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Too much translationese

translationese-densityon by default (info)Japanese

Japanese that copies English syntax (を可能にする, 重要な役割を果たす, あなたは) too often

Example

The rule measures the whole document, so this example was tried with an ordinary passage (about 200 words) after it that gives chaff nothing to report.

How to fix

Say it the way Japanese would (を可能にする → ができる; drop あなたは).

Why it matters

Phrases that copy English syntax into Japanese (を可能にする for "enable", 重要な役割を果たす for "play an important role", されることができる, あなたは for "you") read fine once, but stacked they make the whole document read like a translation, and the reader translates it back to get the meaning. They are common in machine translation, drafts thought out in English, and generated text. None of them is wrong alone, so the rule counts them per length of the document. The phrases are in the lexicon translationese, each with a plainer Japanese way to say it.

What it does not flag

None of these is wrong alone, so documents shorter than 500 characters are not measured. Phrasings common in human technical writing (を提供する, に焦点を当てる, することができる) are not counted. A document whose only such phrases address the reader (あなたの, あなたは) has chosen to speak to its reader and is not reported; beside other phrases they count. The literature preset turns it off, since a novel calls its characters 彼女.

Turning it off or relaxing it

This page is built from the rule's definition file:packages/chaff/rules/translationese-density.yaml