Martti Ahtisaari is a former Finnish president and the recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. He came to Japan to speak on conflict resolution and then toured the tsunami-stricken areas near Sendai. I got to tag along and interview him for around a half-hour in the van on the way back to the shinkansen station.

The interview will go up on Nippon.com, which is the big project keeping us busy at Japan Echo these days. I have a blog post to write about all of that. It will happen soon.

Mishima_dialogue.pdf

It weighs in at more than 6 MB, so don’t click it if you’re on a slow connection.

Japan Echo Inc. is once again working in the International Media Center at a big summit gig. Last time was the G8 summit in Hokkaido in 2008, and now it’s the APEC summit in Yokohama. Not much to report yet, as the foreign ministers are just starting to do their thing today and the leaders don’t get started until the weekend.

I have a few photos posted to Flickr, with more to come. See the set over here.

The Nippon Foundation runs the Read Japan project, which aims to get reading material on Japan and by Japanese writers published in other languages. One focus of the organization nowadays is enhancing Japan’s global cultural voice, and throwing money at translation and publishing of a pretty good range of books seems like a better way to do it than designating some Akihabara kids as “cultural ambassadors,” or whatever the government’s Cool Japan efforts amount to these days. Anyway, this symposium was part of the exploration of ways to increase that global voice.

I had to run back to the office to wrap up some work, so unfortunately I had to miss the second session, which covered literary journals and what they accomplish. I took some notes during the first session, though, which I summarize below. (This is more to get it straightened out in my own memory, but if you’re interested, read on.)

Unearthing new writers

Matsuie Masashi, an editor who now teaches at Keiō, moderated the talk. He began with an overview of editorial careers in Japan and the US/UK: while in Japan a young editor will be shifted among a range of tasks over the years, starting out assisting editors on a weekly mag and later moving on to a women’s magazine, then a monthly journal, then a manga, then bunko paperbacks, and on and on, the American editor tends to start professional life as one kind of editor—of magazines or of fiction novels, say—and stay there for good. He then asked the participants to talk about ways to discover new writers.

Ozaki Mariko, deputy cultural editor at the Yomiuri Shimbun, noted that Japan has a publishing environment in which it’s relatively easy to uncover new talent, thanks mainly to the contests for new writers held each year by the five major literary journals. (The Akutagawa and Naoki prizes, awarded twice yearly, top this list.) In combination, these contests field thousands of entries, and winning one of them is a young writer’s ticket to publication and attention in the field.

Deborah Treisman, fiction editor at the New Yorker, gave the rundown: some new fiction comes in via agents, some by direct submission (this ends up in the “slush pile” at the publisher), and some via reference from another author or a writing teacher. Her publication runs debut fiction issues from time to time. She thinks there’s actually too much focus on first-time novelists, particularly young ones, and would prefer to see more energy directed toward second and third novels from writers becoming more established.

John Freeman, editor at Granta, noted that his pub receives more than 10,000 submissions a year from new writers. He places emphasis on meeting people in person, traveling to speak to creative writing classes and take part in writers’ conferences. Granta features a “new voices” section on its website on a regular basis and helps to uncover foreign writers with its issues focused on foreign literary scenes—the latest issue is on Pakistan, and Spain is next on the list.

John Siciliano, senior editor at Penguin Group, stressed the key role played by literary agents. While he also attends conferences and meets people in the flesh when possible, he deals more with translated works, often written by dead authors, so the services of an intermediary—often a translator also acting as an agent of sorts for the writing—are vital. When he meets a translator who has worked on a book without pay up front, he views it as a sign that this may be an exciting, inspiring writer.

Lexy Bloom, senior editor at Random House USA, underscored the importance of agents, who are the conduit for some 90% of submissions that end up on her desk. Also important to her are recommendations from other writers or translators whose work Random House has published previously. When the editor can’t read the language in question, input from the translator is vital, and is especially welcome when that translator is a known entity.

Julian Loose, publishing director at Faber and Faber, said that agents play a similarly fundamental role in the UK publishing industry. He has sat on contest judging panels in the past, helping to select new writers with promising futures. He views the role of the editor as to select and then sell books about which he is passionate.

James Gurbutt, the head of Constable and Robinson, also in the UK, agreed that this is a people-focused business, and that it’s most important to make the rounds and meet with as many agents and other industry figures as possible. Book fairs, particularly Frankfurt, are key venues for this.

What agents do

Matsuie said that literary agents are only starting to make their presence felt in Japanese publishing. Given that there appear to be pluses and minuses in what they do, he asked what the panelists thought of agents and the role they play.

Treisman said that agents play a valuable screening role: they want manuscripts that will do well, and they serve publishers’ needs by letting through a carefully selected subset of everything that comes their way. They also serve writers by performing various interface work—dealing with contracts, communicating with publishers and editors—that can be a chore. On the whole the system has a purpose and works well, despite the presence of some overly ambitious agents who overreach on behalf of their clients.

Freeman noted that the best agents are those who learn the editor’s taste and send material along to match; less talented agents send along anything and everything. A collegial nature is something to look for in a professional agent: Freeman was at one gathering where a South Asian agent introduced a number of writers who weren’t in his own stable because he knew they met Freeman’s needs at the time. The agents he dislikes are those who push too hard when it comes to “kill fees” and other contract conditions, trying to place all risk on the publisher’s side.

Siciliano stated that the case was somewhat different for literature in translation. There are few agents representing foreign authors, and it’s harder to depend on agents to fulfill the roles they usually do in a single-language market. Often translators themselves are the ones marketing authors to publishers, but in some cases they are doing so with their eye solely on their own interest, as they want to earn that translation fee or royalties down the line. Providing sample translations of part of the material is one way foreign agents can provide great value and overcome the language gap. Editors are basically professional readers, and they must have stuff to read to do their job; provide them with that stuff and you’re on your way to building a positive relationship.

Bloom noted that in America and Britain, where there is no system of literary contests in place like that seen in Japan, publishers depend heavily on agents as a result.

Loose agreed that agents in the UK are valuable as filters, but noted that the tastes of the agents and publishers must match for best results. Being aware of the preferences and needs of the other party is what lets an agent recommend the most appropriate works.

How to market Japanese writers abroad?

The panelists next moved on to the question of how best to get Japanese literature out in front of foreign publishers. What are some ways to boost interest in and discover Japanese writers?

Bloom talked about two authors she has edited: Kirino Natsuo, whose work was brought to her by an agent, and Yoshida Shūichi, who came via the translator first and then an agent. Various channels exist and get used today.

Freeman talked about the tie-up between Granta and the Japanese literary journal Gunzō as a way to stay fresh, to avoid “becoming an institution and dying.” The two publications send selected pieces back and forth for translation and publication. Eventually the idea is to accelerate the process so that the same works can appear in both languages concurrently. He sees this as a vital partnership for his publication.

Loose noted that in some cases, the best source of information on a promising Japanese writer is another publisher. It’s best to hear that “this writer is good; you should pick her up” from multiple sources—translators, agents, writers with whom you’ve already got a relationship. Recommendations from trusted sources, such as authors you’ve previously published, will generally trump input from agents.

Gurbutt again stressed the importance of Frankfurt and other international book fairs. There is great interest in the industry, particularly in Europe, to see where a book attracts interest, and which markets it gets translated for first.

What e-publishing means

Matsuie noted that two of the panelists had been involved with books addressing Internet communication and web-related publishing: Siciliano edited the US version of Twitterature and Freeman wrote The Tyranny of E-mail.

Siciliano sees the e-book revolution as an opportunity for publishing, not a crisis. There are plenty of positive steps that can be taken toward making books available in new forms to a larger market of readers, who will purchase more titles than before. Twitterature was meant to be timely and fun, but also a means of publicizing the classic texts it introduced in 20 tweets or fewer—many of which are sold as Penguin Classics.

Freeman is more skeptical about the benefits computer tech can bring to the industry, and to people in general. The average American today spends more time with a computer than with his spouse, and when he seeks pleasure he tends to seek it away from his computer screen. This includes the pleasure of reading: Freeman vastly prefers the printed page. But there is demand for digital formats, and Granta has responded with an iPhone app (released) and a Kindle edition (now in the works). The iPad version, which he thinks will work better than the Kindle version thanks to the machine’s ability to display color, will come next. He wryly noted that publishers are now required to use all the things that are killing their traditional business in order to keep up with the pace of change. He had harsh words for net users, who have a “free culture” in that they want to receive all things for free, and little patience for the argument that net-based social bonds are being forged: “this sense of an ambient community is bullshit.” Granta focuses on real-world events: for the recent Pakistan issue, there were more than 20 conferences, parties, and other get-togethers. He believes people hunger for face-to-face communication and strives to make that a part of his publication’s activities.

Matsuie said that given the traditional print image of the New Yorker, he was surprised to see the pub release a DVD of all its past content and begin publishing web-only content.

Treisman responded by noting that the iPad edition is also available. Each new phase of publishing, though, heaps new duties on the desk of the editor: they couldn’t just slap up the print content on the web, so the web edition required extra content; now the iPad edition will require its own set of device-specific content, too. This is a distracting environment for overextended editors to be in. At the same time, she finds it very rewarding that the New Yorker podcasts are so heavily downloaded, and is excited by newly possible features like authors reading their own work for the iPad edition.

Matsuie wondered whether the Amazon Kindle would upend the industry with its royalties structure, which gives fully 70% to the author who publishes straight to Kindle.

Bloom admitted that the publishing industry has to date done a terrible job of explaining its cost structures. Publishers are not opposed to e-publishing because it robs them of excessive profit margins in paper publishing; indeed, e-books cost almost as much as paper to publish, and the margins are thin to begin with. To date the industry has been reactive, not proactive. But in the end, the more people who are reading, the better it is for publishing, all questions of format aside.

Matsuie noted that the Japanese writer Murakami Ryū has said “the age of the middleman publisher is over; from now on authors will take their work straight to readers.” What impact will e-publishing have on the Japanese industry?

Ozaki remarked that the waves of e-publishing are just beginning to wash over Japan’s shores, and the domestic industry has a strong sense of crisis. There are new ideas being produced now, though, and the key will be how Japanese publishers boost and make use of this innovation. She sees the rise of literary agents in Japan as a potentially beneficial development in this connection: here they could play an expanded role, helping to battle copyright infringement when an author’s rights are harmed in the digital sphere. In the end, though, the focus will likely return to the authors themselves. All they have to work with—to fight with—is their own words. Editors, meanwhile, must increasingly concern themselves with profitability, rather than the pure pursuit of literature. Agents as a rising class of actors potentially have much to offer to both sides of the industry, the authors and the publishers.

So once you get over the frustration at having to translate what you think is nonsense, take a deep breathe and ask yourself: “what is this text really trying to say, and how can I convey that with minimum disruption to the intended reader?” After all, in that sort of situation, you’re really on both sides, so you want to mediate between writer and reader. Think of yourself as a manufacturer of baby food. You want to keep a little of the nutrition (the author’s priority message), but you don’t want the baby to throw up.

These words of wisdom come from veteran J-E translator Fred Uleman, on the Honyaku mailing list. Something for me to keep in mind when I tackle the prime minister’s speech later this week!

J-J dictionaries

大辞林 – I have this in paper, as well as in data for use in Logophile; I even bought the iPhone app too since it’s so nicely done there.

広辞苑 – This is considered the “standard” J-J dictionary, but I don’t like it as much as things like 大辞林 and 大辞泉 (another one I have at home) since it lists definitions in their historical order, so you have to wade through a bunch of archaic meanings before you get to what words mean today. (See what lexicon whiz Tom Gally has to say about this in his very informative page on Japanese [国語] dictionaries.) That said, it’s a classic reference and as such it has a place on my shelf, as well as in data form in Logophile.

Some good 漢和辞典. These seem to have fallen by the wayside to a greater extent than anything else in my collection, but I do browse through them from time to time.

The 日本国語大辞典 by Shōgakukan is one I use at the office. I don’t have my own copy because it costs nearly ¥200,000 to assemble all the volumes; that Amazon link is just for volume 1. But this is the Japanese answer to the OED, basically: the biggest out there.

Also in the “have it at the office and lack shelf space for it at home” category is the 日本大百科全書, or Encyclopedia Nipponica. I do have this in data format as well. It came with a Sony electronic dictionary my wife was kind enough to get for me for my birthday some years ago. It is also searchable via Logophile, which makes it very handy indeed.

J-E dictionaries

Kenkyusha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary – This is called the “green goddess” by translators for its cover color; it’s a standard reference. (The E-J version is the “brown behemoth.”) The fifth edition is a fantastic improvement on the fourth and deserves a place on the serious learner’s bookshelf. A CD-ROM version is also available. You can also purchase online access to a frequently updated version.

The New Nelson Japanese-English Character Dictionary – The best-known of all the 漢英 Japanese resources. This (well, the second revised edition) is the book I used in my university days to pound kanji into my head.

Bungo Manual – This little book is a great one for advanced learners who want to puzzle out the meanings of some older forms in the language. Classical Japanese isn’t something you need to be able to read on a daily basis, but exposure to its forms will help you decipher a lot of the things that you do see in use in Japanese to this day.

A Dictionary of Japanese Food – This slender volume has come in handy a number of times. Nice to have as a general reference when living in Japan, even if you aren’t a translator.

E-E references

Webster’s New World College Dictionary – This is our desk dictionary at the office; that means it decides how we spell things for our publications (unless a client tells us otherwise). We use this in conjunction with the Webster’s New World Speller/Divider, which is a small book with sturdy pages for rapid flipping. A much better choice when you’re proofing a layout and want to quickly confirm a word’s spelling or a hyphenation choice. Perhaps not so useful to people not in the publishing industry, though.

The Chicago Manual of Style – Our house style guide at Japan Echo Inc. It looks like the 16th edition will be coming out later this summer. We have an additional guide about 10 pages long to set down our rules for things not covered in Chicago; many of these match the rules you can find in . . .

Japan Style Sheet – This little style guide is put out by the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators and is worth owning if you do any writing on Japan.

Other style guides. One major client prefers that we use the Associated Press Stylebook (AP just came out with a new edition that I need to pick up). I also have the Economist and New York Times manuals for my own reading pleasure.

There’s also a handy little book called 和英翻訳データブック put out by the Japan Times. This one, and its predecessor (英文ライターのための和英翻訳ハンドブック), have largely been replaced by the Web when it comes to searching for the official English name of some government department or whatever, but when I’m translating a text that refers to the central bureaucracy as it stood in the 1990s, say, these are lifesavers. If JT ever puts out a new version I’ll likely get it too. Handy little Japan references for translators and reporters.

The history

The journal Japan Echo got its start in 1974. From the beginning it was positioned as a channel for high-quality translations of Japanese views on Japan: at the time the country’s leaders were concerned that the Japanese voice wasn’t reaching the world as it should, and this was one move to help develop a persuasive global presence for the country as a more complex place than simply the home to a bunch of industrious radio and auto manufacturers.

Just as importantly, from the beginning the magazine—and the company producing it—was structured so as to prevent it from being a government mouthpiece. Mochida Takeshi, the firm’s first president, laid down rules that said Japan Echo Inc. would never take on “OBs” from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or other government agencies. This kept the organization from turning into yet another amakudari playground for senior bureaucrats. At the same time, he carved out an editorial stance for the magazine that kept it able to select from the broadest possible range of Japanese journals for its source materials. There were no limits to what could be selected by the (again, governmentally independent) editorial board for translation and publication. (There were other limits in place, though, which I’ll get to in a bit.)

This continued through 2009, and volume 36 of the magazine. Most of our readers during these decades likely obtained their copies courtesy of the Japanese government, as the Foreign Ministry purchased part of our print run and distributed it via Japan’s embassies and consulates to university libraries, government agencies, and researchers all around the world. MOFA was always our largest institutional subscriber in this sense, and our primary source of revenue for the magazine. (In the early years this was synonymous with the company as a whole, but over time we’ve developed a much more diverse set of clients and we make our money translating and publishing stuff for all sorts of public- and private-sector outfits today.)

When the end came, it was due to jigyō shiwake, the Democratic Party of Japan’s process of shaking waste out of public spending on various projects. The DPJ examiners judged that government ministries had no business purchasing magazines in bulk from private publishers. This put an end to the Japanese-language Gaikō Forum as well as our production. Vol. 37, No. 2 of Japan Echo was published in April 2010, bringing the magazine to its end.

You can see more on the magazine’s history and end in the essays from its publisher and editor in chief in the final issue.

What’s changed

Japan Echo Web is online now. Some of us would have preferred an entirely new name for this thing, given its new format, but the powers that be made the choice to keep “Japan Echo” in there. There are still some significant differences between what’s online now and what was once put out on paper, though.

First, it is no longer an independently published journal. This is a Ministry of Foreign Affairs project, as noted on the site’s “about” page. While the editorial board remains mostly the same as before, and we have the same people working on the production side, MOFA has more say over what does and does not go into it. As Shiraishi Takashi writes in his opening comment, “In order to keep the publication from being government propaganda, though the views of the Foreign Ministry are to be considered, the editor in chief is to have final say over the editorial content.” This is no promise that the consideration of MOFA views will be minimal, though. It’s something to watch.

Second, it is no longer drawing on the same source texts. Japanese copyright law states that we have to get permission from the author and publisher of a Japanese article if we want to publish it in English, and while most authors (with a few notable exceptions over the years) love seeing their stuff made available via the web to a global audience, the publishers of the monthly magazines like Bungei Shunjū and Sekai tend to deny permission to publish such translations online. There are a hundred thousand blogs out there written by people who ignore these restrictions, or have no idea that they exist in the first place, but we don’t exactly have the same luxury.

The two major monthlies that are happy to let us translate their articles for online use are Voice (PHP Institute) and Chūō Kōron (Chūō Kōron Shinsha). So you can expect to see articles chosen from their pages, along with interviews we do ourselves and pieces we commission from academics and government officials and so on.

Third, it’s going to be updated more than once every two months. We’ll be posting major articles on a monthly basis, with two months’ worth representing a single “issue” of the journal as before. (And there will in fact be a printed edition of articles selected from the site, published every two months; that will mainly be for MOFA’s own distribution purposes, though, so you won’t see it on the Kinokuniya shelves.) There are also blog entries from members of the editorial board, which we hope to get up on a weekly basis. Not exactly the sort of thing to set your RSS reader on fire, but the translation and editing do take time.

What’s still the same

Japan Echo Web is still translated by the same native-English-speaking translators, checked by the same talented Japanese checkers, and edited with the same care as our print version was. We have the same house style as before, so the voice of this content should be the same as what you know from the magazine days. You don’t get to see my name in there as “senior editor” any more, but it’s still me looking over the texts any number of times before they go out.

And . . . that’s it, really. It’s a whole new ball game other than this. For now we’re still creating this publication, but as our editor in chief notes in his inaugural comment, we won the right to do this in a competitive bidding process that will be repeated each year going forward. Hardly an efficient way to do things—government rules mandate a 40-day period for entrants to prepare their bid packages, and then there are presentations and judging that take place, so you end up losing two months of each year that could be spent preparing an entire magazine’s worth of content instead. We’d love to see this changed to a three- or even five-year contract, but in the present political climate this hardly seems likely.

There are dozens of other little things I could add to this post: All the design decisions that I’m not crazy about but that had to be made for various reasons. The chance that there will be a “Japan Echo” branded publication in the hands of a different company that underbids us for a future annual contract. For the time being, though, we’re live and there’s fresh content to prepare for the big update later this month, so back to work.

Happy reading!

The office is in central Tokyo, handy to Kasumigaseki, Toranomon, and other stations. The work provides good variety, including stuff in the arts and humanities, although the focus tends to be on texts dealing with government, economy, and international relations.

While of course you shouldn’t take anything I write on my personal website as a promise, there’s the possibility of a contract extension in 2011 or even a shift to 正社員 status depending on how much work we see coming down the pipe in the longer term and what we think of the individual’s skills.

If you’re interested, you’ll need to complete the trial translation available on our website [PDF] and send it in with your Japanese-language resume to work@japanecho.co.jp. The resume could be a standard 履歴書 format or something you roll yourself; it will be read by some people here who aren’t translators, though, so we do need it in the language of the land.

Make sure your materials reach us no later than June 15. If you have any questions about the position or the company, you can contact me. Feel free to forward or repost this information. Thanks!

The eighth and most recent entry, not linked on that index page at the moment, is called “Lifestyle or Job?” It gives some figures on author incomes that should scare you away if you’re thinking about getting rich as a writer. J-E translator incomes might be getting pinched by bargain-seeking clients and budget-slashing DPJ governments (more on that in an upcoming post), but I think we’ve still got it better than the folks who have to come up with their own ideas to put into words on the page.

First, Matt Treyvaud’s translation of Mori Ōgai’s 翻訳について (Hon’yaku ni tsuite; “On translation”):

The sweets that Nora eats I translated makuron マクロン. Write rather amedama 飴玉, I was told. Advice like this simply boggles the mind. Tins of almond macaroons have been shipped here in great number so that you may buy them at Aokido whenever you please. Reflect, if you will, on the difference in situation between a woman of the West eating a macaroon and a child of Japan eating an amedama. I recall one scene in a novel by someone-or-other wherein two female university students in Paris’s Latin Quarter munch on macaroons as they trade stories of heartbreak. To switch those macaroons for amedama, of all things—well, it would certainly be comical. The gist of such teachings is that items should appear in translation as appropriately chosen items unique to Japan, but as for myself, I strive to avoid things unique to Japan, the better to produce an extraordinary effect. Furthermore, we only consider here cases where there is an appropriate corresponding item. When uniquely Japanese and inappropriate items appear, the results are quite unbearable.

(Adamu of Mutantfrog Travelogue posted this entry in response to that Neojaponisme piece. Also interesting, especially the comment discussion there.)

Second is “Translator of the universal and the local,” a Japan Times interview with Meguro Jō, who has translated plays by Martin McDonagh (see also her blog):

How do you decide how “foreign” to make your translations?

Obviously there are cultural gaps, but I prefer to retain some unfamiliar things rather than ignore them or change them into something familiar for Japanese. I don’t think it’s right to rework foreign plays as if they were as natural and smooth as plays written in Japanese. We should keep some “foreignness.” Getting the balance right is quite sensitive and difficult. English four-letter words, such as f**k—which McDonagh includes a lot—must be translated case by case. Sometimes, I translate them to keep the rhythm, but sometimes I think it is better to cut them.

And third, there are of course cases where you can’t stick closely to the form of the original at all, so you have to get more creative if you want to get the same point across in your target language. I wrote about these so-called untranslatable terms a while ago.