tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post261231504145253160..comments2024-03-29T00:31:02.713+01:00Comments on ボクの事件簿: Read or DieHo-Linghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04673330638260132388noreply@blogger.comBlogger12125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-24660763134433694782018-05-31T08:51:35.616+02:002018-05-31T08:51:35.616+02:00I was wondering about that, whether the author had...I was wondering about that, whether the author had a particular gender in mind for the character during the writing process, or whether Hilary was considered something like Schrödinger's cat ^_~Ho-Linghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04673330638260132388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-59018410475528373152018-05-30T20:41:01.768+02:002018-05-30T20:41:01.768+02:00It's amusing that Caudwell's readers make ...It's amusing that Caudwell's readers make their own assumptions about Hilary's gender and disagree about it pretty strongly. I, for example, was shocked that my own mother thought Hilary was female, when to me he's obviously male. Caudwell herself refused to ever reveal which gender Hilary was.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06134657400838359852noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-29972228535746051942018-05-27T23:10:43.211+02:002018-05-27T23:10:43.211+02:00This is a very interesting piece. Thanks for writi...This is a very interesting piece. Thanks for writing and posting it.Christophehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01978885973806549838noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-14772674943953012172017-09-14T16:49:23.482+02:002017-09-14T16:49:23.482+02:00I do really love tricks in mystery fiction that ma...I do really love tricks in mystery fiction that make use of specific characteristics of the language they're written/told in, but yes, that makes them hard to translate to languages with little affinity with the source language. And by the time you have explained it all in notes, it's grown into something much bigger than it perhaps should be, so it's a difficult issue.<br /><br />I hadn't heard about the Professor Hilary Tamar series before, thank you. It's not quite the same as the Japanese examples I had mind (where you're basically tricked into assuming a person is of a certain gender through the language used and it is only revealed at the end that the assumptions which were made quite unconsciously were wrong), but it's definitely interesting to see someone trying to work around the problem and I do think I might need to try the books myself to see what techniques are used!Ho-Linghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04673330638260132388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-6214196767413197392017-09-14T14:52:42.450+02:002017-09-14T14:52:42.450+02:00Thank you very much for your fascinating insight i...Thank you very much for your fascinating insight into the Japanese language. It sounds like there might be some parallel with the (mostly) old-fashioned social indicators of 'U' and 'Non-U' terms, dropping 'h's, comedy dialect spellings and regular use of exclamations like 'lord-luv-a-duck!' as well as group specific slang terms, to place people in English language novels; but on a much greater - or more rigid? - scale.<br />It is a shame that so many great book from both sides may never be adequately translated - or at least not without an extra book's worth of annotations and discussion.<br />(Just to note, re: the gender-specific pronoun avoidance, one example in English is in the Sarah Caudwell books in which the main character/detective in the stories, Professor Hilary Tamar's, identity as either a man or a woman, is never revealed over the course of four books. The avoidance of gender specific pronouns is noticeable (though not straight away) but not, in my opinion, jarring.<br />RKOtteryhttp://www.alackofconsensus.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-30992873593379015562015-07-22T19:05:26.983+02:002015-07-22T19:05:26.983+02:00True. To use the male-person-who-the-reader-mistak...True. To use the male-person-who-the-reader-mistakes-for-a-woman example above, it's not /completely/ impossible in English, depending on how the exact wording, but avoiding the use of (gender-specific) personal pronouns will probably feel unnatural after a while.<br /><br />But of course, language incompatibility will always be a problem, be it on a context-level like in my post, or even at a vocabulary level. An example of an English story that didn't quite make it in Japanese: one of the books in Ellery Queen's Tragedy series has a famous language-specific clue that doesn't really work in Japanese.Ho-Linghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04673330638260132388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-23974270502858379942015-07-22T15:32:55.667+02:002015-07-22T15:32:55.667+02:00I've slightly thought of this also couple of t...I've slightly thought of this also couple of times before, but in some cases translating to english in a way that the reader has an idea of what they're talking about might practically spoil the trick or the culprit since the translation could mention something that was supposed to be a clue in the sea of red herrings in a way that the original writer hadn't intended.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-26544020399059058542015-07-08T08:12:26.167+02:002015-07-08T08:12:26.167+02:00Well, haiku, or poems in general, can be open for ...Well, haiku, or poems in general, can be open for all sorts of interpretations, so I'm not going there ^^'<br /><br />The point I was making is that within the Japanese language, 1) role language and 2) conciseness are two elements that are often used in Japanese mystery novels (narrative tricks), which aren't always easy to translate. Both elements make use of (cultural) context and linguistic & cultural expectations made by the receiver. In this case, what data <i>is</i> transferred and what data <i>is being left out on purpose</i>, is just as important.<br /><br />In a 'real' conversation, there's usually very little to no confusion about what is meant, but for a detective novel, it's very well possible to play with the words to invoke certain expectations of the reader w/o saying it out loud (thus the author never lies to the reader). <br /><br />For example, there's a story where the protaganist used the personal pronoun (1st per. s) <i>boku</i> , which is usually used by men (the stereotype in fiction is a young, reserved, bookish men to be exact). Only halfway through it's revealed "he" is a she, who just likes using that personal pronoun. Up to that point, "she" was never refered to with gender-specific words and her speech style had little markers that <i>suggested</i> she was male, but the actual inference protagonist=male was made by me because of linguistic & cultural expectatons. <br /><br />(Nowadays, tomboy characters using the word <i>boku</i> are very popular in fiction though...)Ho-Linghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04673330638260132388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-2814913975928087572015-07-07T21:35:09.891+02:002015-07-07T21:35:09.891+02:00So as far as translation from Japanese to English ...So as far as translation from Japanese to English goes, the structure of Japanese gives rise to two problems:<br />1. The Japanese emphasis on words relating to social identity and status do not have comparable terms in English, making the transmission of important data to the English speaker difficult. I think this is the point you were making.<br />2. The loss of redundant content may obscure the meaning of the text both for the Japanese speaker and the English speaker. For instance, I have a volume of Basho's haiku in translation by Toshiharu Oseko. The poem is three lines long, but the explanatory text can run to one or two pages, and then other translators dispute the meaning with him. This difficulty in the transmission of meaning of three lines is simply not possible in English; or at least I have never seen a case of it.<br /><br />So this kind of obscurity may work to the benefit of the detective story author, but does not help the translator.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-16085961200823078042015-07-07T08:47:53.930+02:002015-07-07T08:47:53.930+02:00I think that's an interesting idea you're ...I think that's an interesting idea you're posing. I don't know any scholarly works on that particular topic, but because the Japanese language is always used in a certain context, I am making the academically-unfounded-guess that the net social energy used easily exceeds that of a low-context utterance. Like you point out, utterances in Japanese in principle are always done in a context of speaker and receiver, (and in some cases, the subject of the conversation) and even the most basic utterances will include linguistic units to establish the social relation between them ("in" or "out" groups). So much is /always/ going on outside the actual spoken words themselves. While I've only done a bit of basic Korean, friends have assured me that using the proper social language with the speaking partner is even more complex, and important there.Ho-Linghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04673330638260132388noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-57031269318668940042015-07-07T05:10:03.193+02:002015-07-07T05:10:03.193+02:00I have also been thinking that human beings, regar...I have also been thinking that human beings, regardless of culture, may only want to spend a certain allotted amount of energy on communication. If this is the case, then if the Japanese wanted to spend more energy to increase the available vocabulary for use in establishing the individual's class or status, they would want to spend less energy on other parts of the communication process, and therefore chop out redundant words where they could as an energy saving. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8031063966272508587.post-43546552631724439232015-07-07T04:57:13.920+02:002015-07-07T04:57:13.920+02:00I had read before that Japanese sentences tend to ...I had read before that Japanese sentences tend to leave a lot of things out. I had read that the interpretation of The Tale of Genji was difficult in the 21st century because Lady Murasaki wrote Japanese in the manner you describe. So leaving out a lot is a problem because it makes interpretation difficult, and that difficulty will increase over time. But it appears to me that Japanese culture as a whole is frugal, and this frugality is also evident in the language.<br /><br />One of the advantages of English, it seems to me, is that the language is loaded with a lot of redundancy. You have to keep using the word "I," for instance. While it takes more energy to increase the redundancy, it also reduces the complexity of interpretation, making the meaning more plain. As a result, it also makes it easier for English to maintain its meaning over time. Shakespeare is still easy to read, and even Chaucer can be read with a glossary. While the words may be foreign, the intent of these authors is fairly plain.<br /> <br />So, there is something to be said for linguistic redundancy. You use more words but the effort of interpretation is less. This may represent a net social energy saving over time. Do you know if any scholarly work has been done in this area?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com