Gotoku Daiji No Sadaijin

It's back to the famous Fujiwara family this month. Our poet, Fujiwara no Sanesada, lived in the latter 12th century, and was a cousin of the anthologist of the Hyaku-nin Isshu, Fujiwara no Teika. His poem at first glance doesn't seem too difficult to understand:

The translator here (Mr. Tom Galt) has done a sort of 'double duty', by giving us not only similar images expressed in the new language, but by also doing it in the same rhythm as the original, 5-7-5-7-7. As skillful as his translation is though, I don't think it catches the alliterative 'music' in the original. It must be pretty tough being a poetry translator. What should you concentrate on - 'meaning', rhyme, rhythm, alliteration ...? It truly is an impossible job, and of course similar problems occur with the translation of prose text too. I know that I sometimes read through the Japanese translations of these little monthly messages of mine (provided for me during the past few years by my friend and neighbour Mrs. Akemi Doi), and feel a bit of frustration. 'Look, you used the phrase 'de mo' four times in this paragraph!', I said to her one day recently when we were checking a translation together. But when we looked back at my original, we found that I had used the word 'but' just as many times ... To my ears though, the English side sounded perfectly normal, but the Japanese version sounded repetitive ...

She in turn, is perhaps frustrated by my use of the word 'I'. It is not unusual for this word to appear as many as three or four times in one of my sentences, but the resulting translation, being full of repeated 'watashi', does not sound like anything that a Japanese would have written. She is continually faced with choosing between two very different ways to translate. The first is to simply transcribe what I said into Japanese words and grammar, in the most straight-forward way, not altering the structure of the original much. This is a kind of 'honest' translation, but the finished work certainly sounds somewhat strange to Japanese ears. It was obviously not originally created in Japanese.

The second way is for the translator to first read and understand the original, and then set out to create a completely new text that expresses similar thoughts, but without any attempt at matching words or sentences. The 'beauty' of the new text will in this case depend almost completely on the writing skills of the translator, not on the original author, and the finished work can of course sound completely Japanese.

In my discussions with Doi-san, I tell her not to worry if our sentences come out sounding like a translation. To my mind, it is more important that I speak 'directly' to the Japanese readers, than that the material 'sounds' beautiful. She would perhaps like to write in a more elegant and beautiful way, but I want my communication to be more straightforward and simple. That's just the way I am.

Although my ability to read Japanese is steadily growing, there has been no such growth in writing ability, and I will probably always need to depend on the skills of people like Doi-san to help me express myself in Japanese. But if only I could stop using that word 'but' so much ... Do you think it's because I'm indecisive ... or just that I like to see both sides of a point ...?

September 1995