Symposia & Conferences
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Item An Error Analysis of Japanese Business Writing.(The Third International Conference on Linguistics in Sri Lanka, ICLSL 2017. Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka., 2017) Balasooriya, B.M.U.S.Business Writing is a type of written communication, usually with standard structure and style. Japanese business writing should follow the customary format and etiquette of formality and politeness. It is necessary to follow proper etiquette to leave a good impression on business partner. Thus, it is one of the main concerns to know about formal style of Japanese business writing by the students learning Japanese in Sri Lanka. In this paper, examples of errors made by the students learning Japanese when writing Japanese business letters were collected, analyzed, and evaluated. The data were collected by analyzing twenty business writings of the first year students reading for Japanese Language Special Degree at University of Kelaniya. Many types of errors related to word choice were identified. Particularly, inappropriate combinations of recipient name and honorific title, inappropriate combinations of verbs and objects, mixing of polite and humble language, and insufficient understanding of fundamental Japanese constructions were prevalent. Other types of mistakes included inappropriate layout, incorrect use of abbreviations, and incorrect use of Arabic and Japanese numerals. There was a tendency to make the same mistakes repeatedly, and it was concluded that the guidance offered by textbook examples is insufficient and that systematic training in formal written Japanese is essential.Item An error analysis in the usage of Japanese Kanji characters(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Balasooriya, B.A.D.N.Kanji are ideographs meaning that the whole character conveys a meaning rather than just a sound as in the case of Hiragana and katakana. Kanji were originally drawn as pictures from nature but gradually transformed to more generalized representations. There are 75,963 kanji currently encoded in Unicode available today. However, the Japanese government's list of recommended characters consists of 2136 characters which are commonly used in Japan. Kanji characters have become the main obstacle for Japanese learning students in Sri Lanka, because of there is a large number of Kanji characters to remember and the period of time is mostly too short to remember those characters, (for an example students have to remember around 2000 Kanji characters within the second and the third year students of Japanese language education) when compared with Japanese native students. Most of the students obtain better marks for Kanji character tests but their writing and reading ability of Kanji is very poor. Especially they make many errors when they write Kanji characters. So this study focuses on identifying errors in usage of Kanji characters. The data was collected by conducting an essay test guiding to use Kanji characters as much as possible for the second year students reading for Japanese language special degree at the University of Kelaniya. The findings highlight the fact that, Kanji characters which has few stroke numbers and which are based on pictures are in frequent usage, complicated Kanji characters which have a number of stocks are in less usage. Other than that missing some strokes of the character, Kanji characters which have lots of strokes become larger than other letters and some parts of Kanji characters are mixed up with similar shapes of other characters can often be seen as frequent errors made by Sri Lankan students.Item Difficulties Encountered by the Japanese Language Learners in Using English Loanwords(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Udeshika, O.P.D.Loanwords are defined as the words where both form and meaning are borrowed or assimilated with some adaptation to the Phonological system of the new language. English loanwords have become a considerable part of the contemporary Japanese vocabulary. Loanwords are one of the most difficult pedagogical elements in Japanese language Education. It appears that the most overarching and fundamental source of difficulties is the narrow range of intuitive acceptability when English words are converted into their katakanare presentations. (Jun Xu-2013). Intuition of the learners who are learning Japanese as a foreign Language may differ from the native Japanese speakers. It is clear that the difficulty of acquiring loanwords by the Japanese learners as a Foreign Language is often not fully recognised by the teachers. The students make errors in identifying and writing English loanwords. In Conversation students use original English words. The conversations become unsuccessful, due to the inability of understanding Japanese conversations. This study is an attempt to identify how English loan words have become difficult to be studied when they are acquired by the Japanese learners in Sri Lanka. First English loanwords of Japanese were analysed and were categorised in order to identify the errors. The necessary data were collected using 100 students who were reading Japanese Language at the University of Kelaniya. They were asked to translate English loanwords into Japanese and Japanese words into English loanwords. The analysed results of this study revealed that the most of the students had faced many difficulties in translating those words. In conclusion it was obvious the fact that the main reason behind the issue was that most of the students were not familiar with that English word though English Language is considered as the Second Language in Sri Lanka.Item The Reasons behind Japanese – Sinhalese Cultural Translation Errors(Department of Linguistics, University of Kelaniya, Sri Lanka, 2016) Balasooriya, B.A.D.N.Quality language translation aims to share the knowledge and bridge the communication with world. Recently the language translation has become one of the most in- demand job opportunities for foreign language learning students. Responding those job opportunities, Japanese Language section in the University of Kelaniya added Japanese Language translation method unit for the special degree program from 2013. Though it has passed nearly 3 years, students make many errors in their translations and still they are not competent enough to do a successful Japanese-Sinhalese translation. Especially most of the errors can be seen in Japanese - Sinhalese cultural translations. Therefore there is an urgent need to clear the common errors made in Japanese - Sinhalese cultural translations. Thus, this study aims to identify the common errors made by the Japanese learning students in their cultural translations. The main focus will be on the errors based on the meaning of cultural word translations. Data were collected by reviewing cultural translations of the first year students reading special degree in Japanese language at the University of Kelaniya. Mainly the errors can be categorised as, source language writing errors, target language understanding errors and transmitting errors from the source language to the target language. The findings highlight the fact that, transmitting errors from the source language to the target language are the vastly found and the target language understanding errors are the second. The particular study is effective in the field of Japanese - Sinhalese and Sinhalese - Japanese translation methods to make the Japanese learning students more aware of the field of translation.Item A comparative study of idioms which includes parts of the body in Japanese and Sinhala(Faculty of Humanities, University of Kelaniya, 2015) Herath, H.M.P.C.An idiom or an idiomatic phrase is an expression, word or unity of words that has been widely used since ancient eras. Therefore, it is quite obvious that idioms have been shaped and reinforces by the people of a particular social scenario. Meanwhile it is a kind of metaphor which inherits a hidden or immobilized meaning, conventionally understood by the native speakers. Thus, if these idiomatic phrases are not properly understood in the communicating process, no doubt it will be a root cause to occur wrong and inappropriate responses. For an instance the Japanese expression‘頭に来る’（come in to head）gives the meaning of getting angry, though in sinhala language it means ‘get a good idea’. Therefore it is crystal clear that figurative meaning is more important that its literal meaning in any language. The main objective of the research is to identify the similarities and differences of idioms which consist parts of the body, especially ‘head’ ‘hand’ ‘mouth’ ‘eye’ ‘leg’ and ‘ear’ since Sinhala and Japanese language are abundant with idioms that corresponds with these parts of the body. It is an identified fact that using components like idioms in any languages are significant to preserve the purity of language and essential for effective day today communication. Therefore the findings of this paper will support students who learn Japanese as a foreign language to use and understand idioms in their daily communication and enrich their knowledge about idioms.Item Error Analysis on Japanese - Sinhala Translations(University of Kelaniya, 2015) Rathnayake, D.Language translation is one of the most in-demand job opportunities for foreign language learning students in Sri Lanka. Japanese language among the other foreign languages has been taught from the school level to the undergraduate level for many years. Recently, a fast increase is seen in the number of Japanese tourists and investment companies due to various reasons in the country. In this context, Japanese-Sinhala, Sinhala-Japanese translation is considered one of the in-demand job opportunities which can easily be fulfilled by those Japanese learning students. Nevertheless, at present students of Japanese are not competent enough to engage in successful Japanese-Sinhala translations and there are many errors in their translations. Those errors can be seen mostly as a result of transfer from L1, intra-lingual, or over-generalization of L2 system or intra- lingual error. There are approaches of assessing learners translation ability (using, integrative testing and communicative testing) (Buck, 2001) both for the linguistic forms and comprehension. Many learners can easily find the meaning of the words and phrases from the dictionaries and recognize the linguistic form, but they cannot have a correct comprehension of the text. Therefore It is vitally important to give careful attention to this area, and need to build up skills of students in Japanese-Sinhala translation. The primary purpose of this study is to analyze what errors students make in their translations when they translate passages from Japanese into Sinhala by reviewing their translated sentences. The writing will be evaluated basically and the sentences with errors will be recorded to identify the types and frequency of errors. The main focus will be on the errors of ; use of words and expressions, use of suitable word order, use of suitable grammar, use of preposition, articles, use of tense and voice.