I do not know much about textual differences in various foreign language translations of TBOTNS. In fact, I know practically nil.
However, I do know this: the first volume of the Japanese translation has a lot of editorial footnotes on certain words. I have not seen any of the other volumes, so my guess might be wildly wrong (and, to anticipate the next question, the answer is no, I have not read the entire volume of Japanese--I barely thrashed my way through several of the footnotes), but my guess is that the footnotes were cribbed from "Words Weird and Wonderful" in CASTLE OF THE OTTER (now aka CASTLE OF DAYS), and as a result I suppose that later volumes did not have such footnotes. The footnotes in first volume act as a pair of training wheels, it seems to me, preparing the reader to go on without them--a neat trick, I think, in theory at least.
But I could be wrong, and if I am, then a lexicon existed in Japanese before I ever set out to write one in English. (Even so: the task of translating such a wordlist from Japanese back into English . . . well, it would be a job bigger than writing one's own lexicon. Or so it seems to me.)
I wonder if any other translations adopted this clever strategy?
=mantis=
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