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JAT Bulletin 187, October 2000. Publications Committee
Last month's Bulletin carried the table of contents of a recently released book 翻訳は文化である（丸善ライブラリー） by 藤岡啓介, who drew on insights gained in working as an editor over four decades to produce a book that is unusual in covering literary translation, the history of translation in Japan, and the practical aspects of professional translation. After editing translations in a publishing firm Fujioka edited and published the monthly journal 工業英語 and the 科学技術25万語大辞典. Since 1997 he has been editing a bilingual version of Cobuild English Dictionary, and he has also written and translated several other books.
If you're looking for a book that will help you with specific suggestions on how to translate, this is not the book for you. The author has deliberately avoided the example translations found in so many books on translation. Instead the aim implied by the title lies in highlighting how translation--be that of literary works or technical texts--is vital to the development of civilization and the human spirit and how the Japanese language and culture acquired their current vigour through translations. Yet the actual content of the book is more down-to-earth than this might suggest, and the book is full of interesting anecdotes that demonstrate Fujioka's familiarity with post-Meiji translation history, as well as with Western and Chinese translation history.
After mentioning how the Japanese sidestepped the need to translate Chinese texts by using kambun kundoku, Fujioka goes on to argue that when European novels were first introduced into Japan, the names of the authors would have meant nothing to Japanese readers, so the translator's name was listed alongside that of the author, thereby borrowing the translator's authority to boost the sales of the book. This was in a time when translations were often made by established writers or well-known scholars, and it was the origin of the practice of always citing the translator's name on the cover of translations--a practice that is only recently becoming more common in the West. Fujioka suggests that if all translators (including those of technical and commercial texts) put their name to their work the quality of translations would improve, as translators would take greater responsibility for their work.
In the Meiji period few people could understand foreign languages, so there was no fear of being criticized for errors, which led to bold and well-written translations. As the number of people with foreign language skills rose, however, translators became more concerned about being criticized for errors, and the resulting slavish respect for the source text led to the prevalence of awkward translations. Whereas most translators in the prewar years had been writers, academics, or journalists who did translation as a sideline, the sixties saw the emergence of professional translators. Agencies and technical writers also began to appear (although the very first translation agency dates right back to 1910).
Chapter 1 (翻訳者の条件) emphasizes the importance of not just ability in the foreign language, but also good expression in Japanese, and lists the author's minimum criteria for translators. He is highly critical of how the Shakespearean translator Odajima Yushi (Fujioka refers to him only as O氏) recently published four translations in a “Best of Chekhov” series, working from English renditions rather than the original Russian--something that Fujioka regards as unforgivable in this day and age, particularly since the resulting translations are rather flat. Later, however, Fujioka argues that relay translations via an intermediary language are easier for translators to understand, making it easier to produce an outstanding rendition. This is another reason why there were so many excellent translations in the Meiji period, when translators were often forced to work through a filter language such as English. Fujioka is also critical of the recent practice of 超訳 (arbitrarily adding lines that are not in the original and omitting information or rewriting the original so as to make it ‘easier' to read) and of the way in which the translator's identity has often been obscured in the 超訳 of Sidney Sheldon's novels. The practice of 監訳 also comes in for criticism. This is where a well-known specialist translator lends his (or her) name to a team translation, thereby blurring the locus of responsibility for the translation. Fujioka regards such practices as worse than translation errors, which he regards not as a matter of incompetence, but as an inevitable hazard in the intellectual task of translation. This is why it is important for translations to be checked by someone other than the translator.
Chapter 3 (直訳か意訳か) makes the valid point that the much-used terms 直訳 and 意訳 take on different nuances or meanings depending on the user, and argues that it is dangerous to discuss translation in these terms. Fujioka also describes what he says is a recent trend whereby translators are sometimes asked by editors to rewrite their translations into more prosaic and less polished Japanese. The rationale is that readers are used to literal translations or lack the ability to savour sophisticated Japanese, or that they would prefer a literal translation to ensure that no errors occur, rather than an outstanding translation full of errors. Without some supporting evidence it is difficult to judge whether this claim is indeed accurate, but my own impression is that such attitudes have started to change for the better in more recent years.
The author makes some controversial points in this chapter. For instance, he argues that good translations are ones that read well (fair enough) and, more contentiously, in which it is easy to find the original word from the translation. (He doesn't say why it is desirable to be able to match the two texts up in this way.) He also claims that nowadays it is possible to produce an idiomatic translation by making good use of dictionaries, even without particularly good foreign language competence.Chapter 2 (翻訳の環境) focuses on dictionaries, a topic about which the author is highly knowledgeable because of his background, although personally I found this chapter less interesting than other parts of the book. The account of machine translation in Chapter 4 (人の領域、機械の領域) makes no new contribution to the discussion. Fujioka believes that MT has still not reached a usable stage, but he suggests that technical texts and simple texts that do not require complex syntactical analysis are suitable for MT. He argues that MT is not impossible if texts are written clearly and simply--the problem lies with the writers of texts, not with MT itself.
Chapter 5 (翻訳の代価) is a concrete discussion of translation rates and the wide range of translators' income, quoting actual translators and also the guidelines recommended by 日本編集プロダクション協会料金契約問題委員会. Despite the low rates some translators receive, Fujioka argues that there is no other job through which one can gain such pleasure and satisfaction by dint of one's own efforts. Royalties and copyright fees for translations are also discussed in some detail.
Chapter 6 (翻訳と編集) draws on the author's experience as an editor to discuss different categories of people who end up as translators, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses. Rather surprisingly, Fujioka says some editors recommend that their translators use particular dictionaries and reference works and he suggests that if the editor prepares a ‘model translation' of the first several pages of a book this will show the translator what approach to adopt (although he admits that this rarely happens).
The author makes some rather controversial comments about women translators, who are on the increase in Japan in recent years. While admitting that the translator's gender should not matter, he argues that women are sometimes not suited to certain texts. For instance, in novels where four-letter or four-character words are used frequently, women translators seem to produce flat translations in which the language is dull, and they have trouble expressing sexual scenes and slang or taboo words in Japanese. Women are also less familiar with sports and gambling, so have difficulty coming up with appropriate expressions. Fujioka says these differences arising from the different backgrounds of men and women will no doubt become less apparent in the future, but they still exist at the moment. He suggests they might disappear if women translated under a man's name, but this would jeopardize the translator's individuality. Men and women also differ in practical ways, with women generally observing their deadlines but men being more likely to be diligent about making changes and correcting errors at the proofreading stage, whereas women seem to believe their work needs no further polishing. Fujioka attributes this to the fact that many women translators entered the translation profession without ever having had to face the rough and tumble of the world, whereas men have had to face many trials and tribulations in life. While many of Fujioka's comments here might raise the reader's hackles, his long years of firsthand experience in working with translators of both sexes mean we cannot simply dismiss his views out of hand.
Fujioka also emphasizes how the translation environment a century ago was far different from today, with a lack of appropriate translational equivalents, no bilingual dictionaries, and no associated knowledge, so it was virtually impossible to produce good translations. The infrastructure today is vastly different, with the advent of dictionaries and translation tools and with the Internet bringing the world closer both physically and culturally, so that today there are far fewer extenuating circumstances for mistranslations. Fujioka estimates the translation industry in Japan today to be worth two trillion yen, with the bulk of the work being carried out by professional translators and consisting of technical or business documents where the translator remains anonymous.
Overall, the book is a little unstructured, as is common with Japanese books of this type, and it is somewhat frustrating in that the author raises interesting points but fails to follow them up. Nevertheless, I found it to be an interesting and worthwhile read by an author who has extensive and intimate knowledge of the translation profession in Japan, and I would recommend it to JAT members wishing to broaden their knowledge of our profession beyond the practical aspects of how to translate particular words or constructions.