December 15, 2010

SWET Newsletter, No. 126

Translating from Japanese to English

Summer School Workshop: Translating Tawada Yōko, by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Ginny Tapley Takemori attended the 2010 annual Summer School hosted by the British Centre for Literary Translation at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, U.K. Here she describes the intense experience of this unique opportunity for literary translators to come together with each other and with other publishing professionals. Could this type of initiative be more widely applied in translation studies?

SWET Events

Rebecca Otowa on Writing At Home in Japan, by Avery Udagawa

Rebecca Otowa, author of At Home in Japan: A Foreign Woman’s Journey of Discovery (Tuttle, 2010; reviewed in SWET Newsletter No. 124: “A Semantic Adventure,” pp. 64–67), spoke to SWETers on June 17, 2010, at Wesley Center in Minami Aoyama, Tokyo, about the six-year process of writing, illustrating, and revising her collection of essays.

Alternative Luxuries in Rural Japan: An Interview with Andy Couturier, by Suzanne Kamata

In the summer of 2010, American writer, poet, and teacher Andy Couturier visited Japan and spoke to SWET members about his second book, A Different Kind of Luxury: Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance (Stone Bridge Press). The book, which began as a series of essays in the Japan Times, profiles 11 Japanese men and women who have learned to live lightly upon the earth with as little money as possible and an abundance of time—time that allows them to grow their own organic food, revel in the beauty of nature, pursue creative endeavors, and contemplate the deeper aspects of life. Suzanne Kamata corresponded with Couturier to learn more about his work, his worldview, and the people he writes about.

SWET Cyber Matters

In the Jerry-built Edifice of English and Editing as Mentoring, by Torkil Christensen

SWET-L digs into ways to improve professionally, creatively explaining the ineffable in order to appease clients and maintain spirits. This installment of the discussion on SWET-L (May to August 2010), along with its usual bits and pieces of language-work, includes a thread about improving writing skills to elevate the polish of translations that brought out the thoughtful side of the denizens of the list at its best.

Book Review

Literary Translation: Interpretation and Permutation

Reviewed by Edward Lipsett
One Poem in Search of a Translator: Rewriting ‘Les Fenêtres’ by Apollinaire. Edited by Eugenia Loffredo and Manuela Perteghella. Oxford; Bern: Peter Lang, 2008. ISBN 978-3-03911-408-5, £34.00.