Projects: College Essay

A project that was brought to me a while back was for a college essay.

The woman wanted to apply for a certain nursing school in the states and wasn't confident in her ability to express herself to the college in English. That's where I came in. This was not a particularly difficult project, but it did have its peculiarities.

Prose in Japanese is a bit different from what Americans are used to. The flow of intentions is almost the opposite. In English we tend to sandwich what we want to get across. I remember learning the "Hamburger Model" in many stages of my education. We tend to use this even when we want to give people advice, bad-news and applying for a job. For documents like letters of intentions or essays, we usually say:

1. What we want
2. Why we want it　・　Why we should have it
3. Why the reader should want us too (restatement of what we want want)

There are extra things to accompany that, but that's basically what it is. English speakers are generally comfortable reading and writing professional letters in that format.

However, in Japanese, one usually doesn't state their intentions until the very end. Perhaps due to the structure of Japanese (SOV), what is being conveyed isn't expressed until the end of the statement. "I apples want" as opposed to "I want apples." So even in an essay or speech, what the writer/speaker's intent isn't fully apparent until the very end. All of the information that they want the listener/reader to know made explicit, then they state what they want at the end of it. This also shows up in their humor. As an example, Japanese people say that they never start laughing until the very end of a joke or story.

At the risk of rambling, basically, I had to transform her essay into what English speakers are used to reading without ruining her intents. Translating it itself was not difficult, but I did have to dance around the structure of the would-be English version.

If I was to do it again, I would like to meet with the person and talk about exactly what they wanted to express it make it even better; even more personal. There is only so much you can do with only text, but I feel like I did a good job on it.

I heard from her a while later and head that she got into the college and the program of her choice.