What I'm Up To

I've been tinkering with Japanese translations of Lewis' work for the past decade or so, and have written about some of them in the Sinclair Lewis Society Newsletter (S2003, F2004, F2005).

Recently my focus has again landed on Ugai's 1941 Japanese translation of Arrowsmith. The language in this work is very dated, so much so that I don't think it would be enjoyable reading material for an ordinary Japanese person, even if the work were reprinted and readily available.

So, I have undertaken the project of modernizing the language of this translation. If I'm keeping an accurate count, your questions at about this point would be as follows:

1) Why is the 1924 original English edition still linguistically accessible and the 1941 Japanese version not? (That is, why did Japanese change faster than English?)

2) Why's some non-native Japanese guy doing this work, rather than a native person?

3) Aren't there any modern translations?

4) Oh, and, if not, why not just re-translate rather than updating an old translation?

I don't know all the answers, but I know some of them, and have ideas on the others. These are the sorts of questions I intend to discuss in the blog, along with additional information about what I'm finding in the work itself.

By the way, I'm currently working in Chapter 6, and have so far added over fifty footnotes with corrections to the original. Some of them are minor. But I want the new version to be not only modern, but also accurate. I'll keep you posted.