Library and Information Science

An experimental study was carried out to obtain the information about the influence on the translated sentences of the subject knowledge. Two groups, with and without subject background, were to translate from English into Japanese, two sorts of chemical document, one of which was a textbook used in technical institutes, and the other was a technical paper from a chemical journal. Those who have some background translated more than those without, in the journal article, but produced more errors. The difference was found in the quality of errors between two groups of translators, in the textbook sentences. Those who have some background made errors in lexical level, and those without in syntactic level. The tendency was observed that those who have no subject background would translate into explanative Japanese.