May 7, 2008

As translation studies and practice have been gaining in critical attention across the humanities, fine arts, and literary/textual arts, our Graduate Symposium for this year invites graduate students to submit 1.) proposals for presentations pertaining to the study of translation as a politics, theory, or practice, as well as 2.) translations by graduate translators (principally from Japanese to English, but we are open to other directions and situations).

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May 7, 2008
Yoko Mizui

ASAHIKAWA, Hokkaido--Laughter filled a classroom of second-year students at Asahikawa Kita High School as students wrote their homework assignment on the blackboard at the beginning of an English lesson by Tetsuro Matsui on April 24.

The assignment was to write "words of love that you want to text or e-mail to someone" on the condition that it uses the subjunctive mood and does not contain direct expressions, such as "I love you" or "I like you."

Among the examples, the sentence that evoked the most laughter was "If you were a cactus, I would hug you," written by a girl. When Matsui read the sentence aloud, students seemed puzzled and so did Matsui. Thinking for a while, Matsui revised the sentence to read: "Even if you were a cactus, I would hug you."

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Thursday, May 1, 2008

U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, is urging the federal government to offer Asian language translation videos to international tourists arriving at Honolulu International Airport.

...Akaka noted that more than 1.3 million Japanese tourists flew to Hawaii in 2007. More than 100,000 came from China, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore.

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By Andrew McGall
04/27/2008

Americans accustomed to the 26-letter Roman alphabet and the English language may believe they can never enter the impenetrably dense thickets of cross-hatched markings and flowing lines of Asian writing. A Chinese or Japanese newspaper or book might as well be written in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Indeed, the Chinese alphabet that the Japanese adopted is a kind of hieroglyphic system, in that the symbols can represent both sounds and ideas.

Gabriele Mandel's "Japanese Alphabet" is a formal introduction to the 46-character Japanese alphabet. Most of it is a 98-page practical guide to vocalizing consonant-vowel combinations and writing the alpahabet's letters. Here on facing pages for the more poetic hiragana and the simpler katakana forms are each character's sequence of strokes, "voice" and "half-voice" markings, parallel Chinese character and an example of each in four modern print fonts.

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Thursday, Apr. 24, 2008
By ANDREW MONAHAN

Fujiwara no Teika (1162-1241) was, by most accounts, a horrible bully. The Japanese nobleman lived through the country's violent transition from the Heian aristocratic era to the martial Kamakura shogunate, and was surly, severe and infamously ugly, as if malformed by the turbulence of his times. But as a poet and editor, Teika has transcended the ages. He compiled Japan's most influential and long-lasting anthology of poems: the Hyakunin Isshu (one hundred people, one poem each), also known as the Ogura Hyakunin Isshu. For more than seven centuries, these poems have resonated with countless readers.

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Apr 3, 2008
by Peter Cohen

The Japanese-English Dictionary is a translation dictionary that contains necessary information for English-speaking students now learning Japanese. It includes grammatical notes containing thousands of Japanese words and phrases with English translations. You can use it to copy words and paste them into another document. You can also search for grammatical abbreviations (such as “adj-na” for “adjectival nouns or quasi-adjectives,” for example). The software is based on the EDIC Dictionary File of the JMdict/EDICT project.

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Thursday, March 13, 2008
Reyhan Harmanci

A 600-year-old traditional Japanese storytelling genre might have more in common with Voltaire's famous satire on class stratification, "Candide," than you might think.

To prove it, San Francisco's 25-year-old Theatre of Yugen will hold its fifth annual Sorya! (an expression meaning "wow!") production, interweaving Yuriko Doi's new translation of the classic Japanese comedy "A Religious Dispute" (Shuron) with "Candide" adapted in traditional Kyogen style.

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The Yomiuri Shimbun

TOKYO — A Japanese academic has unearthed a 1906 Japanese-language version of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit,” the first book in the “Peter Rabbit” series by Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), that appears to be the earliest foreign translation yet identified.

A Dutch translation of the book published in 1912 had been considered to be the oldest foreign version, and a Japanese translation published in a magazine in 1918 was thought to represent the first appearance of the popular series of children’s books in Japan.

Yoshihide Kawano, professor of English and American literature at Daito Bunka University, and two fans of the “Peter Rabbit” series came across the 1906 version in a magazine published by the Nisshusha newspaper, the predecessor of The Yomiuri Shimbun, when they were examining old literature in the National Diet Library in late April.

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By Peter Cohen

Apimac has released a Japanese-English translation dictionary for Mac OS X. Downloadable now, it costs $24.95 to register.

The dictionary provides grammatical notes with thousands of Japanese words and phrases with English translation. You can copy words from the dictionary and paste them into other application documents; you can also use the dictionary to help you study grammar.

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March 7, 2007

Kabuki star Ebizo Ichikawa is convinced Parisians won't have any problem understanding the emotional drama of Japan's traditional theater that he says goes beyond language barriers.

The 29-year-old actor, appearing with his father Danjuro Ichikawa and others at the Paris Opera house later this month, says foreign audiences usually come more prepared to his performances and are more attentive.

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Sunday, March 4, 2007

By MARIKO KATO
ZEN OF VEGETABLE ROOTS, calligraphy by Siu-Leung Lee, paintings by Fu Yi Yao, translated by Siu-Leung Lee. Yuzankaku, 2006, 254 pp., 2,800 yen (paper)

The original "Zen of Vegetable Roots" integrates the philosophy of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism in a collection of more than 750 Chinese proverbs dating from the 14th and 15th centuries.

As a guide to the art of living, the proverbs contained were considered fundamental, but hard to take -- like the title's "Vegetable Roots," which are the most nutritious parts of a plant but also have the most unpalatable textures and flavors.

As the popularity of these proverbs spread over Japan, Buddhist priests aligned them with their teachings; and more recently, they have provided the moral backbone for many businessmen and politicians. This feature has alienated the proverbs from the young modern reader despite their convincing profundity.

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2007/2/18
By Mari Yamaguchi TOKYO, AP

The author of a book on Crown Princess Masako slammed a Japanese publisher on Saturday for its decision to cancel a translation of his biography following indignant protests from Japan's government, calling the step a "blatant attack on freedom of speech."

Japanese publishing house Kodansha Ltd. said late Friday it has canceled plans to publish the Japanese translation of "Princess Masako: Prisoner of the Chrysanthemum Throne," written by the Australian journalist Ben Hills and released by Random house in December.

The tartly worded biography is billed on the cover as "tragic, true story" of the 43-year-old princess, a Harvard graduate who abandoned a diplomatic career to marry royalty. The book describes her as a virtual captive of the imperial palace who has been bullied by bureaucrats into depression.

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By KEVIN KERNAN

February 18, 2007 -- FT. MYERS, Fla. - New Red Sox pitching coach John Farrell is impressive talking about pitching and is doing everything he can to make sure games aren't lost in translation now that Daisuke Matsuzaka is the center of Boston's rotation.

Farrell has been feverishly trying to learn Japanese, at least how to speak about pitching in Matsuzaka's language.

"It's a humbling experience," said Farrell, who joked he might put flip-up translation cards on his wrist, a la football quarterbacks' play calls.

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The North Koreans and Chinese have criticized the changes, but what they fail to realize is that their belligerence toward Japan has accelerated a Japanese revision in their thinking regarding military power

By Richard Halloran

Monday, Jan 08, 2007

`The only thing one director-general of the agency was able to accomplish was to have a military band parade in his hometown.'

Tomorrow the Japan Defense Agency becomes the Japan Ministry of Defense in a change that seems small on the surface but is substantial in its reality.

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By Jess Halliday

09/01/2007 - The bonds between the Japanese and European functional foods industries are strengthening, as industry and regulators recognise the mutual benefits of working together.

Japan is renowned as having the most developed functional foods industry in the world; it was the first country to introduce government-approved health claims in the 1980s.

According to US-based analyst Paul Yamaguchi, the Japanese nutrition market was valued last year at around US$27 billion, but FOSHU foods (foods for specified health uses) account for only $6 billion of this. Non-FOSHU functional foods account for $11 billion, and dietary supplements around $11 billion too.

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