Nuance

    In Japanese, the nuance of "I think he is not coming." and "I do not think he is coming." are slightly different. I believe it's the same in English. The former one is you can also say "I guess he is not coming.", and the latter "I believe he is not coming." I have never lived abroad, so I am not sure whether these difference are correct, but I can feel some of them.

    I occasionally translated an English website into a Japanese one as a volunteer for a few years, then I found a lot of difficulties. One of them was the technical words. It was a website for music, and I knew some words for it, but I did not know enough to write the Japanese articles. So sometimes I had to check some Japanese music websites to find what kind of words were used.

    Translating English into Japanese is not easy because sometimes they include special expressions such as idioms or old sayings, or thoughts with religions or cultures. I could use my words for it, but 'my words' led readers in different direction because of the meaning of their words depended on their feelings.

    As I first wrote, I can feel differences between two sentences in the above, but it depends on my feeling. But if I keep writing and try reading articles, I would be able to become closer to their original intentions.