Punctuation: dots below characters

[daofeishi]

I have just started reading 村上春树s 《天黑以后》. Several places in the book they use a kind of punctuation that I have never seen before. What do "full stop"-like dots below characters do? Are they there to add emphasis?

I can't add those dots on my computer, but to give an idea of where they put them I'll copy down some sentences and mark the places where they have put "lowered full stops" in bold. The sentences are taken out of context, so if no one knows what I'm talking about and you need more context and surrounding text to determine what it is, tell me.

都市发生的呜呜声作为通奏低音就在那里。

无论怎么叮嘱要咯嘣咯嘣的，却一次也没烤出那样的面包片，莫名其妙！

这就是知性好奇心？

玛丽做出那种事哪里晓得的神情。

[gato]

Can you post a picture or scanned copy? Some books use underline to indicate proper names, but that doesn't seem to be the case in your examples. And I've never seen Haruki Murakami use dotted underlines in other stories. I can't imagine the translator adding the punctuation with Murakami's consent. One possibility is that you have a bad pirated copy, and the dots are smudges from the printer. ;-)

[roddy]

See emphasis marks.

[chaiknees]

In the higher volumes of NPCR there appear these dots in the grammar section. If an example sentence is given, the dots are used to mark the word or phrase of which the grammar explanation is about. Just instead of bold typing for example.

[gato]

Does emphasis mark make sense for the words quoted above?

[gato]

It's possible that this version is translated from English, and italics in the original were all given the emphasis mark, which seems kind of inappropriate. The highlighted words above, for example, probably should be enclosed in quotes instead.

[roddy]

Wouldn't think so, the same method is used in 1Q84 and there isn't even an English version of that yet. And unless Daofeishi has picked up some very pirated copy, this will have been done from the Japanese.

Looks like Japanese does the same thing, but above the character. The filthy Bigendians.

[gato]

Mmm, Bigendians.

[daofeishi]

Thanks for all the replies.

The book is a good-quality copy from 上海译文出版社, so there are no printing artifacts. I first thought that the dots must be emphasis marks, and that explanation is still the most likely one. The only thing is, the emphasis marks are used very liberally, and sometimes they don't seem to make sense, like the mark below 回收 on the first page that I've attached. It's also strange that there are no similar emphasis marks (like boldface or italics) in the English and Norwegian translations of the book.

[imron]

What's interesting is that in those two pages, the dots appear the first time the word appears on the page, but not the second time (all of the dotted words appear again shortly afterwards).

[bob22222]

I've been wondering about this too....

I've only ever come across these dots in 村上春树's books, and they seem to be there no matter who the translator is, which makes me think that it is probably from the original Japanese version. I've asked some Chinese friends before and no one seems to have any clue. Seem that they don't appear in translations of other Japanese books either.... I've tired reading the translators intros at the front of the books, but no explanation of them.

Just seems really weird, I guess emphasis is the most likely explanation, but I've also seen the use of bold and larger font sizes in 村上春树's books for emphasis, so still not very clear on the matter...

[aristotle1990]

Here's another example I came across today -- I assume the point of the emphasis marks here is to mark the incorrect portions of the sentence.

[daofeishi]

What is wrong about "自古以来"? :blink:

Edit: Oh wait, never mind. It can't be used in that context.

[roddy]

Just come across the name for these - 着重号。 I also now find I can add them in Word (2010) under the font pane. Wonder what happens if I paste them in here:

着重号 hello

Oh well.

[imron]

Well, once we have a name, we can also find a usage. According to the 中华人民共和国国家标准《标点符号用法》, the dots should be used to draw the reader's attention to a specific character, word or sentence: 要求读者特别注意的字、词、句，用着重号标明。

I'm guessing the book in question that spawned this thread has it's own thoughts about which words were important and so used the dots in those circumstances.