Tamil Coolie

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Tamil Coolie

• Translating the Translation
• Curtis Gutter
• Earlham College, May 2004

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Background
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?????(Oguri Mushitaro)

• Born 1901, in Kandan, Tokyo
• Writer of Detective Stories
• Perfect Crime (????)
• Murder Incident at Black Death Hall(????????)
• 1941 Traveled with Sendenhan to Malaysia
• 1943 Published Tamil Coolie in Shintaiyo
• 1946 Died of cerebral hemorrhage
• Shintaiyo (???) is a magazine
• whose name means The New Sun

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???(Sendenhan)

• Department of Propaganda/Public Relations
• Two purposes
• Reporting to the Japanese Government on the
  conditions of another country
• Spreading Essentialist philosophy (Unified Asia,
  under Japan, against Europe)
• Tamil Coolie is an example of the latter
• ??????? (Proclamation of Universal Brotherhood)

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?????(Tamil Coolie)

• Written in 1942, written as Oguris experiences
  in Malaysia
• Tamils, Malaysians, Japanese, and British.
• Tells of plight of Tamil Indians in Malaysia
  under British low wages, social inferiority,
  alcoholism, massacres.

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(No Transcript)
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Oguri in Present-Day Japan

• Who?

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Embarrassment, or valuable lesson?

• WW2 viewed as an embarrassment in Japan
• Korea and China still trying to convince Japanese
  government to modify textbooks so that they dont
  Whitewash Japans Colonial Past1
• Those who do not remember the past are condemned
  to repeat it2
• Past does not belong to Japanese alone
• 1 Korea Herald
• 2 George Santayana

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Why?How

• Before beginning any translation, must decide
  what the purpose of the translation to know how
  to translate
• Purpose of this translation so that we (English
  and Spanish Speakers) may learn from the history
  of others. I.e., reader should identify with
  Japanese storyteller
• Domestication instead of Foreignization

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Theory
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Translation Theory Review

• Foreignization
• SL Bias
• Reader enters foreign world of the text
• Faithful to the letter
• One look is better than hearing a hundred times

• Domestication
• SL Bias
• Text enters domestic world of the reader
• Doesnt sound like a translation
• Seeing is believing
• ?????????

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????????????

• ?? (seisen) Holy War? Crusade? Jihad?
• Holy War literal meaning of each kanji.
  Originally a neutral term, it is now associated
  with religious fanaticism/Islam.
• Jihad loan word from Arabic, this would
  definitely imply religious fanaticism. ?
• Crusade originally applied to religious struggle
  based in Christianity, has acquired meaning of
  fighting for a cause in general.

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?? choice

• Crusade
• Christianizes author / Blatant domestication
• Connotations draw Christian reader closer to
  narrator
• Acquired secondary meaning of fighting for a good
  cause.
• I chose Crusade

• Holy War
• More literal translation
• ??War justified by religion. Holy WarWar to
  spread ones religion
• Connotations with religious fundamentalism,
  especially Islam. (I.e., pushes narrator away
  from Christian reader).

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More to consider

• The linear Domestication / Foreignization concept
  needs to be adapted when the TT itself involves
  more lingua-cultures.

In his story, Oguri presents three basic groups
of characters The Japanese protagonist, whose
voice we hear through the narrator Tamil and
Malaysian victims, who need to be saved from
oppression and the British antagonists, who have
been doing the oppression.
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More to consider

• Furthermore, I must take into account the fact
  that one of these groups is inherently closer to
  the English reader (not so much a problem with
  the Spanish translation). That is, history as it
  is, my audience probably already identifies with
  the British more than any other group (fig. 2).

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What to aim for?

• I had to decide whose voice to adapt to the
  audience and whose voice to leave as the other.
  I realized I had two options to choose from.
  The one would be a completely neutral,
  translation where everyone is equal in relation
  to the reader (fig. 3).

• This approach was hard to justify, as Oguri had
  not intended to write a neutral story, nor did
  his readers read the story without a clear
  understanding of who were the good guys, and who
  were the bad guys.

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What to aim for?

• My other option would be to create a translation
  that my reader could connect with in the same way
  that Oguris audience had. In other words, shift
  the readers bias to the Japanese character.

• I opted for this philosophy, as I found it more
  natural, as well as consistent with my motive for
  translating in the first place.

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Far Translation vs. Near Translation-An issue
unique to translating translations
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Religious Example

• How should we spell the name of the son of Mary
  in the New Testament? In Aramaic, it was ????
  (Yeshua). In Greek, our source of the New
  Testament, it was spelled ??s??? (Iesous).
• YeshuaFar Foreignization
• JoshuaFar Domestication
• JesusNear

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Near vs. Far

• Far Translation
• Advantages
• More realistic
• Disadvantages
• More risky in cases where the original is
  lost/doesnt exist

• Near Translation
• Advantages
• Accurate to what we know.
• Disadvantages
• Less realistic.

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????????

• Punjabi soldiers name how to spell in English?
• Shikutichaddo Exact transliteration of Japanese
  (not a Punjabi name).
• Shiktichad educated guess
• (e.g., ??????Kaatisu?Curtis)
• Kshitij Actual Punjabi name, sounds similar (k
  is silent)

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Other Spelling Choices

• ?????
• Korampo (N)
• Kuala Lumpur (F)
• ?????
• Mr. Naeel (N)
• ???
• Beeda (N)
• ???
• Neelam (F)

• ??????
• Nasi Minyari (N)
• Nasi Minyak (F)
• ??????
• Bunga Kerou (N)
• Bunga Kelang (F)
• ????????????
• Agile and Southerland (N)
• Argyll and Sutherland (F)
• Words in italics were used

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Dealing with the Foreign
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Background in Japanese Writing

• Kanji Characters borrowed from China
• ? ? ? ? ? ?
• Kana Phonetic symbols derived from kanji
• Hiragana standard ??? ???
• Katakana loan words ??? ???
• Furigana small kana originally invented to help
  reader with kanji (fig. 1).
• Ateji Using furigana to tell the reader how the
  author wants the kanji to be read (fig. 2). Can
  also be used to write non-Japanese words with
  Japanese kanji (fig. 3).

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The Challenge

• How should I translate these words
• 1) Kampong Malaysian Village
• 2) Tamil Coolie South Indian Coolie
• 3) Callu Paithyam Palm-wine disease
• 4) Bohon Lie
• Word on the left is based on how
• the katakana is pronounced
• Word on the right is based on what
• the kanji mean

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Dealing with the Foreign in English and Spanish

• English and Spanish handle the foreign in
  similar ways, so my approach was the same in both
  languages
• Italicize the word in the story, include it in
  the glossary (e.g., kampong)
• Let the reader rely on context clues (e.g., Tamil
  Coolie)
• Offer a translation in the text (e.g., so-called
  Callu Paithyam Toddy dementia.)
• Include a footnote (e.g., Bohon means lie in
  Malay)

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Furigana Fun What does Raja mean?

• Narrator (Japanese) and Malaysian Prince both use
  Malay word Raja at some point, but author uses
  different kanji depending on who says it

• Though both kanji have the furigana ???? (rajaa),
  the kanji used when the Malaysian prince spoke
  means local ruler (fig. 1), while the kanji
  used when the narrator spoke means royalty.
  The difference is subtle, and impossible to
  preserve without lengthy footnotes.

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Near and Far Revisited
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Why Spanishand what it entailed
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Why Spanish?

• Natural tendency to use Spanish when English was
  problematic
• Optional Subject in Japanese and Spanish, not
  English
• Simplistic reasoning Spanish is no closer to
  Japanese. Grass looks greener on the other side.
• Frustration of Multiple Translations
• Japanese?Spanish via English
• In support of Bilingual USA?

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Translating into a 2nd Language

• The fact that Spanish is my second language
  influenced some choices I made.
• ????????????????
• ???????
• I ever saw a Tamil Coolie, and that
• image has stuck with me ever since
• la imagen del Culi Tamil se me
• quemó en la memoria
• Spanish had more Foreignization than English

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Translating into a 2nd Language

• Less comfortable with Spanish
• Understanding Connotations
• To translate literature, one must be a writer in
  the TL. I barely claim to be a writer in
  English, let alone Spanish.
• In the end, Japanese words ?English brain?Spanish
  text Spanish is still a translation of a
  translation!

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Conclusions
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What to get next time
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THANK YOU

• Nami Ujihara
• Kumiko Sato
• Kathy Taylor
• Chisato Murakami, Chiemi Hanzawa, Sudha
  Sukumaran, Marc Benamou, Sangmi Choung, Michael
  Birkel, Kushboo Goel, and Pumla Pamla

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The End