Given the structural differences between English and Japanese, some Japanese speakers may have great difficulty in developing the level of English writing skills that is expected of them. We list the most common errors made by our clients here.

I.Articles

II.Comma

III.Hyphens and dashes

IV.Tense

V.Word Choice

VI.Apostrophe

I.Articles

Japanese authors tend to make mistakes in article usage. Errors in the use of the definite article are particularly common. This is not surprising, as the Japanese language does not have an article system; therefore, the Japanese author lacks a point of reference for inserting articles. This substantiates the need for our translators to check whether the article usage is correct and consistent throughout a document and rectify the same.

II.Comma

Overuse of commas is another major issue. Refer to The Chicago Manual of Style (CMOS) for guidance on comma usage.

III.Hyphens and dashes

Check for consistent and correct use of hyphens and dashes. These punctuation marks appear as follows: hyphen (-), en dash (–), and em dash (—). Typically, a hyphen is used to join words of unequal importance (e.g., fluorescein-labelled conjugates). An en dash is used to join words of equal importance (e.g., electron–phonon interaction), to denote ranges (e.g., 2–5 years, January–April), and to connect words that already have a hyphen (e.g., quasi–one-dimensional). An em dash is most commonly used to set off parenthetical text, to indicate a sudden break in thought—a parenthetical statement like this one—or an open range (such as “John Doe, 1987—”). Please consult CMOS for further guidelines on usage of hyphens and dashes. In addition, to denote subtraction and negative numbers, please use the minus symbol (−), which can be inserted from MS Word’s symbol list [Character code 2212, Unicode (hex)].

IV.Tense

In scientific writing, several tenses are used for various purposes. For example, the past tense is used for reporting studies done in the past (Dhanoya et al. determined the atomic weight of edisensium using the chemical method); present tense is used for stating scientific facts (The atomic weight of edisensium is 203); and future tense is used to state what is expected to occur (The use of edisensium will solve the energy crisis).

A common error is the use of was/were vs. has been/have been. The former are used to describe an event in the past (Edisensium was discovered in 2006) whereas the latter are used to describe events that happened at an unspecified time before now (Many researchers have been studying the properties of edisensium).

A good explanation of tense usage with visual timeline is given here:

http://www.learnenglish.de/grammar/tensepastcont.htm 

Note that native English speakers probably find this distinction intuitive, so we should be alert to context clues that a “simple past” tense may be technically correct but is used incorrectly with an event whose continual nature is important to the logic of the article’s argument.

V.Word Choice

Non-native speakers sometimes use a word that sounds similar to but has completely different meaning than the intended word. Spell checkers will not catch such errors; therefore, you will need to pay careful attention to such word usage problems.

VI.Apostrophe

The apostrophe is mainly used to indicate possession. Read carefully to avoid instances where it is used after plurals. Also note that there should be no apostrophe in terms such as 1920s and 1930s.

Some helpful resources on English language usage by Japanese speakers

http://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/japanese.htm for differences between the Japanese and English language systems

http://www.jref.com/japanese for general reference on Japanese

http://humanities.byu.edu/elc/Teacher/japanesestudents.html for challenge faced by Japanese students writing in English

http://www.f.waseda.jp/vicky/students/help/mistakes/mistakes.html for word usage errors made by Japanese students