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.

Dick Davis (1945- ): “The Translator’s Nightmare”
ディック・デービス「翻訳家の悪夢」

Born in Portsmouth, England, Dick Davis is one of the most brilliant and witty poets working in formal verse today.  For links to several of his other poems, including one of my favorites, “Iran, Twenty Years Ago,” click here. 

In addition to writing his own poetry, he is also the most prominent translator of Persian medieval verse, having translated the great Persian epic, the Shahnameh; an early version of the Tristan and Isolde legend from Persia called Vis and Ramin, and many other great works of Persian literature.  Davis now teaches at The Ohio State University. 

It was while I was a graduate student there that he taught me much of what I know about translation, and it was in his class that I did one of my first translations, Hagiwara Sakutarō’s “The Town of Cats,” which was published several years later.  It was in large part thanks to him that I started down the path to becoming a translator.  I still owe an enormous debt of gratitude to him.   

ディック・デービスはイギリスで生まれの詩人だが、長くアメリカに在住している。韻と律を踏む詩人の中で、最もユーモラスでウィットに富んだ一人である。その他に、中世ペルシア文学の最も有名な翻訳家にもなっている。ペルシアの偉大な叙事詩シャナメーと、トリスタンとイゾルデの伝説の原型とされているヴィスとラミンの他に、ペルシア文学の英訳が多い。現在デービスはオハイオ州立大学で教えている。

大学院生の頃、私はデービス先生の翻訳講座を取ったが、その講座で翻訳の理論と実践を初めて味わえた。振り返ってみると、その講座は翻訳家になる切っ掛けだったというのは、決して大げさではない。その講座の期末プロジェクトのために、萩原朔太郎の「猫町」を翻訳して、数年後にその英訳を本の形で出版した。十五年が経った今でも、デービス先生に心から感謝している。

In honor of National Poetry Month

Yale University Press introduces new online forum for works of translation
March 28, 2012 
By Laura Booth

The Yale University Press has recently introduced an online component – www.worldrepublicofletters.org – to complement its Margellos World Republic of Letters, an initiative designed to engage with both contemporary and canonical literary works in translation.

Aside from available titles such as Syrian poet Adonis’ “Adonis: Selected Poems” and Norman Manea’s “The Lair,” the site’s current offerings include interviews and excerpts (including one from renowned translator Edith Grossman’s book, “Why Translation Matters”), news dealing with works in translation and even a way for users a way to engage on Twitter through the hashtag #wrlbooks.

Contemporary foreign literature, much like contemporary foreign film, is often superficially tainted with a sense of elitism – for whatever reason, Americans continue to be perceived as unreceptive to foreign works. However, the lack of translations of contemporary foreign work is at least as much economic as it is cultural.

Among other concerns, most major publishing houses simply don’t factor in the time and cost of translation into the process of publishing foreign works, and the leaders of many American publishing houses lack the linguistic ability to assess foreign works for their appeal to American markets. The language barrier – a moot obstacle in nations, especially in Western Europe, where being bilingual is the norm and speaking English is equally common – in America is as yet a difficult one for foreign writers to surmount.

We know that translation is, inherently, a vital part of engaging with the wider world. Under such economic pressures, however, it is unsurprising that the responsibility of producing translations falls to academic or non-profit institutions such as the Yale University Press or smaller outfits like Melville House and the Dalkey Archive Press rather than major publishing houses. 

Still, if Stieg Larsson taught us anything, it’s that works in translation need not be a niche market geared toward canonical works and academia. Contemporary translations can glean massive popular attention – and economic success – too.

Nevertheless, the current publishing climate for foreign works lends itself to help from universities like Yale and its peers. If any organizations can chip away at the stigma against foreign literature in America, it’s smart, fresh online initiatives like The World Republic of Letters.

The American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) invites publishers to nominate translations published in 2011 for consideration for ALTA’s National Translation Award.  The translator selected for this award will receive a cash prize of $5,000.

To be eligible for the 2012 National Translation Award, the translation must be: 

• by an American citizen or U. S. resident
• from any language into English
• of a book-length work of fiction, poetry, drama or creative non-fiction (literary criticism, philosophy and biographies are not eligible),
• published anywhere in the world in 2011.

The deadline for receiving nominated books published in 2011 is March 15, 2012.  Please send a letter of nomination, four copies of the nominated book and a $50 entry fee for each nominated book ($30 if your press publishes no more than five titles per year) to:

American Literary Translators Association
ATTN:  National Translation Award
c/o The University of Texas at Dallas
800 W. Campbell Rd., JO51
Richardson, TX 75080-3021

If a translation is chosen to go on to the second round, publishers will be informed by June 1, 2012, that they will need to send a copy of the original-language text (a print version or e-mail attachment) by June 15, 2012.  Criteria for judging the award are (1) the importance of the translation and the literary significance of the original; and (2) the success of the translation in recreating the artistic force of the original.  Translations of contemporary works are preferred, but important retranslations or first-time translations of older works will also be considered if they make significant contributions to literature. 

The award supports ALTA’s goal of enhancing the status of literary translation, improving the quality of literary translating, and broadening the market for works in English translation.  The award-winning book and translator will be featured at the 35^th annual conference of the American Literary Translators Association in Rochester, NY, October 3-6, 2012.

Recent winners include such distinguished translators as Joel Agee (2007), Richard Wilbur (2008), Norm Shapiro (2009), Alex Zucker (2010), and Lisa Rose Bradford (2011).

A recent discussion on the ALTA Talk e-mail list about the translatability of poetry led me to a well-written, provocative article by Art Beck in the newest e-issue of Rattle Poetry.  In particular, I was struck by this passage.

In June, [Rainer Maria] Rilke sent her [Marina Tsvetaeva] a copy of his just released Vergers, a volume of poems he’d written in French. He vaguely wondered whether he should be writing poetry in a non-native language. Marina’s reply was immediate and ringing:

Dear Rainer: Goethe says somewhere that one cannot achieve anything of significance in a foreign language—and that has always rung false to me… Writing poetry is in itself translating from the mother tongue into another, whether French or German should make no difference. No language is the mother tongue. Writing poetry is rewriting it. That’s why I am puzzled when people talk of French or Russian, etc., poets. A poet may write in French; he cannot be a French poet. That’s ludicrous.  I am not a Russian poet and am always astonished to be taken for one and looked upon in this light. The reason one becomes a poet (if it were even possible to “become” one, if one “were” not one before all else!) is to avoid being French, Russian, etc, in order to be everything,…Orpheus bursts nationality…

This passage, from a self-exiled White Russian in Paris, might well serve as the Internationale of poetic translators. Poets of the world, unite! Translators, lose your chains. The idea that a poem isn’t just a function of the language in which it appears, but of some underlying, pre- Babel, mother tongue—elevates poetry to an almost mystical evocation.

     It also evokes a quasi-mystical observation found in various forms and similes across a broad range of commentators on literary translation. Which might be boiled down to the working translator’s instinctive sense (or illusion) that apart from: a) the source poem and, b) the poem as transcribed in a new language; there’s yet a third poem, an ur-text, as it were, that both the original and tran- scribed poems draw from.
     An implication is that authentic poems, (as well as all great literature but particularly poems), have a life of their own that not only outlives their authors— but may actually precede the author. Not all poems: There are verses like Joyce Kilmer’s Trees, “made by fools like me,” that entertain a generation, then pass away. But then there are those, albeit rare, works of another dimension, whose hallmark is a certain inevitability. Poems that needed to occur and, once brought to life, live and migrate generations, languages and cultures in ways not dissimilar from music.

As a person who translates a great deal of poetry, moving from two profoundly different languages (Japanese and English) that have very different notions about what sounds “poetic,” I wonder about the idealism of the idea that poetry is not produced by a language but represents some quality underneath, something that predates language.  So much of poetry is language, and even the most banal observations can become rich and poignant if the language works well. 

Yet at the same time, part of me wants to agree with this idea.  There is, it seems, a certain kind of logic that is often work in multiple styles of poetries of different traditions, regardless of where it comes form—the desire to see things in radically different ways, the use of juxtaposition to bring unexpected things together in new ways, the bringing of a new dimension to the familiar. 

Although few people, even in the poetry world, tend to read poetry in translation, translation involves a fundamentally a poetic gesture—the attempt to bring something beyond one’s quotidian experience into one’s own language—even if that involves breaking or modifying the rules of the target language. 

The 400th anniversary celebrations for the King James Bible and the constant presence of Stieg Larsson in English bestseller lists have contributed to a new appreciation of the art of the good translation

Robert McCrum wrote this article for the UK newspaper The Guardian.  Click here for the full article.  Some highlights are below. 

Lately in the US the appetite for “foreign fiction” – Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy or Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 – has sponsored a trend that has inspired new audiences for international literary superstars such as Umberto Eco, Roberto Bolaño and Péter Nádas. Perhaps not since the 1980s, when the novels of Milan Kundera, Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa became international bestsellers, has there been such a drive to bring fiction in translation into the literary marketplace…

The surge in this global audience for new fiction has been driven by the complex interaction of the IT revolution and the antics of literary promotions such as the Orange Prize and Man Booker hyping their brands through social media.

None of this would be thinkable, or commercial, without one extraordinary statistic. According to the British Council, backed by many other reliable sources, about half the world’s population – 3.5 billion people – have knowledge of, or acquaintance with, “some kind of English”. And for the first time in human history it has become possible for one language to be transmitted and received virtually anywhere on the planet.

This unparalleled linguistic phenomenon is underpinned by the formidable power of global media. Lindsey Hilsum, the foreign editor for Channel 4 News, reports how, asking for the meaning of some Arabic graffiti sprayed on a wall in Tripoli, she was given a translation that made a comically incongruous cross-cultural nod to Anne Robinson: “Gaddafi, you are the weakest link. Goodbye.”

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently ran an article called “American Reader’s Translation Privation” by Carlin Romano this week about the sorry state of translation in America.  Click here for the entire article, but I have taken a few telling snips and pasted them below. 

Complaints about the rarity with which American publishers pay attention to foreign books date back generations. There’s a magic number every foreign publisher knows, whatever the year-to-year fluctuations: Only about 3 percent of the fiction for sale in the English-speaking world has been translated from another language. By contrast, in continental Europe, as much as 25 to 30 percent of a mainstream house’s titles may be translations, with the bulk of them from the United States. In one year, 30 percent of all books published in Italy were translations, with 50 percent of those from English. It is, for non-U.S. publishers around the world, the never-ending story. […]

Even a successful sale to America demands enough Herculean effort to make a European foreign-rights agent ill. Consider.

In Sweden, The Hundred-Year-Old Man sold a million copies and topped best-seller lists. Pontas quickly sold the rights into 24 languages, without any translations into those languages available yet. In contrast, Soler-Pont explained, “nearly every U.S., Canadian, U.K., Irish, Australian, and New Zealand publisher had been sent the proposal,” and the author had already commissioned a full translation into English. Still, her agency couldn’t sell it to an English-language publisher.

Then, earlier this year, translations of the book appeared in France and Italy. Eighty thousand copies of the novel sold in the two countries. With that proven success, Pontas finally sold the world English-language rights. Wrote Soler-Pont: “It took hundreds of e-mails, dozens of phone calls, and meetings in New York and London … to sell the English rights to this proven success. Can you imagine how huge a mountain it is to climb for any literary agent trying to sell something with less of a pedigree?”

Western Michigan University just published this little article about me, including in it several photographs of me as a fifteen-year old in Japan in 1987.  

 

Some of the other photos show me with the prominent poets ITŌ Hiromi 伊藤比呂美 and TAKAHASHI Mutsuo 高橋睦郎. Click here for the article and more embarrassing photos.

David Bellos, the author of the new book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?: Translation and the Meaning of Everything, did an interesting interview with NPR recently.  Below are some highlights, but click here to go the NPR webpage and to hear the entire interview. 

Interview Highlights

On why translation is integral to relating to others

“We translate all the time. If we refuse to translate, refuse to listen to what other people have to say to us, whichever language it is in, we’re not living as fully as human beings as we could be …

“For translation to exist, you have to accept the fact that languages are all different and they don’t describe the world in quite the same way. You also have to accept that languages are all the same in that anything you can say in one language can be said in any other. And it seems to me [that the] tension between the incommunicability of difference and … the sharing of a common set of messages and meanings is … human. I mean, we all live in that state, that I am not like you. My experience is not directly commensurable with yours, and yet, for us to get on and to be human and to be in a society, we have to also make the assumption that in another dimension, we’re all the same. We have the same needs, the same fears, the same desires.”

On why good translations can never be word-for-word

“People … often have the idea that a translation … has to be the same as the original that it’s translating. And my big argument all the way through the book is no, no — a translation has to be like. And the ways in which it is like its original vary. They vary historically. They vary in the specific language patterns that you’re dealing [with]. They vary depending on the kind of text or object that you’re translating.

“Likeness is what translation seeks to provide. A good match is what you’re after, but sameness … well, that you just can’t have, because even in the same language, no two utterances — even of the same sentence — are actually the same. You know, time has passed and the mere fact of saying it a second time makes it not like saying it the first time. So I think it’s this ideology — not very explicit, not reformulated, but [a] quite powerful idea — that unless a translation is the same as the original, then it’s no good.

“That’s what I’m trying to get people to drop, to abandon, to realize it’s much more subtle and much more interesting than that.”

On the limitations of automated translation tools

“It’s very silly to use Google Translate or any automatic translation service to produce text in a language you don’t master completely. … The output of any automatic translation device needs to be read and corrected by somebody who commands that language completely, because you can often see easily where the mistake is, or you can tell whether it’s garbage or not. And if it’s garbage, you disregard it.

“[In] the retranslation game, well, if you work for human translators … the retranslation into English would not be the same as what you started with. It would be fluent English, because the translator’s a human being, not a machine. But it would be different in some degree, in some detail, great or small, because language isn’t a machine itself …

“When you use it to take a letter from a Swedish girlfriend and check that you have understood what she meant, that’s fine, if your Swedish is a bit ropey. … Google Translate has many perfectly sensible and viable uses, and it’s a most impressive intellectual and technical achievement. But … Google itself wouldn’t think of using Google Translate to produce its publicity literature in the languages in which it sells its services. It uses human translators to do that.”

On the flexibility of languages

“Every human language can fulfill all the needs that its users want to make of it. And if it really needs a word to articulate the wrist and distinguish the hand from the arm, well, they’ll jolly well invent one so as to do so. And if they haven’t invented one, it’s because actually their [are] sort of other ways around it, because life is a very flexible thing.

“I’m personally very skeptical of the idea that any language, any of the languages that human communities have, constrains them to talk about the world in any particular way. It may make it easier to talk about the world in some particular ways, but if you really need to make a distinction, well, you invent a word. You do something new. Language is forever changing in response to [its] users’ need.”

This year’s issue, number 27, of the always awesome journal POETRY KANTO is now available.  (This issue contains several of my own poems and translations.)  If you wish to receive a free copy, while copies last, just notify Alan Botsford by e-mail < alan@kanto-gakuin.ac.jp > and include your name and mailing address.

The offer applies to anyone interested in reading this year’s issue— a pivotal year in Japan marked by the March 11 Great Eastern Earthquake and the subsequent, ongoing nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Nuclear Facility.

The line-up of poets in issue No. 27 is:
Ito Hiromi
Jeffrey Angles
Libby Hart
Geneva Bronwyn Hargreaves
William I. Elliott
Gavin Bantock
Sally Bliumis-Dunn
Gregory Dunne
Leila Fortier
Niels Hav
Changming Yuan
William Heyen
Michael Sowder
Adele Ne Jame
Yumiko Tsumura
Jane Hirshfield

The editor especially encourages prospective future contributors—poets or translators— along with potential reviewers to request a copy and to help spread the word about this bi-lingual journal aiming to promote dialogue between Japan and the English-speaking world.

Poetry Kanto will begin reading submissions for the 2012 issue from December through April.

Poetry Kanto, a not-for-profit journal distributed free in Japan and in locations around the world, is funded by the Kanto Poetry Center of the College of Humanities at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan. The bi-lingual journal, featuring contemporary and modern Japanese poets in translation, and English-language poetry from around the world, has been in publication for nearly 30 years.

For more on Poetry Kanto, please visit the websites:
http://home.kanto-gakuin.ac.jp/~kg061001/
http://mamaist.com/poetry_kanto

Poet Brandon Shimoda has just compiled this second issue of Ancients, an e-anthology that contains links to lots of previously published poems available on the web.  This issue is dedicated entirely to contemporary Japanese poetry in English translation, and contains of links to super cool poems, videos, and concrete poetry.

records-ancients-matters:

ANCIENTS Issue # JAPAN is composed entirely of links to previously published translations of the work of thirty-three Japanese poets born within the one hundred years comprising the late and fabled twentieth century, with every tribute to the translators and every thank-you to the original venues for existing this work. Read ANCIENTS Issue # Zero here. Coming soon: ANCIENTS Issue # One.

____________________________________________________________

Hinako Abe, Reflective Optic Chamber. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. In How 2, Volume 2, Issue 3, Spring 2005. Born 1953.

Takako Arai, Three Poems. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. Octopus Magazine, Issue 13. Born 1966.

Shoko Ema, Three Poems. Translated by Miryam Sas. In How2, Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2004. Born 1913.

Akiko Fujiwara, Two Poems. Translated by Malinda Markham. In How 2, Volume 2, Issue 3, Spring 2005. Born 1974.

Ginema, Haiku Performance. Read Jeffrey Angles’ “quick, off-the-cuff” translations here. Read also Joyelle McSweeney’s commentary of a Ginema performance at the Tokyo Poetry Festival, 2011, with translations by Eric Selland.

Takashi Hiraide, from For The Fighting Spirit of the Walnut. Translated by Sawako Nakayasu. In Octopus Magazine, Issue 10. Born 1950.

Toshiko Hirata, Two Poems. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. In How 2, Volume 2, Issue 3, Spring 2005. Born 1955.

Yoko Isaka, Four Poems. Translated by Eric Selland and Sawako Nakayasu. In How2, Volume 2, Issue 3, Spring 2005.

Hiromi Ito, Five Poems. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. In Action Yes, Volume 1, Issue 5, Spring 2008. Born 1955.

Kitasono Katue, from White Album. Translated by John Solt. In Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry. Born 1901.

Hiroshi Kawasaki, Tree. Translated by Takako Lento. In Poetry International Web. Born 1930.

Ayane Kawata, from Castles in the Air. Translated by Sawako Nakayasu. In Almost Island, Winter 2011. Born 1940.

Fuyuhiko Kitagawa, Small Bird in a Dismembered Landscape & Five Short Poems. Translated by Jerome Rothenberg. On Jerome Rothenberg’s Poems and Poetics, April 30, 2011. Born 1900.

Masayo Koike, In the midst of reverberations. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. In How 2, Volume 2, Issue 3, Spring 2005. Born 1959.

Kiriu Minashita, Life History. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. In Other Voices, Volume 42, 2009. Born 1970.

Koi Nagata, Selected Haiku. Translated by Eric Selland. On durationpress.com. Born 1900.

Seiichi Niikuni, Three Concrete Poems. The National Museum of Art, Osaka. Born 1925.

Kiwao Nomura, Three Poems. Translated by Kyoko Yoshida and Forrest Gander. In alligatorzine 76. Born 1951.

Kyong-Mi Park, Three Poems. Translated by Hiroaki Sato. In Green Integer Review, No. 2, March-April 2006. Born 1956.

Chika Sagawa, Fifteen Poems. Translated by Sawako Nakayasu. In How2, Volume 2, Number 2, Spring 2004. Born 1911.

Ryoko Sekiguchi. Six Poems from Helios. Translated by Sarah O’Brien. In Other Voices, Volume 41, 2009. Born 1970.

Matsui Shigeru, Quantum Poems (2002-2004). Method Poem Works, etc … the website of Matsui Shigeru. Born 1975.

Kazuko Shiraishi, Tulip’s Ear and A Wandering Estonian. Translated by Yumiko Tsumura and Samuel Grolmes. In Poetry International Web.

Chimako Tada, From a Woman of a Distant Land. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. The Academy of American Poets website. Born 1930.

Mutsuo Takahashi, This World, or the Man of the Boxes. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. On Jerome Rothenberg’s Poems and Poetics, July 13, 2011. Born 1937.

Ryuichi Tamura, Nine Poems. Translated by Samuel Grolmes and Yumiko Tsumura. On the CCC Books website. Born 1923.

Yosuke Tanaka, Africa. Translated by Jeffrey Angles. In Poetry International Web. Born 1969.

Yoko Tawada, The Flight of the Moon. Translated by Bruno Navasky. In Poetry International Web. Born 1960.

Yuka Tsukagoshi, Four Poems. Translated by Yuka Tsukagoshi and Eric Selland. In Eleven Eleven, Issue 8

Ryoichi Wago, Banzai, Banzai, Banzai. Performed live as part of the Festival of Contemporary Japanese Women Poets, November 15-17, 2006, New York City. Born 1968.

Gozo Yoshimasu, Naked Memos. In Asymptote Journal, January 2011. Born 1939.

Minoru Yoshioka, Rooster. Translated by Eric Selland. On durationpress.com. Born 1919.

Syoji Yoshizawa, Eleven sound, visual and concrete poems. In Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry. Born 1937.

ITŌ Hiromi 伊藤比呂美 reading one of her most famous pieces of poetry, “Killing Kanoko“「カノコ殺し」at Western Michigan University in 2008

This poem, written at the time when Ito was taking care of her first daughter Kanoko, is one of Ito’s most famous and frequently anthologized poems. The bold expression of a young mother’s desire to commit infanticide shocked many readers and earned Ito a place in the tabloid newspapers. The words “Congratulations on your destruction” (horoboshite omedeto gozaimasu) repeat and overlap, creating recurring, almost hypnotic cadences that parody the congratulatory message a young mother hears repeatedly upon becoming pregnant or giving birth.

The translation I am reading here appears in Killing Kanoko (Action Books, 2009).

Recently, Open Letter Books published a wonderful e-book called The Three Percent Problem: Rants and Responses on Publishing, Translation, and the Future of Reading.  Released to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the online journal Three Percent, which documents trends, major voices, and publishing issues having to do with international literature, this book presents a vision of the (sorry) state of literature in literary translation in the English-speaking world.  I was recently asked to provide some comments about the book and the state of publishing for a small article, but I thought that I would share my full responses here.

1. What is your reaction to the release of The Three Percent Problem?

I was glad to see many of the posts that have appeared on the Three Percent website collected in one place, easy to access and read.  In the last few years, the Three Percent website has been one of the most important, articulate, and forceful voices arguing for the Anglophone world to pay more attention to literary translation and, by extension, what is happening outside of the narrow parameters of Anglophone literature. 

While I am sure that English departments would shudder to hear me imply that English literature is a small field, the truth is that by comparison, it is.  There is a staggering amount of literary production in the world, and only a tiny fraction of it ever reaches the United States, Britain, and other English-speaking nations precisely because literary translation and translators are so undervalued.  The Three Percent Problem dramatically illustrates how the industry of literature in translation devalues such works.  The book is thus full of implications about the patterns and imbalances in the global circulation of knowledge. 

In reading The Three Percent Problem, I was surprised to read about the staggering numbers of books published each year in China.  Meanwhile, Anglophone countries have translated not even the tiniest, minutest fraction of that production, even though the Chinese are busy reading enormous amounts of English literature in translation.  These imbalances not only make us intellectually poorer; they cripple us by rendering most of what is happening in the world invisible.  The Three Percent Problem, by bringing together studies of literary production, reviews, and discussions of the literary landscapes of various countries, helps us see these crippling deficiencies and how they affect us.  

2. How does a book like this help literary translators?

I think that this book and other publications like it benefit translators two major ways.  First, it helps us understand where we—the small guys sitting at our desks and working on our nitty-gritty translation problems—fit into a larger, world-wide industry.  That is not always easy to see from our position, since we often do not have much insider access into book fairs, publishing house board rooms, and other places where decisions are made about what and whom to translate.  Still, I think that many of us have sensed the general indifference on the part of publishers who are not interested in reading works by authors with foreign names.   The Three Percent Problem helps us position ourselves within that larger world and understand (sadly) how small we are in it. 

Second and perhaps more importantly, The Three Percent Problem helps us as literary translators argue for the importance of the world of translation, thus giving us critical tools to begin changing the situation.  There are a large number of literary translators, including myself, who work in university settings.  Strangely, universities often do not value translation and do not count it as contributing to tenure and promotion.  (Thank God, I work at Western Michigan University, which is an exception.)  The Three Percent Problem and other books like it, such as Lawrence Venuti’s books, point out exactly how critical our work is and how much it contributes to a global economy of knowledge, thus providing translators with important tools to argue for the value of our work. 

3. As the publishing industry continues to change and evolve how does this impact literary translators?

I wish I knew more about the inner workings of the publishing world, so what I am about to say are just my impressions as an “outsider” literary translator.  (I suspect that almost all literary translators feel like “outsiders”!) 

It seems that as the American public turns to other forms of entertainment than reading, the big presses are not doing as well as they would like.  As a result, they grow less likely to take on “risky” projects, such translated books by authors that are not yet well known in this country.  Meanwhile, the internet helps small publishing houses proliferate by giving them the ability to publish more cheaply and market their own work.  It only makes sense that given this climate, more and more translators turn to small presses and even online publications, but the financial consequences of doing so should not be ignored.  A translator cannot expect much (if anything) in the way of royalties, and in fact, many small or online publishers can offer little more than an apologetically delivered thank you for a job well done.  We certainly cannot blame the presses themselves, which operate on a shoestring budget and often are doing their work out of a profound love for literature, but it remains a sad, cold, hard fact that there are very few financial incentives to engage in translation. 

In Japanese literature (my own field), I know of no one who lives solely off of literary translation alone, as there is simply too little money to be made there.  Most of us supplement our incomes with jobs as professors, translators of “practical” material, or other jobs.  Although there are a few superstar Japanese authors such as Haruki Murakami that have opened up some possibilities by drawing attention to Japanese literature, I fear that the situation will not change radically anytime soon, and that most of us will continue to translate largely out of love for literature and a sense of dedication to the field.  

I sincerely hope that the rise of e-publishing and its relatively inexpensive modes of distribution will make publishers more willing to try to new things, including taking on projects that they might not have considered seriously in the past.  Still, it is too early to know if this will happen, and what this might mean for literary translators.