Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Minoru Shimozaki
This paper analyzes Haruki Murakami’s Umibe no Kafuka and its English translation
by Philip Gabriel, Kafka on the Shore, with a focus on the downtoners kind of and sort
of. The analysis reveals that kind of appears 65 times (76.5%), while sort of appears 18
times (23.5%), totaling 85 occurrences. The study identifies three types of correspondence
between these expressions and their equivalents in the source text:
(1) Downtoning Correspondence (40.0%): Instances where kind of and sort of
correspond to downtoning expressions in the source text.
(2) Intensifying Correspondence (11.8%): Instances where kind of and sort of
correspond to terms that increase the intensity from the assumed norm.
(3) No Correspondence (48.2%): Instances where kind of and sort of do not
correspond to any equivalent expression in the source text.
The findings suggest that the translator prioritized capturing the colloquial style of the
source text at the text level, often sacrificing precise word- or phrase-level equivalence.
This highlights the translator’s focus on recreating the style of the source text at a higher
level of equivalence, even at the expense of strict word-for-word accuracy.
