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I wrote a sentence that I was trying to mean "But, I don't know if it's
correct", and the Japanese person corrected it so this is the result:

> でも、これが正しい翻訳かはわからない

My best guess is that the particle か are there to create relative clauses
together with the topic particle. If so, what is the purpose of は here?
[Contradiction](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/47377/difference-
between-%E6%99%82%E3%81%AB-%E6%99%82%E3%81%AF-%E6%99%82%E3%81%AB%E3%81%AF)?
Formality?
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2018-09-13T23:49:48.090
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particles
What does かは mean?
According to "A Dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar", page 168, か is short
for かどうか which is a "marker for an embedded yes-no question". It can be
translated as "whether or not", "if or not".

Example (the terms in parenthesis can be omitted):

鈴木{すずき}さんが大学{だいがく}に入{はい}ったか(どうか)(は)知{し}らない。

I don't know whether or not Mr. Suzuki entered college.
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2018-09-15T17:50:31.273
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When your main concern is use of は, the problem is the same as the は-が problem
in general.

With は, it's a complete sentence by itself with topic これが正しい翻訳かは and comment
わからない.

Without it, it's an incomplete sentence on its own without topics and only
with comment これが正しい翻訳かわからない. Of course, however, people can guess what it's
telling about from context. For example, if the previous line is 情報が少なすぎる (we
have too little informaiton), a topic to be shared by the both lines will be,
say, これでは (at this rate) or so.

Besides the problem of topic, in other words, whether it functions as a
primary topic or not, は can imply the sense of "even **if** I know the others"
in the example that says you don't know one. (Note that not "though" but
"if".) This function is often called "contrast" or "contrastive marker は".

In addition, は can be added to a negative predicate like わからない just because
it's a negative redicate even if it's not a primary topic or contrastive.
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