While reading Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, I came across something in the Japanese translation that caught my attention.
When Fowler asks his wife, Helen, for a divorce, her reply contains this line:
I can see you marrying after a drink too many.
In Seijiro Tanaka’s translation for the Hayakawa epi paperback, it reads:
I can just picture you having one drink and marrying anyone at all.
A drink too many does not mean simply having a drink once. It means one drink beyond what was wise—in other words, doing something after drinking too much. A more literal rendering would be something like, “I can imagine you getting married after one drink too many.”
What also catches the eye is the phrase “anyone at all.” There is nothing directly corresponding to it in the original. In context, the person Fowler intends to marry is Phuong. Yet the Japanese translation broadens her into an unspecified anyone.
Where did “anyone at all” come from?
Compared line by line, the translation seems to go quite far beyond the English. Read as part of Helen’s full letter, however, “anyone at all” does not feel entirely baseless.
Helen knows that Fowler is a man who cannot bear to be alone. He had loved another woman before and spoken as though losing her would bring his life to an end. Now he tells Helen that losing Phuong would be “the beginning of death.”
Helen is not necessarily saying that his feelings are false. She probably knows that he means them at the time. What she doubts is how long that sincerity will last.
For Fowler, Phuong is both the woman he loves and someone who keeps age and loneliness at a distance. Elsewhere, he speaks of his fear of growing old alone. He even says, in effect, that having a woman in the same room would be better than solitude, even if he did not love her.
Having watched him for so long, Helen may see his wish to marry less as a resolve to cherish Phuong for life than as an impulse to escape loneliness and the prospect of returning home. If the translator meant “anyone at all” to carry that cool assessment of Fowler, the choice has an intelligible logic.
Even so, the change is not minor. The image of drunkenness in the original fades, and Helen’s judgment takes its place. What the English leaves readers to gather from the surrounding passages is stated for them in Japanese. An implication becomes an assertion.
The translation alone cannot tell us whether this was a deliberate paraphrase or a misunderstanding of the idiom. But reducing the difference to a single label—mistranslation—would also hide the more interesting question of what, exactly, Helen has understood about Fowler.
Can “I miss you” be translated into Japanese?
Thinking about this makes even the ordinary phrase I miss you seem unexpectedly troublesome.
Japanese offers plenty of possibilities: “I want to see you,” “I’m lonely,” “I long for you,” “I want you beside me,” or “I was lonely without you.” None is an exact match.
“I want to see you” emphasizes the wish for a future meeting. “I’m lonely” puts the speaker’s own state in the foreground. “I long for you” is beautiful but sounds somewhat strong and literary in everyday Japanese. “I want you beside me” contains a request directed at the other person.
I miss you holds several things together: the fact that someone is absent, the awareness of that absence, loneliness, affection, and the wish to meet again. It can be said to a lover, a family member, or a friend. It can be a heartfelt confession or almost a casual greeting after a long silence.
Japanese has no single everyday phrase with quite the same breadth. To a friend seen after a long absence, one might say, “I wanted to see you.” To a distant partner, “I’m lonely without you.” Addressing someone who has died, it might become “I long for you” or “I wish I could see you again.” The same three English words turn into different Japanese expressions depending on the relationship, the distance, and the time that has passed.
To translate is to decide
Translate I miss you as “I want to see you,” and the desire for reunion comes forward. Translate it as “I’m lonely,” and the speaker’s solitude does. Choose “I long for you,” and affection or loss grows deeper. Every choice communicates something well, while pushing something else farther away.
The line in The Quiet American works the same way. “Marry after one drink too many” preserves the original image, but Helen’s cool view of Fowler may feel less distinct in Japanese. Adding “anyone at all” makes her distrust explicit, but narrows the room left for the reader to notice it.
Of course, not every mistaken idiom or excessive addition can be excused as interpretation. Still, literary language cannot be carried by dictionary meanings alone. To make a character speak again in another language, a translator has to choose anew the word order, the tone of voice, and how much of the feeling to reveal.