Translating animal names : The case of the Japanese TANUKI

A funny furry critter walks the shady forest floors of the Japanese archipelago in search of insects, mice and frogs. It is such a common sight that the natives dubbed its kind with the name of tanuki. Now the tanuki makes an interesting case for discussing of the principles and problems of translating zoonyms into other languages. Unlike unicorns, tanuki do exist in nature, so that on the basis of their observable properties a culture can group them into a single animal species. However, their original areal of diffusion is such that Western European people hardly have any acquaintance with them, and their languages have no word for ‘tanuki’. For the names of unknown animals like the tanuki a number of translational or referential strategies exist, and I will discuss, compare and assess them by means of a simplified version of the mental-file framework developed within the domain of the philosophy of language. The scientific binomial Nyctereutes procyonoides can be used, thus adopting a metalanguage expressly devised as to be shared across all cultures and languages. This strategy, however, assumes that the receiver already holds the Linnean name as a mental file header or as an alternate name for a known object. The description ‘raccoon dog’ is the most attested translation, thereby asking the receiver to start a new mental file headed by a tiny segment of its content, the information that the tanuki is a canid resembling a raccoon. Similarly, when the Japanese word tanuki is borrowed, a new mental file must be started, this time empty and with a completely opaque label. ‘Raccoon’ is also attested, thus bridging the two knowledge systems by referring to an animal which shares outlook and ecology with the tanuki. Finally, even ‘badger’ occurs in authoritative texts, causing the same zoological error as ‘raccoon’. Here the translation obtains through reference to a carnivore not even of the same family as the tanuki, but supposedly bearing the same folkloric role of shapeshifting trickster.