About the Translator
Hi! I'm Ainikki, a 30-something woman with a graduate degree in English (focus on American English Literature and Middle English Literature). I started self-teaching myself Japanese in September of 2018. My best friend from childhood moved from Korea to Japan to teach English some years back, and I encountered a book that I really wanted to read in the original Japanese. I also knew it would be hard and I wanted to take the language up as a personal challenge. I'm far from fluent, but I'm also not a beginner anymore.How I Translate
I use a Rocketbook (endlessly erasable notebook) and erasable pens to create the first draft of the translation. This is often very rough and riddled with running errors in tense (especially) and detailed notes on the order in which to present information, since this often varies between Japanese and English. I translate two chapters, then type up the first one and read it aloud before posting it, then translate another chapter after that. This way, I'm always at least a chapter ahead of schedule, and usually two chapters ahead (in case work/life stuff happens and I need a buffer).
Typing up the literally transliterated text is the hardest part. This is the stage where I need to smooth out tenses, tone, character voices, idiomatic expressions, etc. I've learned a lot from Uehashi's other translations into English, but something I take special care with is humor. I don't think that usually comes through as strongly as it should in other translations, because Uehashi can be wickedly, darkly funny even when you least expect it. Violence, battles, politics and history also need special care; Uehashi's battle scenes are often not very long, but contain very specific and pointed details. Her treatises on history can span ten pages or more. Whole novels (Traveler of the Void, Traveler of the Blue Road) have an overarching structure of manipulators and manipulated politicians circling around one another in 400-page games of chicken. When translating the individual chapters, it's sometimes difficult to keep the focus on the whole. I think I can only do this (to an extent, anyway) because I've read this series before, back when my Japanese proficiency was far worse.
After transliteration and typing comes posting. I usually edit after I post (bad habit, I know) because it helps me to read it the way someone else would, and I find it hard to catch fossilized errors that I've made in transliteration/typing until after I've let them sit for a couple of days. It's one of the perils of doing your own editing.
I'm not perfect. I do mess up. I fix things when I notice that I've messed up, but I don't always catch everything. If you ever spot something obviously wrong or think I should take a closer look at something, please let me know!
Why Moribito/Guardian of the Spirit?
"Guardian of the Spirit" was the first novel I read in Japanese. It was not the novel that sparked my desire to learn Japanese (that would be Nishio Isshin's Los Angeles BB Murders Case (Death Note)), but it was the novel that served as a milestone for my being able to read long-form Japanese. The first chapter contained 672 words that I didn't know. (I still have the flashcards.) It took me 4 months to read the book, attacking it for 2-3 hours a day. I'd been studying Japanese for about eight months at that point. (Yes, I tried to read a children's novel only four months after beginning my studies. I don't recommend this. It isn't fun.)
I managed to get to Japan to visit my friend, where I bought the entire series in Japanese at bookstore in Shinjuku that had eight floors. I had to lug them all back on the train in the rain (my friend did not help enable this somewhat questionable decision...), and on the plane ride back home I read the first third or so of "Guardian of the Dream." And the rest followed from there. It took me about seven months after that to read the series, not getting everything but getting the gist, and I shifted gears toward Classical Japanese for a while--Akutagawa Ryuunosuke, Dazai Osamu, and the like.
And then a lovely internet stranger (platypusbutt/Evil Receptionist of Doom) asked me offhandedly if I'd like to translate the series. I decided to try, realized it wasn't nearly as hard as I remembered it to be the first time around, and here we are. If all goes well, most of the series should be translated by 2022.
When's the next book/series going to be done?
The two short story collections, The Wanderer and Those Who Walk the Flame Road, should be done by October 2022.
Where the Wind Takes Us (a post-series novel featuring Balsa and Tanda) should be done by December of 2022. (It's 450 pages long.)
There is an additional short story published in a magazine that features the lives of Balsa and Tanda years after the series' ending; I'm trying to get my hands on it. I've also managed to get a copy of the 2 radio plays, and may try my hand at making transcripts for them some time after the main series is complete.
Will you translate the first three books?
Possibly. The first two have been published in official translation; the third has a very capable fan translation already. But if there's interest in having the same translated "voice" for the series, I'll render the complete series. However, I won't be able to post the first 2 books on this blog (as that would be copyright infringement and I'd never do that to Uehashi-sensei). People desiring those books would need to contact me directly, and prove that they've already supported the official translation--I have no desire to rob Uehashi-sensei, her publishers, or her illustrators/editors. I just want the story to be told.
Other questions? Ask me anything!
Maybe you want to do this yourself, or want some tips on rendering tricky Japanese? Let me know in the comments. :)
Hey, I guessed some details about a stranger on the internet correctly! *fist pump* I'm impressed at how much work you've put into all this, and how much thought; but the effort really shows in the translation itself, imo. My process has been to painstakingly transliterate the text of my manga, then pop the result in Google Translate, then mess with the line breaks to see if that yields something more reasonable, and then to pop the text into Jisho to make sure that doesn't give wildly different results. And to sometimes guess at something that neither Jisho nor Google Translate can interpret. ROFL ROFL ROFL. My translation method is VERY high-tech, you see. XDDDDDDD (You can also see why I've learned very little Japanese from my efforts... though I would really think I'd have memorized the dang alphabets by now.) And for the first like 70 pages or so I wasn't even using Jisho. I did give a few really confusing pages to my Japanese aunt to interpret, and then my cousin after my aunt was stumped. But... yeah, it's the translation equivalent of banging on an engine with a wrench til it starts working. 8D
ReplyDelete...But also I haven't touched my manga translation in like a month because no one is reading it and my Moribito fix is being very, very well-satisfied by this far-superior translation of this far more nuanced and involved material. Eventually I'll get back to it. XD
I too am a 30-something woman with a graduate degree. We have so much in common! But mine is in geology, and I'm still in grad school. I'm really happy that a stranger on the internet (Ainikki) totally just blasted through a translation of Traveler of the Void and is already onto Guardian of the God, and she even replies to comments and everything. We've had some pretty interesting conversations - and I finally have someone I can yak at about Moribito, which is excellent 'cuz I've been obsessed with it on and off since 2008. It restores my faith in internet-based humanity. :)
I really had been planning to do a translation project in Japanese sometime in my third year of study, so I had a lot of the logistical details hashed out already. So you asked at a perfect time. :) If you hadn't asked, I probably would have saddled myself with the "Dororo" novels, and then I'd be tearing my hair out. (They're written in ancient Chinese-laced 15th century Japanese. Authentic, yes, and fascinating, but much too hard for me still.)
ReplyDeleteThere are times, especially in manga, where a conversation takes place between two characters that are familiar with a situation that the audience hasn't seen yet. (This happens in the novels as well.) In this case most of the dialogue is untranslatable because of the lack of context. (Your poor aunt...I can imagine the struggle of trying to translate "loose" Japanese independent of any grounding whatsoever!) Your method is definitely painstaking and likely hews closer to the literal meaning of the thing that my translation does, since my Japanese translation into English is not so much 1:1 conversion as it is scene painting: how would this same conversation go in English? What tone is being used? What details are emphasized? What do I need to add in to make sure English speakers could even follow this dialogue? Etc. Incidentally, your rendering of dialogue is usually pretty good and natural, especially given that long and complicated process.I hope you do get to return to your translation, soonish. If you get stuck, you can ask me, too--I at least have a basic understanding of the series as context, and that really does tend to help.
I'm glad to be out of school, but I also kind of miss the rigor and discipline of school. I don't think of translating as homework (it's too much fun for that), but it does add some structure to the evenings spent in quarantine, so I appreciate it. And of course I reply to comments! I don't have many people to discuss the series with, either, beyond the first two books, though I've already convinced my mother and best friend to read the Guardian of the Dream in translation, and Traveler of the Void when it's finished being edited. So I'll have made at least a few more fans of the series as I go :)
Good luck with your grad studies! I think you'll really enjoy how this series develops, and especially how it ends. I'm excited to keep sharing it.
Hooray for more converts to the Moribito fan community! One more step towards the series getting the recognition it deserves!
ReplyDeleteMaybe you'll gain so much XP from doing Moribito that by the time you've finished you'll be levelled-up enough that Dororo will be much easier to tackle. ^_^
Your method of translation it like what professional translators do, right? Like, there's a definite art to it, from what I've read, where they try to imitate the original writer's style to some degree, and how it gets even more art-like where there are jokes and other especially-hard-to-translate points. I find it really fascinating.
I'll definitely get back to my translation eventually (and my fanfics, and my reading, and various real-life things that have been on hold). The hurricane I've been in the midst of all month has dulled a bit, so now that I've a moment to breathe I can finally go back and continue these conversations and get caught up on Guardian of the God. I'm looking forward to just sitting down and blasting through all the chapters I've missed!
Thank goodness your life's calmed down a bit...I remember my last few months of grad school as a blur of reading 800+ pages per day to study, writing theses, and teaching undergrad students. I think the world record of going without sleep is 11 days, but most of my cohort'll tell you we didn't get much sleep for a solid month before Master's Exam week. I sincerely hope things improve for you from here on out.
DeleteI powered through the first 100 pages of the first "Dororo" novel my first time through before giving it up, not because I *couldn't* read it, but because a page a day was far too slow when the novel was 400+ pages.:( I suspect I could do better now, but I also think it's at least three levels too hard. When my reading level climbs to high-school level (right now it hovers between 6-8 grade) I may give "Dororo" another shot.
Cathy Hirano had a lot of access to the author and other translators, which I haven't got. What I do have is her translations, which I did read through first to get a feel for how other people approach the style and (especially) the magic, because it has to be rendered more concretely in English than in Japanese, and I wanted to be consistent. But I'm not trying to imitate Hirano's style--I find her descriptions of combat especially clinical and lacking in speed, focus, and a general sense of fun. (Balsa likes fighting. It's a major plot point in the second "Guardian of the God" book and the drama.) She mentioned she was squeamish about the fighting in her interviews; I've been involved with some form or another of martial arts and weapons training for decades. And I'm an action movie/show fan, so I vastly prefer what I can put out for the fighting bits. :) She almost certainly has me beaten in the social anthropology bits, at least stylistically, because that's her area of expertise. Different translators are going to bring different things to the work. I think I'm going to have a lot of fun with the Spear Dance, when I get to it, because I'm 100% convinced that I can render something more fluid and graceful, which is what the Japanese version has in it (but not the English version, which gets the movements right but is missing...something.)
"The Translator's Turn" is the only book on translation I've ever read, so I share it's philosophy mainly because I lack other perspectives...for literary translations, though, "write it the way you'd want to read it" is not terrible advice. :)
There'll be a new chapter of Guardian of the God up today (I wanted to post it yesterday, but it was too long for me to both type and edit before the end of the day...ah well.)
Welcome back! And if you ever need to take a break, feel free. As I've said, I'm not going anywhere for a bit. :)
Thanks for your well-wishes, I hope things improve, too. >___<
DeleteI think the different strengths of different translators, like you mention, is why two different translations of the same work can feel like totally different books. (I've even seen in in different anime fansubs of a single series, lol.) No wonder there are so many translations of famous books like War and Peace. But I imagine there's no replacement for the translator and the author being able to sit down in a room (or over email, or whatever) and talk about the translation itself, especially when the author is also bilingual. I bet very few translators get that luxury.