The Specificity of English

This week I started my new job, which sometimes requires me to translate things from Japanese to English, and while I did this a lot in college and when I lived in Japan, this is the first time I've really thought about how vague Japanese can be.

Now, this isn't news to any student of Japanese, but the process becomes a lot harder when you're doing it for a job and not for a grade; people now rely on the information of my translations.

For example, the overuse of his, her and they can cause confusion in English, which is the last thing you want to do for your readers. In Japanese, however, vagueness becomes an art form. I just hope that my translating and reacquaintance with the language doesn't affect my English writing ability. In addition to the vagueness of Japanese, the sentence structure is different, with the verb usually falling at the end of a sentence. My English abilities suffered when I lived in Japan, I just hope it doesn't happen here, in the US too!