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すでに入出国の記録も抹消するよう、　手配してあります。

I know that verbs, nouns, and adjectives can qualify nouns in Japanese via qualifying phrases, and I'm assuming that's what's going on with '入出国'. Broken down, the individual kanji mean the following:

入 - 'to enter, etc'

出国 - 'departure from a country' (according to https://jisho.org/search/出国)

Would a translation of 'entering from a country' work in terms of keeping the qualifying aspect of the original, or am I wrong with my assumption that '入出国' is a qualifier phrase in the first place?

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Your parsing is a little confused. :)

入出国 is not 入 + 出国, but rather 入出 + 国. An alternative way of looking at this is 入国 + 出国.

Note also that the key noun in the relevant phrase is 記録 as the object of the verb 抹消する. 入出国 describes what kind of 記録.

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  • How can you tell 入出国 is 入出 + 国 and not something else? I'm trying to understand your reason for parsing it that way... So then a better translation would be literally "input-output country" for the kanji, or in proper English I guess it would be something along the lines of "immigration", then add the 記録 to make "documents of Immigration/Immigration documents"?
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Apr 28, 2019 at 20:23
  • @Toyu_Frey: "How can you tell 入出国 is 入出 + 国 and not something else?" -- Because 入 + 出国 isn't a sensible collocation. Because 入 + 出国 doesn't make sense. I wouldn't say "input/output", since that sounds like computers. Also, 入国 = immigration (coming in, entering), 出国 = emigration (going out, exiting). FWIW, even the signage at Narita has that wrong, where the airport authorities have mistakenly translated 出国 as "immigration".
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 15:58
  • Then what does 入出国の記録 mean, if not literally "Documents of inOutCountry", which I think means "immigration documents", in the above context?
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 20:03
  • @Toyu_Frey: Various points. 記録 is more like "a record, a note that something happened", rather than "documents". 入出国 as 入国 + 出国 is not "input/output", but rather "entering and leaving a country". Thinking it through further, rather that most such events occur as a result of travel rather than changing one's residence, "immigration" and "emigration" also don't apply very well strictly speaking, since "travel" != "migration". See also en.wiktionary.org/wiki/immigration, for example. So as a whole, I might render 入出国の記録 as "records of entering and leaving the country". Does that help?
    – Eiríkr Útlendi
    Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 20:38
  • Utlendi Yeah, it does help a bit, although a native English speaker would most likely say "Already arrangements to locate his immigration documents are underway, in addition to a method of erasure." for a translation of the above sentence, instead of “Already arrangements to locate his documents of entering and leaving the country are underway, in addition to a method of erasure. " (Plus the 'leaving the country' part does not make sense, seeing as how the character in question is entering America for the first time and has not left, and therefore would have no record of leaving.)
    – Toyu_Frey
    Commented Apr 29, 2019 at 22:44

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