Upcoming Events
- May 19, 2012 - Kansai: A Digital “Roving Reporter” Walk Through Japan
- May 25, 2012 - Tokyo: Walking and Writing Japan
SWET Newsletter
SWET Newsletter, No. 129
SWET Newsletter, No. 129
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Japanese to English Translation
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Slave to the Word, Michael Karpa
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Slave to the Word, Michael Karpa
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March 11, 2011: Continuing Stories
- After March 11: A Magazine and Local Newspaper Respond to the Disaster, Terri Nii
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The Silent Citadel: Poetry for 9/11 and 3/11, Higashizono Tadatoshi
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SWET Events
- Orchards: Holly Thompson on Japan in Fiction for Teens, Ann Tashi Slater
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Joan Ericson on Japanese Children’s Literature, Lynne E. Riggs
- From the Steerage
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Book Review
- Tidbits among the Triumphalism, Charles De Wolf
SWET Weblog
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Wordsmith’s Craft
Some may have seen the New Year’s TV program showing the tsuikidoki craftsman who takes a flat sheet of copper and over three days to a week beats it into a gracefully shaped teapot, complete with spout, using only a hammer, a high-piled rack of toriguchi forming tools, and the accumulated experience of two or three decades (reference here). The completed work is functional, durable, beautiful to look at, and comfortable to hold in the hand. A work of polished craft is honest work indeed.
For those of us who think of ourselves as wordsmiths, the work of the tsuikidoki craftsmen strikes a recognizable chord. Like them, we have our “forming tools” (though they can’t be hung on a rack to show off to visitors), and we have our years of accumulated experience that tell us how to get a grip on our materials and how to aim our “hammers” to get the desired results. And yes, it can take a week to refine a manuscript from its original material to the polished, crafted work that we call our product, but the result will long communicate its message in print or on the Internet, quoted, paraphrased, and reforged by others for years to come.
Thinking about this model of craft and professionalism is encouraging as we return to our routines in the New Year.
In 2012, SWET starts its thirty-second year. SWET exists because many people who work with the English word in Japan wear more than one professional hat—we may translate, write, edit, proofread, develop copy or captions, compile indexes, offer advice about design, guide the layout of tables and charts. We are charged with getting a grip on words and shaping them in the desired form for a desired purpose, and are paid to do it skillfully. And beyond that, we build bridges between cultures.
Tasked to cover so much professional territory, we can benefit not only from collaboration with each other, but also from the experience of those who have done these things before us. SWET is a repository of that experience, both in its archives and in the living body of its membership, a valuable repository to tap and to build upon.
SWET’s website is in the process of being redesigned, but SWET has to redesign itself as well. The membership is shifting. SWET was founded by wordsmiths who worked predominantly with the printed word and who were accustomed to face-to-face interaction and networking. Today is an era of Internet-based communications and social media, e-books, websites, and “cloud” computing. What will SWET be in this era? Who wants and needs it? What will it do? How will it operate? These are questions that members with initiative and a sharing impulse will answer, and we hope that will include you.
A spirit of information sharing and mentoring has driven SWET and its activities since its founding. We hope that spirit will be carried on, giving what we do enduring value and a heightened presence in a world that needs the right words and good communication more than ever.
Lynne E. Riggs
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Happy New Year from SWET
![Happy New Year from SWET! [Sado Island (c) 2011 George Bourdaniotis]](http://www.swet.jp/images/uploads/SWET_NY_2012.jpg)
Friday, July 08, 2011
E-book: Tsunami: Japan’s Post-Fukushima Future
Tsunami: Japan's Post-Fukushima Future, is an e-book sponsored by Foreign Policy Magazine and selling for $4.99 per download. All proceeds are to go to the Japan Society for transmission to victims of the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami in the Tohoku area.
The book was edited by Professor Jeff Kingston of the Temple University Japan Campus. The essays cover the disasters from the cultural, media response, experiential, scientific, historical, political, and diplomatic perspectives.
The e-book announcement and order form may be found on the Foreign Policy magazine website.
Table of Contents of TSUNAMI
Chapter 1: Tales from the Hot Zone
By Mariko Nagai, Kaori Shoji, Steve Corbett, Robert Whiting, Shijuro Ogata, and Kumiko Makihara
Chapter 2: Japan’s Quakes, Past and Future
By David McNeill and Gregory Smits
Chapter 3: Looking Out on the World
By Christian Caryl, Devin Stewart, Jeff Kingston, and Noriko Murai
Chapter 4: The Economic Future
By David Pilling, Bill Emmott, and Brad Glosserman
Chapter 5: The Political Future
By Rod Armstrong and Jun Honna
Chapter 6: The Nuclear Future
By Lawrence Repeta, Andrew Horvat, Paul J. Scalise, Andrew DeWit and Masaru Kaneko, Robert Dujarric, and Gavan McCormack
Thanks to Rod Armstrong for forwarding this information
July 7, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Japanese Children’s Books in English
Published and aspiring translators of Japanese children’s literature into English have e-networked for several years through the SCBWI Tokyo Translation listserv, an email list open to members and non-members of SCBWI.
Several members of this list have now begun a group blog about publishing Japanese children's lit in English translation. The blog also highlights the children’s literature and culture of Tohoku in the wake of the March 2011 disasters.
The latest post on the blog is an interview with SWET member Cathy Hirano about her translation of the fantasy novel Mirror Sword and Shadow Prince by Noriko Ogiwara (VIZ Media, May 2011)—the sequel to Dragon Sword and Wind Child (VIZ Media, 2010), which Hirano discussed in an interview for SWET Newsletter No. 122.
Several SWETers participate in both the SCBWI Tokyo Translation listserv and the group blog. To learn more, please visit the blog or email the organizers.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
SWET in the Wake of the 3-11 Disaster
Among the majority of wordsmiths active in Japan today who stayed put, despite the recurrent shakings, the upset economy, and the Fukushima nuclear power plant crisis, many have been quietly contributing both to helping out and to helping understand what has happened. Here are just a few heard about recently. Please let us know of others to share from this page at weblog@swet.jp.
- More than fans of Wm. (Wilhelmina) Penn’s weekly TV column in the Daily Yomiuri newspaper will appreciate at “This Week in Japan” the skillful weaving of what we see on Japanese television with facts and the social commentary in her blog.
- Writer and translator Leza Lowitz’s article about marching against nuclear power plants appeared on the Huffington Post “Red Room” site. A Berkeley-bred powerhouse sounds in her element.
- SWET and SCBWI translators have been helping get the word out in English about the “3.11 Picture Book Japan in Iwate” activities to support children whose lives were overturned by the tsunami.
- Sapporo-based translator and writer Deborah Davidson introduced in SWET Newsletter No. 125 is doing a “humanizing the quake” series of etegami, prefecture by prefecture.