Articles
January 5, 2012
From the Steerage • The Future of the SWET Newsletter
by Lynne E. Riggs
The SWET Newsletter is going to change. As announced in No. 128, the present Newsletter will continue through No. 130, to come probably in February or March. After that, the new incarnation of the Newsletter will appear sometime in 2012, as part of our redesigned website (details on which see below).
Preparations for these changes... more
December 15, 2011
Slave to the Word
by Michael Karpa
In an efficiency-first, high-tech world, will human translators soon be transformed into skilled slaves? We bring to the task of translation understanding and consciousness, exactly what both rule-based and statistically based MT translation lack, and the completeness of our understanding becomes the measure of what we do. Karpa recalls the history of reading text when there were no... more
November 30, 2011
SWET Newsletter, No. 129
Japanese to English Translation Slave to the Word, Michael Karpa March 11, 2011: Continuing Stories After March 11: A Magazine and Local Newspaper Respond to the Disaster, Terri Nii The Silent Citadel: Poetry for 9/11 and 3/11, Higashizono Tadatoshi SWET Events Orchards: Holly Thompson on Japan in Fiction for Teens, Ann Tashi Slater Joan Ericson on Japanese Children’s Literature, Lynne E. Riggs From the Steerage SWET... more
September 8, 2011
Qualifying as a Translator
by Lynne E. Riggs
"The world in 1991 badly needs trained, experienced Japanese-to-English translators—not just people who know both English and Japanese and have fancy computer setups, but people educated for the job of translating messages in one language to those in another."
In the 20 years that have passed since I wrote this, many hardworking, experienced translators... more
July 5, 2011
SWET Newsletter, No. 128
Remembering March 11, 2011: Stories • Bob Gavey, Anna Husson Isozaki, William Wetherall, David Gilman-Frederick, Asakura Kazuko SWET Events Editing for Better Nonfiction Translation • Lynne E. Riggs David Moreton on Publishing the Diaries of an English P.O.W. • David Gilman-Frederick From the Trenches Newsletter News • SWET Newsletter Editorial Team Book Review Awa Naoko in Translation • Misa Dikengil Lindberg Remembering March 11,... more
May 31, 2011
Thinking Forward: SWET Starts Its Fourth Decade
by Lynne E. Riggs
Only a few blocks away from the apartment building in Aoyama where, in November 1980, 100 writers, editors, translators, and others of their kind had gathered and founded SWET, 33 SWETers—young, not-so-young, and 30 years older—gathered at the Wesley Center on November 3, 2010 to celebrate the beginning of SWET’s fourth decade. Remarks by James Baxter, Janine... more