Fun with ALC

I spend a fair amount of time digging through dictionaries and resource materials with work and other things, and one of my favorite tools online has got to be ALC. It's just your ordinary Japanese-English dictionary, but they have slang in there too and a great variety of alternative ways to say things... sometimes too much, actually. These variations can be dangerous for someone just starting out learning Japanese (the first entries for 格好いい, which would basically mean 'cool', are "cool beans", "off the hook", and "on point"- cool beans!! Flashback to 5th grade...), but if you're working with a good base of knowledge and backing up use of ALC with other sources, like Japanese-Japanese dictionaries and more traditional sources, then it's quick and awesome.

Anyway, a side effect of this variation is that I sometimes run across some rather bizarre example sentences, some of which I'll share now.

Searching for 凝視する I came up with the following entry:

同じ時期、車の通行の激しい道路でインコを地上高く投げ、落下して地面に叩きつけられたうえ、車に轢かれるインコを凝視するAkiの姿も目撃されている。
There was another incident around that time where she was seen throwing a parakeet high into the air at a busy road, and staring at the bird as it fell and was run over by cars.

I don't know who this Aki person is, but apparently she throws dead birds into oncoming traffic, sweet.

Or this one was particularly good, under the entry for 考えられがち:

「ホモ（ホモセクシュアリティ）」とイコールと考えられがちであるが、オカマはもっと広い意味で使用される。
People often tend to think of this word as having the same meaning as "homo (homosexuality)", but "okama" is used in a much wider sense.

This is actually quite true - "okama" has more range than just covering your garden variety gay guy, and is probably closer to meaning a cross-dresser. I really wasn't expecting that looking up a phrase that basically means "is often thought of as", but yeah thanks for the info.

Of course next, I just had to search for the term "okama" itself:

またこのオカマにくっついて遊んでいる女性を釜の底に付くことから「おこげ」と呼ぶ。
Women who go out together with "okama" are said to "stick to the bottom of the 'kama'" and so are referred to as "okoge", or the "scorched rice" found at the bottom of the pan.

Wow, and there you have it... learn something new every day! Lesson of the day: "okoge" means faghag in Japanese, nice!

1Q84, chapter 1

If you don't want to know what the book is about, read no further.

So the linguistic nerd in me is looking for an outlet to make studying fun again. Apparently translating stuff all day for a living isn't good enough, so I've decided to do one paragraph from each chapter of 1Q84 as I read along just to give people a taste of what they otherwise couldn't read without picking up the Japanese original. I'll give the original, then the translation, then some thoughts on the chapter itself.

見かけにだまされないように。現実というのは常に一つきりです。

青豆は大きく息を吸い込み、大きく息をはいた。そして『ビリー・ジーン』のメロディーを耳で追いながら鉄柵を乗り越えた。ミニスカートが腰のあたりまでまくれあがった。かまうものか、と彼女は思った。見たければ勝手に見ればいい。スカートの中の何を見たところで、私という人間が見通せるわけではないのだ。そしてほっそくとした美しい両脚は、青豆が自分の身体の中で一番誇らしく思っている部分だった。

Translation:

Don't be fooled by outward appearances. There's always only one reality.

Aomame inhaled deeply and then exhaled. She then climbed over the railing while continuing to chase the melody of Billy Jean with her ears. Her mini skirt rolled up around her hips. "Who cares!" she thought. If they want to look, let them look. It's not like they're going to see what kind of person I am just from seeing under my skirt. Besides, her firm, alluring legs were the part of Aomame's body that she was most proud of.

Well it's a little harder to capture the art of an author's work than I was thinking, but that's basically the gist of things.

The book opens to the first of 2 main characters, Aomame. She's supposed to be a stunning beauty that doesn't try to stand out, but with an odd name like that she always gets teased (I've never heard that name, and it sounds like edamame, the green beans everyone traditionally snacks on with beer).

As with many novels, we find our subject in a very normal situation, with a twist. This time around, our girl Aomame is trapped in an endless traffic jam on the Shutoko, the Tokyo expressway, in a taxi with an abnormally good sound system. The music evokes memories she has no earthly reason to remember, then upon the suggestion of her knowledgeable driver decides to hop out and take an emergency ladder down to ground level and hop a train so she can make her meeting on time (the Shutoko is elevated).

I think that first sentence above is going to have something to do with the theme of the book - there's always only one reality. I liked how Murakami sneaks an MJ reference in there too... almost too precognizant with his timing on that one. Then again it is supposed to be 1984, so I'm sure Billy Jean was playing all over the place.

And there you have it - the highly abridged summary of chapter 1 of Haruki Murakami's 1Q84.

For an introduction to the book, go here. Stay tuned for more.

Dispelling common Japanese misconceptions about translation: advice for the aspiring

So the other day I got a mail from a friend I used to work with saying that another friend of hers was looking into how to get started in translation. As she knew that I've recently done the same, she figured maybe I could help give him some friendly advice, and set up a meeting. I have been translating at every job I've had since I got to Japan about 3 years ago now and been accepting freelance work on the side for more than 2 years, but I'm really just getting started at doing freelance work fulltime, so I wasn't sure how much advice I'd be able to offer him. I figured that some experience is better than none though, and as he was just starting out my advice couldn't hurt really.

There are a few things that I feel Japan usually misunderstands about the world of translation, so I stuck to the basics. Here's what I told him:

1. Lots of people think that if you can understand both languages you can automatically be a translator - false. Translation involves 2 main skills: understanding the source text and skillfully putting that into words in the target language. For example, for me this means that I not only have to be able to understand what is written in Japanese, but also need to be able to write well in English. There are plenty of people that aren't very adept at writing in their own language, and if you're one of those people then you're going to need to work at that to be a good translator. It's not just about accuracy (although that is important, it can be pedantically overemphasized amongst Japanese translators), but also about style.
   
   
2. Just because you know both languages doesn't mean you should translate both ways. Uggh... this is probably the most common and annoying misconception in Japan, even with translation companies. In the rest of the world, people generally translate into their native language, basically because no matter how well you learn your 2nd (3rd, 4th, etc.) language, you will always have tiny imperfections or not know all the colloquialisms of the foreign language. In Japan, many people think of a translator as someone who translates between both languages in their pair, and then add an extra step by having a native speaker check the work. I don't care how good Kenji's English is I guarantee that mine is better, and likewise he's always going to know more Japanese than I. From a quality standpoint, whenever possible I should leave translations into Japanese to them, and they should leave translations into English to me.
   
   
3. Work in-house for at least a year or so, and get yourself a specialty. While not strictly required, both of these help for sure. Working in-house means that you often have direct access to the person who wrote the text in the first place and can confirm hard to understand clauses directly. It also means that you have time to build your skills and specialized vocabulary.
   
   As far as a specialty goes, you will make far more money in the long run translating a niche market than you will in general translation. Law work, including patents, and medical work can easily command twice the price of general translation work, but even technical fields such as IT or engineering can make money. I forget where, but one place I saw online said that in the long run it's most important to pick your specialty based on what you enjoy as opposed to what the most expensive field du jour is.
   
   
4. Decide rates based on the source, not the translation! The reason for this is simple and logical, and looking around at some translation companies I can't believe this escapes them... if I'm translating from Japanese to English, I have control over how many words I write, but I can't do anything about how many characters are in the original source text. Thus to take any question of the translator just being wordy in order to inflate their fee and focus on making the best possible translation they can, you should base payment on the source. It's the most fair way to do things.
   
   
5. A word-for-word translation is not always the best translation. As mentioned in 1 above, you are writing for an audience, and different audiences understand things differently. If you have a warning label in Japanese that says "please do this," it should be in command form in English, not left as a kind request. Also there are entirely too many direct translations out there that come off as very stiff and hard to read.
   
   
6. Keep up your skills and never stop learning. In order to do this, you need to read regularly in both languages and also write in your native language, e.g. the target language you're translating into. Many people realize they need to continuously work on their 2nd language, but neglect to work on their native language skills as well. These skills will totally fall off if you don't use them!
   

Those are the basics I believe. Specific rates and all are whole different can of worms... maybe I'll get into it some other time.