Henry Smith
General Comments
When a contemporary artist led a demonstration against a museum exhibiting her work, cultural historian Masanori Tsujita took notice. He followed the news stories and the subsequent social media debate, visited the art exhibition in question, and went on to write the opinion piece that is our source text. Over the first two thirds of this text, translators must convey a dispassionate explanation as to why protestors alleged that the museum is complicit in genocide in Gaza and why they advocate rejecting its main art collection. In the final third, we must deal with the author’s more subjective response to this protest and the political message of the protesting artist’s displayed work, and his conclusion urging readers to visit the art exhibition with no political blinkers on. The text’s fascinating challenges for translators start with the title.
政治的に正しければ 「愛国無罪」か
The obvious choices for the underlined terms would seem to be variations on ‘politically correct’ and ‘patriotic immunity/innocence’, but it may be worth asking a couple of questions before we fix our translations. Firstly, how might 愛国無罪 relate to our art museum situation? We know it was the slogan of 2012 anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, so it surely conjured up a negative image for the article’s original readers. The 2012 demonstrators apparently violated property rights with impunity, and the museum protestors were accused of violating other artists’ rights (to find an audience for their work) with impunity, so the phrase here could correspond to some phenomenon of ideologically justified intellectual vandalism. Can ‘patriotic immunity’ get that across clearly enough to an Anglophone readership? If not, is there anything translators can do about it (in the short space allowed by the title)? As for ‘politically correct’, in recent English usage, this term has often been linked with avoiding offensive language, but here it seems to be closer the original meaning of a sort of political purity test. Is this something translators should worry about, either in the title, or the other places 「政治的に正しい」appears in the text? For what it is worth, I can share a suggested title I got from a real-life columnist/editor in London after briefly outlining our text, and that was China’s Cultural Revolution Restaged? Political Theatrics at a Japanese Art Museum. This suggestion is nothing like a translation of course, but it shows that in real-world publishing, satisfying a sub-editor while staying faithful to an original title is no easy task.
東京・上野の国立西洋美術館（西美）で、 現代美術の 企画展「ここは未来のアーティストたちが眠る部屋となりえてきたか？」 が3月12日から開催されている. // 西美は、川崎造船所社長を務めた松方幸次郎が主に第一次大戦中に欧州で買い集めた美術品のコレクションを基礎として、1959年にオープンした。
When it comes to the opening sentences, our finalists should be complimented on doing their background research and getting the exhibition’s official English name right (Does the Future Sleep Here?) as well as the correct name for Kawasaki Dockyard Ltd. They also generally scored pretty highly for the completeness and accuracy of their translations here, but I would like to pose a question about the first sentence. Would it look more natural in English if it were split into two? For example, if we used a Museum is staging Exhibition (title) > Exhibition has been running since March 12th skeleton structure, could we make this rather unfamiliar information a bit more digestible to our end readers? This suggestion ties in with one of my particular hobby horses. If we stick ‘Ueno, Tokyo’ in an unstressed position in the split-off second sentence, we now have scope to introduce the museum as ‘Japan’s National Museum of Western Art’. Apart from possibly giving the museum a nationality, how much should translators do to ‘Japan-ise’ the translated English text? Do we need to identify Kojiro Matsukata as a Japanese businessman, or Kawaski Dockyard Ltd. as a Japanese shipbuilding company, or have later references to the Japanese Ministry of Defense, or to the Achi Triennale 2019 as Japan’s
most controversial recent art exhibition? Clearly, we do not need to answer all these questions with a ‘yes’, but translators should be aware that non-Japanese readers may need some help to understand things that would have been obvious to the original Japanese readership sometimes.
The text then runs through more historical background, and the next point I want to comment on crops up when we reach the protest itself.
出展作家の飯山由貴らが「パレスチナで現在起きているイスラエル政府のジェノサイド」に反対するなどとして抗議活動を行ったのだ。
All our finalists have dropped the など from their translations, but is this a など that we need? There were two key points to the protest, one about Gaza and one about the Matsukata Collection’s unfortunate political history, and I argue that second point is ultimately the more important one to our discussion. However, with a list of two points, options like ‘etc.’ and ‘such as’ do not work well, so perhaps we should use a phrase like ‘for one thing’.
Within a couple of sentences, we come to the author’s dispassionate recounting of the protestors’ assertions.
彼女たちの主張はこうだった。.. . … . その原点を忘れてはいけない。//
それに加えて、… .… . 西美は、…武器輸入を止まるよう働きかけるべきだ― 。
This case is summarised over two Japanese 段落, and the author has used a literal underling at the end of the second, to signal the end of the paraphrasing. Things could be a bit more complicated in English, where readers may have a default assumption that a Their-case-was-as-follows-type sentence would act as a prelude to a single paragraph. This may be important because we do not want readers to think that the author is stating his own opinion, as we translate それに加えて, and it is interesting to see how our finalists have come up with a range of flexible approaches to this point.
After looking at what the protestors said, the author starts to present his own analysis, stating with areas of agreement with the protestors (opposition to genocide and the questionability of the Matsukata Collection’s history). He then moves into more critical territory with the passage below
そのいっぽうで、このような突発的な抗議のやり方と、 抗議内容と密に連動する飯山の出展作品の是非については別に検討されなければならない。たとえば、ドローンの輸入をもって虐殺の加担とまで断じていいのか。抗議を際立たせるため、無理に物語をつくってはいないか。
What must be considered separately from what here, and how do the two questions at the end fit in with this consideration? Parsing the long first sentence, it appears that the merits of Iiyama’s exhibit has to be a separate topic from discussions on the way of protesting. Some unconventional background research helps us to understanding the exact nature of the 密に連動する statement and what the 物語 of the last sentence is. Iiyama’s exhibit, 《この島の歴史と物語と私・私たち自身―松方幸次郎コレクション》, is still easily viewable on-line. She created her installation as a wall of handwriting around reproductions of paintings to denounce the Matsukata Collection’s militaristic original sin and its perpetuation by the Japanese artists who adopted the collection’s colonialist style. She also specifically identified herself as the author of these ‘Narratives’ (in the museum’s official translation) with the legend「作り手が私自身の物語をつくること」. Her art exhibit thus works hand in glove with the protest to convey a critical message about the Matsukata Collection as the ‘wrong kind of art’, on political grounds, and this might explain why consideration of an art work (the 出展作品の是非について ..検討) throws up questions that seem to be related to a political protest. So, my advice on this passage is (literally) look at the big picture, and consider whether and how it should be captured in the translation, which will set the scene for the next, crucial section.
ようするにここで言いたいのは、「政治的な正しさ」だけが評価の尺度ではないということである。表現の巧拙、調査の徹底度、幅広い訴求性。尺度はほかにたくさんある。これは政治的な正しさを否定しているわけではない。ただ、政治的に正しいことをやっていれば杓子定規に肯定するというのは「愛国無罪」のようなものだって、表現の軽視になりかねないと言いたいのである。
One of the key decisions for translators here is how to handle 評価: what is being evaluated? When considering that, it is worth noting that there is no mention of ‘art’ in this section. So, has the author used the museum protest as a sort of parable, just to illustrate the problems with political correctness, as a concept that could creep into the evaluation of anything? Or is the art exhibition still present here as the sort of unstated context often encountered in Japanese writing? I found some evidence to support the second interpretation, but it comes from outside
this text. The evidence is contained in the author’s talk on the protest and the exhibition, uploaded to his 辻田真佐憲の国威発揚ウォッチ You Tube channel on March 14th
last year. In this talk, one of his key points appears to be that, when art can only be defined as ‘correct’ or ‘incorrect’, 「アートに対して評価できなくなっちゃう」, and focusing on the correct-versus-incorrect question means 「アートを論じるというよりは…政治の話に引きずられてしまう」. He also touched on 表現 and 調査 as praiseworthy points for another exhibit (《玉姫公園》-弓指寛治, a sensitive portrayal of homelessness) that he contrasted with Iiyama’s installation.
The above quotations from You Tube may just seem like the fruits of more highly unconventional research, but they raise the question of how translators should balance textual and external clues. This feeds into a wider question: how do translators use all these clues to decode (or rule out) any unstated context? I do not know of any scientific answer to that, but feeling confident about a translation is often a matter of instinctively ‘hearing’ the cogs click into place. In the case of this source text, that might come when the final third carries a clear and consistent message on who the author disagrees with and why. Speaking personally, I could ‘hear the cogs click’ with a translated message, roughly as follows. Art (by Iiyama or anyone else) should be evaluated for the qualities of its artistic expression etc., and not just for its adherence to some politically correct line. Other translators may hear different cogs or find different messages, but this interpretation may at last explain why it matters that cyberbullies with contrary opinions have not even seen the exhibition. We meet them, along with a couple of interesting questions, in the next two 段落/paragraphs.
ところが今回、このような意見は抗議活動に水を差すものとしてバッシングに晒された。世界の潮流を知れない、「Jアーティスト」的な振る舞いだというのだ。
本当にそうだろうか 。政治はもごとを 「賛成か反対か。 賛成しなければ敵だ」と 単純化しやすい。今回もその悪弊が出たのではないか。肝心の展示を見ずしてバッシングに加わる人間の多さがその証拠だった。
The obvious question here is: what is a Jアーティスト? The text does not tell us definitively, but I would hazard a guess that the ‘J’ here means something like Japanese imitator of ... Nowadays, we have J-Pop, J-Rap, and J-Hip-hop artists emulating something from western culture, which is apparently what Matsukata wanted Japanese painters to do with the western art style he sought to promote. With a little more digging, I believe we can identify the origin of this Jアーティスト. It appeared as the title of tweeted polemical cartoon, 「おりこえで無能なJアーティスト」, in the social media debate the day after the protest (which the author monitored). The cartoon depicts J-artists, not painting, but heartily approving violent acts of oppression and becoming outraged when the oppressed fight back. Considering how this fits in with Iiyama’s view on collection-copying painters developing a colonialist mindset, perhaps the mental image corresponds to Japanese artists aping their Western ‘Masters’ without realizing the world has moved on. I suspect that the author saw the Jアーティスト as an over-the-top caricature, and that would give 本当にそうだろうか in the next sentence a bit of sarcastic bite, and make even more sense of a conclusion that urges readers to visit the controversial art museum with an open mind.
All six finalists have suggested some good solutions for the many challenges in this text, and I think they all demonstrated solid skills that will stand them in good stead for a successful translation career. I also had a chance to look at entries from those translators we were unable to shortlist, and I saw several imaginative solutions that show there is a lot of talent our there. (My personal favorite was a title proclaiming, ‘My Ideology, Right or Wrong’.) I hope all entrants this year enjoyed working on this challenging but fascinating text and feel encouraged to attempt more challenging translations in the future.
E03
E03 produced a wonderfully brief translation that still scored well for completion and accuracy. Unfortunately, word counts are not assessed in this contest, but they can be very important in real-life translation jobs. As my main suggestion for improvement, I recommend E03 to build on her skills for concision and precision, by thinking about how to make her texts more reader orientated. Let me structure these comments thematically to show what I mean.
E03 probably scores about 99% for completion and accuracy over the first five sentences, but readers may find the going a bit heavy. Here is an example (sentence number four):
In bringing these bona fide works of Western art back with him to Japan, Matsukata had intended to provide young artists with inspiration.
Four of the five opening sentences start with a long adverbial clause like this. These ‘fronter adverbials’ have their place in English writing of course, but readers will find it hard to discern the thread when 75% of the sentences start like this. This particular clause also accounts for the dropped 1% on her completion and accuracy score here: Matsukata never got to bring these art works with him back to Japan. (He died nine years before the museum opened.) A sentence starting ‘Matsukata (had) intended ….’ (or ‘hoped’) would thus have been a better translation and more historically accurate statement.
A more reader-orientated approach might also have helped in paragraphs four and five. Starting paragraph four with ‘The artists’ assertion was this:’ is fine, but I believe that ‘In addition, …’ at the front of paragraph five leaves readers unclear whether this is a continuation of the protestors’ case (as is clear in the Japanese text), or (incorrectly) the author now adding his own opinion, and that distinction is very important.
Part of writing with the reader in mind involves word choices, and I want to highlight a few of E03’s choices that may not have worked so well on this front. Having 「話題になった 」as ‘became a topic of conversation’ might not fit the controversial nature of this protest. I believe that ‘contravention of the official programme’ made「予定外のこと」sound more legalistic than it should be, and ‘stirs up uproars’ near the end is a rather unnatural collocation, especially with the use of the plural. Making the right word choices can be an agonizing process sometimes, but I often find reading two or three target-language pieces on a similar theme is enough to get some inspiration on natural expressions that would fit the bill.
It looked like E03’s translation had a mistake where ‘last night’ was used for 昨今. This is just the sort of thing that easily creeps into anyone’s work when our eyes are tired or time is short. As a quick experiment, I got DeepL to retro-translate E03’s paragraph here, and then asked ChatGPT (in English) to find discrepancies between the original and back-translated sections of Japanese text. It took less than five seconds to identify the mistranslation, which makes me think that AI could be used very effectively for checking in time-critical situations and ironing out any little (but embarrassing) mistakes like this. Small mistakes that AI checking may not catch included ‘English’ for 「英国で」 when this clearly has to be ‘British’, and ‘Are we not forcing narratives .. ’ for 「無理に物語をつくってはいないか」 where the subject should probably be Iiyama (or she).
In my general comments, I discussed keeping a clear, consistent message across the difficult final third of the text, but I found a couple of places where, as a reader, I was not clear about the message. The sentence ‘At the same time, the appropriateness of such guerilla protest tactics, the subject of the protest and Iiyama’s closely-linked works need to be examined separately’ looks like a bit of a fudge on the parsing front; are there three things for separate comparison, or are we missing an ‘and’ (or an Oxford comma!) somewhere? A little further into the final section, I suspect these two sentences are not giving readers as logical a sequence as they should.
Their conduct has been made out to be that of Japanese artists who lack understanding of global trends (Paragraph 10, sentence 2)
The proof is in the number of people … who piled on with their criticisms.
The two underlined terms here may broadly correspond to the single term バッシング in the Japanese, but I suspect many readers will not easily understand that the (unnamed) allegers of Japanese-artist-like conduct in the first sentence are also the critical pilers-on mentioned in the second.
These commentaries inevitably contain many suggestions for improvement, but we should not forget the many good points about E03’s translation, in addition to the good score for accuracy and completion. Adding ‘… permissible’ could be a nice way to leverage some of the nuance of 「愛国無罪」into the title. ‘Built upon a line of thinking in this vein’ was a nice way to capture 「そのような考えのもとで」, especially given the number of related questions that the exhibition was designed to explore. Consistently translating 虐殺 as ‘genocide’ was a good decision, as this was clearly the meaning that the protestors wanted to convey, and ‘guerrilla protest tactics’ was a very imaginative choice for 「突発的な抗議のやり方」. Finally, ‘non-political lens’ is a very good choice for the 尺度 to be used in an art museum.
E18
E18 also scored well for completion and accuracy, and has clearly analyzed some of the pitfalls in the source text, and come up with solutions for them. In a couple of places, I (subjectively) think the solutions may not have been optimal, but the text analysis skills E18 shows here are vital for any translator. Let me work through the text to look at the solutions that worked, and those where I believe more thought would have helped.
I will start with the title, where E18 has offered ‘Does Political Stance Grant Patriotic Innocence?’. I believe E18 is trying to avoid confusion between the different nuances of political correctness. However, I fear that ‘political stance’ may bring another set of problems. A stance can often be described as ‘moderate’, or ‘neutral’, or ‘shifting’, none of which can work here. Maybe solutions with ‘politically correct line’ (or perhaps ‘political purity test’) could have worked better.
I liked the way E18 started with ‘special contemporary art exhibition’ as the grammatical subject of the opening sentence, and I think she might have made even more impact if ‘March 12th’ had been the final term in the sentence, leaving ‘Ueno, Tokyo’ as the sort of detail readers might glide over. E18’s proactive way of thinking about word order was on display in the juggled word order for the next two sentences on the art collection’s early history.
When it came to describing the protest itself, ‘… disturbance resulted in police being dispatched to the scene’ struck me as good way to cover 「警察が出動する騒ぎ」. However, I think the comment on genocide should have been in speech marks because it was a direct quotation from the protestors’ leaflets.
E18 has also come up with a solution to the problem of paraphrasing the protestors’ case over two paragraphs, with ‘The protestors’ assertions were thus: First, … . // Next, … . Finally, … .’. I concede this does work, and readers will appreciate that these are not the author’s opinions. However, E18’s solution seemed a like a better fit for real-time interpreting (with the conversational ‘next’), rather than the written translation, where we have more time to ponder the subtleties and nuances of this text. I argue that there is something more complex than a sequence going on here.
Having said that, I think E18 made a lot of really good decisions in this part of the text. She did really well to shake up the word order and bring ‘roots of Kojiro Matsukata’s collection should not be forgotten’ to the front with a ‘Not only … but also …’ construction after it. This expressed some rather complex information very naturally in English. Splitting the statement on British propaganda posters into two sentences with ‘superior caliber’ for 「優れた … (プロパガンダポスター)」in the second sentence was also an inspired move.
After E18 (rather deftly) writes that ‘support for the protest quickly poured in via social media’, I think she missed a trick by translating なるほど as ‘suddenly’. Really, this is the point where the author enters the text to start discussing his opinions. Maybe an Indeed-I-understand-where-the-protestors-are- coming-from-type phrase would have announced his entry better.
It looks like E18 has made ‘legitimacy of (protestors’) assertions’ the key point of the paragraph around the 「議内容と密に連動する飯山の出展作品の是非について」point, but I think we need to keep more focus on 出展作品 here.
This is not to say that political stance should be disregarded entirely, but rather that unwavering endorsement of only what aligns with your perspective is analogous to claiming patriotic innocence and could lead to your statement being brushed aside.
This may be the most important statement in the text, but I fear that E18’s translation may be a little too convoluted for readers to grasp easily. It might have benefited from being split into two, and ‘your statement’ struck me as slightly unnatural choice.
Similarly to a comment I made to E03, I think readers may not easily grasp the sequential relationship between these two sentences
‘ … cautionary words like these were criticized …’
‘ … large number of people who participated in the dogpiling … ‘
I think the two underlined words correspond to バッシング in the Japanese text, which established a link in the original nicely, but I am not sure the English readers will cotton on that that link so easily. About ‘dogpiling’, I have to say 勉強になりました！Having checked the Wikipedia definition, I think it may describe the phenomenon very well (but would it be clear for all readers in the same age bracket as myself?).
I really liked ‘Politics has a terrible habit of boiling everything down to making allies of those who agree with you and enemies of those who don’t’. This is actually a very difficult sentence to render naturally in English, but this is a good example of the nice touches that E18 has shown with this translation.
E45
E45 has done a very solid job of getting to grips with the source text, and done well at the key points. A lot of my suggestions for improvement concern relatively minor points, so perhaps my main advice would concern tightening up a bit on the checking procedure.
I do not see any big problems in the first few sentences, and E45 has done a nice job in shuffling word order to make a more natural sequence. As one very small point, it looks like a reference to Europe has slipped through the net in these juggled sentences, which is something to watch out for when word order gets shifted around.
Another small point comes in the next few (otherwise well-translated) sentences, where E45 writes ‘Matsukata brought original Western art to Japan to … ’. As I pointed out elsewhere, he did not live long enough to see the collection come to Japan, and so a little more careful reading of the text (or a few more minutes on the museum’s web site) could have prevented this small error. That contrasts with another small point where E45 seems to have done her homework, translating 「飯山由貴ら」 as ‘Yuki Iiyama and others’, which nicely deals with the fact that some of the other protesters were artists, and some were not.
E45’s starts the two-paragraph summary of the protestors’ case with ‘The heart of the issue rested with the collection’s history’. I agree that the collection’s history was (at least part of) the heart of the issue for the protestors, but will readers understand that the author is paraphrasing the protestors’ viewpoint here? The problem may be compounded when the next paragraph just starts with ‘Furthermore, … ’. However, I have to say that I liked the phrasing about Matsukata starting the collection ‘impressed as he was by the remarkable propaganda posters he caught sight of in England’. My one pedantic objection is the last few words should be posters he was shown in the United Kingdom
(check out my comments to E48 and Matsukata’s Wikipedia page to see why).
Subsequently, rendering 「美術館が政治的パフォーマンスの場となっており」as ‘ … theaters for political performance … ’ was a really nice touch that made the sentence look exactly as it should for a highbrow journal. However, choosing ‘commendable’ for 「わかりやすい。」 may have been implying more approval for the protestors than the author intended.
Two sentences later, I also liked ‘Focusing on the history of the Matsukata collection certainly addresses the objective of the exhibition’ for both the imaginative approach to word order, and giving the ‘focusing’ the feel of something done actively. ‘A message against genocide does not invite disagreement’ was another change in word order that produced a very natural translation.
A little later in the text, but I saw a couple of things to comment on in E45’s translation of the「Jアーティスト」sentence.
… these opinions were lambasted as undermining protests—that this was behavior typical of Japanese artists, who are unaware of global trends.
I thought ‘lambasted’ captured what was going on here very well, but turning the ‘unaware of global trends’ into a subordinate clause could be problematic. That is because it implies that all Japanese artists suffer from this ignorance, yet there were Japanese artists on both sides of the debate, and that undermines the sentence logic here somewhat.
A couple of word choices in the final paragraph struck me as being nice touches. Having 「炎上は起きていない」as (the exhibition) ‘has not evoked criticism’ is a great way of turning a Japanese phenomenon-describing sentence into an English action-describing one. Urging readers to ‘form their own opinions’ was an elegant way to render 「みずから考えて欲しい」.
E48
E48 made many excellent translation decisions, and his text demonstrated his great ability to write naturally in English. In many places, he pulled off the square-peg-into-a-round-hole tricks that represent the key challenge for any J>E translator. In my opinion, however, a couple of wrong turns about two-thirds of the way through meant he could not get the really high score that the first two-thirds of his entry suggested he should.
To start with, E48 made a bold move in not trying to translate 「愛国無罪」literally in the title (or the body of the text). I think ‘Can the politically correct do no wrong?’ was a pretty good effort. I am not sure it quite encapsulates the text 100% effectively, but could anything in the short space we have? On the plus side, I think E48’s effort might even pass muster with a strict sub-editor.
I also thought that E48 got off to the best start of any finalist with ‘The modern art exhibition Does the Future Sleep Here? opened at … ’ at his first words. I think high-impact English sentences tend to keep the subject and verb close together like this, and maybe this style would avoid the need for the two-sentence approach I advocated in my general comments.
He carried on the good work in the second paragraph. The changes in word order made the English very natural, and that effect was enhanced by phraseology such as (the museum) ‘opened its doors’, and (asking) ‘contemporary artists to speak to Matsukata’s original intentions’.
Moving forward a little, ‘The police even ended up intervening, as the artists did not disclose their plans in advance’ was a wonderful way to put the nuance of the だったためin 「予定外のことだったため、警察が出動する騒ぎにもなった。」. On a small point, just before that, E48 described 出展作家の飯山由貴ら as ‘Iiyama and other exhibiting artists’; we can confirm from the news stories that two other artists joined her protest, but many other of the 20 or 30 other protestors were not artists. So, a little more background research might have produced a more accurate translation.
I will paraphrase their argument: ‘Kōjirō Matsukata bought the pieces in his collection ... .
‘Moreover, Kawasaki Heavy Industries (KHI), … he was inspired by pro-English
propaganda posters … to stop the import of weapons.’
This is the structure that E48 used to cover the two-paragraph protesters’ case (much discussed elsewhere). Using the verb ‘paraphrase’ was an inspired choice, but I would urge E48 to check style guides, because I am pretty sure that paraphrasing does not use quotation marks (maybe italics?). Nevertheless, the skip between paragraphs with just an opening single quote mark for the second paragraph was a lovely use of Commonwealth English punctuation conventions, very pleasing to a Brit like myself! However, I got out my red pen for ‘pro-English’ because these propaganda posters in 1914 to 1918 were very much on behalf of the British Empire. Incidentally, the artist who drew them (and won Matsukata’s admiration) was Frank Brangwyn, a Belgium-born Welshman. Apart from overlooking the place of Wales in the United Kingdom, E48’s translation then runs very well until the author introduces Iiyama’s exhibit into the text.
Having said that, we can critique her (Iiyama’s) tactics as someone who colludes with other artists to stage disruptive protests. But we must do this without attacking her exhibition piece. For one, can we really say that importing drones makes a company complicit in genocide? It seems like they are just forging a narrative aimed at furthering their agenda.
E48 has made a bold attempt to come up with some natural English sentences, but I fear he stretched things a little too far. It might help to look at photographs of Iiyama’s exhibit on-line, as I suggested in my general comments, and then re-think how to interpret this passage. In that light the ‘narrative’ is the one told by her exhibit. The narrative forger here is thus more likely to be ‘she’ rather than ‘they’, and the narratives are more likely to underscore the message of the protest rather than more broadly ‘further an agenda’. I argue that the overall issue here may not be whether people attack her exhibit or not, or whether she was colluding with artists to disrupt things, but the need to consider her exhibit separately from discussions of protest tactics.
E48 has continued to produce a well-written text after this point (in terms of English style), but I fear that he continues to make bold moves that could take readers in the wrong direction. As a small example, I cannot see 「調査の徹底度」as ‘scientific rigour’, especially as we have just been talking about an art exhibition. When E48 tackled the「愛国無罪」のようなものsentence, he made an even bolder move that I fear drifted even further from the intended meaning. I applaud his ambitious efforts to come up with another figure of speech that might catch the phenomenon here, but sadly, I do not think that ‘hammer and nail’ works. In part, this may be because the 「愛国無罪」 phenomenon is a destructive one, whereas ‘hammer and nail’ images usually apply to someone trying to make or fix something. Furthermore, a good rule of thumb for a figure of speech is that it is not working well if it has to explained. Perhaps that metaphor could work better here if the hammer represented the rigid doctrine, and the nail were the object that has to be hammered into a politically correct line.
I hope that E48 is not discouraged by these comments on the final third, because he has done a lot in other passages to show his skills as a translator. He shows them again with a very nice demonstration of meaning-centric translation when he renders the final 「企画展」 as ‘Does the Future Sleep Here’ (the exhibition’s English title). I think this is how an Anglophone cultural historian would conclude a similarly themed article in an English-language journal.
E53
This year’s winner has produced an excellent translation. There are many inspired and imaginative choices, and his work is never less than competent at any point. My one recommendation would be for E53 to play safe a little less, and gamble on his imaginative choices a little more.
We can see some of these points at the beginning of his text, as E53 gets off to a cautious, but still competent, start. I am not a fan of ‘Patriotic Immunity’ in the title, but at least E53 has used quote marks. His opening sentence is certainly error free, but readers have to wade through Ueno and Tokyo before the verb (a has-been-hosting
clunker) emerges. This all rather makes the case for subdividing this sentence, as I advocated in my general comments.
By the end of the second paragraph, E53 is showing his more imaginative side.
So, how might contemporary artists engage with Matsukata’s legacy and mission today, 65 years after the museum’s opening? ‘Does the Future Sleep Here?’ is an ambitious experiment, premised on this line of inquiry.
There is a lot to like here, from the meaning-centric use of the exhibition title to the good vocabulary work-out with artists engaging with Matsukata’s legacy and (presumably) museum curators premising their experiment on a line of inquiry.
As we work through the next couple of paragraphs, there are several word choices that show a touch of class, maybe a small one with the use of ‘albeit’, or a grander one in referring to protestors denouncing ‘what they described as … genocide’, which establishes our author’s stance as an impartial observer for this part of the text really well. Describing Matsukata as amassing his collection with capital generated from a military economic boom matched an authentic voice for our historian-author. As a small point, I think E53 could have made the next paragraph even more effective if he had introduced ‘Kawasaki Heavy Industries’ as the museum’s partner at the start of the paragraph, rather than toward the end.
I understand their desire to problematize and question; their concerns are clear.
E53 was the only translator to use the first-person singular for a なるほど translation at this point, which is a good fit here. This is the point where the author switches from dispassionate observation to giving his opinions. I might have gone even further with Indeed, I understand … for a bit more emphasis.
E53 then does a pretty good job with the next 段落/paragraph. I thought the point about ‘Iiyama warping her narrative’ got close to how the author felt, although perhaps it would have been better followed with ‘to underscore the protest’ rather than ‘to widen her appeal’ (for 抗議を際立たせるため):
In other words, what I wish to convey is that political correctness should not be the sole measure of evaluation used here.
There is much to admire for the translation of this crucial passage here, but does ‘In other words, …’ work? I do not think the author is paraphrasing either of the two previous questions, or the key point of the previous 段落, so readers might be a bit puzzled about ‘in other words’.
E53’s choice of ‘evaluation ... here’ was an interesting one, as it suggests a link to the previously mentioned art exhibition, but in the next couple of sentences E53 seemed to be moving a wider discussion on political correctness as a concept. I am not saying I disagree with all his choices, just that I could not ‘hear the cogs click’ (please see my general comments to explain that phrase!).
… I am suggesting that the categorical affirmation of actions solely because they are politically correct risks losing sight of the intrinsic value of expression itself. This approach resembles a particular brand of ‘patriotic immunity,’ where actions aligned with a ‘greater good’ are shielded from critique.
This works very well in terms of capturing the words on the page, and it is a very good decision to split the hyper-long Japanese sentence into two English ones. I thought ‘risks losing sight of’ and ‘shielded from critique’ were the sort of touches that made this text look like a piece of natural writing rather than a translation. However, I feel bound to ask E53 a facetious question: how many brands of ‘patriotic immunity’ are there? Before reading this piece, I would never have imagined there were any!
E53 had a very interesting approach to the Jアーティスト sentence.
Critics labeled them as tone-deaf
and ignorant of global affairs.
E53’s ‘tone deaf’ makes for a good compromise here. We cannot know exactly how the author conceptualises a ‘J-artist’, especially as he did not invent this phrase. From the context, we can be sure that the ‘bashers’ believe ‘J-artists’ to be tone deaf, but we cannot really go beyond that with any certainty, so this minimalist interpretation could make a lot of sense.
I attended the exhibition on its opening day. So far, there hasn’t been a major firestorm
like the freedom of expression controversy that occurred during the 2019 Aichi Triennale. Nevertheless, it is likely that we will continue to witness political commotion at art museums in the future. To avoid being swept up in the moment, it is essential to consider criteria that extend beyond politics. ‘Does the Future Sleep Here?’ runs until May 12, and I encourage you to visit the venue and judge for yourself.
I have reproduced E53’s final paragraph in full, because it finished the translation on a particularly strong note. I thought it was a good move to give readers some more information about the Aichi Triennale controversy (maybe adding the words ‘recent Japanese art exhibition’ would have helped even more). As a tiny quibble, I think ‘at such moments’ might have worked better than ‘at that moment’. However, I do not want to detract from the many excellent choices here, from ‘firestorm’ through the meaning-centric ‘Does the Future Sleep Here?’ and ‘continue to witness political commotion’, to the final exhortation to ‘judge for yourself’.
E64
E64 has proposed some great translations and produced some great writing. My one piece of advice might be for him to imagine a little angel on his shoulder chanting ‘Get back to the source text!’ in his ear periodically. (I have to use one of these myself.) I suggest this because I noticed that terms just occasionally slipped through the net, sometimes at the most imaginative translations or ‘purple patches’. The second paragraph is a good place to start to illustrate these points.
The NMWA was founded in 1959 by Kojiro Matsukata, … . Originally established to house his extensive collection of artworks—most of which he acquired in Europe during World War I—the museum boasts a plethora of iconic works, … . … . … , this special exhibition sets out to explore how the creative minds of today have lived up to his expectations.
E64 has done a great job of turning this paragraph into something that reads so well in English. The use of EM dashes around ‘most of which’ is particularly effective here, and a sign of a good writer on top of his game. There are a lot of great word choices here like ‘boasts’ and ‘lived up to his expectations’. However, a mistake has crept in with the statement about Matsukata founding the museum; he actually died in 1950. A few more minutes of research on the museum web site would have paid off here. E64 has translated 「現代美術のアーティストたち」as ‘creative minds’ but I think the dual presence of 美術 and アーティスト points to visual artists rather than artists in any category.
E64’s next paragraph has a lot of good choices, too. He suggested ‘a group led by exhibiting artist Yuki Iiyama’ (which correctly allows for both artists and non-artists in the demo). Having the unannounced demonstration ‘cause a commotion, leading to police involvement’ was a great way to render 「予定外のことだったため、警察が出動する騒ぎにもなった。」
I think E64 proposed the best solution for the author’s description of the protestors’ case. Let us look at this detail.
The demonstrators brought two issues to the forefront: the first being the origins of the NMWA. Kojiro Matsukata, encouraged by nationalist propaganda posters in the UK and wanting to improve the standards of art in Japan, purchased artwork for his collection with money earned during the war boom of World War I.
The second issue raised was that …
This is a very impressive natural flow in English, and it presents no problems for the reader in terms of understanding that we have a summary running over two paragraphs. E64 has achieved a lot of his effect by extensive shifts in word order versus the Japanese original. Just as a small point, the first Japanese 段落 here ends with 「その原点を忘れてはいけない」. Most of that seems to have made it to the front of the English paragraph, but I wonder if the 忘れてはいけない nuance has slipped through the net a bit here? Perhaps the simplest solution would be an extra adjective somewhere?
A little later we get, ‘It’s evident that Iiyama and her group are deeply passionate about their cause’, which is a nice English sentence, and certainly true, but did not seem to me to be a perfect fit for 「なるほど、 彼女たちの問題意識はわかりやすい」.
As we enter the tough final third, E64 continues to produce some finely written paragraphs, but sometimes I felt he was drifting from the author’s intended meaning. For example, the passage containing 「飯山の出展作品の是非について別に検討されなければならない」appeared to become a paragraph starting with ‘… it shouldn’t be taboo to critique the ways in which Iiyama conducted her unannounced protest’ as a topic sentence, and I could not see how the adverbial 別に had been transferred into English. I do think E64’s ideas about onlookers being able to judge her exhibits, and the exhibits providing context to the protest have some promise, but might need a couple of tweaks.
Activists who hide behind a shield of political correctness for validation often mirror extreme nationalists who wield patriotism like a weapon—in both cases, their claims lack substance.
E64 has proposed a very nicely written sentence for the key sentence describing the author’s reservations about 政治的に正しいこと. The first part about activists mirroring extreme nationalists has a lot of potential. I guess the underlined part corresponds to 表現の軽視になりかねない in Japanese, but it looks to have rather a different meaning. I wondered if E64 was making a largely stylistic, and not linguistic, choice here. I bet every J>E translator since Arthur Wayley was working on the Tale of Genji would recognise the temptation, but we should try a bit harder to do justice to the intended meaning, and I am sure that E64 has the skill both as writer and a translator to do that.
In today’s political climate, it has become incredibly easy to label those with differing views as enemies.
Here is another very well-crafted sentence, and the main part of it is a really good translation indeed. It is reasonable to assume that the author was thinking about ‘today’s political climate’ although if we used something like ‘With a politicised approach, it is easy …’ we could avoid introducing a chronological reference that does not appear in the original.
E64 shows a number of nice touches before the finish; for example, I liked ‘having frameworks besides politics’ and ‘avoid getting swept up in the moment’. Encouraging readers to ‘visit and form your own opinions’ was a good note to conclude on.