Winter 2019 Meeting Report
The winter meeting of the Ohio Honyaku Group was held on Saturday, January 26, 2019, at JASCO (Japan America Society of Central Ohio) headquarters in Dublin, Ohio. The meeting was originally scheduled for January 20, but was postponed due to snow. And yet, despite the short notice, a total of nine members attended this rescheduled meeting.
We first asked members about their interest in holding a second workshop on patent translation to follow the one that was held in the 2018 fall meeting. All members expressed their interest, and we will ask the presenter if he is willing to prepare a follow-up presentation for the spring 2019 meeting.
One member mentioned that the Mercantile Library in Cincinnati was holding an event on Lafcadio Hearn on Tuesday, March 5. Although some members were unfamiliar with him, others explained his importance in introducing Japan to the Western world, his important literary contributions, and how, by his mastery of Japanese, he blazed a path that all of us now follow as translators and interpreters. Further event information can be found at the Mercentile Library website.
In current events, we also talked about the White House Russian interpreter in the news and confidentiality issues in interpreting. We also covered different dialects in the U.S. and how standard American English is typically considered to be found in the Midwest, or even Cincinnati, Ohio.
This meeting used the usual format of 5-minute presentations by members on any selected topic. Although no one is required to provide a presentation, most have a topic from work or their Japan experience that they would like to share. This meeting had a wide variety of well-researched topics that were presented.
The first presentation covered three books that a member discovered at her local library. These were Killing Trail by Margaret Mizushima (it turned out the author was married to someone with a Japanese name and had no connection to Japan), A True Novel by Minae Mizumura (2002 Yomiyuri Literary Prize winner, 2014 Best Translated Book Award, 1st Runner-up), and Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata (Winner of 2016 Akutagawa Prize, English translation uses British English).
In the second presentation, a translator talked about his mindset in dealing with a host of life changes that occurred to him over 2018. He cited the book entitled Mindset: The new psychology of success (2018) (First edition, 2007) by Carol Dweck. He explained the two cognitive models presented in the book, “Fixed Mindset” (striving to maintain a certain image of yourself, validating yourself, setback as failures) and “Growth Mindset” (basic qualities can be cultivated through effort, developing yourself, not growing is failure). We also talked about differences between Japanese and American culture and their assessment of effort vs. results.
The third presentation started by explaining the concept of EVS (Ear-Voice Span) or décalage, that is, the time lag between input from the speaker and output from the interpreter in simultaneous interpreting, which is typically 2.5 seconds. He talked about how a shorter or longer lag time is a tradeoff between accuracy and ease. In addition, with the verb coming at the end of the sentence for Japanese, this presented a unique dilemma when interpreting – to wait or not to wait. The presenter explained the “salami technique” of breaking down long sentences into smaller chunks by converting into short, simple independent clauses for better clarity. He then provided a practical example by actually interpreting a 30-second recording from spoken Japanese. Another member mentioned that adding conjunctions to these chopped sentences can further improve flow, smoothness, and formality.
The fourth presentation was based on an excerpt from 13 Secrets for Speaking Fluent Japanese and talked about how Japanese assign phonetic syllables to phone numbers with numerous examples. It concluded with a quiz challenge for members to try to figure out the phases derived from several phone numbers.
The fifth presentation provided a detailed description of the three major events corresponding to the new Japanese emperor ascending to the throne in April-May 2019. These events are the investiture, enthronement, and the Daijosai. The presenter described each one in detail using examples from the previous enthronement in 1989-1990. She also described why the third of these events, the Daijosai, is considered to be controversial due to its religious overtones and concern about it violating the separation between Church and State.
The sixth and final presentation explained the ambiguity found in some Japanese math test questions. Although these questions used the keywords zenbu de (“in all”) and nokori wa (“left over”), a student unfamiliar with these keywords could easily make a different, but equally valid, interpretation of the meaning. From there, we talked about specificity in Japanese and English, cultural differences in specificity, and how the directness in English likely derived from its use as a common language among different groups of immigrants.
The Ohio Honyaku Group meets quarterly to discuss issues of importance to translators and interpreters of Japanese, and we welcome all current and future Japanese language professionals. The meetings are lightly structured and new topics for discussion tend to arise spontaneously as we chat. If you live in Ohio or a nearby state, or if you happen to be visiting the area when we are meeting, please join us!
The next meeting is scheduled for Saturday, April 27, 2019 at JASCO headquarters.
For more information, please visit our website at http://www.ohiohonyaku.com/.
Contact us at inquiries@ohiohonyaku.com.
Report prepared by C. K.
