Swet Columns
November 21, 2009
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,... more
October 23, 2009
eBooks and the Author
by Hugh Ashton
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... more
September 29, 2009
Keene, Seidensticker et al.: Products of War, Commodities of Peace
Reviewed by William Wetherall
Focusing on recently published biographical works by the late Edward G. Seidensticker and Columbia University professor Donald Keene, William Wetherall evokes the personalities and the times of two great promoters of Japanese literature in the postwar era.
Wetherall’s articles on a variety of subjects are posted on the gateway to his websites.
Intrigued... more
August 19, 2009
Swimming with the Flow
by Jiho Sargent
Jiho Sargent was a technical writer and editor, proofreader, programming expert, and a SWET stalwart for more than two decades. She was also a Buddhist priest who served for a time at Taisoji near Sugamo station. Her health took a turn for the worse in 2006, however, and she decided to return to the United States to live... more
July 21, 2009
Self-Publishing a Self-Initiated Translation
A professional non-fiction translator for over 40 years, Fred Uleman, in September 2009, self-published Rethinking the Constitution: An Anthology of Japanese Opinion, a translation of Kodansha’s 2004 Nihon no kenpo: Kokumin shuken no ronten. SWET asked Uleman how he came to translate and publish a book he was not paid to do, and what it involved.
... more
July 8, 2009
Kurodahan: Selling to a Niche
by Ginny Tapley
Based in Fukuoka, Kyushu, far from the usual centers of publishing, Edward Lipsett, Stephen Carter and Chris Ryal have established Kurodahan Press, a new type of publisher now entering its fifth year. Having started with Mayumura Taku’s Administrator in 2003, Kurodahan specializes in translated Japanese literature, particularly genre fiction such as science fiction, horror, fantasy, and mystery. Ultimately, however, they aim... more