They took the roses apart themselves, ripping them from their stems and casting the petals on the waters. Silently, purposefully. It was tragic, gardens shaped by decades of love and care destroyed in a moment, yet the people showed little…
Blog Archives
The memory police
Tagged with: International Booker, Japanese, Steven Snyder, The Memory Police, Translation, Women in Translation Month, Yoko Ogawa
Posted in books, Man Booker 2013, translation, Women in Translation Month
Posted in books, Man Booker 2013, translation, Women in Translation Month
Tokyo Ueno Station
Tokyo Ueno Station is the Japan the tourists never see, because it’s literally swept off the streets. We hear about it from the inside. This is Kazu’s story, told by Yu Miri and translated by Morgan Giles. A middle-aged man…
Tagged with: books, Buddhism, homelessness, Japan, Japanese, Morgan Giles, Tilted Axis Press, Tokyo Ueno Station, Translation, Yu Miri
Posted in books, translation
Posted in books, translation
Islands of Protest
This book will make you angry, and sad, and want to act, at least it did me. Coming from a small country where people were made to wear a sign around their neck if they spoke their native language…
Tagged with: Davinder L. Bhowmik, Islands of Protest, Japanese, Okinawa, Ryukyu Islands, Ryukyuan languages, Steve Rabson, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, short stories, theatre, translation
Posted in books, poetry, short stories, theatre, translation
waiting for Christmas, Japanese style
Sometimes reading a new book is like meeting a new friend. Chika Sagawa was born over a century ago, and this new volume of her writing is slim, but it was enough to seal the friendship for me. It may…
Tagged with: Chika Sagawa, Collected Poems, Japanese, modernism, PEN, Poetry, Sawako Nakayasu, Translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Posted in books, poetry, translation
Words to bridge the gap
From a capella to zeitgeist, English has always filched other people’s words and run with them. There are so many more waiting to be used. And Ella Frances Sanders has brought them to life. As she says in Lost in Translation:…
Tagged with: Ella Frances Sanders, Inuit, Japanese, The Bridge Called Langauge, Translation, Untranslatable Words, Welsh
Posted in books, Illustration, language, translation, words
Posted in books, Illustration, language, translation, words
chocolate for everyone
Valentine’s Day both loses and gains something in translation. For the Japanese, today is the day when the women give chocolate (and only chocolate) to the men. This is because one chocolate company made a translation mistake, switching the genders, when…
Tagged with: cake, chocolate, Estonian, Finland, Finnish, friends, Japanese, Language, Translation
Posted in translation, Valentine's Day
Posted in translation, Valentine's Day
found in translation 