Translating without the use of pronouns

Question

I saw this sentence in my review today:

母はいつも、単身赴任中の父のことを案じている。

No pronouns, but easy to understand. One way of translating this sentence would be

My mom (A) is always worried about my father (B) moving away for work.

In other words, there is a first person talking about (A) and (B). Now, what if the sentence was written this way:

My mom is always worried about her husband moving away for work.

The meaning is still the same, but this time, instead of showing how the first person is related to (A) AND (B), it shows first person's relationship to (A), then (A)'s relationship to (B). Thanks to the use of pronouns, ambiguity is avoided. Japanese has a tendency to avoid pronouns as much as possible, so I think this sentence doesn't sound natural:

母はいつも、単身赴任中の彼女の夫のことを案じている。

母 can be repeated twice to remove ambiguity but it sounds awkward.

母はいつも、単身赴任中の母の夫のことを案じている。

Is there a way to translate the sentence "My mom is always worried about her husband moving away for work." without using pronouns?

Answer 1

This speaker is calling his/her own father 母の夫 or 彼女の夫, but it sounds really awkward at least in Japanese. While it's grammatical, the listener will probably think the speaker has some complicated reason not to call his/her own father father.

The first sentence looks perfectly natural and there is almost no ambiguity. If you really care, you can make it more explicit simply by saying 母はいつも、単身赴任中の私の父のことを案じている. As you know, we do not say 私の commonly in Japanese, but it's still much better than saying 母の夫.

In rare cases where your mother is worried about your grandfather, you can say something like 母はいつも、まだ現役で単身赴任中の祖父のことを案じている.