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sinnesspiel) wrote2013-09-23 11:43 pm
sinnesspiel) wrote2013-09-23 11:43 pm
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Shiki Novel Translations 4.0 and notes
I lost the sheet I was writing down notes for the culture notes chapter break on, so if anything seems to have been forgotten let me know.
Links to Chapter 4
Chapter 4 - 1
Chapter 4 - 2
Chapter 4 - 3
Chapter 4 - 4
Chapter 4 - 5
Chapter 4 Translation Notes
Chapter 4 - 1
Natsuno starts out talking quite formally towards Ritsuko (desu, masu, keigo), slipping more towards his usual speech as they become more comfortable and casual (da/no copulas). This is normal, proper Japanese behavior by a child to an adult and amongst strangers as well. The content of his speech may be so, but I tried to relay that he was not being rude in terms of how he was speaking. I'm afraid I may have failed to carry this in translation well.
Medical:
The bump described as having been on Natsuno's knee that one grows out of, usually as they reach their full height, is Osgood-Schlatter syndrome. It's inflammation of the tendon below the kneecap, usually before the knee is finished growing. Normally it goes away as adolescent growth finishes.
Chapter 4 - 2
Geckos - Geckos, called yamori or 'house guardians' are almost unanimously considered good luck in Japan. There are a few scattered legends of them representing the souls of dead warriors and being prayed away by monks, but these stories are fairly obscure to the average Japanese person. In other eastern cultures, they can be considered different forms of good or bad luck for a variety of reasons. They are quite common in summer, all the more in run down houses near forests. Draw your own conclusions to what they mean here, if they mean anything, or whether Ikumi is simply itching to be relevant. I'll continue fishing for sources on whether there's any significance to their appearance during prayer.
Chapter 4 - 3
Uchi and Soto, Inner and Outer, Us and Them - Hirosawa engages Yuuki in a discussion of uchi and soto. Popular terms in Nihonjinron, or the study of Japanese people and their culture, they are often even left untranslated in English language discussions. Here is an excellent and brief summarizing article that requires no knowledge of Japanese to follow, and relates to the behaviors and feelings discussed in the chapter. The Wikipedia article on the subject focuses more on the linguistic aspect than the actions taken as a result. There are full essays and even full books available on the various aspects of uchi and soto.
Your translator posits that the concept is not so uniquely Japanese as to lose anything in translation when put into English terms or require a note on the words themselves to follow the text, but feedback is welcomed and it can be put back as uchi/soto if readers believe it's an improvement. In a comment below, I will post the translation of the blurbs with uchi and soto left as they are in the original text.
However universal a concept is, it bares mention how concrete it is in Japanese, to the point of being necessarily understood in order to be competent (not even fluent) in the language. Uchi is a word that can literally mean 'myself' or 'us' as well as 'inside'; soto or outside is never used as any second or third person pronoun.
Japanese verbs have an optional, psychologically directional inflection. An example is the verb suffix -kureru which form implies a benefit coming to the speaker from the verb to which it is affixed.
If Ono Fuyumi were to write your sister a letter, your sister is 'uchi' enough that it would or at least could be spoken of with the directional -kureru as if you were a direct beneficiary. Imouto ni tegami wo kaitekureta. She wrote a letter to my sister. You may even feel at one with fandom enough to say as much if talking about another fan you've never even met receiving a letter. This would not be the case if discussing that Ono Fuyumi wrote a letter with no connection to you, such as her accountant. Dareka ni tegami wo kaita. She wrote a letter to somebody.
Note that while you probably are more endeared towards Ono Fuyumi than some unknown fan and would wish more well upon her than you would a stranger fellow fan, the fan is more in your sphere of reference. Ono being soto or 'other' isn't a matter of amicability alone, nor are the Yamairi three necessarily disliked as a layer of soto.
This is not only in spoken Japanese but commonly in narratives, displaying where sympathies are expected to lie. While "Kyousuke-kun ni kiiteinai" (They didn't listen to Kyousuke-kun) is grammatically correct, it may mark the writer as foreign for how much more natural "Kyousuke-kun ni kiiitekurenai" is, presuming a greater sense of 'ours' or 'uchi' for the reader in Kyousuke.
There are other directional verbs which are based on the stations of the giver, receiver, speaker and related formalities, but we'll stick to the basics here in order to emphasize the uchi/soto concept. You'd probably use more formal inflections for the actions taken by Ono Fuyumi, or anyone you'd address as -sensei.
Chapter 4 - 4
Medical:
postmortem lividity (in the lungs and abdominal cavity) - Upon death, the blood pools and bruising occurs at the bottom of the body, such as the back if you die face up, or the feet if you died hanging.
The blood settled in the chest and stomach, meaning she likely died face down, rather than having been, say, poisoned, dying in her sleep, then being moved. Because there are no external wounds suggesting no assault, it further supports the idea of a natural death.
myocarditis - inflammation of the heart muscle, which can be from a variety of causes.
coronary arteriosclerosis - when the coronary arteries harden due to a deposit of fatty materials.
necrosis of the liver tissue - when liver cells start to die. Ozaki lists several liver problems that could be potentially responsible.Severe liver problems can also lead to pooling fluids in the stomach.
hepatic encephalopathy - when the liver fails to filter out certain toxins, they effect your brain, leading to altered mental statuses, ranging from comas to forgetfulness to (rarely but potentially) full on crazy.
When the body loses a large amount of blood, there are hormones released to perform emergency response activities, such as assuring the remaining blood goes to the vital organs. The hormones also stimulate the liver to break down glycogen to release glucose and fatty things into to the bloodstream. In cases of prolonged low blood supply, the liver would suffer distinct failure and begin to die off (become necrotic). I find this relevant to note given Mieko was found with heart problems when her primary physician Ozaki) pointed out a distinct lack of prior history of such in her to this point.
gamma globulin - a vaccine for rabies.
The medical notes are perhaps more conjecture on the authoress's medical writing than something that it's my job to present as a translator, so I may remove them and just store them on side-posts so that the culture/translation notes can be provided with the full translation PDF at a later date.
Links to Chapter 4
Chapter 4 - 1
Chapter 4 - 2
Chapter 4 - 3
Chapter 4 - 4
Chapter 4 - 5
Chapter 4 Translation Notes
Chapter 4 - 1
Natsuno starts out talking quite formally towards Ritsuko (desu, masu, keigo), slipping more towards his usual speech as they become more comfortable and casual (da/no copulas). This is normal, proper Japanese behavior by a child to an adult and amongst strangers as well. The content of his speech may be so, but I tried to relay that he was not being rude in terms of how he was speaking. I'm afraid I may have failed to carry this in translation well.
Medical:
The bump described as having been on Natsuno's knee that one grows out of, usually as they reach their full height, is Osgood-Schlatter syndrome. It's inflammation of the tendon below the kneecap, usually before the knee is finished growing. Normally it goes away as adolescent growth finishes.
Chapter 4 - 2
Geckos - Geckos, called yamori or 'house guardians' are almost unanimously considered good luck in Japan. There are a few scattered legends of them representing the souls of dead warriors and being prayed away by monks, but these stories are fairly obscure to the average Japanese person. In other eastern cultures, they can be considered different forms of good or bad luck for a variety of reasons. They are quite common in summer, all the more in run down houses near forests. Draw your own conclusions to what they mean here, if they mean anything, or whether Ikumi is simply itching to be relevant. I'll continue fishing for sources on whether there's any significance to their appearance during prayer.
Chapter 4 - 3
Uchi and Soto, Inner and Outer, Us and Them - Hirosawa engages Yuuki in a discussion of uchi and soto. Popular terms in Nihonjinron, or the study of Japanese people and their culture, they are often even left untranslated in English language discussions. Here is an excellent and brief summarizing article that requires no knowledge of Japanese to follow, and relates to the behaviors and feelings discussed in the chapter. The Wikipedia article on the subject focuses more on the linguistic aspect than the actions taken as a result. There are full essays and even full books available on the various aspects of uchi and soto.
Your translator posits that the concept is not so uniquely Japanese as to lose anything in translation when put into English terms or require a note on the words themselves to follow the text, but feedback is welcomed and it can be put back as uchi/soto if readers believe it's an improvement. In a comment below, I will post the translation of the blurbs with uchi and soto left as they are in the original text.
However universal a concept is, it bares mention how concrete it is in Japanese, to the point of being necessarily understood in order to be competent (not even fluent) in the language. Uchi is a word that can literally mean 'myself' or 'us' as well as 'inside'; soto or outside is never used as any second or third person pronoun.
Japanese verbs have an optional, psychologically directional inflection. An example is the verb suffix -kureru which form implies a benefit coming to the speaker from the verb to which it is affixed.
If Ono Fuyumi were to write your sister a letter, your sister is 'uchi' enough that it would or at least could be spoken of with the directional -kureru as if you were a direct beneficiary. Imouto ni tegami wo kaitekureta. She wrote a letter to my sister. You may even feel at one with fandom enough to say as much if talking about another fan you've never even met receiving a letter. This would not be the case if discussing that Ono Fuyumi wrote a letter with no connection to you, such as her accountant. Dareka ni tegami wo kaita. She wrote a letter to somebody.
Note that while you probably are more endeared towards Ono Fuyumi than some unknown fan and would wish more well upon her than you would a stranger fellow fan, the fan is more in your sphere of reference. Ono being soto or 'other' isn't a matter of amicability alone, nor are the Yamairi three necessarily disliked as a layer of soto.
This is not only in spoken Japanese but commonly in narratives, displaying where sympathies are expected to lie. While "Kyousuke-kun ni kiiteinai" (They didn't listen to Kyousuke-kun) is grammatically correct, it may mark the writer as foreign for how much more natural "Kyousuke-kun ni kiiitekurenai" is, presuming a greater sense of 'ours' or 'uchi' for the reader in Kyousuke.
There are other directional verbs which are based on the stations of the giver, receiver, speaker and related formalities, but we'll stick to the basics here in order to emphasize the uchi/soto concept. You'd probably use more formal inflections for the actions taken by Ono Fuyumi, or anyone you'd address as -sensei.
Chapter 4 - 4
Medical:
postmortem lividity (in the lungs and abdominal cavity) - Upon death, the blood pools and bruising occurs at the bottom of the body, such as the back if you die face up, or the feet if you died hanging.
The blood settled in the chest and stomach, meaning she likely died face down, rather than having been, say, poisoned, dying in her sleep, then being moved. Because there are no external wounds suggesting no assault, it further supports the idea of a natural death.
myocarditis - inflammation of the heart muscle, which can be from a variety of causes.
coronary arteriosclerosis - when the coronary arteries harden due to a deposit of fatty materials.
necrosis of the liver tissue - when liver cells start to die. Ozaki lists several liver problems that could be potentially responsible.Severe liver problems can also lead to pooling fluids in the stomach.
hepatic encephalopathy - when the liver fails to filter out certain toxins, they effect your brain, leading to altered mental statuses, ranging from comas to forgetfulness to (rarely but potentially) full on crazy.
When the body loses a large amount of blood, there are hormones released to perform emergency response activities, such as assuring the remaining blood goes to the vital organs. The hormones also stimulate the liver to break down glycogen to release glucose and fatty things into to the bloodstream. In cases of prolonged low blood supply, the liver would suffer distinct failure and begin to die off (become necrotic). I find this relevant to note given Mieko was found with heart problems when her primary physician Ozaki) pointed out a distinct lack of prior history of such in her to this point.
gamma globulin - a vaccine for rabies.
The medical notes are perhaps more conjecture on the authoress's medical writing than something that it's my job to present as a translator, so I may remove them and just store them on side-posts so that the culture/translation notes can be provided with the full translation PDF at a later date.
Alternate translation to 4 - 3 (Uchi and Soto kept)
"Yuuki-san, you remember the mushiokuri, don't you?" Hirosawa said quietly. "We marched from hokora to hokora bearing the Bettou, didn't we?"
"Ah---yes." Yuuki tilted his head. Hirosawa may have been about to say something abruptly, and in a moment was at a loss for how to put his thoughts in order.
"The traveler's guardians in the hokora... are the gods on the roads, aren't they?"
"I think it may be better to call them the gods of the boundary, myself. In Sotoba there are many traveler's guardians. They may be in the form of Jizos or Koushin mounds but they're all made of stone, and their nature is clearly to serve the role of travelers' guardians. The border of uchi and soto of the village, they're the gods of that boundary."
Yuuki blinked. "I'm sorry. I'm a bit lost on where you're...."
"Pardon," said Hirosawa with a smile. "The traveler's guardians are fundamentally the gods of the boundary between the uchi and soto. We refer to ourselves with 'uchi', don't we? That doesn't refer only to your own home as a building, it's more of a conceptional idea. You and your own space, your family and the memories tied in with them, there are various things caught up in the image of what we call 'uchi', aren't there?"
"Ah, certainly."
"When talking about buildings, the boundary line for 'uchi' is clear. It's the walls of the house, or perhaps the boundary lines of the property. It's known to be denoted by the walls or the fence surrounding a space but, at any rate, there's a boundary where you can say from here to here is my house, isn't there? Even so, the image was have for 'uchi' has no such clear boundary. Beyond 'uchi', distinctly unable to be distinguished as uchi or soto, is a gray zone. It's the space that's sometimes uchi and sometimes soto."
"Haa... yes."
"The village is the same. In Sotoba we have a school district determined by the administration, and that's a clearly defined boundary. But the image of the village's boundary is vague. That is to say, the village itself has an uchi of its own."
"Uchi at a company, uchi at school..."
"Yes, just like that. We recognize the 'uchi' portion of the village but if there's an uchi there in theory must be a soto, thus in the end, the world is split into two, the uchi and soto, and in doing that, there's the question of whether that barrier is uchi or soto."
"Haa, that's certainly...."
"That's what it means to draw a conceptional line like that. What's white is over here, what isn't white we'll push over here as black. If you do that in the end you have vaguely gray remains that you can neither call white nor black. In other words it's the grey zone that separates the image into two parts. That grey at times--depending on what you're comparing it to, it can become white or it can become black."
"Ah, that could be the case at times, couldn't it?"
"What we imagine as the boundary of 'the village's uchi' isn't clearly defined as 'uchi' itself. It's surrounded in that grey zone. This vague gray zone is a barrier, and a barrier is ultimately both uchi and soto. The traveler's guardians are the gods of that boundary. Placed between the uchi and soto, the gods themselves are that boundary."
"Huh...."
"So the traveler's guardians protect the uchi from the soto's invading obstacles or evils and usher in good harvests, at the same time being classified as an evil spirit themselves. This duality of those stone traveler's guardians' has, since times immemorial, made those stones into the barrier between those things which have life and those which do not. That's why stones, stone monuments and stone Jizos have been set up around the barrier of the village as traveler's guardian deities."
"Ah, the memorial services center around those traveler's guardian deities then, making them offerings. While doing that, we wave the Bettou around the village, drawing out the impurities and evils, the insects and the disease, casting it into the barrier. Now that you mention it, that kind of festival certainly involved taking it outside of the village to dispose of it, but in a way it wasn't really soto."
Hirosawa smiled broadly. "That's right. That's precisely the duality of the barrier. In the village, oni are a metaphor for disease. The oni go along with the Bettou out to the village border. While we do that, we do the Uppo dance to step into and purify the inner or our own portion of that border."
"I see, oni are soto, good fortune is uchi."
Yuuki smiled, making Hirosawa smile as well.
"Even now," Hirosawa said with a gentle laugh. "this village performs a festival like that with great religious zeal. To those of the village, there's a strong feeling of uchi. To put it another way, they're isolated from soto."
"Ah.... I think that's something I understand."
Hirosawa sighed, gazing into his coffee glass.
"Yamairi was a community on the verge of extinction. There were three people left, and being geographically isolated as well, I think there was a sense of separation from those of the village. If you were to ask if Yamairi was uchi or soto for the village, then by its history and by the administrative distinctions, you would have to call it uchi. But, somewhere beyond conscious thought, I think there's a sense that it's soto somehow."
Yuuki nodded, "Ah. It's a far cry from the image of uchi, it's become a border itself, Yamairi."
"That's what I think. The elderly died in Yamairi, and because the people are 'uchi' it's a pure and real tragedy. Three old people out on their own, with nobody to care for them, dying in their desertion. But, while it is a tragedy while it's uchi, if we set it as soto for a moment, it becomes nothing more than an event that happened across the shore. That said, if something happens across the shore, a tragedy is still a tragedy. When we set eyes on a calamity in a foreign country, it's a tragedy, we think 'those poor people', we have cognizance that it's a tragedy for the other side. A certain sense of reality, of its relation to us is missing but we accept that it is a tragedy, we react to it, we hold an awareness of it as a tragedy."
"But, Yamiri wasn't soto?"
"That's true. Yamairi was the border. Neither uchi nor soto. It isn't uchi enough to treat it with solemnity. That said, it's not soto enough not to hold an awareness of it, not to make a fuss about it."
"Ah... is that right. I see."
"That's probably why the way they're handling Yamairi seems so hopelessly flippant. And while a funeral is a type of religious service, any ritual makes an ordinary day into the extraordinary day. In a way it's a festival. A great number of people have gathered around to participate in one ceremony, there's no denying that that is one meaning to the word festival. And then another something unusual comes bounding in. It isn't completely unrelated, but this abnormality is one that's at a safe distance. So then we have what's known as synergy---it would probably be impossible to keep it from exciting them."
"I suppose so...." Yuuki said with a not. I see, that's what it is, he thought. While he accepted it, it was true that somewhere in his heart was a despondency.