Monthly Archives: December 2018

Cool Word – 仕事納め

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I’m back in Chicago after the holidays, the temps have dropped again, and there’s a dusting of snow on the ground, but I’m on the inside looking out, sipping on a hot mug of honey ginger lemon, so no complaints.

I’m done with work for the year!

A Japanese friend’s Facebook post reminded me of the excellent Japanese word 仕事納め (shigoto-osame)—finishing up work for the year. It makes sense that Japan — where New Year’s is absolutely the dominant national holiday — has a word that means wrapping up for the year.

Nothing too crazy going on here – just 仕事 (work) plus a nominalized form of the verb 納める (to complete).

納める is one of those verbs that can have a ton of different meaning depending on context. In fact, the Japanese dictionary provides nine independent usages. Dictionary posts like this are complicated but really helpful if you’re trying to get a true sense of meaning. The dictionary post for 仕事納め is much simpler and good reading practice for beginners.

Update: Check out the 仕事納め hashtag on Instagram for a nice contextual definition of the word and a cool glimpse of how Japan is wrapping up the year.

Translation Pre-order – Masquerade and the Nameless Women

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It’s official—the translation I did for Vertical this summer is available for pre-order. It’s been up for a little while, but I wanted to wait until the cover was on Amazon to let everyone know. Take a look. They put your boy on the cover:

The book is Eiji Mikage’s 殺人鬼探偵の捏造美学 (Satsujinki tantei no netsuzō bigaku), which works out to something like “The Serial Killer Detective’s Fabricated Aesthetic.” Here’s the Japanese cover:

There are lots of fun variations on this. Detective Serial Killer’s Invented Aesthetic. The Invented Aesthetic of the Serial Killer Detective. The Japanese cover also has the suggested translation “Masquerade’s Fabricated Aesthetic.” Of these variations I think “Masquerade’s Invented Aesthetic” might be closest to what Mikage was going for.

Clearly we went in a different direction with the English title. I’m really happy that Vertical took one of my suggestions. The title is drawn from the text and I think creates forward momentum for the reader. I had a few other options, but I think I’ll wait to share them when the book is published.

This reminds me that I recently learned the Spanish translation for Murakami’s Norwegian Wood is Tokio Blues. I was having a conversation with a Venezuelan and briefly thought there was some Murakami book I wasn’t familiar with until she described the opening: a Japanese man lands in Germany and “Norwegian Wood” is playing over the airplane speakers as the passengers disembark.

I think this title translation borders on criminal. “Norwegian Wood” is so effective as a title because (assuming the reader is familiar with the Beatles, which isn’t a huge assumption to be making) the song title itself is incredibly potent and generative. You have the sound of the song, of course, but also whatever memories and experiences you have wrapped up with the song, which is exactly how the novel begins—Toru’s near physical pain at everything he associates with the song.

The translation demolishes that and replaces it with an incredibly simple summary of the book…although I will admit that it does summarize the book somewhat effectively, lol. Are the Beatles just not as popular in Spanish-speaking countries? I find that difficult to imagine. I’d chalk this up to an overeager translator/publisher.

A quick Wikipedia perusal shows that most translations leave the song title, but French and German also commit crimes.

The French title is La Ballade de l’impossible (The Ballad of the Impossible), which is garbage, and the German is Naokos Lächeln (Naoko’s Smile), which is better—likely drawn from the text, kind of hints at how the narrator is feeling—but still #NotGreatBob.

I hope that my title translation hasn’t done this much damage. Obviously it’s done some, at least when it comes to authorial intentions. But I do think the English will benefit from this new title. We’ll see.

So go get a pre-order at your favorite bookseller! I should note the trigger warnings: gore, suggested statutory rape, suggested incest (・・；)

How to Japanese at (the Entrance to) Keio University

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So Keio University used one of my Japan Times articles on their entrance exam this year. That’s a thing that happened.

I wrote a little about it (and writing as a side hustle) over on my personal site.

They used “Japanese humor: more universally funny than you think,” one of my earliest for the JT. I’ve written 50 articles for the Bilingual page now, and this was my seventh, so the style feels a bit awkward at times, the word choice clunky, and the Japanese examples kind of sparse, but there are still some good points.

Here’s what the version on the test looks like:

They did some pretty significant editing and rewriting for the test, which makes sense. The target audience here isn’t native speakers. To be honest, they could have changed more, but their edits make it somewhat more readable by giving each joke a clean introduction. Hopefully that made it less trying for the applicants (to the medical school, which is shown at the bottom of the final page).

The questions are interesting: 1) write an introductory paragraph in English, 2) replace the word in the underlined phrases that doesn’t make sense with a word that does make sense, 3) place the appropriate conjunctions in the blank spots in the text, 4) translate the underlined Japanese sentence into English, 5) translate the marked Japanese phrases into English, and 6) translate “the opposite is true” into Japanese.

That’s an awful lot of work to do for a single reading comprehension passage. I wonder how much time they had to get through it? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? Probably less.

It’s very interesting to learn that Keio did not have to ask the JT permission to use the text on the exam and that in the past they weren’t even citing the author or publication (“Entrance exams breaking copyright law? Academically unethical?”). I wonder how the writer discovered that texts were being used.

I suspect that they were being reprinted in books of past exams which get used as study guides. That’s how I learned my article was used—the publisher notified the JT and was required to pay them usage rights and me author fees. Actually, I’m not certain if it’s required, but they seemed willing to pay the rates.

I wonder how many other JT authors this has happened too. Any readers know of this happening?