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In
Translation
"In
Translation" not only showcases interesting translations of a diverse
range of Asian writers, but also highlights the vital role of the translator
in this intercultural transmission.
This section is coordinated by KJ's Associate Editor Stewart
Wachs.
(Click
on page graphics for larger view)
KJ
#69 IN TRANSLATION
Troopers’ Inn – Takenishi Hiroko,
trans. Lawrence Rogers
The maid, fuming, was at the sink washing
dishes and talking to herself.
“That fool officer! Why didn’t he let his men eat?
We made a special effort for them! An officer who can’t
feel for his men can’t be a decent leader!”
She went on vilifying the officer. Hisashi’s mother sensed
the maid’s complaints were on the mark. She began to think
that the officer had not even considered their feelings, let
alone what his men felt, but then she reconsidered. No, she
decided, she couldn’t expect it to not have been a trial
for him as well. How much easier it would have been to have
given the rice cakes to his men. Putting it in that light, she
felt sorry for the officer as well, not just his men.
KJ #69The Barter – Ho Anh Thai (trans.
Ho Anh Thai & Wayne Karlin)
While I was studying in India, I had a
German classmate with whom I also shared a room in the hostel.
In a word, we were roommates.
The first day we met, he introduced himself with these words:
“I am Heinrich, from Bavaria, located in the south of
Germany.”
I told him I had read the work of the German poet Heinrich Heine,
his namesake. He shrugged—nowadays, he said, everyone
was writing poetry. I abandoned nineteenth century German literature
and mentioned Heinrich Boll and Erich Maria Remarque. He looked
at me suspiciously, as if I were trying to trap him into admitting
some association with criminals wanted by Interpol.
See also online feature "The
Man who Believed in Fairytales" by Ho Anh
Thai |
KJ #68 Of
Singing Clams & Soccer Camp
Searching for Japanese children's literature in English translation
Avery Fischer Udagawa
Beyond fond memories, cherished children’s
stories fill us with visions, questions, and ideas —
thoughts that nudge us for years, their origins gradually
fading from mind until, one day, we rediscover them, perhaps
while seeking books for our own children. We may realize then
that certain stories, and ways of telling them, have shaped
our definition of a superb children’s book, even as
they have become part of who we are.
The question of whether such books are translations rarely
occurs to us...
 KJ
#68 While the Beans
are Cooking
Awa Naoko, translated by Toshiya Kamei,
artwork by Amane Kaneko
The fox and the shrikes were not the
only ones who wanted what Sankichi carried in his rucksack.
A weasel pestered him, following him around, whenever he bought
dried fish. Just before New Year's, an ogre chased after him,
wanting his black beans. As always, Sankichi heard someone
call his name. When he turned around, he found a big ogre
in leather clothes staring at him. Horrified, Sankichi tried
to run away. Then the ogre said in an unexpectedly quiet voice,
"I don't want them for free. I'll trade you one go
of gingko berries for one go of black beans."
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KJ
#67
Translating a Classic
with excerpts from The Pillow Book
Meredith McKinney
Haru wa akebono — yôyô
shiroku nariyuku yamagiwa wa, sukoshi akarite .
. . Most people in Japan can reach back to their school days
to unhesitatingly recite the famous opening lines of the thousand-year-old
classic known in English as The Pillow Book. The sounds
roll off the tongue like poetry, with the same resonance and
authority that transcends mere meaning. They are accompanied
by a little swarm of facts worn almost meaningless by repetition
and familiarity: Sei Shônagon, gentlewoman at the court
of Emperor ? (the name often slips the memory), mid-Heian period
“woman writer,” contemporary and rival of the author
of The Tale of Genji.
And
yet, when it came to translating The Pillow Book, the
ironies of its classic status suddenly became acute. Sei Shônagon
is in fact still very much alive and asserting herself, at the
very centre of her work. Without the vividness of her personality,
the words turn to dust. It was she herself I realized I must
translate, quite as much as “the text.” |
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 KJ
#66 Nakahara
Chuya and the Art of Translation
Essays, and translations of poems,
by Christian Nagle and Rye Beville
By
age thirty he would be dead, and in his lifetime publish just
one volume of poems in a small print-run, yet today the young
man from Yamaguchi with the haunting stare is widely seen as
one of 20th century Japan’s greatest poets. Nakahara Chûya
(1907-37) is not only a nationwide subject of classroom study,
but a romantic fixture in the minds of countless readers.
Additional Nakahara Chuya poems in translation
here. |
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KJ #65
A Mountain Village
Nishimura Isaku, translated
by Joseph Cronin
Nishimura Isaku (1884-1963) was
the founder of Bunka Gakuin, a school which he established in
1921 in the Surugadai area of Tokyo, with the help of the poet
Yosano Akiko, her husband Tekkan, and the painter Ishii Hakutei.
The school’s philosophy was one of freedom and equality.
Many famous writers and painters taught there.
"After living in Shingu for a while with my father’s
parents, the Oishis, I moved in with my mother’s mother,
Mon, and my two brothers at the Nishimura house in Kuwabara.
It was at that time, when I was only eight years old, that I
legally became the head of the rich Nishimura household."
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KJ #65
Prologue: On Power
Haniya Yutaka, translated with
commentary by Manuel Yang
Haniya Yutaka's lifework Shirei
(Dead Spirits) stands as a major monument of postwar Japanese
literature. It is, like Dostoievski’s Demons, an epic
novel of revolutionary ideas, and, in an elegantly crystalline
language of brooding metaphysics, does for the internecine political
intrigues of underground leftwing radicals in interwar Japan
what Dostoievski did for nineteenth-century Russian anarchists
and nihilists. Jailed during World War II for his Communist
activism, Haniya read Kant's Critique of Pure Reason in his
cell and forged a dissenting politics of hybrid originality,
which he defined as that of "Communist by day and anarchist
by night.” |
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KJ #64
A Japanese Feminist in
Occupied Shanghai:
Tu Xiaohua, translated by Tan
Ban Chong
Tamura Toshiko (1884-1945)
was the avant-garde editor of Nu Sheng [Women’s
Voice], the only women’s magazine published during
the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Some regard Tamura as the
most important Japanese female writer of the late Meiji and
early Taisho periods.. Her direction led Nu Sheng to
have a profound influence on women in occupied China.
Nakedness
Is Just Another Way To Clothe Yourself:
Lin Yichuan, translated
by Andrea Lingenfelter
Puta:
a poem by Elynia Mabanglo,
translated by Pia Arboleda & Jorge Andrada,
with commentary by Pia Arboleda |
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KJ #63
Chasing Folksongs
by Miyamoto Ysuneichi, translated
by KJ contributing editor Jeffrey Irish
One of Japan’s greatest ethnologists and one
of her best kept secrets, Miyamoto Tsuneichi (1907-81) walked
some 160,000 kilometers in search of the meaning of life in
rural Japan. Born into a farming family on an island in Japan’s
Inland Sea, Miyamoto was first an ethnologist, an observer and
recorder who wrote more than fifty books and took some 100,000
photographs. ...“Chasing Folksongs” was originally
titled “Folksongs,” and appears as a chapter in
one of Miyamoto’s most-read books, The Forgotten Japanese
(Wasurerareta Nihonjin), now in its ninth printing.
Miyamoto has never before been translated into English. This
excerpt is his long-overdue debut. |
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KJ #63
How the Ceremony Ends
by Su Tong, translation and
commentary by Josh Stenberg
“That
was how the folklorist discovered that Eightpines had once
had a custom of drawing ingots to designate a “man-ghost.”
Immediately, he sensed that this was likely to be the most
valuable finding of his research.... . It occurred to him
that during his career as researcher, it was the first time
he had encountered such an appalling custom. In the heat of
the tavern stove, his thoughts began to turn feverishly; and
finally it occurred to him that the ideal way to record the
custom for posterity would be to recreate it. Turning to a
white-haired old man, he asked, 'Do you recall how the ceremony
used to be performed?'” |
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KJ
#62 Cloudburst
by
Fujisawa Shuhei, translation and commentary
by Gary Alderson
"It didn't occur to him that there
are both happy and unhappy people in the world. Nor did it
occur to him that those who are happy now may not always be
happy, and that those who are now unhappy may find happiness
again. The laughter had triggered only an intense hatred for
the happy ones — a hatred that saturated his heart."
This translation won the Distinguished Translation
Award at the 2005 Shizuoka
International Translation Competition.
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KJ
#61 Bicycle
Diary 1903
by Natsume Soseki, translated by Damian
Flanagan
"Having spent his adult life engaged
in perhaps the most wide-ranging literary research ever conducted,
with a head full of knowledge and insights from every corner
of the globe, Soseki was ready to come out fighting. Taking
even the most mundane subject — learning to ride a bicycle
— Soseki was able to transform it into something of intense
complexity, wit and symbolism, making reference to everything
from The Tale of Heike to Chinese poems as his alter
ego comically falls and bruises himself." |
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KJ #60
Generational
Tensions
Translator Yu Young-nan reflects on her work
& women writers in Korea
"My philosophy is maybe different
from other translators in that I consider my reader to be someone
who’s like me, interested in learning about foreign cultures
and what makes people behave the way they do. I’d like
to remove hindrances and change sentences to make them flow
better in English. My motto is to make my translation as readable
as possible. The substance is more important than the form."
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KJ
#59 Revealing
the Invisible
An
interview with Manoa's Frank
Stewart & Patricia Matsueda, by Ken Rodgers
Featuring the following translations, reprinted with kind
permission from Manoa:
"The Pepper Tree" – Ito
Hiromi (fiction)
"A Poem for my Young Lover" –
Du Tu Le
"Land of Snows" – Yidam Tsering
"The Diabolical Sweetness of Pol Pot"
– Soth Polin |
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KJ #58: Reflections
of a Psychotherapy Go-between
An interview with Shinji Kazue, by Stewart
Wachs
"Like most clients
who visit a clinic I thought at the beginning that personal
problems brought there would be solved by the therapists. But
while working there over the years I came to realize that the
role of therapists is not solving problems for clients but helping
them gain insight into themselves so they can analyze their
problems and eventually find ways to solve them by themselves."
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KJ
#57: Agreeing on Agreement
by Uchida Tatsuru, translated by Kawasaki
Takeshi
The
introduction from Kodomo Wa Wakatte Kurenai (Children
Don't Understand Us), a collection of essays on the relationship
between younger and older generations, published by Yosen-sha,
Tokyo (September 2003). |
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KJ #56: They
Who Render Anew
by Avery Fischer
Interviews
with contemporary literary translators Juliet Winters Carpenter,
Janine Beichman, Sam Hamill, Leza Lowitz & Oketani Shogo,
Elaine Gerbert, and Royall Tyler, exploring their
diversified approaches to introducing Japanese writers to
Western readers, and comparing various translations of well-known
works. |
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Earlier
issues of KJ featured some precursors to In Translation,
including the following:
KJ #51 Dancing
With Words
by
Roy Hamric, a profile of translator Red
Pine (Bill Porter), who specializes in classic Chinese
texts, especially poetry. |
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KJ #49 The
Last Family
by Murakami Ryu, translated by
Ralph McCarthy
Plus: Ryu & Me,
an interview (sort of) with Murakami Ryu, incorporating translated
extracts from many of his novels.
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KJ #42 (Time
special issue):
On
Translating the Meiji Emperor's Clock Poem
by Harold Wright |
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