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JAT member Hiro Sato will talk about electronic and computer industry translation market trends and business customs at the November 15 JAT Meeting. He will cover the following areas.
1. Marketability - General trends
2. Translation industry structure - Business customs, market creation, connections, and pricing
3. Translation problems
4. Reference materials
5. CD-ROM dictionary use
Mr. Sato is currently a contract-based in-house translator and editor for NEC Documentex. He is also a very busy member of the IJET-9 Committee.
The meeting will be held at the Shiba Seinen Kaikan near Hamamatsucho Station. It will begin promptly at 14:30 and finish shortly after 16:30. All JAT members, friends, and guests are encouraged to attend. There is no charge.
The meeting will be followed by an informal gathering at a nearby restaurant.
Bob Oliver
The October 18 JAT Board meeting was attended by Oliver, Whipple, Tokikuni, and House. Lise and Sato, who were unable to attend because of important family commitments and oshigoto(Sato), submitted comments by e-mail. Whipple presided in lieu of Lise.
I. Membership Report
Whipple distributed the following written report:
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Membership Secretary's Report, JAT Board Meeting 97-10-18
As reported in this month's bulletin, as of the end of September JAT had 208 members, including 68 overseas. As of today we have 210 paid up members (including pending renewals for August, September, and October). Of these, 59, or slightly over a quarter, have requested inclusion in the open online directory; 69, or just under one third, are overseas. The 161 members recorded in the database as subscribed to JAT-LIST account for almost 80 percent of the total. (Last month I collated the database subscriber list and the actual subscription list from Netcom; the two are now basically in synch.)
A full 26 members were due to renew in September, 14 of them have not done so yet. We may be headed for a dip in at the end of November when the September non-renewals are taken off the rolls.
September was the last month for the postcard meeting notices. It was nice not to have to send out 200+ of them this month!
I still haven't gotten around to putting up the Japanese version of the JAT infobot message; will try to do before the end of the month.
Meanwhile, Paul Findon, who is SWET's Internet guru, has volunteered to produce a Windows version of the JAT "register" software for use in paying dues through Kagi off line. Adam Rice produced a Mac version last year when we set up the Kagi service; though nobody has complained about the lack of a Windows version, it will be good to have it available.
Whipple noted his intention to put back compilation of the next paper directory until after the new directors are elected and his idea of including a report on the past year's activities. Oliver was enthusiastically in favor of this idea and suggested waiting till May or June so that the treasurer's report can also be included. Whipple tentatively tried to suggest that waiting for the full treasurer's report was not necessary; his unvoiced opinion is that the thing should definitely go out in April without waiting for the books to be closed. Oliver and Whipple agreed that additional pages including dues payment info and messages from the president and other directors could be included, along with a page listing the directors (perhaps with photos).
II. Treasurer's Report
Oliver distributed a report for September 1-30 showing
Total inflows 42,000
Total outflows 17,760
Net inflows 24,240
Outflows included 13,000 in postcard mailing expenses, which will not be incurred from now on (with the end of the postcard meeting notices).
Oliver reported that the meeting room fee is slated to go up 20% or so (from the present 18,000) to defray the cost of renovations. He asked for approval to pay 250,000 next month to reserve the room through 1998; there were no objections.
III. Meetings
As of this writing, meetings were basically scheduled through March. Interested members are encouraged to watch for notices on jat-list or to access the URL http://www.jat.org/ nextmeeting.html, where the meetings that have been finalized are listed. Oliver encouraged other directors to look actively for speakers.
IV. Bulletin Report
A. November Bulletin
Sato submitted a status quo report by e-mail. Oliver volunteered to write up the October meeting, but a full-text version of our speaker's talk was kindly provided by our speaker. It has been included in this issue.
B. Website Bulletins
Lise submitted a report by e-mail. House suggested that the reference therein to the nearly ready September bulletin actually meant the October bulletin. A later report by Lise indicated that this indeed was the nearly ready September issue, as the October issue had not yet been received.
V. IJET-9 Report
Tokikuni gave Whipple a sample of the newly prepared Japanese- language information/registration handout and reported that an English-language version was in the works.
VI. IJET-10 Venue Proposals
Lise submitted a report by e-mail. After our meeting, one proposal was received which basically provided the information required, although it originally proposed having IJET-10 in October, which would be 17 months after IJET-9 and only 7 months before IJET-11. The directors are still discussing this, and are still open to latecomers with viable proposals. As of this writing, no possible sites or proposals have been ruled out.
VII. Other Business
Oliver reminded us that we should be thinking about next year's election and looking for possible candidates. He stated that formation of an election committee should be on our agenda next month.
Tokikuni showed a sample JAT director's meishi with photograph and offered to make them for other directors. After the directors' meeting he took photos of Lise, Oliver, and Whipple.
The upcoming IJET-9 Conference, to be held in Yokohama (23-24 May) will happen. You and I expect it will happen, and I think we are right in our thinking. IJET is a tradition. But there is one part of the tradition we should try to break, and that is the tradition of having to wait until just before the conference to have any accurate idea of how many people will participate. This fine IJET tradition takes its toll every time around, in a number of ways.
Without accurate numbers on the number of people that will show up, the IJET Committee cannot even be sure that three sessions running concurrently will be an appropriate number. Perhaps it should be two, or even four? Why keep us in the dark?
Another heavy cost of this wait-til-the-last minute tradition is born by IJET Committee members working on registration and the treasury. Our last IJET in Japan was a smashing success, but it would have been much less trouble to organize if most of the people didn't sign up in the last few weeks before the conference, let alone show up on the first day of the conference hoping to slip in under the wire. There are a lot of IJET tasks to attend to in those last few weeks--join the committee next time to find out just what we mean--and having to handle latecomers doesn't make them any easier.
As of this writing, we already have had at least five signups (meaning, of course, paid-up applications) for IJET-9, and would be very happy to see others help us break this tradition of procrastination. Doing so is easier this year than ever before. Just point your browser at http:www.jat.org/ijet-9 for online signup and payment. Colleagues seeking a more traditional (and, of course, slower) method of signup can still contact Bob Oliver, the IJET-9 registration coordinator, at roliver@gol.com or by fax at 045- 832-2211.
Naturally, if you think you would like to propose yourself as a speaker, I would be happy to hear from you, and even happier to hear from you early. Just drop me a note at billlise@gol.com for details, or take a look at the above-noted URL for details.
See you in Yokohama.
IJET-9運営委員会 委員長 時國滋夫
９月のJAT会報で富井さんから「IJET-9 (IJET-98) 以降への提言」を 頂きました。また、別の折りに「議事録はなぜ会議のときに参加者に配布 しないか」という質問も富井さんから受けました。この点について運営 委員会で討議を行いましたので、ここに回答いたします。
富井さんの提言は大きく２つに分けることができると考えましたので、 それぞれについて回答します。
1. 「この種の会議の成功度を示す尺度は、何といっても、やはり参加者 の数です。」
IJETはプロとして活躍している翻訳者や通訳者を主たる参加者と考えて います。これから翻訳者になろうと思っていらっしゃる方や勉強中の方が 参加されることは構いませんが、積極的にその方々に参加を呼び掛けよう とは考えていません。IJETのことをまだご存知でない翻訳者・通訳者の 方々にはいろいろな手段で声を掛けていきたいと思っています。また、 日本人の翻訳者・通訳者の参加を増やしても仕方がないという考え方は していません。国籍はどこの国であろうとも日本語と英語の間の翻訳・ 通訳に従事していて、その仕事を真摯に考えている方にはぜひとも出席して ほしいと考えています。今回も日本翻訳家協会 (JST)、日本翻訳連盟 (JTF)、 日本翻訳協会 (JTA)を初めとして、多くの翻訳団体に参加を呼び掛けます。 また、ひとりひとりのプロの翻訳者・通訳者が互いに会って話をする場を 提供することがIJETの意義だと考えていますので、参加者が少しずつ 増加することは喜ばしいと思いますが、急に参加者数が増えて参加者 同士の交流が希薄になることがないようにしたいと思っています。 以上の理由から、IJETの成功度は必ずしも参加者の数で測ることは できないと運営委員会では考えています。
2. 「各回のIJETのテーマを設定し、それに沿ってIJETを「プロデュース」 するくらいの意気込みで取り組んでいただきたい。」 （「これからのIJETでは、抽象的、概念的、観念的テーマのセッション ばかりでなく、How Toものを workshopなども交え、もっと数を増やす べきであることを提案したいと思います。」
今までのIJETではいろいろな講演がありました。また、テーマを掲げた IJETもありましたが、すべての講演がそのテーマに関連していたわけでは ありません。運営委員会としてはこの多様性にこそ価値があると考えて います。講演の題目を知ることで講演者の抱えている問題点や重要だと 考えていることがわかり、自分の注目している項目との関連を考えて出席 する講演を選択していると思います。今回のIJETでは特にテーマは設定し ません。ハウツーものこそが必要だと思われる方が増えればそういう講演 も自然に増えることになります。運営委員会が方向を決めるのではなく、 IJETの参加者、講演者がその時点での各自の考えを表わすことでIJETが 作られていくと思っています。
3. 「議事録はなぜ会議のときに参加者に配布しないか」
講演を選択するための情報として、参加者には会議の前にプログラムを 配布しています。議事録の目的は自分が会議で出席できなかった講演の 内容を知ることです。議事録を事前に配布すると、その内容を棒読みする 講演者や論文は提出したからといって講演を欠席する講演者が出てくる恐れが あります。また、議事録の論文を会議の前に集め印刷する仕事は運営委員会に 取って大きな負荷になりますが、運営委員のなり手がさほど多くない現状では これ以上の負荷は増やしたくないと思っています。また、広告を集める点から 言えば、異なる時期に二つの媒体が発行されることに意味があります。した がって、今回も会議終了後しばらくしてから参加者のみなさんに議事録を 送付したいと考えています。
以上、富井さんのご提案・質問に対して運営委員会での討議を元に私が回答 文を書きました。ご理解頂ければ幸いです。ご提案があったため、今まで討議 したことのない点について運営委員会で互いに意見を交わすことができました。 運営委員会ではいろいろな提案・質問を歓迎します。JATの会報に投稿して もらってもいいですし、運営委員に直接連絡してもらっても構いません。
| IJET-9運営委員 | ||
| Bill Lise | [Program coordination] | billlise@gol.com |
| Jeremy Whipple | [Program production] | jwhipple@gol.com |
| Hiro Sato | [Advertisement] | hanami@mx2.nisiq.net |
| Kathy Taji | [Venue] | ktaji@gol.com |
| Bob Oliver | [Registration] | roliver@gol.com |
| Adam Rice | [Publicity] | adamrice@crossroads.net |
| George Tokikuni | [Chairperson] | PFG01116@niftyserve.or.jp |
December 20 - Michinobu Yoshimi will discuss the Japanese automotive industry.
January 17 - "Meet the Candidates" meeting
February 15 - Social critic Kenji Sato
March 15 - Meeting on the Internet and Web
JAT Directors 日本翻訳者協会理事
To learn more about JAT, please visit our Web site at http://www.jat.org/.
The Japan Association of Translators (JAT) is a nonprofit association dedicated to serving the interests of individual translators. Unless otherwise stated, opinions expressed in JAT Bulletin articles are solely those of individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Japan Association of Translators.
c) 1997 Japan Association of Translators, All rights reserved. Individual authors of articles in the Bulletin retain copyright to their articles, permitting them to use the articles as they see fit, including granting permission for reprinting in other media.
Thank you, Bill, for the kind introduction. Coming after your overly generous notice to JAT members about today's session, it's going to be difficult living up to the reputation that you have given me.
As I will tell you later on, I have done a large amount of announcing or voicing work, but I don't consider myself eloquent or articulate enough to speak off the cuff, so I have prepared some notes which I would like to deliver from. Bill has suggested that I speak for close to an hour, so if at any point you have some questions, rather than wait until I finish, please feel free to interrupt me.
I do not want to sound philosophical because I am not a deep thinker, but at the outset, I would like to state that I am not dedicated to work. I do NOT live to work; I work to live, to enjoy the pleasures of life whether it is eating or drinking or enjoying my hobbies. I of course would like riches, but only to be able to enjoy the pleasures of life and my hobbies. Which is perhaps why I am not at all affluent.
In fact, I am not very good at making money, but I am very good at spending money, and I have over the years invested in a number of hobbies. I say invested, because it has turned out that I have been able to relate most of my hobbies to revenue-producing work. My current hobbies include photography, model trains, and boating; in the past I used to build radios and high fidelity equipment in the days of valves, which is British English for vacuum tubes, and I also used to go in for small-bore rifle shooting. I also read a lot, both books and periodicals, nothing really serious, but I do believe that reading has enhanced my vocabulary and also writing.
Now this not going to be a joint study session or a seminar or any sorts - in the first place, I wouldn't know how to conduct a session like that. And so I am not sure whether what I will be saying will be of any interest or value or use to you, but President Lise in his notice indicated that I would be taking you on a verbal tour of the world of a language professional with one foot in each of two languages and cultures, and I shall try to do that. And when I come to think of it, perhaps this is very timely, as an opportunity to review my own life in this particular year, my fiftieth year of full-time work since I started working full-time in April, 1948. Because I am talking about five decades, half a century, and because I have been doing so many things concurrently, it is difficult to tell you about these things in precise chronological order, and so I will be going back and forth over the years, but please bear with me.
As I have said before when introducing myself at previous JAT meetings, I do not claim to be the best interpreter nor the best translator, however, I probably have been doing both at one time or another for possibly longer than anybody else, since I first got a paying job as an interpreter in 1946 when I was 15 years old, and I've been doing both interpreting and translating on and off ever since. In fact, my first paying job was interpreting in 1946, as I mentioned a moment ago, while one of my most recent jobs was interpreting at a political conference in Cairo last month, so that shows how little progress I have made in over half a century.
But to backtrack a bit, let me tell you how I got where and what I am. My father was a woodblock print artist who went to London, England, in 1910 as a member of the Japanese Team at the Anglo-Japanese Exhibition put on in London. I don't know how familiar you are with woodblock prints, but there are three basic processes involved in making woodblock prints. The first is painting or drawing the original picture, the second is carving the woodblocks for the printing, and the third is printing the pictures. Generally, each process is handled by a separate artisan; my father was somewhat unique for his time in that he did all three; painting the original picture, carving the woodblocks, and printing the pictures. Anyway, he liked England so much that he stayed on after the Exhibition for 30 years, and probably would have stayed on longer had it not been for World War Two. He was based in London all during those three decades, and in addition to his own work on woodblock prints, he also did a great deal of work at the British Museum restoring or reproducing in woodblock print form oriental works of art. He used to tell us about watching Kaiser Wilhem's Zeppelins bombing London in the Great War, World War One, the war to end all wars.
During this period, he also travelled extensively to continental Europe, and formed many associations with European artists. We still have woodblock prints by a number of European artists, as it seemed to have been a sort of custom for artists to send each other samples of their works. Unfortunately, he never got anything from Picasso which is a shame; life might be a little easier for us now if we had a couple of Picassos.
I was born in October, 1930, and I shall be 67 years old the day after tomorrow. This of course was during the depression, and Mum and Dad must have had a very difficult time, because a lot of people did not have money to buy enough food, let alone woodblock prints.
My formal education began at what was then called a L. C. C., London County Council, elementary school, the equivalent of Japanese public schools - not British public schools. This was interrupted in 1939 by the outbreak of World War Two when children were evacuated to the countryside. Since our family elected to stay in London, we transferred to a small private school, something like a JUKU in Japan. Japan had already become a member of the Axis group nations, signing up with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, and so the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs started urging Japanese citizens residing in England to return to Japan. In due course, the German bombing of England began, but we were fortunate in that we did not suffer any injuries or damage, although some chunks of shrapnel did fall in our front garden. We were in England during the British retreat from Dunkirk in 1940 and during the 1940 German bombing of England which was called the Battle of Britain when Prime Minister Winston Churchill uttered those famous words about the Royal Air Force, "Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few". We were in Tokio during World War Two, and so we have been on the receiving end of both Axis and Allied bombing.
Around 1939 to 1940, my father produced a portfolio of woodblock print versions of sketches by a well-known British artist, Frank Brangwyn, R. A., or Royal Academy, who later was to be knighted for his achievements. In August of 1940 my father sent a set of these prints to the then Prime Minister, Mr. Winston Churchill, and he subsequently received a gracious letter of thanks from Mr. Churchill. The point about this is that the letter of thanks is dated 18th August, 1940, while the peak of the Battle of Britain, when Britain's fate was supposedly hanging by a thread, is considered to be the 12th of August, 1940. That Mr. Churchill should have taken the time to dictate such a letter when no doubt he had a great deal more on his plate at the time is indicative of his innate courtesy.
We eventually left England in November, 1940. This was when Germany's U-boat offensive was mounting in what is called the Battle of the Atlantic; literally dozens of Allied ships were being sunk monthly even in those early days of the Battle of the Atlantic. It was also in this year that an NYK cargo-passenger ship, the Terukuni Maru, struck a mine in the English Channel and sank. This was probably why the ship we boarded for the journey to Japan did not come into the Port of London or Southampton. The ship itself was a passenger ship built before World War One, in 1912, I think, NYK's Fushimi Maru, so she was already close to thirty years old then. Presumably NYK did not want to risk any of their more modern vessels. The ship came into Galway Bay on the western coast of Ireland to await our arrival and boarding. So at the end of October, 1940, we left London, my birthplace, travelled by train to Liverpool, then by the packet to Dublin, and then across Ireland to Galway Bay by train. The speed of the ship was around 12 or 15 knots, 20 to 30 kilometres per hour, and the routing was from Galway Bay to Bermuda, New York, Newport News for coaling, through the Panama Canal to Los Angeles, or rather, San Pedro, and then to Yokohama. At her slow speed, it took two months to get to Japan; we finally arrived on the 8th of January, 1941, exactly 11 months to the day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour.
While in England, I never did learn Japanese. We hear the words 'culture shock' frequently these days; believe me, it was truly a great culture shock to arrive in Japan back then, not speaking the language, not having a toilet seat to sit on, nor having flush toilets, with a generally anti-western attitude then prevailing. My parents tried to get my sister and I into the local Japanese public elementary schools, the 'KOKUMIN GAKKO', as they were called, but we were refused entry on the grounds that we would hold up the rest of the classes because we couldn't speak Japanese.
So after two months of intensive private lessons in Japanese, I was accepted in a private French mission school at Kudan called Gyosei. I was then 10 years old, and should have been enrolled in the 5th form or 5th grade, but because my Japanese was still far from adequate, I was only admitted into the 3rd grade, two grades below my contemporaries. This did have some merits in that I was larger than most of my contemporaries, and was able to do quite well in sports.
We hear a lot about bullying in schools, but let me assure you that it is certainly nothing new. In England, I was called either a 'Chink' or a 'Jap', or 'Tich' which is a somewhat derogatory British word meaning little guy; I hope I am not offending anybody by using these terms, but I am only stating facts. Then in Japan, because I had not been born in Japan, I did not have 'YAMATO-DAMASHII' and was the butt of more bullying. So I hated school.
Nowadays, there are many children who were brought up abroad as a result of their fathers being posted abroad, the so-called 'Kikoku Shijo'; when these children return to Japanese they usually are quite fluent in the language of whatever country they had been brought up in. Unfortunately, they very quickly forget that linguistic capability when they return to the Japanese school system and find themselves constantly having to cram for entrance exams for admittance to the next level school. These 'Kikoku Shijo' acquired a foreign tongue because of the circumstances they found themselves in, without having to make special efforts, yet when they get back to Japan, they quickly forget much of it, again because of the circumstances they now find themselves in. It is a great pity that there are few opportunities for them to continue to put that ability to use to enable them to maintain whatever fluency they had acquired. However, I was fortunate in that my sister, who is one year older than I, was admitted into the International Division of the Sacred Heart here in Tokio, where the lessons were conducted in English, so we continued to converse in English at home, and in retrospect, this has stood me in good stead. What this means is that to stay even half-proficient in a second language, you have to use it. I recall how, some thirty years ago, I used to conduct the English proficiency interviews for people who were applying for Ministry of Transportation tourist guide licenses. The people who had been members of the so-called 'English speaking societies' at their universities were good. They were not afraid to speak up, not afraid to make mistakes. They were good because they used the language.
I mentioned earlier that my first paying job was interpreting in 1946. World War Two ended in 1945, when I was two months short of 15 years of age. Overnight the bullying virtually ceased, and now my school chums would virtually fawn on me for assistance in English lessons. In 1945, I was in the first grade of junior high school, still two years behind boys of my age, and during the English exams, I would finish my paper quite quickly, and my paper would then start circulating among my fellow students who would copy the answers and then pass it on to the next boy.
During the summer holidays of 1946, when I was in my second year of junior high school, I applied for a job with the Allied occupation forces, and became an interpreter in the costume department of the Ernie Pyle Theatre across from the side entrance of the Imperial Hotel at Yuraku-cho, which had been until then and once again is the Takarazuka Theatre. This was my first paying job. I worked there for a month and a half at the princely salary of 1,500 Yen. In that year, 1946, in an effort to curb inflation, each individual was allowed to draw only 700 Yen monthly out of the bank for living expenses, the rest being kept blocked in the Bank. This in fact implied that each family would be able to subsist, after a fashion, on 700 Yen monthly; so you will see how a monthly salary of 1,500 was quite a princely sum, even though I was able to draw out only 700 Yen monthly. My work during those summer holidays of 1945 paid for my tuition for the next two terms. In addition, because I was classified as a 'Foreign National' because of my British citizenship, I was fed three meals a day at a mess hall facility run by the U. S. Army. After four years of strict rationing and general shortage of food, especially during the final stages of the war when there was practically no rice at all, those meals courtesy of the American Army, were truly gourmet meals. In fact, to digress slightly, right after the war, U. S. occupation troops would purchase woodblock prints, and sometimes they would pay in kind, in foodstuffs. From time to time, we would get American Army combat rations, the infamous C-rations or K- rations, but for us, they were also gourmet foods. To this day, I have great a nostalgia for American Army combat rations, and in fact, at home, I still have a case of Vietnam War vintage combat rations and also some more recent dehydrated U. S. military combat rations. My rationale is that they would be very useful in case a big earthquake occurs, but deep down, the real reason is nostalgia.
During the summer holidays of the next year, 1947, I again got a job as an interpreter with the U. S. occupation, this time in the Repairs and Utilities Section of the 720th Military Police Battalion, located at what until then had been the Japanese Police Academy at Nakano. Today, of course, it is once again the Police Academy. In those days of the occupation, the U. S. military police controlled police affairs in Japan; U. S. military police were directing traffic, patrolling the roads in white jeeps, and also providing security at the A-class War Crime Trials at Ichigaya, at the complex that is now the headquarters of the Ground Self Defense Forces.
The work at the 720th Military Police Battalion was quite simple; I would accompany American military personnel and Japanese contractors on inspection tours of facilities - buildings, septic tanks, etc. Since I was working there only for a few weeks, rather than go through the paperwork to be hired properly, I was hired as a 'day labourers' or 'Hiyatoi Romusha'; every evening, I would line up along with the manual labourers and collect my day's pay which was something like 56 Yen. They also allowed me to lunch on leftovers at the army mess hall, so it was not a bad deal at all.
Incidentally, I am telling you about the work I was doing when I was 14 and 15 so that you will appreciate the level of English prevailing in Japan at the time which was low enough to justify hiring a 1st to 2nd grade junior high school student as an interpreter.
I finished junior high school in March, 1948, but was unable to go on to senior high school because of family financial problems, and so I applied for a job with the occupation forces, and was hired as an 'examiner-translator' in the Civil Censorship Detachment of G-2, the Intelligence Division, of SCAP, Supreme Commander Allied Powers, that is to say, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur's General Headquarters. I also enrolled in a night course at a polytechnical high school at Shinjuku called 'Kogakuin', aspiring to eventually becoming a mechanical engineer, but I lasted only two terms there, until the end of 1948. Getting back to work, in those days, the Civil Censorship Detachment was censoring all mass media: books, magazines, newspapers, motion pictures, radio broadcasts. They were also censoring at random personal mail and tapping telephone calls. Occupation Headquarters had come out with what it called the 'Press Code' whereby criticism of the Allied Powers was taboo, pornographic material was taboo, leftist or nationalistic material was taboo, and so on. Some newspapers were subjected to pre-censorship, which meant that the publishers had to submit galleys of the next day's paper prior to distribution for censoring in advance. One of the newspapers that had to be censored in advance was, perhaps naturally, 'Akahata', the daily organ of the Japan Communist Party, or JCP. My work consisted of reading material assigned to me, and marking out and translating those sections that could be construed to be in violation of the Press Code. During the one-year that I worked in Civil Censorship, I worked in successively in the magazine section, book section, and newspaper section. One of the books that I personally examined was one of the bestsellers of the time, 'Biruma no Tategoto', the 'Harp of Burma'. In this book there were several references to the colonial past of Great Britain and the Netherlands. While perfectly true and factual, such references nonetheless could be construed as an implied criticism of the Allied Powers, so I dutifully marked the objectionable portions, translated them, and sent them on to the next level up. Another item I recall is, in retrospect rather ludicrous. It was in a magazine called 'Liberal' which was essentially a pornographic magazine of the time. The article described how a pedicab, those bicycle cabs of the day with enclosed passenger cabs, one day picked up an American soldier and a Japanese woman, presumably a prostitute, and was instructed to drive to a quiet spot. The driver was then told to go away for a while, and the bicycle was seen to be shaking. This was construed to be critical or derogatory of the Allied forces since a supposedly pure and innocent American soldier would never consort with prostitutes and therefore the article could well be a violation of the Press Code, so I translated it, and sent it on to higher authority.
I used to make a little extra money on the side taking advantage of the office I was working in. At the time, I was getting into model railways, and I needed money to purchase model railway rolling stock, equipment, etc. In those days, newspapers could be sold for their scrap value at a reasonably good sum, so since the Newspaper Section had mountains of already censored newspapers, I would collect the newspapers, ostensibly to boil them down into pulp to fabricate scenery for the model railway, but actually to sell as scrap. Yes, CHIRIGAMI KOKAN existed in 1948. So what did I do with my ill-gotten gains? I bought model trains. I discovered beer.
After one year at the Civil Censorship Detachment, I decided to move to the commercial field, and got a job in the Business Office of Time-Life International, which was then situated in the Meiji Seika Building at Kyobashi. The monthly salary at Time-Life was 12,000 Yen plus one CARE package each month. CARE, C-A-R-E, stood for Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, and was an American relief operation that was extended to Asia after the war in Asia ended. These CARE packages cost the company 10 dollars each, and came in two types, one containing foodstuffs such as tinned foods and the other containing clothing or bolts of suiting and so we would alternate between them every other month. My work at Time-Life consisted of various sundry tasks such as maintaining the subscription list, doing translation work, delivering TIME Magazine to military exchanges in the Tokio area, and picking up the CARE packages for the staff. I learned how to drive at Time-Life, so as to be able to make the weekly deliveries of TIME magazine. We had a couple of military surplus jeeps, and I practiced driving on public roads and I then obtained my driving permit in September of 1949, so I have been driving in Tokio for almost half a century.
In those days, Japan's international trade balance was very much in the red, there were shortages of everything, and foodstuffs were still rationed. However, if one was a foreign national and had access to U. S. currency, then there were what were called OSSs, standing for Overseas Supply Stores, where imported goods such as spirits, all kinds of foodstuffs, clothing, etc. could be purchased. Unfortunately, Time-Life did not pay in U. S. currency, so in 1950, I got a job at an American Insurance Agency where I was paid 25 dollars in U. S.-backed funds and 9,000 Yen which was the equivalent of another 25 dollars. By this time, I had come to enjoy beer, and this was not enough. So I then landed a job once again in the occupation forces, as the Chief Cashier at the Far East Air Force Officers' Club, in the University Club, 'Gakushi Kaikan' near Jinbo-cho, where I was paid $100 a month plus all I could eat from the Officers' menu. This job lasted for a few months, I forget how long, until the American insurance agency invited me back to join them at a total salary of the equivalent of $170 including U. S. dollars and Japanese Yen. The work at the insurance agency consisted of selling insurance, a job which I found I did not really like, nor was very good at.
Next came a job at USIS, United States Information Service, in 1956, where I met the lady who was to become wife. I am afraid she 'married beneath her', to use an old English phrase, in that her father had been a viscount who had been a member of the House of Peers, or 'Kizoku-in' and ex-Railway Minister, while her grandfather had been a Minister of education under Emperor Meiji who had had a hand in writing the Imperial Rescript on Education, or 'Kyoiku Chokugo' and also the Meiji Constitution. Nevertheless, she has stuck it out with me, and in exactly two weeks' time we will be having our 37th wedding anniversary.
Getting back to USIS, the work there consisted of quite a bit of Japanese to English translation. This was before the days of television; commercial radio had just started in Japan and the commercial stations were short of internationally-oriented material, so taking advantage of this niche, USIS was producing radio programmes that were naturally U. S.-oriented, and distributing them free to any radio station that would air them, no strings tied. Sometimes I would translate draft radio scripts for approval, sometimes interviews or talks by prominent figures, sometimes final scripts, into English for scrutiny by the higher ups. I also did some interviews of personages visiting Japan from abroad.
In 1958, I became Office Manager for a tiny little newsletter type organisation, Foreign Reports Tokio, which was the Tokio Office of Foreign Reports in New York that was being run by the late Mr. Harry Kern, formerly Newsweek International Editor during the war. The Tokio end was being run by the late Mr. Michio Kawabe. My work was primarily administrative, writing English correspondence that had been dictated to me in Japanese, plus some interpreting. Mr. Kern would come to Japan twice a year and meet with top executives of top Japanese companes such as Hitachi, Toyo Menka, Toyo Rayon, Kinoshita Shoten, Ishikawajima-Harima, Nippon Steel, etc., and I would interpret at some, but by means all, of the meetings.
That same year, Mr. Kern had arranged an association between Foreign Reports and Hill and Knowlton, Inc., reputedly the largest public relations company in the U. S. at the time. A sister company to Foreign Reports Tokio, Public Relations Japan, was formed and went into the public relations business, and so now I was working for both Foreign Reports Tokio and Public Relations Japan.
Going back to 1957, in that year, NSB, the Nippon Shortwave Broadcasting Company went on the air on several shortwave frequencies, and I was invited to edit and deliver the news in English plus a report on the Tokio Stock Market and Commodities Market. This work at NSB marked the beginning of my serious radio, and subsequently television, work. The news consisted of items I was free to select from galleys of the next day's Japan Times, and it was fun, although tiring since the programmes were transmitted live just before midnight. This went on for a year or so. Then in 1958, there emerged plans to open a commercial radio station in Yokohama, and I was invited to be the co-host of a 40-minute bilingual music programme to be broadcast from 11:20 p. m. to 12:00, which for those days made it a late-night show. Because of the late hours, the programme was to be 'canned', that is, taped in advance, so since at the time I was holding down a full-time day-time job at Foreign Reports, the programme was taped in advance, three days' programmes at a time, twice a week. In order to keep my daytime work quite separate from the radio ARUBAITO and also because the lady who was appearing on the programme with me found URUSHIBARA awkward to pronounce, I conjured up the name Ken Tajima, Ken being both a Western and Japanese name. At the time I had thought that it was just another part-time job, an 'ARUBAITO' that would last for perhaps six months if I were lucky, but in the event, the programme went on 17 years or so, had a three-year lapse, resumed for another three years, and finally died a natural death in 1981. Concurrent to that programme, I began appearing in more and more radio programmes, both live and taped, in both English and Japanese, until I finally left Foreign Reports and Public Relations Japan in 1964 to devote myself full-time to radio and associated activities. So two decades after arriving in Japan without being able to speak Japanese, my Japanese had improved to the point where I was allowed to do live talk programmes on radio in Japanese.
In 1968, after four years of free-lancing, we decided to build a house, and I applied for a bank loan. But because I did not have a regular salaried job, I could not get a bank loan since I was considered a radio-TV talent type and therefore flighty and undependable. Actually, their assessment was not too far off, come to think of it. So I got a job at a company called Falcon Advertising and PR, concurrently continuing with what radio programmes I could, and was finally able to get a bank loan. After two years there as the number two, I joined the Tokio Office of Hill & Knowlton, reputed to be the largest public relations company in the U. S. at the time. I stayed there for two years, had a violent argument with the local manager, and resumed free-lance work in 1972.
From 1972 to 1973, I had a one-year stint at JCTV, Japan Cable Television, which was established by TV-Asahi,. Channel 10 here in Tokio, to pipe English-language TV programmes into hotels. The operation had just started, and so most of us had to do practically everything: I was preparing news scripts, reading them on air, or rather, on cable, alternating every other day between em-ceeing and directing a talk show, and as trying as it was, it was, in retrospect, fun.
In 1972, concurrently with Japan Cable Television, I started doing translation work for a certain translation company at Shiba in Tokio which at the time was considered one of the larger technical translation firms in Tokio. It had some good clients too, and I will cite two for reasons that you will see later, Fujitsu and JRC, Japan Radio Company. Fujitsu we all know; JRC is one of the older electronics companies of Japan and has been manufacturing electronics for the Japanese military since long before World War Two. More recently it has been manufacturing O.E.M. radars for small boats for Raytheon of the United States. Unfortunately, the president of the translation company was first and foremost a businessman, a salesman, and did not, or rather, could not, do translation work himself. I suppose he saw himself as a management executive rather than a plodding professional like a translator. In any event, he could not assess the quality of work, and the work produced was poor in quality. Yet because there were not too many translation companies around, he could and did get away with murder. He did have a few native speaker editors, some of whom I had introduced, but sometimes, if there was a big rush for a particular piece work, it would go out neither being checked nor edited, and sometimes the quality was appalling. I was considered by the sales staff of the company as one of the better translators, for the time, that is, so that whenever a new client had been entrapped, I would be given the first work assignment or trial assignment, and when accepted, future work would be relegated to lower priced translators. The native speaker editors would sometimes complain to me how they were given to understand that speed and volume of work was more important than quality; they knew what poor quality work was going out, and it bothered them. Yet in some respects, the company was quite advanced for its time; in the mid- to late 1970s, it had a number of Wang word processors which in those days were selling for several million Yen per copy, it had a LAN, a local area network linking the word processors and printers, it had facsimile machines that had just been developed and were priced in the order of a million yen per copy, and it was in the process of putting together its own in-house computerised data-base incorporated in the local area network. But it finally went belly-up, probably an outcome of both the poor quality work it produced and its excessive investments in high-tech equipment. Whenever I think about this company in retrospect, I am reminded of the Italian pressure cookers that Sony had been importing and marketing at one time. One day - it must have been 20 years or so ago - one of the pressure cookers exploded and the user sustained serious injuries. In the investigation that followed, it turned out that the original instruction manual had been mistranslated. This illustrates the responsibility of translators and/or translation company; I shudder to think of what would happen if the instruction manuals for computers or radar sets that the translation company I mentioned a few moments ago had been carelessly translated and carelessly edited. In those days, generally, native speaker editors could not read or even speak much Japanese, so they had to assume that the draft translations they were editing were accurate. But if any sections were ambiguous and could be interpreted in more than one way, then if the editor could not understand the original Japanese text, he would have to rely on the ambiguous draft translation. I believe that any editor of translations should have a working knowledge of the original from which the translation had been prepared. I say this because I have seen material that has obviously been edited excessively so that it has become distanced from the original to the extent that the nuances and points of emphasis have changed. As a matter of fact, whenever I do a translation, I try to find out whether it is going to be edited by a native speaker. If so, I will provide a literal, word-for-word translation, which may be awkward, cumbersome and may not read very smoothly, but at least is accurate and can be edited without too much concern over deviating from the original, because every time a translation is edited, it inevitably gets farther and farther away from the original. I have interpreted many speeches for executives of a certain motor company where both the original and translation have been prepared and printed in advance, so all I have to do is follow the Japanese. But here again, frequently, the translation has been edited so drastically that the English written translation is out of context, or the nuances or points of emphasis have been changed, to the extent that I have sometimes have trouble following the original words and trying to relate them to the translation I have in hand.
Having said that though, I am very pleased that there are people like all of you who, in the case of our GAIJIN friends, if you will permit me to use that term, I would like to think, are young enough that you do not have what I call the occupation mentality, the mentality of the victors of the war, or a touch of white superiority. In colonial days, the British, would speak of the fictitious Colonel Blimp who would declare that 'anyone can understand English as long as it spoken loudly and slowly'. You, with your willingness to have learned Japanese, have done much to improve the quality of work produced by translation industry. And with your backgrounds, you are far more professional than I have ever been in the fields that each of you specialises in. I respect you for your abilities, because you acquired these abilities through hard work; quite often you acquired you linguistic abilities after you had attained a degree of maturity when it becomes more difficult to learn a language.
Let me backtrack again and tell you how I got into simultaneous interpreting. In 1969, while still at Falcon Advertising and PR, when I was doing a live 12:30 a. m. to 3:00 a. m. once-a-week DJ stint on TBS radio called 'Puck in Music', whatever that was supposed to mean, one of the Apollo shots before the Apollo 11 moon landing, Apollo 8, was due to splash down somewhere in the Atlantic. Apollo 8 was one of the space launches that went around the moon but did not land. The splashdown was to take place during the live broadcast of the programme, and so the director asked me whether I could do a simultaneous interpreting of the commentary on the splashdown. At that time, I had never done any simultaneous interpreting at all, but I thought, why not, let's give it a shot, and so sitting there in a TBS announcer's booth in the wee hours of the morning, with a TV monitor showing NHK's live coverage of the splashdown, I did a simultaneous interpretation of the English commentary. Apparently I didn't do too badly, because when TBS decided to broadcast the Apollo moon shot series, I was tapped to do the simultaneous interpreting. The first moon landing, by Apollo 11 on the 20th of July, 1969, was one of the most dramatic experiences I have ever had. I was on live, on screen for eight and a half hours, and it was very thrilling thing. With Japan being metric, few people can relate to a foot, a mile, a pound, in metric. I take some pride in the fact that of all the simultaneous interpreters on the other TV networks, NHK, NTV, Fuji TV, TV Asahi, and TV Tokio, I was the only one who converted feet to metres, miles per hour to kilometres per hour. I continued to do the simultaneous interpreting for the subsequent moon shot programmes on TBS TV up to and all the way to Apollo 17.
My bilingual radio work and, although it was to a lesser extent my TV work, led to being called on to serve as bilingual compere, Master of Ceremonies, for international events. These include formal receptions, parties, and sports activities such as golf tournaments. For 13 years or so, I was the starter at the Taiheiyo Masters Golf Tournament. I would start off by introducing the next players to tee off and their past records in English and Japanese, and then send them off. I would then em-cee at the awards ceremonies that followed. I have been em-ceeing the welcoming reception for the Japan Cup horse race organised by the Japan Racing Association for 15 years or so, and will be doing it again next month. Quite often these bilingual em-ceeing jobs will involve interpreting the speeches and addresses made by the dignitaries present. One memorable address I translated was an address given by Sam Jameson, then Tokio Bureau Chief of the Los Angeles Times, at a reception hosted by Mr. Tokuji Namikoshi, the acupressure expert. What made it memorable was the fact that Mr. Jameson speaks excellent Japanese and so he delivered his address in Japanese, and I had to interpret into English an address delivered by an American in Japanese.
Going back again to the war years, I had always been very interested in things mechanical. In England, there used to be a company called Meccano Limited in Liverpool, which manufactured Hornby model trains and metal construction kits for boys called Meccano outfits. Meccano kits are similar in concept to the Erector Sets of the U. S. or Maerklin Metall of Germany, and one started with the smaller sets and built one's way up to the ultimate set, the Outfit No. 10. By the time we left England I had got to an Outfit No. 6, slightly more than halfway up the ladder. In Japan, I then discovered crystal radio sets, and that set me off on building radios. My first crystal set I built when I was 12 years old, and I went on to building battery operated sets. By 1945, when the bombing of Tokio was in full swing, I had a three-valve, battery set which was extremely useful when the mains power was out because of the bombing. I would listen through headphones to Radio Tokio which would broadcast what was called the 'Eastern Military District Information', 'TOBU GUNKAKU JOHO', which would report the present location of the B-29 superfortress bomber fleets, their heading, number, and so on, and then shout this information to the neighbourhood using a very primitive cardboard megaphone.
I have talked about these hobbies of mine because they have had a direct bearing on my translation work. Back in 1956, when I was still working for USIS, my interest in electronics continued, and I had graduated to high fidelity equipment and was building tuners and amplifiers from scratch. Around this time, I was approached first by Sansui, then by Pioneer, and then by Trio, now Kenwood, to translate instruction manuals for their products, first monoaural high fidelity, and then stereo equipment. Because I was familiar with what they were manufacturing, and knew both the English and Japanese terminology, I found the work quite easy and quite profitable, for the time, that is. In those days, I would get around 250 Yen for a 25-line double space page, and when considering that a university graduate's monthly starting salary was around 10,000 to 15,000 Yen around this time, this was a very nice sideline. In due course, I felt it was not proper to do work for all three companies since they were competing with each other, and so I limited my work to Pioneer. When I left Foreign Reports and Public Relations Japan, Pioneer then put me on the payroll as a non-regular employee, a 'SHOKUTAKU', to do public relations work on their products and also varied and sundry translation work. This was an instance of one of my hobbies standing me in good stead in business activities. This continued until the 1973 oil shock when it was restructuring time, as they say nowadays, and I was taken off the payroll.
Another instance of my personal interests serving me in good stead is my fondness for motor cars. I have always been interested in things mechanical but particularly in motor cars, and have always tried to keep myself up to date with developments in the industry and new vehicles. Thus, when Motor Magazine, one of the leading automotive magazines in Japan, decided to come out with an English version of their magazine in 1973, I was taken on as Associate Editor. Actually, the work consisted mainly of translating articles on new developments and test-driving of new cars, articles written by leading automotive journalists of Japan. Unfortunately, the marketing of the magazine was not very successful, and despite its excellent contents and appearance, it folded up in 1975. But it did lead to the contributing journalists inviting me to join the Automotive Journalists' Association of Japan, AJAJ, and to this day, I continue to be a member of that group. As a quote, 'journalist', I regularly receive invitations to press previews and test-driving of new vehicles, plus news releases on developments in the automotive industry. My interest in automotive matters also was very useful when I was asked to serve as bilingual event announcer at the Second Motorcycle International Grand Prix race series held at Suzuka Circuit in May, 1963. Most announcers in those days were not familiar with motor vehicles, because cars were still not that popular nor affordable. Although a layman, I do have some knowledge of motor vehicles, and this was very useful in commenting on the races and vehicles in the race. This sparked off my motor racing announcing which continued for over thirty years until around 1994 at racing courses such as Suzuka Circuit, the no-longer-in-existence Funabashi Circuit, Fuji Speedway, Sugo Circuit near Sendai, etc. Somebody recently mentioned that I spoke rather fast on the telephone. I replied that that probably comes from having done extensive motor racing announcing, where you have to give the order of vehicles, their lap times, and the names of their drivers in English and Japanese at the end of each lap in, for example, the one minute and twenty seconds or so that it takes the leader of a race to do a lap at Fuji Speedway. Of course, with twenty vehicles in the race it is impossible to do it for all of them, but you try at least to do it for the top five or six vehicles.
Going back to 1964...I must apologise again for jumping back and forth over the years, but the fact is I have been doing so many things concurrently so please bear with me...back in 1964 when still at Public Relations Japan, we were handling some aspects of the public relations activities for the 1964 Tokio Olympic Games, and I took the opportunity to join the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan, a membership which I enjoy to this date. This led to a friendship with Bruce MacDonnell of NBC, who in 1983 or thereabouts, asked me to interpret for Jane Pauley of NBC's popular morning show who was going to interview top executives of the Japanese motor industry. I interpreted her interviews with Mr. Ishihara, then-President of Nissan Motors, and Mr. Eiji Toyoda, then-Chairman of Toyota Motors, and when the Toyota Public Affairs people found out I knew a little more than average about automotive matters, I began to receive assignments from Toyota to interpret at press meetings, test drives by foreign pressmen, etc., both within Japan and abroad extensively, and I continue to do so to this date. So this is another example of how my personal interests have translated into a fruitful business activity.
One of the awkward bits of interpreting was at a Toyota reception for visiting journalists in April of one year, at cherry blossom time. The buffet tables were ready, and so the Master of ceremonies announced, 'in Japan, they say 'HANA YORI DANGO'. Ladies and gentlemen, the buffet tables await you'. I interpreted that by saying, 'Ladies and gentlemen, at this cherry blossom time, the flower are very pretty to look at, but they don't satisfy the inner man; so please let me direct your attention to the buffet tables that are ready and await you'. Then there was the Diet member from a rural constituency who was talking to an American congressman; he said, in Japanese, 'Japan is a country where rice is the staple food, while the characters used for America, BEIKOKU, are BEI or KOME, which is also rice, and KOKU or KUNI which is country, so we are kindred peoples.'
Let me give you still another example of a private interest being of use in my work. Perhaps because I have never served in the armed forces of any country, I retain the awe and respect that boys feel for the armed forces and their equipment. In particular, being very fond of ships, I have followed naval developments around the world, to the point where I try to buy the latest copies of Jane's Fighting ships every three to four years. So that when in 1976, TBS-TV decided to do a Sunday-special series on military forces and asked me to serve as reporter-commentator, I jumped at the opportunity. The programme series took me to military bases at Subic Bay in the Philippines; Okinawa; in the U. S. Camp LeJeune, Fort Knox, Fort Bragg, Fort Rucker, Fort Jackson, Eglin Air Force Base, Charleston Air Force Base, West Point, Quantico; and also Swedish Army, Navy and Air Force installations throughout Sweden; and although my knowledge of the military is really no more than that of a keenly interested amateur, it nonetheless was very useful in interpreting sessions during the trips. We went out on an aircraft carrier, a missile cruiser, a landing ship, in varied helicopters and jets, and so on, and it was great fun.
I'd like to interject some thoughts about interpreting vis-a-vis written translation work. Our President, Bill Lise, told me that very few if any interpreters, have spoken to this group. There seems to be some sort of gap between interpreters and translators, and I think that that's a great pity, because I personally feel that interpreting, particularly simultaneous interpreting, complements your translation work in that it gives you more speed in translating, while translating work complements your interpreting in that it gives you a wider vocabulary. So if you've limited yourself to translation work, then I suggest you take a crack at interpreting too when the opportunity arises, because I know from personal experience that it will be to your benefit.
In addition to all of the things I have told you about thus far, I have also done quite a bit of film, and nowadays, video, production work in the production of English language versions of documentaries or publicity films. I translate and edit where necessary the Japanese commentary scripts, and then record them. A problem that I frequently encounter is that since English versions of these videos and films are intended for foreign audiences, what need not be explained in any detail in Japanese may have to elaborated on in the English version. Also, metric figures may have to be changed to feet and inches, miles per hour, or gallons for foreign audiences. This then gives rise to the matter of whether to use the old British billion versus the American billion, the Imperial gallon versus the U. S. gallon. And where the Japanese text simply says, for example, 'in Kyushu', this may require the English text to put it as 'in Kyushu, southernmost main island of Japan'. Unfortunately, quite often there is not enough footage to allow for the extra words, so this requires a bit of fiddling around.
In this connection I might mention something that I have encountered many times, and I am sure you have too. If you don't want to bite the hand that feeds you, sometimes you have to tailor the translation to the level of English of the person you are dealing with. Around twenty years ago, I would use the word 'ergonomic' for technical publicity or documentary films, and it would often be corrected to 'human engineering' for 'NINGEN KOGAKU'. Another example is 'within and without Japan'. Once or twice, I have come up against a person who would insist that 'without' means 'not having', and not 'outside of Japan'. Then of course there is the problem of poorly written originals that have to be translated. This is particularly so in the case of material written by technical people such as engineers. This can't be helped, I suppose, but it does make the poor translator's work that much more difficult. Tom Elliot of Dynaword wrote about this in the Japan Times the other day. Yet if you rewrite it in decent English, you will frequently be told that 'that is not what the original Japanese says'. Of course, poorly written originals are not limited to Japanese language manuals; witness those awful English language computer manuals written in incomprehensible computerese.
My interest in photography goes back to when I was ten years old and my parents bought me a Kodak Baby Brownie camera. This interest remained dormant during the war, but I resumed photography in 1950 to the extent where I was doing my own darkroom work, developing and enlarging my own pictures.
More recently, since 1980 I have been serving as the senior simultaneous interpreter for Japanese Diet delegations to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, I. P. U., statutory conferences that take place twice a year plus some occasional specialised I. P. U. conferences. The Inter-Parliamentary Union is a gathering of parliamentarians - members of parliaments, congresses, diets - of over 130 nations of the world that was formed in 1889 in order to resolve international disputes by arbitration. It therefore predates the post-World War One League of Nations and of course the United Nations. However, unlike the League of Nations and the United Nations which are attended by the Executive Branches of the member nations, the I. P. U. attendees are of the legislative or elected branch who do not have executive powers. Anyway, these meetings are held in the capitals of the member nations of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, so that over the past 18 years that I have been interpreting at these conferences, I have visited over 40 nations in the world. You will readily understand how simultaneous interpreting between English and Japanese is a bit of a problem because of the differences in sentence structures. During the days of the Cold War, when there were shouting matches between East and West nations, the interpreters could quite often anticipate what was going to be said, and generally, they would be correct. But now we have a different world situation, and it has become more difficult to anticipate what is going to be said. Still, simultaneous interpreting is sometimes monotonous and boring, sometimes exciting, sometimes satisfying, and I wish I had taken some training at an earlier age and got into it more extensively. But I repeat what I said earlier: it definitely enhances one's translating capabilities, for I have found that my translating speed has gone up. During my travels, I started collecting cameras, and at one point last year, I had around 140 cameras including 28 Leicas. Because we have now moved to an apartment, there is no room to store the cameras so I sold a large part of them, and I have only around 35 cameras left. Still, this is another hobby that has tied into my interest in military matters and maritime matters and boats; whenever I go to San Diego, for example, which happens once or twice a year, I hire a small motorboat and go out to take colour slide pictures of American Navy vessels at the San Diego Navy Station, and send them to a Japanese shipping magazine, Ships of the World or 'SEKAI NO KANSEN', and when they use them in the magazine, they send me small cheques. So here are four of my interests, photography, military matters, maritime matters, and boating, linked up to a revenue-producing activity that is also fun.
I think that I am destined to work until I die, but on the other hand, as translators, we are lucky in that we can continue working far longer than interpreters. I think that one reason for this is that the people who do the actual working level hiring of interpreters are of a certain age group, I would say in their thirties, and I think that they feel uncomfortable hiring somebody twice their own age, or somebody older than their parents, and then being in the position of ordering the interpreters about. If you think you've heard this before, yes, you're right, Tom Elliott, a gentleman who I respect very much, made this point in one of his recent articles in the Japan Times, while I came to this conclusion myself some time ago too. So I shall keep on working for as long as I can, because I have some expensive habits like a boat, which as they say, is a hole in the water you keep pouring money into. I think that one reason why my very patient wife puts up with all this is because after spending what little money I have on the boat, there isn't any left to mess around in other areas.
As I look back on what I have done over the years, how I have performed, I realise that the standards in all of those fields today, whether it is interpreting, translating, announcing, em-ceeing, or whatever, are far superior to the standards of what I have been able to do over the years. Yet when I was commissioned to do these things, there simply were not very many capable people blessed with today's standards, so the people who commissioned me were stuck with me, mediocre as I realise I was by contemporary standards. I was filling a need, and in doing so, I hope that I have served Japan, the land of my parents and my spiritual home, in some way during the 50 years of my working life.
So what have I got to show for all this? Experience, albeit shallow and perhaps superficial in many respects, both in terms of work and personal interests. I have a wonderful family: my wife of almost 37 years whose patience and understanding and wisdom have enabled her to put up with all my ups and downs; an elder daughter, almost 36 years old, who acquired an MA at Sophia University and a PhD. at Brandeis University, and is now an assistant professor at Kita- Kyushu University; a talented and warm-hearted son-in-law who acquired an MA at Tsukuba University and a PhD. at M. I. T., and is now an assistant professor at Fukuoka University; their offspring and our grandson, all of four and a half years of age and a bundle of fun; and a younger daughter of almost 33 who had an unfortunate 8-month marriage and is now BATSUICHI, who graduated from Gakushuin University, is an energetic horsewoman, and appears to have set her mind on becoming a career woman in real estate development work. On top of all this, none of us have suffered from any serious illnesses or injuries, and are in reasonably good health. So poor we may be in terms of money or other assets, but we are rich in things that money cannot buy, for which I am truly grateful.
I've gone on for quite some time, and I don't know how useful my comments have been, or whether they have been of any interest. Not very much, I think, but if of all the words I have delivered there has been one item that sparked your interest, one item that gave you a hint or something, then the work of preparing these comments and presenting them to you here shall have been well worth it.
Thank you for coming today, and thank you for your attention; I would be delighted to hear any comments, or try to answer any further questions you may have.
[Note: The talk was indeed followed by a question and answer session of the likes that makes coming to meetings in person worth the trip.]
As the last decade of the 20th century - the 1990s or the nineties (don't know the spelling) - is almost over, I'm beginning to wonder how we should call the first and the second decade of the coming century. Zero-zeros and tens? Noooo．．．
一方、日本語では「十年代（じゅうねんだい）」から「九十年代（きゅうじゅ うねん）だい」までは問題ないのですが、最初の10年間はなんというのでし ょう? 「ゼロ年代」もなんか変だし・・・・
Any suggestions?
-- Emily Shibata-Sato
With cries of "smash all printers" and "save the trees" ringing through the computer world, Japan's National Diet Library is holding its head over the problem of whether or not it is obligated to collect and make available for general access the huge volume of non-printed matter that is "published" each year, according to an article in the evening edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun (1 Nov 1997).
A little-known law, established in 1948, requires that the NDL collect and make available publications as they are issued. Naturally, the makers of the law never envisioned electronic publishing, either in forms such as CD-ROMs or on the Internet. The library is now faced with problems from both of these types of publications, and will need to rethink the definition of the term "publication." The problem is particularly serious with regard to existing publications maintained by the NDL which, as a convenience to the publisher and/or to save money, have switched from paper to an electronic medium such as the Internet, seemingly leaving the library with no choice but "collect" the publications (presumably by downloading them?) and "make them available" (presumably by setting up terminals from which the publications can be accessed in the library.
With its recent fervor for at least sounding like it is terribly concerned about copyright infringements, this leads the NDL folks to wonder about whether they would not be undermining the sales of publications on the Internet by making them available in a (presumable off-line) form. I suppose nobody over at the NDL recalled that such publications already undermine their own sales by being on open sites. Naturally, to resolve these problems, the solution was to form a committee (納本制度調査会) headed by a Professor Emeritus of guess-what university. With typical speed, the aim of this committee is to come up with a solution by the end of March 1999. In the meanwhile, if you find something valuable on the Internet, you had better download and archive it yourself, because Big Brother is decidedly not watching the Internet with that much interest.
It appears to me that there is an issue, however, that the NDL has not perceived, that being the issue of responsibility on the part of electronic publishers to create publications that are clearly definable and catalogable. This is a particularly acute problem with regard to publishing on the Internet, where the nature of the medium enables content to be both modified and moved at the will--or whim--of the author. The ability to modify content to provide the latest information to website visitors is both a great advantage for the Web and a great obstacle in the way of its becoming a medium to be taken seriously by researchers and catalogers of information. Let's look at some examples and their analogs in the printed-medium world.
Assume a researcher has written a paper and placed it on the WWW at the URL http://www.flakenet.com/madscientist/paper.html. Further assume that you find this paper and wish to use it as a reference. You dutifully include the URL in your work to enable readers of your publication to access Mad R. Scientist's paper. All find up until this point, but several things can go awry.
One fine morning, Dr. Scientist decides to reorganize his website, placing the paper originally in file paper.html in a folder (directory for Wintel folks) called mypubs. Now, an explicit access to the original URL (http://www.flakenet.com/ madscientist/paper.html) will just result in a 404 error, indicating the file was not found.
Consider also the scenario in which Dr. Scientist discovers that Flakenet's rates can be beaten by about 20% by that new ISP Flashvapor, and decides to shift his site paper to the URL http://www.flashvapor.com/madscientist/paper.html. Now a direct access to the original URL will result in the same 404 error, but with even less hope of finding the page of interest.
The above two scenarios are analogous, respectively, to a book being shifted from one division of a publisher to another, and to a book being taken over by another publisher, leaving no forwarding address at the previous publisher's location.
Consider, now, what the ability to update files does to the system. Since files can be updated at the discretion of the author, how does one identify a publication? And--perhaps a more serious issue--is it at all meaningful to reference a version of a publication that nobody can any longer access because it only exists in the latest edition? If the researcher made 15 versions of his publication between 1 June and 1 August of any particular year, how many publications are we talking about? And how are readers to know what version they are reading if the version or update information is not included, a situation which is not acceptable in the traditional publishing world, but quite common on the Web. And just how much responsibility can be charged to a library for maintaining and making available copies of all the versions?
The ease of publishing on the Web and the gradual disappearance of paper versions of publications will create ever-greater headaches for our libraries, unless some system can be developed to structure the "act of publication" on the Web so as to enable clearer definitions of the both the location and the content of a publication. Some modest suggestions I have for content providersy(authors) are the following.
In addition, I wonder whether it would not be possible to establish a system of tagging a particular version of a document as being "published," in the sense that an ISBN number points to a printed publication, as an aid to both libraries (which might or might not elect to tackle electronic publications) and readers wishing to cite the electronic document in their writings. It could be a perhaps-welcomed hurdle to the trigger-happy web author who modifies documents frequently enough to make readers long for thew days when publications didn't change while they were reading them.
All of the above said, with nearly 200 files on my website, I will need to invest a bit of time to ensure that I practice what I preach. But don't my reader's deserve that investment in time?
Even though the electronic Bulletin does not need fillers (there being no "pages" that have to be neatly filled), here is one anyway.
One of the telephone companies here in Japan has a program of reduced rates for people who sign up. These rates, however, are limited to the company's low-traffic times: at night and on weekends.
So they have called the program 夜土日.
And all of the television advertising features a line of Cossacks doing a Cossack dance. Cossacks? Of course. After all, "Yorudonichi" sounds like a good Russian name in Japanese. Very memorable. But please don't ask me to translate it.
-- Fred Uleman (fmu@gol.com)
I picked up three books the other day which might be of interest to patent translators, and offer these, with my short reviews of them, to colleagues working in this field.
特許庁技術懇話会編『特許実務用語和英辞典』 日刊工業新聞社 1997.
(ISBN 4-526-04083-5)
This book is a true dictionary, providing substantial definitions
and explanations for all terms in both in Japanese and English.
It provides in-depth coverage of terms used to describe specific
administrative actions and organizational aspects of the Japanese
patent system. Another interesting feature is a 60-page section
providing full-text samples of translations of various documents,
such as rejections notices, issued by the JPO. I can recall
colleagues in the past asking whether such boilerplates were
available; now they are, and the quality of the translations is
beyond anything available from Japanese sources in the past.
飯田幸郷 『英文明細書作成の実務: Drafting of English Patent
Specifications』 改訂版. 発明協会. 1992. (4,200 yen; ISBN 4-8271-
0149-3)
I recall that, when I first glanced at this book, my impression
was that Iida had redeemed himself with this book, after years of
false advertising of his Wa-Ei and Ei-Wa dictionaries as
dictionaries of "patent terminology" although their content is
about 20% patent and 80% padding with non-patent-related
technical terms. Upon reading Iida's new offering, it appears
that I had jumped to a very wrong conclusion.
The book is a well-meaning attempt to provide guidance to the
preparer of English patent specifications, and it does provide
useful information in certain areas. Unfortunately, the book is
seriously marred by its English examples, with respect to both
typesetting/spelling and technical content (for example, the
"capacity" of a capacitor). Virtually every page confronts the
reader with typos or other serious mechanical problems, which
makes the reader wonder whether the author bothered to have his
book read by someone who could write proper English. The fact
that the book is written by a 79-year-old benrishi and published
by the Hatsumei Kyoukai might point to the reasons why nobody
could or would tell the author that he had no clothes. In short,
Iida has merely provided another example of how entrenched
experts are sometimes allowed (perhaps even encouraged) to
demonstrate their not-so-impressive expertise. I vote this one as
a better-missed chance to fill your patent bookshelf.
米国特許研究会編『米国特許実務用語辞典: The Dictionary of US
Patent Practice Terms』改訂増補(第３版). AIPPI-JAPAN. 1994.
(13,390 yen; no ISBN number could be found.)
This substantial volume, which is not often found on bookstore
shelves (maybe that's related to the lack of ISBN number),
provides a wealth of information about terms used in US practice.
While this might seem not too important for J-E translators, it
can provide a good background for a translator who must discuss
patent matters directly with Japanese patent professional in
Japanese. The latter half of the book provides much information
about the organization and procedures in the US patent system. A
Wa-Ei index is provided.