May 18, 2008

SWET Newsletter, No. 119

More details:

• The Writing Life
  • Sixty Years of Journal-Keeping, by Donald Richie
    On October 14, 2007, writer, reviewer, specialist on film, and self-professed flaneur over half a century Donald Richie spoke to a sizeable crowd near Sannomiya Station in Kobe, focusing his remarks on the art of journal-keeping. Illustrated with quotes from his own journal entries extending over several decades, this article is an edited version of the October 14 talk.

• Japanese-to-English Translation
  • Noh Translations on the World’s Stage, by Higashizono Tadatoshi
    The special challenges of translating noh plays and treatises that have been a concern since the Meiji Restoration brought noh theater to the attention of Western connoisseurs. From early works by Ernest Fenollosa to the December 2006 symposium on “Translation of Noh Theater” organized by the Hōsei University Institute of Nogaku Studies, translators and scholars continue to strive toward renderings that are both accurate and poetic, that qualify both as literature and performance drama.

• SWET and Other Events
  • Manga and Anime Overseas (Imoto Chikako)
    The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) held a discussion about the cross-cultural appeal of manga and anime on November 17, 2007, with Roland Kelts, novelist and writer based in Tokyo and New York, and Shōgakukan executive producer of Pokémon TV programs and movies Kubo Masakazu.
  • SWET New Year’s Party and Special Panel (John Presley)
    On January 28, 2008, SWET launched its twenty-eighth year with a special SWET panel presentation followed by a buffet meal at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan. More than thirty eager partygoers gathered to hear writer Suzanne Kamata, editor Barry Lancet, and translators Alfred Birnbaum and his wife Thi Thi Aye talk about their recent projects and perspectives on their professions.
  • Foreign Journalist Tells All (Deryn Verity)
    Eric Johnston, reporter for the Japan Times in Osaka and a well-known figure in the Kansai foreign community, talked to SWET Kansai in February about the challenges faced by the foreign-language media in Japan, and the tricky problems to be overcome getting the facts right in English before press time. Deryn Verity, professor at Osaka Jogakuin College, reports.

• SWET Member News
  • Kurodahan: Selling to a Niche (Ginny Tapley)
    Ginny Tapley interviews Edward Lipsett, Kyushu-based translator and editor who has spearheaded the founding and development of Kurodahan Press, specializing in genre fiction translated from Japanese. This article brings SWET Newsletter readers up to date on this ambitious project.
  • On Wakame and Bicultural Fiction for Children: Holly Thompson (Avery Udagawa)
    SWET core member and regional advisor of the Tokyo chapter of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), Holly Thompson has lived in the Kamakura-Yokohama area since 1998 and teaches poetry and fiction writing at Yokohama City University. She is the author of the novel Ash (Stone Bridge Press, 2001) and recently made her debut as a picture book author with The Wakame Gatherers (Shen’s Books, 2007), the story of a bicultural girl who gathers wakame with her Japanese and American grandmothers. In this interview, Thompson shares some of her experiences writing and marketing The Wakame Gatherers, a rare example of bicultural fiction for children set in Japan.

• Threads on SWET-L
  • Artful Punctuation and the Limits of Style (Torkil Christensen)
    The list affirms that wordsmiths don’t always have authorities that agree, but SWET-L puts a human face on sticky issues constantly cropping up on computer screens worldwide.

• Book Reviews
  • Read Real Japanese Essays, by Janet Ashby and Read Real Japanese Fiction, by Michael Emmerich (Roo Heins)
    For anyone who struggles with written Japanese, two new Read Real Japanese books from Kodansha International may offer a glimmer of hope in the dark and forbidding realm of kanji.
  • Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema by Abé Mark Nornes (Mark Schilling)
    “All of us have, at one time or another, left a movie theater wanting to kill the translator,” writes Abé Mark Nornes in the introduction to his well-researched, well argued—and indeed argumentative—book on translating films across languages and cultures.