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SWET Newsletter
SWET Newsletter, No. 123
October 2009
In this issue:
- Features
- From Behind Cloistered Walls: A Tale of Two Translations · Lynne E. Riggs
- Remembering Jiho Sargent: Technical Writer and Buddhist Priest · Naomi Otani
- SWET Events
- A Poet's Prose: The Economy and Voice of Moving · Bonny Cassidy
- SWET Open Forum 2009: Wordsmithing in Japan · Katherine Heins
- SWET Member News
- Talking Poetry with Jane Joritz-Nakagawa · Leza Lowitz
- SWET Cyber Matters
- Lacunae of English, Manners, and Elucidations · Torkil Christensen
- Book Review
- Self-Help for Editors · Ginny Tapley Takemori
SWET Weblog
Thursday, January 28, 2010
About Mori Ōgai on translation
The American Lauren Elkin writes a literary blog in Paris and she posted on Mori Ōgai on translation and fallacy. A snippet: “Ōgai talks about the virtues of being ‘wrong’ in translation—adding or detracting from the original text; of most interest, I think, is the final section in which he contemplates how far a translation should go into the source culture.” She is LaurenElkin on Twitter.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Help Haiti
All royalties from sales of my ebook edition of Beneath Gray Skies for sale ($3) on Smashwords from now until 21 January 18:00 (Japan time) will be sent to a relief organization (TBD) to help Haiti.
For more on Smashwords, please see the article on my blog–-it’s a very interesting approach to the whole ebook concept, including Kindle and B&N distribution. Kindle, iPhone, PDF, Sony, Palm, etc. formats all available, covering almost all the bases.
Please download the ebook and help Haiti.
Friday, October 23, 2009
ebooks and the author
I’m considering all the new options by which we can now read books (i.e. the ebook reader market, which appears to be coming of age - sort of), and it seems to me that there are both technical and business issues here.
The software to convert existing material to ebooks does not seem to work at all well. For example, although Adobe claims that InDesign CS4 produces ebooks, it doesn’t - these are simply strings of text, rather than organized and formatted books).
Though there is obviously some technological skill required to produce an ebook, many producers of ebooks will be the authors, with sub-optimal technical skills, and the situation, with its different standards (Kindle, Stanza, nook, PDF, etc. etc.) seems to be much worse than, say, the start of the Web, where we were all learning what these strange “tags” and weird angle brackets meant.
Although there is an easy-to-use conversion service provided by Feedbooks, it comes with a very large string attached - the demand that the material enter the public domain, which to me seems an unfair restriction to put on an author who has something original and worthwhile to say, and who has taken the time and trouble to say it.
So… Any ideas on how ebook publishing should proceed? I have a little more to say about this and ebooks at my own site.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Channelling Jonathan Swift, or, Never Throw Anything Away
Some years ago (actually, quite a few years ago) I went back to college to “retool.” One of the courses I took was “Child Growth and Development,” a worthy class in which I learned a lot. But by the time midterm exams came, I’d had enough. One of the short essay questions asked, “In your opinion, what will be different in breast-feeding practices fifty years from now?”
My resistance was low. Possessed by some demon or other, I wrote:
“I believe that in fifty years breast feeding will be much more common than it is today due to two factors. The first is that advances in medical technology will make it possible for men to nurse as well as women. The double-breasted suit from C & R Clothiers will be a much different affair from today’s version. Power lunches will include a shot of brewer’s yeast and other substances believed to increase milk production.
“The other reason that breast feeding will be more important in the future is that this country will have had almost seventy-five years of uninterrupted Republican rule, a leadership which has nearly completed the elimination of the single-breadwinner family and the dismantling of what few family support services created since the New Deal still survive. This and the support of the monopolization of food production now in progress will mean that the American child will be breast fed until he or she is old enough and earning enough to be able to buy his or her own meals at the local MacDisneySears.” (11/13/90, revised slightly)
Midway down the page the instructor scrawled in the margin, “You’re serious?” There was a second question to the exam which I answered more sanely and she gave me an A.
But that’s not why I saved the thing. I save all sorts of writing. I came across it recently when going through papers from that time and laughed out loud when I read it. I saved it because I thought it was funny. And I still think it is funny. And despite my mis-prediction of presidential elections, I think it remains true in spirit.
With my writing I’ve had to be patient. I’m just now placing poems written ten and fifteen years ago. Some of them are real world travellers, having crossed the ocean dozens of times. I may no longer feel much emotion when I look at them. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t exactly what some editor might need for a particular issue. Or that they won’t affect readers seeing them for the first time.
And even the goofy answer to a long-ago exam can find a path to a few more readers.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Biking the Yamanote Line
Sunday, September 20th New York Times Travel section features a decidedly romantic three-day bike ride around the Yamanote Line. No Squishing: Biking a Tokyo Rail Line is a short visit to places we all know and love. Has anyone done a literary walk around Tokyo?