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Japan Translates: Words Between Languages from Classics to Hyperculture

Fourteenth Annual Graduate Student Symposium for Japanese Studies held in Royce hall on Oct 25th, 2008.

The one day symposium featured nine panelists from around the country, three discussants and a keynote address by Indra Levy, of Stanford University, on "Cultural Translation and a Culture of Translation." Panelists engaged in traditional academic panels focused on the difficulties of handling multi-lingual texts, the issue of women's language and culture, while others engaged in a translation work shop. Panelists were given the opportunity to receive feedback from participating faculty and peers. Among them were UCLA professors William Bodiford, professor of Japanese Buddhists studies, and Michael Marrra, professor of classic Japanese literature.

This event was sponsored by the Paul I. and Hisako Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies.

Some of the issues addressed during the symposium include:

* Approaches to translation and how it effects the finished work.
* Comparing translations in different languages.
* Comparisons between translations and why some translations are given more authority than others.
* The difficulty of translating multilingual texts and dialects.
* The question of female language and its representation in written text and translation.
* The question of language usage and deciding what type of language to use as a translator.
* The difficulty of translating pronouns from Japanese to English.
* Translating for academic crowds vs. the casual reader.

For the full list of speakers and participants at the conference, please download the program.

Download File: GSS2008-program.doc

Published: Monday, June 15, 2009