The other day we had a telephone call from a man whose wife was going to have a baby.
This sentence was changed on Tatoeba, it now reads:
I understand 奥さん is needed in this context, but I have an easier time translating the current version, but I still have difficulties interpreting sentences containing という.
Is there a reason for the other changes in the sentence? Was the original that unnatural?
Good question! There are currently three different versions of Japanese translation from the English sentence on Tatoeba. However, all of them sound unnatural due to the difference in word order in the two languages. It’s a typical amateur mistake.
A1 – ID: #1143864 (initial = Clozemaster version): 先日私たちのところに、もうすぐ子供がうまれそうな妻を持つ男性からの電話があった。
A2 – ID: #1143864 (updated by the author = current Tatoeba version): 先日私たちのところに、奥さんがもうすぐ子供産むという男性からの電話があった。
B – ID: #1143861 (alternative posted by the same author of A1 and A2): 先日私たちは、間もなくお子さんが生まれる奥さんをお持ちの男性から電話をいただきました。
C – ID: #141459 (Tanaka Corpus version imported to Tatoeba): 先日私達のところに、奥さんに赤ん坊が生まれかけている男の人から電話がかかってきました。
Before taking @mike-lima 's questions, let me give you more natural Japanese sentence:
MsFixer’s alternative: 先日私達のところに、もうすぐ子供が生まれそうな女性の夫から電話がかかってきました。(pronunciation: じょせいのおっと)
The word order in English is “…call from a man whose wife was…” A man is first introduced, and his wife is second in English.
On the other hand, 女性の夫から in Japanese introduce a woman first, and then her husband second. This implies that the purpose of the call is related to childbirth. The central topic of the call is not about the guy.
But the three (or four) on Tatoeba sound unnatural because they throw 妻 or 奥さん out of the blue without introducing who the husband is. Japanese always gives the general outline of information first, and then adds more details in order to narrow down the context. 女性 (woman) is more general term than someone’s 妻/奥さん (wife). That’s why I translate the English sentence as 女性の夫 in Japanese rather than 妻/奥さんを持つ男性.
Back to mike-lima’s questions.
This article explains the difference between 妻 and 奥さん.
妻 is the most standard reference term for a married woman. Japanese family laws and newspapers use 妻 but never use 奥さん or 嫁. 妻 can be used by her husband or by a third person. If 妻 is used by a third person, it’s like descriptive from a neutral standing point.
奥さん is a casual form of 奥様（おくさま）. 奥様 is used when a third person refers to a wife of someone in a senior or honorable position, or when the conversation or writing is formal. If someone’ wife passed away, you should definitely use 奥様 rather than 奥さん. 奥さん, on the other hand, can be used when a third person and a wife’s husband are in the same social status, or in a casual conversation (even between a male boss and his subordinate). Because of the casual use of 奥さん, some native Japanese speakers say 私の奥さん or うちの奥さん to refer to their wives. But it’s a misuse and such a speaker is regarded as an uneducated person.
So, if you want to say “a woman whose husband was injured called an ambulance”, it should be 怪我をした男性の妻が救急車を呼びました in a newspaper article. Don’t say 怪我をした夫を持つ女性が救急車を呼びました. If you replace 男性の妻 with 男性の奥さん, it’s like an oral testimony from an eyewitness (i.e. the eyewitness feels sorry for the injury, the term 奥さん expresses a sympathetic feeling of the eyewitness.)
～という literally means “it is told that” (i.e. hearsay information). Sentence A1 on Tatoeba without ～という implies that “we” and the couple were already acquainted and we had knew the fact that she was pregnant. Sentence A2 with ～という suggests that “we” learned the fact of pregnancy when we got a phone call from the husband.
I guess the author (bunbuku) replaced A1 with A2 because 妻を持つ男性 sounds very robotic word-for-word translation. It even implies that his wife is the guy’s possessional item (i.e. a bit misogynistic.) To avoid such a political incorrectness, bunbuku changed the sentence structure by inserting ～という.