After literally decades of translating, and thinking (as customers and other obligations permitted) about why this translation was better than that, reading on the subject, and slowly developing my own criteria for what constitutes an acceptable translation and what does not, last week I finally received a copy of Umberto Eco's Mouse or Rat? Translation as Negotiation. It has been on my list of books to read for quite some time, but for reasons not terribly relevant sat moldering in the United States for several years until finally making its way to me.
Having read it, I am simultaneously in ecstasy and despair.
I happened to be "talking" with another friend in the translation business the other day (I say "talking" because we were actually emailing each other as time permitted, so a "conversation" might take half a day...), and we mentioned the words awe and wonder.
Translation is all about getting the idea across in another language, but it's not as simple as picking one word from column A and one to match it from column B. Many words are just packed full of cultural goodies that make it difficult to translate them smoothly. And especially if you're trapped in a situation like literature, where you can't get away with footnotes, or (even worse) in movie subtitles where you have only a few lines and five seconds to read them, you have to make some tough choices.
The right word can make such a difference in writing. Or in translation, of course. There's rather a big difference between "Four score and seven years ago" and "Eighty-seven years ago," isn't there? True, "score" was no doubt more commonly used then than it is now, but when we read that today we get quite a bit of peripheral baggage along with the number of years. The word "score" is relatively unused in this sense in modern English and imparts a heavier, more formal tone, as does the fact that the number is given as a "quantity and quantity" rather than the more prosaic "eighty-seven."
Well, that's one more thing I can cross of my list of things that have to be done right now: the cover art for the kaiki anthology series is finally settled, and well on its way toward completion. It took quite a while to get here, and I thought you might find it interesting. Solving problems like this is always interesting, true, but usually far more enjoyable after solving them than while you're trying to figure out what to do next...
Does anyone really know or care what the original language of a work was? There are actually quite a number of works translated from other languages into English, and in many cases (especially in the US) it doesn't actually say anywhere whether it was translated or not. The translator's name may be listed once inside, in small print, or not at all.
As someone who has made a living out of translation for over 25 years, this is rather distressing, to say the least...
Saturday I met with Tatsumi Takayuki, an old friend from Honyaku Benkyokai days in Tokyo and author of Full Metal Apache. We actually met to talk about the articles being written for the upcoming Rampo Reader, but talked about quite a number of things on the way: the possible content of Speculative Japan volume 2, a number of novels that should be considered for publication in the future, upcoming Poe Conferences in Japan and the US, important new books in the field by Sari Kawana and Mark Silver, and more. And then we touched on the deliberate mangling of Japanese works by translators.
When I was quite a bit younger, I didn't speak much of anything... I concentrated on the really important things in life like milk and diapers and chewing on my toes. But it didn't take me long to figure out that various noises could be really important, like warning me I was about to be picked up and have a bottle stuffed in my mouth.
Eventually I figured out that I could make similar noises, and it's been pretty busy since.
Having fallen behind on my reading, I had a chance this weekend to do some catching up... quite a stack to choose from, and instead of picking up one of those books just itching to be read, I happened to notice my copy of 光の帝国ー常野物語 (Hikari no Teikoku – Tokono Monogatari) by Onda Riku (恩田陸) jumping up and down, demanding to be read for at least the third time. Wimp that I am, I fell for it.
Sometimes I wish I could clone myself. There is simply so much to do and not enough time to get it done in. And that's just the things I really must do, not even including all the things I merely want to do. Work can really be all-consuming if you let it, and especially when you happen to enjoy the work you do.
Last week I flew up to Tokyo to meet with Fujisaki Shingo, to sign the contract for Crystal Silence. I read the book quite some time ago, as it was published in 1999 and was chosen as Best SF Novel of 1999 in the annual Hayakawa SF Magazine poll, but didn't have a chance to actually start talking to the author about possible publication until earlier this year.
Story evaluation and discussions are still under way for the second volume of our Speculative Japan series of science fiction in translation, but a number of things happened coincidentally and simultaneously to vastly accelerate our plans for a similar series of Chinese science fiction in English. It's still hard to tell, but it now looks quite possible that the first Chinese collection could come out before the second volume of Japanese stories!
September has come... this should be the middle of the typhoon season here, but the unusual weather worldwide seems to have come to Japan as well. It's unseasonally cool right now, and only a few scattered typhoons roaming around down south. The hotter seas down there will no doubt produce a whole series of whoppers for us later in the year. I can hardly wait.
How far can a translator go to achieve the ultimate goal of conveying the author's intent in another language? For that matter, how well does the translator (or the reader) understand the author's intent? James Joyce' Ulysses has been translated into a number of languages, but considering the range of opinion about what it means in English, it seems pretty clear that few, if any, of these translations actually have anything to do with what Joyce wanted to say.
Japanese, like all languages, is evolving. And, like most people who appreciate a language, I am not very happy about the changes. No doubt Urg and Og said the same thing back when somebody invented polysyllabic words. After all, I invested quite a bit of my life into learning Japanese and I hate to have it pulled out from under me now that I've finally gotten to the point when I can use it decently. (Yes, I know I invested more of my life into learning English, but that wasn't my decision now, was it?)
Japanese authors write for Japanese readers, and not surprisingly, English authors write for English-speaking readers. Authors of all sorts use the slang, the cultural references and the rich vocabulary of their native tongues. Quite a bit of what makes a piece of literature so interesting, however, is the unspoken cultural milieu behind it, and the translator can be faced with a real problem in how to render it in another language... or whether to render it at all.
I am supposed to be getting ready to go on my summer vacation... three glorious days of getting up early to hurry up and do things, but without the dogs scurrying around underfoot demanding that we do things for them instead of for us. Two of the three days are a weekend, but I suppose I can't complain.
In my last blog entry I ran on quite a bit about what I think translation is, or at least should be. I was delighted to find that I am not alone! I was equally delighted to see that some very talented people did a much better job of expressing what I was trying to say.
Once you've figured out what the author really wanted to say (which can be quite a learning experience all in itself), you have to figure out how to say it in translation. Since you (the reader) are probably an English speaker, most of this column will assume you are translating into English. That's quite convenient, because it's what I translate into, which means I have a better chance of actually knowing what I'm talking about.
I've had a few people ask me about what Kurodahan Press is trying to do. Some of them come from technical translation, and seem to have problems understanding that a dictionary and familiarity with field-specific jargon aren't sufficient. Some are monolingual English speakers, and wonder why the author said this instead of the more obvious that. And some just want to read a good story and wonder why I don't translate using Babelfish or whatever. I thought it might be a good time to explain what I think literary translation is.
Some time ago I was speaking to Asamatsu Ken, and he insisted that I read something by a new author, a woman named Takano Fumio (高野史緒), which is a pen-name, of course. He said he'd tell her to get in contact with me. That was fine; I already have a reading list at least a decade long, and adding another book or three to the stack would hardly make much difference.
Kurodahan Press currently exists as merely a division of Intercom, Ltd., and is growing slowly. It has considerable potential and a lot of very exciting things happening, but if more people were involved it could be so much better at achieving its mission of bringing East Asian literature to the English-speaking world.
The rainy season is here with a vengance... as I look out the window typing this, I can barely see the condos lurking out there, hidden behind sheets of rain. It's really time to take the dogs out for a walk, but in all that rain I don't think any of us would enjoy it very much. And while the dogs may be unhappy about missing their lunch walk, it does give me a chance to do my homework. It's a bit difficult to type with a cavalier spaniel on my lap (she's scared of thunder), though...
I just finished reading a fascinating short story by 山尾悠子 (Yamao Yūko), called 遠近法 ("Perspective").
June is finally here, and with it came a whole slew of activity at KHP. Like this blog, which I intend to issue regularly. And like the Kurodahan Press Translation Prize, which we have been planning for some time.