April 13, 2008

SWET Newsletter, Number 118

Contents

 

 

 

• Translating from Japanese to English
  Through a Glass Darkly: Is Translating Poetry Possible? by Janine Beichman
  Translator for over 10 years of a wide range of poems for A Poet’s Notebook in the Asahi Evening News, Janine Beichman knows a lot about translating Japanese poetry. She has also authored the literary biographies Masaoka Shiki: His Life and Works and Embracing the Firebird: Yosano Akiko and the Birth of the Female Voice in Modern Japanese Poetry. Professor in the Department of Japanese literature at Daito Bunka University, Beichman spoke to the Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies in March 2007. Thanks to her and to Prof. Henry D. Smith of KCJS for permitting SWET to publish this edited and slightly expanded transcript.
• A Publisher’s Publisher: Remembering Nobuki Saburō
  Executive director of Kodansha International from 1963 to 1986, Nobuki Saburō was a driving force in publishing about Japan in the years that shaped Japan’s postwar image in the world. He was also widely loved and respected by the editors and translators he worked with. This article reprints an accolade written for Nobuki in the Japan Times by Donald Richie in 1986 and presents memories by 10 people who worked closely with him: Akanoma Yukimori, Michael Brase, Peter Goodman, Katakura Shigeo, Machiko Moriyasu, Sakiyama Katsuhiko, Kim Schuefftan, Mary Sutherland, Jules Young, Dorothy Britton, and Juliet Winters Carpenter.
• SWET Events
  • Damian Flanagan: Why Read Sōseki? (David Eunice)
    Damian Flanagan is author of Nihonjin ga shiranai Natsume Sōseki [The Natsume Sōseki Japanese Don’t know]. In 2005 his translation of Sōseki’s writings on Britain (The Tower of London: Tales of Victorian London) won the 2005 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Flanagan has contributed major critical introductions to new editions of Sōseki’s The Gate (published by Peter Owen in January 2006); Endō Shūsaku’s Scandal (published in March 2006); and Sōseki’s masterpiece Kokoro (published in February 2007). Kansai-based translator David Eunice offers a critical review of Flanagan’s June 16, 2007 talk to SWET, held in Nishinomiya.
  • Writing and Publishing Fiction (Dianne Highbridge)
    Australian author of A Much Younger Man and In the Empire of Dreams Dianne Highbridge spoke to SWET on September 14, 2007 about writing, finding an agent, being reviewed, and other topics. Her successful Creative Writing classes at Temple University Japan led to a series of annual writing workshops (last held in October-November 2007). She has just completed a third novel, The Book Lover.
• SWET Member News
  • The Town and Country Translator: Gavin Frew (Lynne E. Riggs)
    Translator of numerous mysteries going back to the early 1980s, Gavin Frew has lately pursued his interest in art and craft not only in his profession but in renovating an old farmhouse in Gunma prefecture as his permanent home.
• Threads on SWET-L
  • Mr. Pine-Tale Bananas and the Green Goddess (Torkil Christensen)
    Glimpses of what can happen when people try to translate proper nouns, from whence the two “i’s” in shiitake derive, and a discussion of dropped h’s feature in this issue’s digest of the threads spun from SWET-L in the autumn of 2007.
• Book Review
  • Subtleties of Scientific Style, by Matthew Stevens (Rick Weisburd)
    Veteran editor and rewriter of scientific and research writing, Weisburd recommends his book as “useful to any editor of research manuscripts who wants to help authors clarify meaning.”