New Voices in Translation Studies, an online journal published by IATIS has a new issue up.  In it are a number of interesting articles, including one on Japanese translations of teen fiction, including Harry Potter. 

ARTICLES

When Skopos Meets Logical Meaning in a Korean Bible Translation: implications of using clause combination as an analytic tool

Gyung Hee Choi, University of New South Wales, AUSTRALIA

[Abstract] [Article]

1-20

Contrasting Visual and Verbal Cueing of Space: strategies and devices in the audio description of film

Maija Hirvonen, University of Helsinki, FINLAND

[Abstract] [Article]

21-43

IPCITI 2010 Proceedings

Creating Personae: the translator’s afterword in Japanese translations of teen fiction

Isabelle Bilodeau, Nagoya University, JAPAN

[Abstract] [Article]

44-65

Online Paratexts and the Challenges of Translators’ Visibility: a case of women translators of the Quran

Rim Hassen, University of Cambridge, U.K.

[Abstract] [Article]

66-81

Found in Translation: Franco-Irish translation relationships in nineteenth-century Ireland

Michèle Milan, Dublin City University, IRELAND

[Abstract] [Article]

82-98

Publishing Contemporary Foreign Poetry in Post-War Italy: a Bourdieusian perspective on Mondadori and Scheiwiller

Mila Milani, University of Manchester, U.K.

[Abstract] [Article]

99-114

Translating the Greek Civil War: Alexandros Kotzias and the translator’s multiple habitus

Kalliopi Pasmatzi, University of Manchester, U.K.

[Abstract] [Article]

115-131

Co-constructing Dyadic Sequences in Healthcare Interpreting: a multimodal account

Sergio Pasquandrea, Università per Stranieri di Perugia, ITALY

[Abstract] [Article]

132-157

Chasing Ricoeur: in pursuit of the translational paradigm

Deborah M. Shadd, University of Ottawa, CANADA

[Abstract] [Article]

158-169

Translating the Author-Function: the (re)narration of Christa Wolf

Caroline Summers, University of Manchester, U.K.

[Abstract] [Article]

170-187

THESES ABSTRACTS

(This section contains abstracts of recently submitted PhD theses.)

Dialogue interpreting as intercultural mediation: integrating talk and gaze in the analysis of mediated parent-teacher meetings

Elena Davitti, University of Manchester, U.K.

[Abstract]

Translation in Lydia Davis’s Work

Jonathan Evans, University of Portsmouth, U.K.

[Abstract]

Between Irony and Humor: a pragmatic model based on textual analyses of literary works and their translations

Galia Hirsch, Bar Ilan University, ISRAEL

[Abstract]

Translating Conceptual Metaphor from English into Indonesian: a case study of translating economics textbooks

Karnedi, Indonesia Open University, INDONESIA

[Abstract]

Translating World-View: representational hybridity in Anglophone Nigerian narrative fiction

Susanne Klinger, University of East Anglia, U.K.

[Abstract]

Displacing the Mask: Jorge Luis Borges and the translation of narrative

Leah Leone, University of Wisconsin, U.S.A.

[Abstract]

Procedures and Strategies in the Translation into Malay of Cultural Elements of Rihlat Ibn Battuta

Idris Mansor, Universiti Sains Malaysia, MALAYSIA

[Abstract]

Contrastive and Translation Analyses of Medical Texts (English-Spanish): the Case Report genre

Carlos Arturo Muñoz Torres, Universidad Autónoma de Manizales, COLOMBIA

[Abstract]

Cultural and Textual Properties in the Translation and Interpretation of Allusions: an analysis of allusions in Dorothy L. Sayers’ detective novels translated into Finnish in the 1940s and the 1980s

Minna Ruokonen, University of Eastern Finland, FINLAND

[Abstract]

A Comparative Study of Gender Representations in Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and its Chinese Translation

Wing Bo Tso, Chu Hai College of Higher Education, Hong Kong, CHINA

[Abstract]

Translation: Unlocking the Mystique of Change – a theoretical experiment on “translation” as “postcolonial identity” in cultural globalization, with a case study on Hong Kong postcoloniality through the Infernal Affairs film series

Cynthia Sau-kuen Tsui, University of Warwick, U.K.

[Abstract]

H.D. and the Translation of Classical Greek Literature

Jennifer Varney, University Rovira i Virgili, SPAIN

[Abstract]

Lu Xun’s Fiction in English Translation: the early years

Baorong Wang, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, CHINA

[Abstract]

三好達治 MIYOSHI Tatsuji (1900-1964)
「家庭」Household

Household

家庭

息子が学校へ上るので
親父は毎日詩(うた)を書いた
詩は帽子やランドセルや
教科書やクレイヨンや
小さな蝙蝠傘になった
四月一日
桜の花の咲く町を
息子は母親につれられて
古いお城の中にある
国民学校第一年の
入学式に出かけていった
静かになった家の中で
親父は年とつた女中と二人
久しぶりできくやうに
鵯どりのなくのをきいてゐた
海の鳴るのをきいてゐた

From YOTSUMOTO Yasuhiro’s introduction for Poetry International Web

To many Japanese baby-boomers who were born within a decade or so after the end of World War II, Tatsuji Miyoshi was the national poet, and his works appeared in their textbooks almost every school year. Those poems were perfect for classroom teaching: short and handsome, simple yet profound…

　　　Those were the days shortly after the poet’s death in 1964 at the age of 64. Nowadays, unfortunately, Tatsuji Miyoshi is not heard about so often, although his collected poems are still in print in several editions and there is even a poetry award commemorating his work. Most contemporary poets seem to consider him a poet of the past, whose poems might have played fine emotional tunes at the time, but lacked social and historical awareness. The fact that, during the war, Miyoshi wrote poems in moral support of the soldiers on the frontlines, if not for the regime itself, must have been partly responsible for such a view.

　　　But if you set aside the ideological judgments and appreciate the landscapes of Tatsuji Miyoshi’s poetry as they are, you will find an extraordinarily wide range of styles and extremely sophisticated techniques, which few poets today can match…

　　　The reader of his work feels as though they had known him personally, and it is his compassion more than anything else that is so touching. Tatsuji Miyoshi is a poet of attachment as opposed to detachment: he reduces the distance between himself and his object, whether it be a human being or nature, until they become one. His songs are born in that moment of togetherness. And yet, “being a poet”, as he wrote in ‘The Shore of the Sky’, he is also a traveller at heart: he moves on, trying to see beyond, “blinking it eyes at the scent of the tides, chasing after clouds that fly away” (from ‘The Lamb’). Tatsuji Miyoshi travelled rather hastily through the most violent and tragic period in the Japanese history. But he has left behind him the songs which are to stay with us for a long time.

MIYAZAWA Kenji 宮沢賢治 (1896-1933)
“Strong in the Rain” 「雨ニモマケズ」

This poem is probably the most well known, most often memorized poem in contemporary Japan.  It was discovered in the notebook of the great and wildly imaginative poet and writer MIYAZAWA Kenji upon his death.  Although there are relatively few translations of his work into English, he is currently one of the most beloved authors of early twentieth-century Japan. 

Miyazawa was from Iwate 岩手, one of the regions most devastated by the March 11, 2011 earthquake.  This film was created after the earthquake as a way of encouraging Japan in its recovery.  Reading the poem is the actor WATANABE Ken 渡辺謙.  Although the Chinese viewer who added the translation did not acknowledge the translator in the film, this appears to be Rodger Pulver’s translation. 

In celebration of National Poetry Month 2012

TANAKA Atsusuke 田中宏輔 is a Japanese poet, born and raised in the ancient capital of Kyoto, where he still lives and works as a high school mathematics teacher.  Tanaka has published seven volumes of poetry in Japanese, including an ongoing experimental series of postmodern poems called The Wasteless Land, which draws inspiration and quotations from wide array of sources ranging from pop music to classical Western and Japanese literature.

Sadness


1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… ＝ 1 

1 ＝ 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… 

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… ＝ 1 

1 ＝ 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… 

Half+half of a half+half of a half of a half+half of a half of a half of a half+…… ＝1 

1＝half+half of a half+half of a half of a half+half of a half of a half of a half+……
Half+half of a half+half of a half of a half+half of a half of a half of a half+…… ＝1 

1＝half+half of a half+half of a half of a half+half of a half of a half of a half+……
Therefore, take half of sadness and treat it not as sadness.

Treat the half of the sadness that remains as something else.  

The half of the half of the sadness that remains is something else yet again.
Repeat this, and sadness becomes something else again, ad infinitum.

Yet even so, the thing that remains is the same as at the start,

The same single sadness from which it all began.

        — Translation by Jeffrey Angles

        Published in Inventory, No. 2 (2011)

悲しみ



1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… ＝ 1 

1 ＝ 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… 

1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + …… ＝ 1
１ ＝ 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + 1/16 + 1/32 + 1/64 + ……
半分+半分の半分+半分の半分の半分+半分の半分の半分の半分+…… ＝ １ 

１＝半分+半分の半分+半分の半分の半分+半分の半分の半分の半分+…… 

半分+半分の半分+半分の半分の半分+半分の半分の半分の半分+…… ＝ １ 

１＝半分+半分の半分+半分の半分の半分+半分の半分の半分の半分+…… 

だから、悲しみの半分を悲しみではないものにする。 

残った半分の悲しみの半分をほかのものにする。

さらに残った半分の半分の悲しみの半分をほかのものにする。 

これを繰り返して、悲しみを限りなくほかのものにする。 

それなのに、残ったものは、最初にあったものと同じもの、 

同じひとつの悲しみであった。

      「The Wastleless Land VI」(2011)より

In celebration of National Poetry Month 2012

TANAKA Yōsuke (1969- ) is a research scientist specializing in molecular cell biology at the University of Tokyo.  He is also the author of two books of poetry, A Day When the Mountains are Visible 『山が見える日に、』 (1999) and Sweet Ultramarine Dreams 『スウィートな群青の夢』(2008), which display an unique poetic voice, rich in stylistic diversity, humor, and poetic resonance.  YOTSUMOTO Yasuhiro wrote on Poetry International Web, that Tanaka “casually introduces elements from the past or from other poetic forms such as tanka, combining them with a 21st-century sensitivity to create something extraordinary which is simultaneously old and new, traditional and experimental, lyrical and critical.”

The Station to Spring

I screw up my face against the oncoming wind
Which carries my feet to the left and the right
I climb the slopes to the plateau
Just barely managing to hold back
Everything brimming inside me

I had been dreaming of a partially underground movie theater
Swallowing the audience members like a rectangular mouth
Feathers sprouting from an elevator car
And scattering like dandelions in April

A warm café, I hope for
A café on this street
On the rocks, sir?
A deep sleep.

In the darkness
The orange juice glows.
It seems to shine from within.
The station to spring is near.

——Translation by Jeffrey Angles, reprinted from Poetry International Web 

春の駅

顔がくしゃくしゃになる逆風に
右へ左へと足を取られながら
台地の坂を上がる
内面があふれ出しそうなのを
ようやく圧しとどめて

四角い口のように観客を呑み込んでいく
半地下の映画館
エレベータに羽が生え
四月のタンポポのように飛ぶ夢だった

あたたかなカフェあれ、この
道ばたに一軒のカフェあれかしと願う
ロックでいいですか？
深く眠る。

闇のなかで
オレンジジュースが光る。
自分から光っているように感じられる。
春の駅は近い。

 ――『スウィートな群青の夢』(2008年未知谷)

In celebration of National Poetry Month 2012

高橋睦郎の英訳の表紙（近刊）
ミネソタ大学出版部（2012年秋予定）

In fall 2012, University of Minnesota Press will be publishing two books by one of Japan’s most important poets, TAKAHASHI Mutsuo 高橋睦郎.  One is my translation of Twelve Views from the Distance 『十二の遠景』, a sumptuously beautiful book first published in 1970.  This book describes Takahashi’s troubled, impoverished early life in rural, southern Japan and the ways that his family’s fortunes intersected with the rise of the Japanese empire and World War II. Takahashi’s friend, the novelist MISHIMA Yukio 三島由紀夫, lauded the book with these words.  

It is magnificent that in this book, Twelve Views from the Distance, the poet Mutsuo Takahashi has managed to achieve firm prose that, while unmistakably the work of a poet, shines with a black luster much like a set of drawers crafted by a master of old. This book is a magnificent collection of sensations and of memories, much like the toys we might find in a dark closet.

The other forthcoming book by Takahashi is a reissue of Hiroaki Sato’s translation Poems of a Penisist, which brings together much of Takahashi’s most important early poetry, much of which deals with existentialist themes and homoerotic material.  This collection includes the long poem Ode (頌 Homeuta), which the publisher Winston Leyland has called “the great gay poem of the 20th century.” It is said that Allen Ginsberg was so impressed by this collection of poetry that he personally lobbied Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books to publish more of Takahashi’s work. 

震災一周忌イベントでの日本現代詩の英訳の朗読
（平田俊子、ジェフリー・アングルス、谷川俊太郎）

From the WMU Soga Japan Center webpage

On March 11, 2011, a devastating earthquake struck northeastern Japan triggering a massive tsunami and the now infamous meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant. One year later, on March 27, 2012, the Consulate General of Japan in Detroit held a memorial service at the Michigan State Capital’s Rotunda to commemorate the lives that had been lost and to showcase recovery efforts in the devastated region of Japan.

Dr. Jeffrey Angles, the director of Western Michigan University’s Soga Japan Center and an associate professor of Japanese, appeared alongside the Consul General of Japan Kuninori Matsuda, the mayor of Lansing Virg Bernero, and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder at the memorial service. 

The Consul General Kuninori Matsuda (in photo below, at right) extended a special invitation to Angles, who was in Japan during the earthquake and lived through all the anxiety that followed, because over the last year Angles has translated and published numerous poems written by various poets about their experiences during and after the March 11 disasters.  For his contribution to the memorial service, he read English translations of three poems. 

The first, “Do Not Tremble,” was written by the feminist poet Toshiko Hirata during a time when the aftershocks were still rolling through northeastern Japan.  The second, “Thoughts Before a Blackout,” which Angles originally composed in Japanese, was written during the rolling blackouts and frightening uncertainty that followed the aftermath of the disasters.  The third, “Words,” was by Japan’s most popular poet, Shuntarō Tanikawa and optimistically describes the power of language and communication in helping to overcome the trauma of the disasters. The final poem appears in the newly published collection March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown. 

The memorial service was attended by about two hundred people.  Afterward, numerous people approached Angles to tell him how moved they were by the poems he read.

“One person told me that he especially appreciated them since the other speakers had emphasized the infrastructural and economic devastation of the disasters,” Angles said. “That listener told me he felt it was the poems that really gave the most dramatic, human face to what had happened. It was also wonderful to hear that ordinary Michigan residents, including elementary school students, had donated $268,000 to the Japanese Consulate’s office for the recovery efforts.” 

“The 3/11 disasters seem to have changed the way that many Japanese people think about their own lives,” Angles said.  “Many people lost their lives. It will be probably be well over a decade before northeastern Japan has fully recovered.  Our thoughts are with the people of northeastern Japan as they rebuild.” 

伊藤比呂美 Itō Hiromi “Yakisoba”
ウェスタン・ミシガン大学での朗読会、2012年2月22日
Reading at Western Michigan University, February 22, 2012

This film shows the Japanese poet Itō Hiromi reading her poem “Yakisoba” at Western Michigan University on February 22, 2012. The translation is by Jeffrey Angles and Sara Nishi, and it was first published in the online issue of Granta. The poem will appear in Ito’s next collection of poetry, tentatively entitled 『テリトリー論３』 (On Territory 3).

“Cat is watching even your personal life —The Bible.”

By blocking out a couple of strokes in the character meaning “God” 神, some mischievous person turned the character into the word that means “cat” ネコ, giving a whole new meaning to this sign, hanging outside of the house of some Christian believer in Japan.

The always fascinating online journal of international literature, Words Without Borders, has just published two of my translations of poems about the 3.11 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in Japan.  Words Without Borders published these in commemoration of the first anniversary of the Japanese earthquake. 

One of the poems, “Noisy Animals” 「うるさい動物」 is by the young poet OHSAKI Sayaka 大崎清夏, and the other “Do Not Tremble” 「ゆれるな」is by HIRATA Toshiko 平田俊子.  These poems show two profoundly different emotional reactions to the 3.11 disasters. 

Ohsaki Sayaka (1982-) was featured in the journal Yuriika (Eureka) as one of the newest, rising stars of the Japanese poetic world.  She describes herself as a “badger-like girl that lives in Tokyo,” making books, writing poems, and staying in constant motion. Her first collection of poetry, a slim book entitled Jimen (Ground), was recently published. 

Hirata Toshiko (1955-) is a prominent Japanese poet and novelist.  During the 1980s, she, along with Itō Hiromi, emerged as one of the foremost voices so-called “women’s boom” of poetry.  Her poetry is known for its directness and black humor.  In the last decade, she has increasingly turned to writing novels, which often feature ordinary people in bizarre circumstances that lead them to question the traditional family system and the spots allotted to them in society.

『三月は毛糸でできていた』震災文学集（英訳）

One year after the March 11, 2011 earthquake that destroyed much of northeastern Japan, editors David Karashima and Elmer Luke have put together a stunning collection of translations of fiction, poetry, and reflections on the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown.  Included in here are pieces by many of Japan’s most important authors, including TAWADA Yōko 多和田葉子, KAWAKAMI Hiromi 川上弘美, IKEZAWA Natsuki 池沢夏樹, KAKUTA Mitsuyo 角田光代, and many others.  There is even one short, surreal manga, and some poetry by TANIKAWA Shuntarō 谷川俊太郎, whom some people have called the “national poet” (国民の詩人) and American poet J.D. McClatchy. 

I received a copy of this collection last week, and within a day, I eagerly devoured most of the pieces in here.  3.11 wrought almost unimaginable devastation, leaving many voiceless, unsure about how language could address the huge gaping hole, the huge rubble of meaning left in language and in the nation.  “How,” I remember Takahashi Mutsuo asking, “can we write after this disaster?  Nothing seems big or strong enough to deal with destruction on this scale.”  Everything, even language, was thrown into doubt; however, this collection shows the many diverse ways in which writers all over Japan (and even abroad) dealt with this crisis of representation.  As we well, the crisis forced these writers forward, compelling them to address the cries of anguish, fear, and anxiety about the future. 

Here are the reflections of TANIKAWA Shuntarō 谷川俊太郎, the poet who opens the collection. (This translation was my small contribution to the project.) 

The Asahi Shinbun online is posting a series of poems about the earthquake written by some of Japan’s most important contemporary poets in commemoration of the first anniversary of the 3.11 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disaster.  The poems come with a film of the poet reading his or her work.

Just now, I watched Takahashi Mutsuo’s contribution to the series, a stunning invocation of the effects of the triple disaster on language.  It begins “Language was what was broken / We did not realize this at the beginning / Because the destruction came so slowly.” He continues on through his reflections on the role of poetry and language in the wake of a catastrophe on such an enormous scale.

In his personal conversations with me, Takahashi lamented that after the earthquake, he went through a period of blankness, in which he felt that language was not enough to grasp, to conceive the scale of the horror inflicted upon the nation.  Nothing he wrote could cope with the scale of the disaster, and he did not know how to heal.  This coincided with his own realization of his advancing age—another concern reflected in this poem.  Still, in this poem, he seems to find the way forward, as he realizes that the world began with the destruction of the big bang and is hurtling toward entropy.  He cautions us that language is not always necessary.  It is not always necessary to pour trauma into language.  Waiting can sometimes be the path to heal. 

Takahashi is most recently the author of the book Two Thousand Years of the Poetic Mind: From Susanoo to 3.11 「詩心二千年:スサノヲから3・11へ」, published by Iwanami Shoten（岩波書店, 2011).

一九〇四年に永井荷風が滞在した下宿先（米国ミシガン州カラマズー市）
Home in Kalamazoo, Michigan where NAGAI Kafū lived in 1904

Kalamazoo College just published an excellent article about the time that the famous Japanese writer NAGAI Kafū 永井荷風 spent in Kalamazoo in 1904 and 1905.

As Margaret DeRitter writes in this article, we at Western Michigan Univerisity’s Soga Japan Center are working to get a Michigan state historical marker placed in front of the house at 127 Elm Street, Kalamazoo, MI where he once lived.  It was there that he wrote the story “Atop the Hill”「岡の上」 included in his book American Stories 『あめりか物語』, soon after arriving in Kalamazoo in 1904.  (An English translation of this book was published in the year 2000.)

For a copy of a long article in Japanese about Kafū’s stay in Kalamazoo and Kalamazoo’s interest in Japan during that time, click here.  This article was first published in Mita bungaku 『三田文学』in 2006.