Swet Columns
July 12, 2007
“Ask Aunt Eva” Reissued
by Kay Vreeland
Doreen Simmons has been in Japan since 1973, writing feature articles, editing, acting, recording, and with a sideline as one of the few foreign female Sumo experts, including being a live commentator on NHK’s worldwide satellite service. [See Newsletter No. 71, “A Day in the Life.”] From 1996 to 2003, she kept SWETers on the straight and narrow... more
June 1, 2007
Effective Onscreen Editing: New tools for an old profession
Effective onscreen editing: New tools for an old profession, by Geoff Hart. Pointe-Claire, Quebec: Diaskeuasis Publishing, 2007. 723 pages. Ebook. ISBN 978-0-9783227-0-0. US$20 outside Canada.
Do you use MS Word or other applications to edit documents onscreen and think you know exactly how to do it? After using Geoff Hart’s eBook, based on his column... more
April 23, 2007
Mind the Gaffe!
Reviewed by Kay Vreeland
Mind the Gaffe! by R. L. Trask. New York: Harper, 2001, 2006. 290 pages. Paperback. ISBN-13: 978-0061132209; ISBN-10: 0061132209. $11.16; ¥1474.
Larry Trask led a double life—two countries, two careers, two wives—but he had one great passion for linguistics. Ranked by his peers with Noam Chomsky and Stephen Pinker, and author of classics on language, its history, and... more
March 31, 2006
Markuz Wernli Saitō on Book Design
by Peter Goodman
A Swiss designer with a background in commercial and website design, Markuz Wernli Saitō was the photographer/designer of Stone Bridge Press’s Mirei Shigemori: Modernizing the Japanese Garden, a book based on the doctoral dissertation of author Christian Tschumi on the twentieth-century scholar and garden designer. On January 22, 2006 Wernli Saitō spoke about how the photographs... more
December 1, 2005
Kyoto Journal Inspired
by Damon Shulenberger
The Kyoto Journal has always been a source of admiration and inspiration to editors, translators, and writers connected with Japan. In 2005, founding editor John Einarsen and associate editor Stewart Wachs spoke to a large SWET audience about their different perspectives on the journal’s making and showed a lively collection of slides of KJ covers and... more
November 1, 2005
On Staying Published
by Kay Vreeland
Publishing a guidebook to Kyoto is a daunting undertaking, so seeing it on bookshelves eight years after publication is gratifying. What is involved in staying in print and in maintaining a relationship with a publisher that is taken over by other presses along the way? Judith Clancy talks with SWET about the process and the rewards of remaining... more