Interview with Juliet Carpenter: Translating "The Great Passage"

She explained, "I needed similar-sounding words that conveyed (1) a punishment, (2) a possible cognate or root source for the punishment, (3) a cooking term that could also be a punishment, and (4) an expression for final orders. I managed to get all but the last one. Three out of four ain’t bad. I suppose most readers won’t connect 'dredge' with 'drubbing/drumming,' but all three terms do at least share the initial dr- sound. Fun!"

 

This is pure gold! Hats off to Juliet for her own tour de force!

 

But it's hardly the only example of what she achieved with this work. Here's another example (p. 27):

 

 

After reading this passage, I located the expression at the root of the matter:

 

 

"No kanji are involved," says Juliet, "which is precisely why it’s hard to figure out where the expression came from."

 

Although she found it fairly straightforward to translate ツーカー, "what comes next was a challenge." The character searches for natural pairs of words to fit the pattern "I say X, you say Y," and he comes up with these:

 

 

 

To follow this, you have to know that Oi Ocha is a common brand of green tea. The name suggests what a thirsty husband might say to his wife.

 

The second example is the title of an anime TV series from the 1990s that was based on the Moomins (beloved characters in a Finnish book series). Moreover, ねえムーミン (Come on, Moomin) was the title of the show’s theme song and its first line. Everybody knew this charming song.

 

The Japanese readily make these associations, but it's impossible to take the same leaps in English, so Juliet came up with “one says ‘good,’ the other ‘morning’” and “one says ‘horse,’ the other ‘carriage.’”

 

She notes, "Best I could do. It always bothered me a little that mine were less interesting than Miura’s, but you try to make up for that in other ways. (See 'frittata' below!)"

 

Frittata? Yes, she's referring to her translation of this bit (p. 107):

 

 

Juliet expands on her earlier comment: "Since there are other places where the Japanese has more flourish than my English, I compensate by adding interest where I can."

 

Indeed, "flying frittata" is fascinating both as a euphemism and an image! And that phrasing began as 知ったことか? Really? Shouldn't that be about knowing something? No, it's a slang expression:

 

 

Ooh, I'm going to need an etymology, but that's for another day!

 

Here's another example (p. 30) of where Juliet made the English sparkle more than the Japanese. One section ends with a reference to the full moon, and the next part begins this way:

 

 

Instead of translating ボーッとする as "to be in a daze; be absentminded," Juliet used creative license and chose "to moon" (to spend time in idle reverie; behave abstractedly). She notes, "It fits perfectly, and ties into the previous section." Moreover, Majime is mooning because he has fallen for a woman named Kaguya. Her name comes from a folktale about Princess Kaguya, a baby found inside a bamboo stalk. She grows into a beautiful woman and in the end returns home to the moon. 

 

Juliet notes, "English had a verb that tied Majime’s lovesick dreaming to the moon, and I was delighted to be able to use it to connect the two passages—whether or not anyone ever notices. Here English can do something Japanese can’t, so maybe that makes up for not having an English equivalent for the final shime word above."

 

Yes, I'd say Juliet is off the hook—as are her wondrous translations!

 

The following bit of dialogue (p. 120) gave me pause:

 

 

I asked Juliet, "Was this actually in the Japanese??? I can't imagine that any Japanese person needs to explain that to another."

 

She agreed: "You’re right, this precise sentence isn’t in the Japanese, but something was needed to explain 誤字." One editor in the story emphasizes the importance of avoiding 誤字 (ごじ), which means "using the incorrect kanji to represent a sound." For instance, if you intend to write 変更 (へんこう: change) but mistakenly produce 返港 (へんこう), you have committed the sin of 変換ミス (へんかんミス: selecting the wrong kanji (when typing); kanji typo; misconversion). By the way, 返港 does not exist in Japanese; rather, it's a Chinese term meaning "return to Hong Kong"! But if you were to read it with on-yomi, you would pronounce it as へんこう, the same as 変更.

 

The editor in question says this in that section of Juliet's translation: "Seiji means not merely the correct character, but the correct form of that character for print." I wasn't sure I followed, so Juliet clarified it for me this way: "He is explaining that it’s not always enough to avoid 誤字. The same kanji can be written in countless ways, and some forms are commonly used in handwriting but not in print. So 正字 (せいじ) means the proper kanji in the proper form. Sometimes the differences are subtle. That’s why having two little lines within a given character slanted or not makes a difference to a professional eye. These are things that most Japanese readers are probably unaware of, just as most readers of English, even highly educated ones, may not know all the various rules that proofreaders live by."

 

Oh, the fussy-mussy distinctions in Japanese! They can make me tear my hair out, but in all honesty, I don't think you and I would be here if we didn't also love them!

 

I had figured that the editors compiling the dictionary wouldn't be explaining the basics to each other, but I was wrong on this point; Juliet emphasized that the editors of the dictionary do indeed go into fundamentals because that’s how their minds work. They endlessly muse about things that others take for granted.

 

I found more differentiation in a passage stretching over four pages (pp. 99–102) wherein the editors are wringing their hands over how to define さいぎょう in the dictionary. The first meaning needs to relate to a 12th-century monk-poet with the pen name 西行 (さいぎょう). But aside from that?

 

Majime, a particularly knowledgeable editor, says this of the word さいぎょう: "It also means fujimi, as in 'invulnerable, immortal.'" When asked to explain why, he notes, "There was a time when people liked to paint pictures of Saigyo looking at Mount Fuji. The characters for 'looking at Mount Fuji' are also read fujimi, so both meanings became associated with him."

 

In other words, Fujimi Saigyo (富士見西行: lit. "Fuji-gazing Saigyo") is a set phrase for portraits of Saigyo as he looked up at the sacred mountain. Because 富士見 (ふじみ) sounds like 不死身 (ふじみ: invulnerability; immortality), his name also came to mean "invulnerability; immortality."

 

Majime then lists several other さいぎょう-related words, including the obscure fact that wearing a traditional bamboo hat pushed back on your head is called Saigyo-kazuki (西行被).

 

On hearing this stream of esoteric terms, another editor thumbs through dictionaries to verify the information. Juliet translated those dictionary names as Wide Garden of Words and Great Forest of Words. I definitely needed to know the thinking behind saying Wide Garden of Words instead of Kojien (広辞苑, こうじえん) and Great Forest of Words rather than Daijirin (大辞林, だいじりん). I said, "Your wording is so charming and almost fanciful; I had never thought about what the names really meant. Do Japanese people conceive of 広辞苑 and 大辞林 that way???"

 

Juliet replied, "In general proper names shouldn’t be translated, but here it was imperative to do so, since the title of the novel is also the title of the dictionary they are working on: The Great Passage."

 

I would be remiss if I failed to acknowledge one more astonishing section (pp. 47–50, especially pp. 49–50). Majime racks his brain over this issue: "Wasn't there some straightforward way to pinpoint the difference between agaru and noboru?"

 

He soon arrives at this distinction:

 

 

He then considers the noboru in 天にも昇る気持ち (てんにものぼるきもち: extreme happiness; euphoria; (being in) seventh heaven), defined in Juliet's text as "a feeling of rising to heaven." He ruminates about a moment of elation that he had felt only moments before, one that he considered 天にも昇る気持ち. And he reasons that when it came to that phrase, "Noboru was correct, not agaru, because his joy still had room to grow; he hadn't yet attained heaven itself."

 

After that he thought about 舞い上がる (まいあがる), which can mean "to be ecstatic; be in high spirits." Majime concluded that it was right to use agaru there, not noboru, because "the emphasis was on the elation itself.... And since elation was by definition a higher plane of feeling than normal, it was more appropriate to use the verb that implied attainment of, rather than transition to, that plane."

 

This section wowed me—not just Miura's work and Majime's sincere attempt to slice and dice his own language but also Juliet's mastery in conveying all of this clearly and beautifully. I myself felt 天にも昇る気持ち while reading the passage!

 

But what exactly had Juliet been up against here? Were noboru and agaru presented with kanji in the Japanese? If so, that would restrict the meanings a lot.

 

No, they appeared in hiragana, she told me. But "they can use the same kanji, which makes the pair all the more interesting." She was referring to 上がる (あがる) and 上る (のぼる).

 

I asked, "Do the Japanese already know the differences between あがる and のぼる? I bet these distinctions would come as a revelation to 99 percent of the population. What do you think?"

 

Juliet responded, "Japanese people grow up using the two words instinctively, as native speakers do, not stopping to think about the difference. An explanation that works for them will work for non-Japanese-speaking readers as well, since (a) the explanations are logical and succinct, and (b) going up/rising are easy-to-understand concepts. We have expressions in English such as 'being on cloud nine' that work perfectly. To enter a traditional Japanese house you do have to go up a step from the genkan into the living space, so 上がる is appropriate, but in English it’s a bit unnatural to say 'come on up for a cup of tea,' unless you’re inviting someone up to the second floor (as I do here in my island house overlooking Puget Sound, where the living room is on the second floor to take advantage of the view). We would be more likely to say 'come on in/over'—but it’s a small point and readers may not even notice. If they do, they will just have to figure that’s how it works in Japanese. Anyway, the reader (native Japanese and otherwise) should finish the section with the same sense of satisfaction that Majime has in his discovery."

 

I definitely did! Mission accomplished!

 

One last question for the ever-patient Juliet: "Did you relate to the zealous diligence described in the book? After all, a translator's process is comparable to the task of finding just the right words for a dictionary."

 

She answered, "As a translator I definitely relate to the work Majime and the others do, and their 'zealous diligence.' I wouldn’t necessarily want to do what they do, nor would I probably be much good at it, but I admire the way they can think through a problem until they sort it out. It’s comforting to think there are answers to the problems that perplex us, answers that can be useful and give pleasure to all sorts of people. I try to make my translations work for all sorts of people of different backgrounds, just as Majime and his crew try to make their dictionary relevant for whoever opens its pages. I share their passion, definitely. Words open worlds, and working with words is a noble way of life. I feel incredibly lucky and proud to be able to translate, even if imperfectly."

 

Brava and many thanks to Juliet for giving us The Great Passage and for generously sharing her process with us here.