußern. Im Anschluss folgt eine Untersuchung über Relativsätze. Das Relativpronomen der, das sich ursprünglich aus dem Demonstrativpronomen der entwickelt hat, gilt － wie die Bezeichnung andeutet － als eine komplexe Einheit, die aus zwei Wortarten besteht: Demonstrativpronomen und Konjunktion. Die Eigenschaften und Funktionen des Relativsatzes sind demgemäß von der Wechselbeziehung der doppelten internen Eigenschaften des Relativpronomens, Deiktizität und Konjunktionalität (subordinierende oder koordinierende Konjunktion) abhängig. Es gilt somit die These: „Je mehr Deiktizität das Relativpronomen beinhaltet, desto mehr nimmt seine koordinierende Konjunktionalität zu und der Relativsatz fungiert gleichsam wie ein selbstständiger Satz, d.h. als appositiver Relativsatz.“ Beim betreffenden Relativsatzgefüge <indefinites, spezifisches (sprecher-orientiert thematisches) Bezugswort+appositiver Relativsatz> macht der Sprecher über das sprecher-orientiert thematische Bezugswort anhand des appositiven Relativsatzes eine „Aussage”. Die Eigenschaften und Funktionen des Gefüges <Bezugswort+Relativsatz> erfolgen insgesamt auf dem Berührungspunkt von Deiktizität und Konjunktionalität. (View PDF for the rest of the abstract.)

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