Ruth McCreery
This essay spans contemporary political activism, art, and modern history. The finalists took up the challenge well, all following the Fred Uleman rules and performing the necessary translation tasks—“Read a little, think a little, write a little.” Their work is generally well written and includes some thoughtful interpretations and creative use of terms.
The title, 政治的に正しければ、「愛国無罪」is quite challenging. 愛国無罪, “Patriotism is not a crime,” is a phrase mainly used in China concerning protest movements against, for example, Japan, where the phrase has been criticized as justifying violent or illegal behavior in the name of patriotism. Combining it with political correctness is an interesting twist, especially since PC has acquired some negative connotations, and 愛国 is tinged with nationalism and sacrificing for the nation. What the translators end up doing with this title must depend on how they interpret the text to follow.
Next, how to translate the description of the author? 近現代史 is usually “modern and contemporary history” (despite my feeling that “contemporary history” is an oxymoron). Do we call Tsujita a modern and contemporary history researcher or scholar or historian, as well as a critic or social commentator or cultural critic? None are disturbing as translations for the terms in question, but what works as a brief label for the author? “Social commentator and historian” or “critic and historian” would at least be short.
I am immediately tempted to remind the finalists to “Translate the punctuation, too,” since the essay begins with the title of an exhibition and includes titles of works of art, which require special punctuation. While some of the finalists used quotation marks for the titles and others italicized them, both are acceptable, depending on a publication’s style guide. What will not do is just capitalizing titles of works, as E48 did. Still, not a bad start.
The first instance of a title in this text also brings us to the author’s description of the exhibition and the finalists’ handling of 現代美術. E03 and E48 translated it as “modern art,” ignoring the periodization used in writing about art. (近代, “modern” refers to work from about the 1860s to the 1970s or possibly the 1990s, in a series of movements that abandoned traditional realism. 現代, “contemporary,” is art being produced mainly by artists alive today.) E18, E45, and E48 included “contemporary,” while E64 avoided the problem by skipping the phrase entirely. That can be a handy solution, but not here.
That first paragraph also posed the question of what to do about the tense of 開催されている. (E03) inserts an unnecessary passive voice and past tense with “has been held.” “Opened” or “launched” the exhibition (E18, E48, E64) clearly refers to the opening date, without worrying about the exhibition’s status when the reader sees the article. “Opened its doors for” (E45) does, too, but seems both wordy and slightly confusing: had the museum not been open before?
The second paragraph introduces the history of the museum itself. Most of the finalists did some research to find the English name of the company that the donor, Matsukata Kojiro, led. E48 made it “Kawasaki Dockyards,” adding the final “s”; that may sound more natural in English but is not accurate. E45, E53, and E64 described Matsukata as its “former” president. Since he died in 1950, he is now a former everything, but at the time he was building his collection, he was still the president of the company. What inspired adding “former”? E45’s capitalization of “president” is also puzzling.
E64’s “The NMWA was founded in 1959 by Kojiro Matsukata” is utterly wrong and reveals a lack of basic research and a poor grasp of Japanese grammar. E53 has turned Water Lilies into a single word, an error a little research would have avoided. Meanwhile, E18 states, “The collection ... is home to an impressive number of masterpieces” and E53 says, “the collection houses iconic masterpieces.” Both are conflating the collection and the museum while, I would guess, trying to avoid the word “includes.”
The next sentence is a clear statement of what Matsukata hoped to do with his collection: 松方はこのような本物の西洋美術を日本に持ち帰り、若い画家たちに刺激を与えたいと考えていたという. It does not state, as E45 and E53 misinterpreted it, that he did so. (While he did manage to get some works home, the collection that is the museum’s core was not sent to Japan until 1959.) E03’s “In bringing these bona fide works of Western art back with him to Japan, Matsukata had intended to provide young artists with inspiration” avoids a plain statement that he had sent them home but could be interpreted to mean that he had acted on that intention. E64’s translation is smooth and accurate, though I would avoid “plethora,” which has negative implications.
The next sentence provoked an excellent translation by E48: “And so this bold new exhibition asks contemporary artists to speak to Matsukata’s original intentions, 65 years on from the opening of the NMWA.” E64’s “65 years later, this special exhibition sets out to explore how the creative minds of today have lived up to his expectations” also works well. E03 uses “modern” again, and, with E18, does not provide a compelling statement of purpose.
E53 dealt with the next two sentences, which are critical to the narrative, brilliantly: “The exhibition made headlines, albeit in an unexpected way, when Yuki Iiyama and other exhibiting artists staged a protest at a media preview on March 11, denouncing what they described as the ‘genocide currently being committed by the Israeli government in Palestine’.” Combining the sentences strengthens the flow of the narrative, while “currently being committed” accurately avoids the implication (whether we agree or not) of repeated or continuous genocides that the “current genocide” or “ongoing genocide,” translations E03, E18, E48, and E64 used, suggest. (E03 also needs to remember that ら after a noun adds a plural—not just Iiyama but Iiyama and others.)
The demonstration was “unannounced,” “unscheduled,” or “not disclosed” (E03, E18, E48, E64), but not “unprecedented” (E53).
Next, the author summarizes what the protest was about. The translator’s challenge here is to communicate the protestors’ issues smoothly while making it clear that the author is not stating his own views. Three of the translators began with “The protestors’ assertions were thus:” or similar statements. Unfortunately, because they have put the subsequent points in separate paragraphs, where the paraphrasing ends is unclear. E48 tries to avoid that by putting the summary inside quotation marks. That solution is potentially confusing, since it is not a quotation. E53 and E64 simply presented the protestors’ issues, clearly and coherently.
In terms of the content, one of the key terms in the protestors’ assertions is 愛国. While “nationalistic” is a perfectly reasonable translation, the translator should connect it to 愛国無罪 in the essay’s title and near its end. To retain that connection, it should probably be translated as “patriotic,” as E18 and E53 did. How Matsukata acquired the funds to buy art is another issue. E18 mentions the wartime “booming shipbuilding industry,” revealing research on Kawasaki Dockyard but getting more specific than the author did; that may be a helpful addition for readers unfamiliar with the company. “War profiteering” (E48) is going too far; there is no implication in the text that the company had acted unfairly in enjoying the benefits of the wartime boom. All the translators grasped that superb patriotic posters inspired Matsukata’s collection. E53’s “The provenance of this collection, they insisted, must not be forgotten” is an effective use of that art term in a sentence that makes it clear the author is paraphrasing, not preaching.
The purchase of drones sentence produced differing interpretations: Is the company trying to import them or trying to sell them? (それに加えて、川崎造船所の後身にあたる川崎重工業は現在、イスラエルよりドローンを輸入して防衛省に販売しようとしている。）Parsing it as “importing drones to sell them,” as E48 and E64 did, works neatly.
E48 integrates the assertion of genocide and the current relationship between the company and the museum: “This makes KHI, one of the NMWA’s official partners, complicit in mass murder.” E53’s version is also effective: “To do so, they argued, is to be party to genocide.” 武器輸入を止まる is, however, somewhat tricky. The point is to stop importing, not transporting (as in E45) weapons. But the protestors are focused on the Israeli connection in this protest and urging the museum to press its corporate backer to stop importing Israeli weapons, not all weapons, as E18 alone makes clear.
Our translators introduced some straightforward errors in their work on the next paragraph. E03 misread 昨今 as “last night,” and E48 skipped the “with exhibitions targeted” part. E03 and E18 treated 展示 as “exhibits” or “specific displays,” not exhibitions. They also ignored the など after 環境活動家. E48 did not ignore it but used “and the like” as the translation. That is indeed one way to deal with the always pesky など, but “and the like” has a scornful nuance not evident in the source text.
E03 used a related phrase, “and the likes of Iiyama,” for 飯山ら。While it is good that the translator recognized the pluralizing prefix this time, the translation, beyond its scornfulness, misses the fact that the author is talking about Iiyama and the others in the group who staged the protest, not just the others. E18, E45, E48, and E53 handled that point effectively, while E64 only mentions Iiyama alone. Most of the translators handled the surge of support on social media well, but E48’s “Because they are well suited for international movements in particular, Iiyama and her allies have quickly gained traction on social media” makes no sense. I must congratulate all the translators for not succumbing to the temptation to use the Japanese term “SNS” in the English!
But then, why insert “suddenly” for なるほど (E03)? Also, the author states that he understands the protestors’ concerns, not that he finds them commendable (E48). Most of the translators dealt well with the connection between the exhibition’s theme and the protestors’ concerns. E53’s “In light of the exhibition’s theme, it is only natural to focus on the origins of the Matsukata collection” is quite effective.
In the next paragraph, E03’s “guerrilla protest tactics” is brilliant, but the relationship among those tactics, the value of Iiyama’s work, and the point of the protest is muddled. E53’s “On the other hand, the merits of Iiyama’s exhibited work, which is closely linked to the content of the protest, must be considered separately from the abrupt manner in which the protest itself was conducted” sorts out those points well.
The next paragraph brings us to the political correctness that first appeared in the title. The term is so widely used, and has such baggage, that trying to avoid it, as E18 did, is tempting but weakens the author’s argument. E18’s “the only metric we have to judge” is, however, an excellent solution for 評価の尺度. “Measure of evaluation” is literal and almost literally meaningless. E64’s “political correctness should not be the only lens through which we evaluate one’s argument” is also good, until we get to “one’s argument.” And that leads us back to 愛国無罪, which both E53 and E64 handle skillfully. E48’s introduction of a different metaphor, the hammer, could be an effective strategy, but the connection between political correctness and patriotic immunity is weakened.
Then we arrive at the “J アーテイスト” problem. It’s not clear to me that the term is widely used or used in a critical manner; the context makes it clear that the author is talking about those artists as a category, not a single artist. Do we use that term (which could be read as very nasty on the part of the translator) or work around it? The translators mainly used “Japanese artists” and came up with some powerful phrases, including “lambasted as undermining protests” (E45) and “labeled as tone-deaf and ignorant” (E53). That paragraph ends with the observation that many of the people chiming in have not seen the exhibition in question (not what is at its heart, E03, or the point of the exhibition, E48). E45 mentions only “online criticism” of the Aichi Triennale, an unnecessary limitation. But all the translators finish well, with clear statements of the need to consider criteria beyond politics, not follow the herd, and visit the exhibition before forming their own opinions.
Oh, the title: How about “Political Correctness Equals Patriotic Immunity?” E53’s “Is Political Correctness Akin to ‘Patriotic Immunity’” may be better, since it clearly raises the issue with which the essay ends and implies, with the quotation marks around “Patriotic Immunity,” a reference to a specific, history-laden term.