78764
I saw this sentence in my review today:

> 母はいつも、単身赴任中の父のことを案じている。

No pronouns, but easy to understand. One way of translating this sentence
would be

> My mom (A) is always worried about my father (B) moving away for work.

In other words, there is a first person talking about (A) and (B). Now, what
if the sentence was written this way:

> My mom is always worried about her husband moving away for work.

The meaning is still the same, but this time, instead of showing how the first
person is related to (A) AND (B), it shows first person's relationship to (A),
then (A)'s relationship to (B). Thanks to the use of pronouns, ambiguity is
avoided. Japanese has a tendency to avoid pronouns as much as possible, so I
think this sentence doesn't sound natural:

> 母はいつも、単身赴任中の彼女の夫のことを案じている。

母 can be repeated twice to remove ambiguity but it sounds awkward.

> 母はいつも、単身赴任中の母の夫のことを案じている。

Is there a way to translate the sentence "My mom is always worried about her
husband moving away for work." without using pronouns?
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-25T02:35:49.853
78763
2020-07-25T06:33:41.067
2020-07-25T04:50:14.997
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question
translation pronouns
Translating without the use of pronouns
This speaker is calling his/her own father 母の夫 or 彼女の夫, but it sounds really
awkward at least in Japanese. While it's grammatical, the listener will
probably think the speaker has some complicated reason not to call his/her own
father father.

The first sentence looks perfectly natural and there is almost no ambiguity.
If you really care, you can make it more explicit simply by saying
母はいつも、単身赴任中の **私の** 父のことを案じている. As you know, we do not say 私の commonly in
Japanese, but it's still much better than saying 母の夫.

In rare cases where your mother is worried about your grandfather, you can say
something like 母はいつも、まだ現役で単身赴任中の祖父のことを案じている.
CC BY-SA 4.0
2020-07-25T06:21:05.603
78764
2020-07-25T06:33:41.067
2020-07-25T06:33:41.067
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78763
answer