(日本文学の翻訳に関わる方向けに別の場所で書いた記事ですが、こちらにも転載します)
From the standpoint of its history, translation is umbilical to the Japanese language. In other words, one cannot emphasize enough on how much tremendous effect the act of translation has had on it. This article will investigate how "a translator's note" reflects our culture and value.
Once I was asked by a British translator, “Around what percentage of literary fiction includes a translator's note?” Then, my answer was, “Well, among the books I’ve read, more than 90%.” After that conversation, I endeavored to recollect my entire reading experience, resulting in the more precise conclusion that it is well over 95%. Although books can have either forewords or afterwords, afterwords have been much more common since the end of WWII. University professors used to take the central role of literary translation, yet the number of freelance translators has been steadily increasing since Showa periods. Ostensibly, what one would call the ordinary format of translator’s note has become gradually fixed over decades. In that process, freelancers seem to have referred to the ones written by scholars as an exemplar.
Normally it includes the biographical sketch of the author, what awards they have obtained, and what position they occupy in literary circles. In-depth introductions of other works of the author and how translators came across that book might be mentioned as well. Sometimes, the translator's contribution gives them the privilege of meeting the author in person. In that case, some parts can be dedicated to a charming travelogue――an Australian writer Patricia Wrightson once put “a book never fails to connect people,”and I am convinced that that is pertinent.
There are such things as long-beloved translators’ note, which I believe describes the characteristics of Japanese literary scene to a certain extent. When essay collections of a translator is published, it is not rare that the translator’s notes written 10, 15, or more than 20 years ago are reproduced. Take for example:
case1: 柴田元幸『柴田元幸ベストエッセイコレクション』(ちくま文庫)
As the original title is named so, this is an influential American literature translator Motoyuki Shibata’s best essay collections. It contains a translator’s note of a Stuart Dybek’s poetry collections, and this is not so much the translator’s poetic memoir of his childhood in a riverside industrial zone(an industrial bay area) as an introduction of the writer and its works. (Alas, some of my friends said this translator’s note is more interesting than the book itself, though I’m not sure if that is fortunate for the book.)
case2: 浅倉久志『ぼくがカンガルーに出会ったころ』(国書刊行会)
An essay collection of a fabulous yet overly humble translator Hisashi Asakura, who translated numerous writers such as Philip K. Dick, James Tiptree Jr. and R. A. Lafferty in a highly sophisticated way. Along with Norio Ito, his translation has had a decisive impact on many of the SF readers in Japan. Some successful translators state they have been rereading his translator’s notes repeatedly. This book contains more than 35 translator’s notes. Additionally, he translated so many of Kurt Vonnegut’s novels, and even Haruki Murakami proclaims he was influenced by Asakura’s renderings.
case3:沼野充義『世界文学論』(作品社)
The author is a scholar of Slavic literature and emeritus professor of University of Tokyo. Its title can be translated as On World Literature with a volume of 700 pages. People would normally conceive of it as a newly written book in seeing its title. In fact, this is a collection of commentaries, critical essays, foreword of books and so forth he wrote from the 1970s to the 2010s. It contains a translator’s note of selected poems of Czesław Miłosz, who is a Novel Prize winning Polish poet. One can’t emphasize enough that the author seriously considers this book much more than collective different articles, but a book on world literature as a whole.
case4: 山形浩生『訳者解説』(バジリコ)
Although it is hardly seen even in Japan, the whole of this book is constituted of translators’ notes. With extensive knowledge on numerous areas, the author is known for having translated books of vastly different intellectual fields――edgy and experimental literature to noted economists like Thomas Piketty and Paul Krugman to a legal scholar Lawrence Lessig and so forth. His innovative renderings of William S. Burroughs are said to have revealed previously unknown aspects of the author. Also, his works seem to have contributed to the spread of a concept of Creative Commons in Japan. His translator’s notes generally function as the best introductory essay for each academic area.
case5: 柳父章、水野的、長沼美香子編『翻訳論アンソロジー』(法政大学出版局)
An anthology on translation that contains 31 articles. 14 of them are translators’ notes. (緒言 or 譯者の序 are old ways of preface or foreword)The period this book mainly deals with is before the end of WWⅡ, and so these articles adopted were written from 1873 to 1944. Sakutaro Hagiwara’s article tells you that by the 1930s at the latest some translation books had had already established reputation as “better than the originals.”
Why do we place such a great value on translators’ notes? Again, the most readers anticipate out of it is minutely detailed explanation on an author and their literary position in each country―hence, one plausible explanation is that readers in East Asian countries including South Korea, China and Taiwan, are simply a lot more studious with so to speak the historical-context-comprehending-fetishism. Japan has especially been absorbing Western culture at a furious pace since Meiji period. Moreover, it is that elasticity that has enriched our culture greatly and has brought economic upswing. Therefore, we tend to acclaim the translators who have a high degree of accuracy, implicitly expecting them to be intellectual knowledge givers.
Lastly, however, I will introduce one more episode to avoid this seemingly too simple conclusion. While preparing this essay, I asked my veteran English-Japanese translator friend, “If a translator’s note is no common in English speaking countries, don’t the readers have less chances to know the broader context of the author and its work? Or to have the sense of history?”He calmly answered, “You shouldn’t generalize like that. In Western countries, book reviews appearing in the leading newspaper and literary magazines are far much longer. The ones you see in Japanese media, including even leading literary magazines like Gunzou or Shinchou, are all extremely short. So those reviews overseas function as much as translators’ notes of our country.” Whereas I do find this opinion intriguing, I will refrain from further judgment today. In any case, we always can’t wait to read translators’ notes after finishing main texts, as if it were an enchanting gift.
