Part One: Talk on translating The Fall of Language in the Age of English
Part Two: Translation workshop

Speaker: Juliet Winters Carpenter
Date: 6 December 2014 (Saturday)
Time: 2.30–4.30 p.m. (Followed by bonenkai nearby at 6 p.m. Details here.)
Venue: U’s2, Umeda, Osaka (Room D, 3rd Floor) Tel: 06-6345-1325 (Map) 
Address: 大阪府大阪市北区梅田2-1-18 (5 minutes' walk from Umeda Sta./JR Osaka Sta.)
Fee: 1,000 yen SWET, JAT members; 1,500 yen non-members
Translation Passage Download: http://bit.ly/SWET-JWCarpenter
Translation Submission: Wednesday December 3 to SWET Kansai.
Reservation and inquiries: SWET Kansai

Part One: Talk
On Translating Nihongo ga horobiru toki: Eigo no seiki no naka de (The Fall of Language in the Age of English by Minae Mizumura, forthcoming from Columbia University Press, January 2015; translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter; 240 pp.)

Winner of the Kobayashi Hideo Award for the 2008 outstanding work of nonfiction, this best-selling book by one of Japan’s most ambitious contemporary fiction writers lays bare the struggle to retain the brilliance of one’s own language in an age of English dominance. Universal languages have always played a pivotal role in advancing human societies, but in the globalized world of the Internet, English is fast becoming the sole common language of the human race. Mizumura offers an intimate look at the phenomena of individual and national expression through the various languages that give birth to a variety of literatures that nurture and enrich humanity.

Mizumura’s book came out in 2008 and was an immediate sensation, zooming to number one on Amazon Japan. The book’s supporters and detractors were equally ardent in their responses. Juliet Winters Carpenter will give an overview of the book and discuss why it ignited such controversy, explain how the translation came about through her collaboration with Yoshihara and Mizumura, and give her own take on a book that is fun to read and full of ideas and analyses, with broad appeal to those interested in Japanese studies and the written word.

 

Part Two: Workshop
All participants are asked to download in advance a specially selected short passage from the book, read it, and translate it. If you submit your translation in advance by December 3rd, it will be given anonymously to Carpenter, who will discuss and offer feedback on the translations during the workshop. Submitting a translation is optional, but participants are encouraged to do so to get the most out of the workshop.

Download the passage here.

Translate from “私はくり返し思った。” on p. 43 through to “…深くつながっていたか” at the end of p.44.

Please submit your translation to SWET Kansai by December 3rd (Wednesday) as a DOC, DOCX, or RTF file.

 

Profile
Juliet Winters Carpenter was born in the US Midwest and studied Japanese literature at the University of Michigan under Edward Seidensticker, as well as at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, then in Tokyo. Her translation of Kobo Abe’s novel Secret Rendezvous won the 1980 Japan–United States Friendship Commission Prize for the Translation of Japanese Literature. Her many subsequent translations include mysteries, folktales, romance novels, haiku and tanka poetry, historical fiction, and books on Buddhist philosophy. She has translated signature works by Fumiko Enchi, Miyuki Miyabe, Machi Tawara, and Junichi Watanabe. She took part in the landmark project to translate Clouds Above the Hill: A Historical Novel of the Russo-Japanese War by Ryotaro Shiba. A longtime resident of Kyoto, she teaches at Doshisha Women’s College of Liberal Arts and authored the book Seeing Kyoto. Her translation of A True Novel by Minae Mizumura—a remaking of Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights set in postwar Japan—has won the 2014 ATA Lewis Galantiere Prize, and the 2014 Next Generation Indie Book Award's Grand Prize in Fiction.