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sinnesspiel) wrote2014-02-01 01:10 am
sinnesspiel) wrote2014-02-01 01:10 am
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Novel translations and tense; showing and telling moods in Shiki and Gyakuten Saiban
As most of what I've translated to this point has been dialogue, I had a bit of a conundrum when translating a work with a non-character narrator. Fidelity to the given verb tense changes the tone to either an unintelligent error-ridden one at worst or a conversational one at best, when this isn't necessarily the tone of the original text. However, this change must mean something and if it isn't noted, something is lost in translation.
Grammatical moods are not related to emotional moods, they indicate what the verb or sentence is doing, such as whether the sentence is stating a fact (indicative mood), stating a likelihood or potential (potential mood), asking a question (interrogative mood) or serving a number of other purposes. Modality is a cloudy subject best defined before any work discussing it for context due to the many meanings of mood and the many moods languages have or don't. For the purpose of this discussion we're going to go hyper-simple. The only moods relevant are those favorite terms of creative writing teachers: showing or telling. The reason those titled modalities are relevant should be apparent based on the researchers and works considered beforehand.
Paul J. Hopper showed that in English, tense shift is important in developing background and foreground details, such that in the foreground are the sequence of events, and in the background are amplifications or comments upon the occurrences. That foreground must be sequential, it's the showing of actions in a set order, whereas the amplification is telling us something relevant to it, a thought on it. While studies I've read have focused on colloquial speech adjusting tense shift either intentionally creating a vivid tension or because the speaker is caught up as if reliving it, this is not a view without contention, nor is it applicable to something written and edited. I've deemed it more prudent, when considering translation of an omniscient uncharacteristic narrator, to dismiss that mode from consideration.
Kindaichi Haruhiko is the Japanese linguist I was referred to by Japanese, in looking into the tense change matter in Japanese narratives. In his works, he refers to the moods as presenting and narrating, which I've renamed show and tell for because our discussion, unlike Kindachi's considerably more broad fields of linguistic research, is about literature with a narrator who is always narrating. Though they use different terminology and are discussing different works and language, much like Hopper, Kindaichi suggests that different verb tenses denote whether we're being shown something in sequence or told a detail irrelevant to the sequence of events being shown in that foreground.
Neither necessarily says that one verb tense serves one purpose or the other; rather, a non-I character shown taking action of even just established as existing can be identified by a sentence with a certain tense (usually past), and it may be the case that sentences in that tense are then meant to be fulfilling the showing role. This would make a different (present in our case) tense the tense of telling, a separate narrative on a different time plane from the sequence of events. It would be as if the narrator is not in the past, but is adding information relevant from their alternate placement in time, over the shown past sequence.
If you look at the Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban witness statements which are narratives of events the speakers were involved in, this theory generally bears out. The only swaps to present tense are when recounting their current cognition over the past-tense narrated event (I still haven't forgotten; I think, I am, there is). There are exceptions in Yahari's statements. One is one which any reader could unequivocally declare to be a present tense used strictly for emphasis, the same way a news paper headline would read a past tense event as if it were happening now, such as "Dewey defeats Truman!" The other one, "what I do is obvious" (in answer to what he did at a past event) happens to be the only one of the lot to seem to meet a narrative criteria of adding (telling) cognition to the events otherwise sequential (shown) literary narrative.
An interesting note about each of the statements is that they are in fact technically present tense, with more explicit present-tense telling modality than is used even by the omniscient narrator's voice in novels. The novel excerpt has very few asterisks denoting explicit telling modality. The overwhelming majority of past-tense sequential statements in Gyakuten Saiban happen to end with a present-tense copula, which could be translated as "it is the case that this past tense event happened." (Thus, technically present tense with a past tense clause--but translating it that way when it's dialogue would add nothing but bulk.) It is not just declaring something happened, but signifies that the element is being told rather than shown. This is because, short of being a narrator in a story, some things you can only tell.
For those who have studied Japanese, you may have come across the -garu form of adjectives/verbs. The form is necessary because you cannot speak definitively about somebody else's feelings, you were probably told. You cannot show that someone wants something or is afraid; you have to conjugate it with -garu or darou or -sou to show that they are seeming to. You can show or narrate that someone had shown signs of it, but you can only show wanting or fearing from your own perspective. This is likewise why the many statements in the literary narrative would seem inappropriate in spoken Japanese--or at least, would be distinctly taken as a "literary narrative" voice. While I try to keep these notes and discussions to the point where no Japanese knowledge like this is necessary (even if I describe it, I don't think the unnatural or literary feel can be taught), the copula/narrative voice aspects are not necessarily to understand the point made, though they will be illustrative to those who do.
For reference, telling modal markers outlined by Kindaichi are:
da, no da, (no) mono da, (no) koto da, (na, no) wake da, (after otherwise past tense conjugated verbs).
Not outlined by Kindaichi, but brought up by others, and clearly adding cognition and thus making them telling are:
dakara, kara (da), sei (da), ka.
These clearly add cognition because they assign a because, or shoulds. Likewise, there are -you and darous, which are conjectural of volitional.
Nobody's said anything yet but I'm sure some readers have raised a brow at the narrator going probably or might. These I translate out as conjectures, along with the becauses or shoulds; these are not so much lost in translation, but it helps to be aware of them in determining the purposes of modes and tense switches.
Kinsui Satoshi is my favorite Japanese linguist, the leading researcher on Japanese fictional character voices and sociolinguistic stereotypes. He's done extensive documentation on traits of speech that signify a type of character such as their gender, their age, their employment or education level, etc. in fiction. Many of these types of speech are not used by real people unless they're speaking as a character (play acting) the same way one could presumably speak as a narrator. Whether used or not by real people, they are viewed and thus used with a consciousness of character. While no studies I've come across have counted these elements, I would certainly say they qualify as telling as they posit the speaker's awareness of themselves as a speaker. These are modality markers which objective narrators have no form of. While Akane and Yahari in samples below use different forms of the copula (desu and ('n) da respectively) and are characterized through that, both have some sentences whose moods are only suggested by ze or zo or yo (for Yahari) or "no" without the copula that follows (for Akane). Since these aren't mood markers noted by any published linguists I've come across and are my own, and I am not a published linguist, I've noted these separate from the universally available mood markers, as separate from the formally recognized ones.
Japanese linguist Murakami Fuminobu has likewise suggested the view that the change in tense is a change in mood, and that this unique literary narrative voice which can show us a character's feelings or wants in a way other speakers must tell is because the line between author and character blurs. Often times, there is no subject on these sentences, so, Murakami posits, it could be translated with the subject being I, as if the character is monologuing and showing their own states. Sentences with no stated subject doing the action are in grey for your consideration of his theory; for these, you could posit the actor to be anybody, really, though I think context makes my choices fairly inarguable--the question is whether that person should be first person (I) or third person (he).
In standard Japanese language, a person can say what happened, their own perceptions, and their own cognition. In literary narrative Japanese language, the narrator can say what happened, their own perceptions, their own cognition, their characters perceptions, and their characters cognition. The narrator can even perceive the character's perceptions and cognition and add their own on top of it. In short, just as the characters in the Gyakuten Saiban examples can show and tell, the narrator is not the only one who can show and tell in a literary narrative. Tense alone is not enough to determine who is showing or telling for a sure translation, and I posit that this ambiguity is not because of the lack of stated subject in the original Japanese text. I also suggest that because of the characterized linguistic traits noted by Kinsui that the most accurate form of translation from Japanese to English available is, while flawed, the standard, consistent past tense narrative.
If the mood argument were a view that bore out consistently in either spoken or literary narrative, I would absolutely chuck aside grammatical propriety and say that readers of a work translated from Japanese must learn to accept it in literary narrative and that they would 'learn' it as less colloquial than it would feel in English (as the author of Shiki distinctly lacks a characterized feel). If Murakami's analysis were one that applied to the works I've taken on, I would absolutely consider translating such sentences as thoughts of the character. But look at the samples below and see that sentences in past and non-past do not cleanly set out into sequential events and reflection.
I've used a bold font on verbs in present tensein the original text.
Grey text notes sentences where in the Japanese text there is no subject explicitly stated.
Red stars denote that there is a present copula (da, desu, no da, no desu, etc.) on a past tense verb signifying a grammatical mood/modality.
Pink denotes end-sentence characterization/emotion particles.
The underlined bold portion is future/conjectural mood and will be addressed separately as a part of the break down of the problems with the above hypothesis.
Shiki, Book 2, Chapter 5, sub chapter
Grammatical moods are not related to emotional moods, they indicate what the verb or sentence is doing, such as whether the sentence is stating a fact (indicative mood), stating a likelihood or potential (potential mood), asking a question (interrogative mood) or serving a number of other purposes. Modality is a cloudy subject best defined before any work discussing it for context due to the many meanings of mood and the many moods languages have or don't. For the purpose of this discussion we're going to go hyper-simple. The only moods relevant are those favorite terms of creative writing teachers: showing or telling. The reason those titled modalities are relevant should be apparent based on the researchers and works considered beforehand.
Paul J. Hopper showed that in English, tense shift is important in developing background and foreground details, such that in the foreground are the sequence of events, and in the background are amplifications or comments upon the occurrences. That foreground must be sequential, it's the showing of actions in a set order, whereas the amplification is telling us something relevant to it, a thought on it. While studies I've read have focused on colloquial speech adjusting tense shift either intentionally creating a vivid tension or because the speaker is caught up as if reliving it, this is not a view without contention, nor is it applicable to something written and edited. I've deemed it more prudent, when considering translation of an omniscient uncharacteristic narrator, to dismiss that mode from consideration.
Kindaichi Haruhiko is the Japanese linguist I was referred to by Japanese, in looking into the tense change matter in Japanese narratives. In his works, he refers to the moods as presenting and narrating, which I've renamed show and tell for because our discussion, unlike Kindachi's considerably more broad fields of linguistic research, is about literature with a narrator who is always narrating. Though they use different terminology and are discussing different works and language, much like Hopper, Kindaichi suggests that different verb tenses denote whether we're being shown something in sequence or told a detail irrelevant to the sequence of events being shown in that foreground.
Neither necessarily says that one verb tense serves one purpose or the other; rather, a non-I character shown taking action of even just established as existing can be identified by a sentence with a certain tense (usually past), and it may be the case that sentences in that tense are then meant to be fulfilling the showing role. This would make a different (present in our case) tense the tense of telling, a separate narrative on a different time plane from the sequence of events. It would be as if the narrator is not in the past, but is adding information relevant from their alternate placement in time, over the shown past sequence.
If you look at the Ace Attorney/Gyakuten Saiban witness statements which are narratives of events the speakers were involved in, this theory generally bears out. The only swaps to present tense are when recounting their current cognition over the past-tense narrated event (I still haven't forgotten; I think, I am, there is). There are exceptions in Yahari's statements. One is one which any reader could unequivocally declare to be a present tense used strictly for emphasis, the same way a news paper headline would read a past tense event as if it were happening now, such as "Dewey defeats Truman!" The other one, "what I do is obvious" (in answer to what he did at a past event) happens to be the only one of the lot to seem to meet a narrative criteria of adding (telling) cognition to the events otherwise sequential (shown) literary narrative.
An interesting note about each of the statements is that they are in fact technically present tense, with more explicit present-tense telling modality than is used even by the omniscient narrator's voice in novels. The novel excerpt has very few asterisks denoting explicit telling modality. The overwhelming majority of past-tense sequential statements in Gyakuten Saiban happen to end with a present-tense copula, which could be translated as "it is the case that this past tense event happened." (Thus, technically present tense with a past tense clause--but translating it that way when it's dialogue would add nothing but bulk.) It is not just declaring something happened, but signifies that the element is being told rather than shown. This is because, short of being a narrator in a story, some things you can only tell.
For those who have studied Japanese, you may have come across the -garu form of adjectives/verbs. The form is necessary because you cannot speak definitively about somebody else's feelings, you were probably told. You cannot show that someone wants something or is afraid; you have to conjugate it with -garu or darou or -sou to show that they are seeming to. You can show or narrate that someone had shown signs of it, but you can only show wanting or fearing from your own perspective. This is likewise why the many statements in the literary narrative would seem inappropriate in spoken Japanese--or at least, would be distinctly taken as a "literary narrative" voice. While I try to keep these notes and discussions to the point where no Japanese knowledge like this is necessary (even if I describe it, I don't think the unnatural or literary feel can be taught), the copula/narrative voice aspects are not necessarily to understand the point made, though they will be illustrative to those who do.
For reference, telling modal markers outlined by Kindaichi are:
da, no da, (no) mono da, (no) koto da, (na, no) wake da, (after otherwise past tense conjugated verbs).
Not outlined by Kindaichi, but brought up by others, and clearly adding cognition and thus making them telling are:
dakara, kara (da), sei (da), ka.
These clearly add cognition because they assign a because, or shoulds. Likewise, there are -you and darous, which are conjectural of volitional.
Nobody's said anything yet but I'm sure some readers have raised a brow at the narrator going probably or might. These I translate out as conjectures, along with the becauses or shoulds; these are not so much lost in translation, but it helps to be aware of them in determining the purposes of modes and tense switches.
Kinsui Satoshi is my favorite Japanese linguist, the leading researcher on Japanese fictional character voices and sociolinguistic stereotypes. He's done extensive documentation on traits of speech that signify a type of character such as their gender, their age, their employment or education level, etc. in fiction. Many of these types of speech are not used by real people unless they're speaking as a character (play acting) the same way one could presumably speak as a narrator. Whether used or not by real people, they are viewed and thus used with a consciousness of character. While no studies I've come across have counted these elements, I would certainly say they qualify as telling as they posit the speaker's awareness of themselves as a speaker. These are modality markers which objective narrators have no form of. While Akane and Yahari in samples below use different forms of the copula (desu and ('n) da respectively) and are characterized through that, both have some sentences whose moods are only suggested by ze or zo or yo (for Yahari) or "no" without the copula that follows (for Akane). Since these aren't mood markers noted by any published linguists I've come across and are my own, and I am not a published linguist, I've noted these separate from the universally available mood markers, as separate from the formally recognized ones.
Japanese linguist Murakami Fuminobu has likewise suggested the view that the change in tense is a change in mood, and that this unique literary narrative voice which can show us a character's feelings or wants in a way other speakers must tell is because the line between author and character blurs. Often times, there is no subject on these sentences, so, Murakami posits, it could be translated with the subject being I, as if the character is monologuing and showing their own states. Sentences with no stated subject doing the action are in grey for your consideration of his theory; for these, you could posit the actor to be anybody, really, though I think context makes my choices fairly inarguable--the question is whether that person should be first person (I) or third person (he).
In standard Japanese language, a person can say what happened, their own perceptions, and their own cognition. In literary narrative Japanese language, the narrator can say what happened, their own perceptions, their own cognition, their characters perceptions, and their characters cognition. The narrator can even perceive the character's perceptions and cognition and add their own on top of it. In short, just as the characters in the Gyakuten Saiban examples can show and tell, the narrator is not the only one who can show and tell in a literary narrative. Tense alone is not enough to determine who is showing or telling for a sure translation, and I posit that this ambiguity is not because of the lack of stated subject in the original Japanese text. I also suggest that because of the characterized linguistic traits noted by Kinsui that the most accurate form of translation from Japanese to English available is, while flawed, the standard, consistent past tense narrative.
If the mood argument were a view that bore out consistently in either spoken or literary narrative, I would absolutely chuck aside grammatical propriety and say that readers of a work translated from Japanese must learn to accept it in literary narrative and that they would 'learn' it as less colloquial than it would feel in English (as the author of Shiki distinctly lacks a characterized feel). If Murakami's analysis were one that applied to the works I've taken on, I would absolutely consider translating such sentences as thoughts of the character. But look at the samples below and see that sentences in past and non-past do not cleanly set out into sequential events and reflection.
I've used a bold font on verbs in present tensein the original text.
Grey text notes sentences where in the Japanese text there is no subject explicitly stated.
Red stars denote that there is a present copula (da, desu, no da, no desu, etc.) on a past tense verb signifying a grammatical mood/modality.
Pink denotes end-sentence characterization/emotion particles.
The underlined bold portion is future/conjectural mood and will be addressed separately as a part of the break down of the problems with the above hypothesis.
Shiki, Book 2, Chapter 5, sub chapter
Toshio received notice of Mizuguchi's Ohkawa Shigeru's death at the usual time, early in the morning. September 19th, Monday. By the time he had hurried to the telephone, Shigeru had already died. Ohkawa Shigeru had been 33, one grade higher than Toshio, with 34 close at hand when he'd suddenly died.
Shigeru had been bedridden since three days prior, his breathing fizzling to a stop without anyone to care for him in the grey hours of the morning. When his family had come in the morning to try to wake him they finally noticed Shigeru was dead.
"To think that this could happen!" Shigeru's mother throws herself over the corpse sobbing. Toshio looked over that in irritation. Why, if he was ill, was he not made to go to the hospital, not brought into the hospital?
---Of course, he knows. Because it was over a weekend. It isn't that Shigeru's parents weren't worried about their son. Nor are they indifferent to his health. Shigeru became far worse than his parents feared. At first, they couldn't think it was something to call the doctor out for on his day off. All the same, because they were worried for their son, they planned to bring him in first thing at the beginning of the week. And that wasn't soon enough. The illness did not give Shigeru until Monday.
Toshio knows it'd be better to open the hospital even on days off. Those in the village are intimately familiar with Toshio. But that's why all the more they can't exploit him on his days off. There's no excuse for that, they think, most considerably. They mean well--it's absolutely nothing but the best of intentions but for those patients braving this disease, the two days of the weekend, just those two days of procrastination would become fatal.
It isn't just his patients. This is a problem for Toshio, too. Every time he's called out for an examination it's of a corpse---and unable to even do an autopsy, he can't observe its progress or observe it, leaving him unable to determine the source of the disease. Anyway, saying that he needed to fill out a death certificate, he asks about Shigeru's medical history, both parents' medical history, his habits past and present, pushing with all his might for who he'd seen recently, where he went, if there was anything there that could have infected him but nobody but the man himself could know all that. If he could at least ask Shigeru himself. While he was still lucid.
Lately the death reports had stopped. It is an incredibly short break. And then in came Shigeru's death notification. It was possible this is a beginning. After a small break ended the peak was coming.* The coming wave would probably be greater than the last one.*
It would be good to open the hospital on the weekend too.* He knows that. All the same, if he did decide to open the hospital, he would need staff. It wasn't as if he could tell his already busy staff to work any harder, and they weren't exactly surrounded left and right by places to try and recruit new staff from.
Toshio looked down at the Ohkawa husband and wife crumpled and crying, in a dark, somber mood.
Seishin received notice of Ohkawa Shigeru's death also at the usual time right after the morning services. Returning to the office for a short break Seishin and the others heard the phone ring and looked to each other. That a phone call in the morning was not a good thing was something all of them had come to feel in their bones this summer.
The one to take the call was Mitsuo, the one to say "again" in a small mumble was Tsurumi. Nobody else said a word beyond that.
When he went to the Ohkawa household in Mizuguchi for the bedside sutras, there unfolded the usual pathetic scene.
"If I'd known that it would come to this, I would have drug him to the hospital on Saturday!" His mother Norie breaks down sobbing. "It was because he said himself that he was okay!"
What happened with Fuki---when Gotouda Shuuji died, was repeating itself here. His father Choutarou and Norie both look to have rounded and become smaller too. Shigeru wasn't yet married. Seishin doesn't know whether he should say that the two having no daughter-in-law or grandchildren was fortunate or unfortunate.
For Ohkawa Choutarou and Norie, their son Shigeru's death was a disaster on par with their own deaths. It was a death so sudden they couldn't even imagine it in their dreams. The shock and significance was likely immeasurable to them, and yet to Seishin this was nothing more than another stereotypical scene he'd seen repeat so many times he felt nauseous this summer.
And so he found himself failing to ask indirectly about Ohkawa Shigeru's latest movements, too. Either way it there wasn't going to be any visible point of connection, he's feeling from the beginning in his heart. ---And, practically speaking, he couldn't find any point of contact between Shigeru and the dead to now.
Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney
Statements given by Akane (Ema) in case 1-5 (Yomigaeru Gyakuten):
"On that day... I was waiting for Onee-chan in the office at the police station.
The criminal came in there when running away... I was taken hostage.*
Prosecutor Zaimon Naoto-san had saved me but...*
I still haven't forgotten the sight I saw in that moment!
The criminal's knife overhead, above the prosecutor's chest...!
Even though I drew a picture from that time. It looks like it had gone missing....*"
"This 'picture'... is the one that I drew two years ago. *
The lightening was so bright that I could only see dark outlines, but...
After that, I... fainted, it looks like.*
....There is no mistake, the scene is drawn just as it was seen it at that time."
"Seeing the person who was the criminal with the knife above his head.... I,
without thinking, I rushed forward!* ...Towards the two shadows.
And then I knocked away the person holding the knife... I think.
At that moment in the flashing of light in the window,
I... saw Taiho-kun!*
Even though he wasn't in the room....
It was definitely Taiho-kun!*"
Statements by Yahari (Larry) in case 3-5 (Kareinaru Gyakuten):
"I was looking at the stars that night. At that lodge deep in the mountains.
That's, I walked around that bridge on food a few times but...
I didn't see nothing like a s, snowmobile!*
That night I didn't see no one at all around the bridge!*"
"Since I went to the mountain hut around 9... It was probably half past ten, I guess?*
I was lying down in my futon when... there was a bright white flash of light right before my eyes!*
And then, outside the window, that run down bridge's bursting into flames burning up!
The lightening was sounding but I went to see it right away. That's what I did.
There, I did meet Naruhodo. ...That's what I did."
"I'm a Tenryuusai (TN: Last name)! An artiste. It should be obvious what I do! (TN: in response to a question of what he did, past tense)
I drew it!* In front of the bridge! I was in a daze, throwing myself into drawing it out!*
The blow to my psyche... it's all taken down in the notebook just how I saw it!*
...When I realized the fire was out, that guy came staggering up.*"
"When I went to the run down bridge, she wasn't there anymore but...
I... I was worried about her, so I searched all over around the area!*
And then, I found a pretty crystal half buried in the snow!*
I'm sure Ayame-chan... was wearing a spare hood.*
There's no one else who could have lost a crystal that night is there? So yeah."
In the Gyakuten Saiban samples there's no doubt any present-tense background information is the speaking characters' cognition or perception. In the Shiki samples the background information is less discernible.
In both the Toshio and Seishin halves the immediate actions of Shigeru's parents over his corpse are put into present tense-as if happening on a different level than the narrative of what Toshio or Seishin are doing. It's practically filler fluff information. Coinciding with that, neither of the characters at the center of the sequential narrative interact with present-tense active Norie and Choutarou in their grieving, beyond witnessing it in a way that seems, to me, passive. This would make the present tense actions of the parents "background" or "told" details. In Toshio's portion the aspects formerly central to such scenes of his, namely the medical assessments or possible infection routes, are now based on how futile those are. When he does pursue those avenues as is his professional duty, it's in present tense and quickly dismissed for more narrative focus on we might assume are the topics more actively on his mind at the time. In Seishin's portion of the narrative, it's even explicitly outlined that the entire affair taken on a repetitive, removed nuance for him, to the extent that he even opts for inaction due to the ineffectiveness of it all. I think that we are shown what they think and told what's happening around them as they do. The sequential narrative is at first background.
Yet much of the non-sequential narrative, such as the 4th paragraph, is also present tense.
Is it cognition told over the past-tense events which are then shown in the rest of the 4th paragraph? If so, is it the narrator or Toshio doing the telling? What about the past tense events after; should that be taken as the perspective of the narrator showing us objectively it happened, or is it Toshio showing what happened? Who is our lens? Is it the narrator telling us what on Toshio's mind, or perhaps showing us Toshio's thoughts? If so the framing device of 'he thought' would likely be in place, or it could be put in parenthesis, both choices the author has made multiple times to show thoughts. With no framing device, is it simply the narrator narrating or is it as Murakami suggests, a reflection of the character that could even substitute the subject 'he' with 'I' for the following?
"To think that this could happen!" Shigeru's mother threw herself over the corpse sobbing. Toshio looked over that in irritation. Why, if he was ill, was he not made to go to the hospital, not brought into the hospital?
---Of course, I know. Because it was over a weekend. It's not that Shigeru's parents don't worry about their son. Nor are they indifferent to his health. Shigeru became far worse than his parents feared. At first, they couldn't think it was something to call the doctor out for on his day off. All the same, because they were worried for their son, they planned to bring him in first thing at the beginning of the week. And that wasn't soon enough. The illness did not give Shigeru until Monday.
If the present tense is meant to set off Toshio's own show and tell as suggested by Murakami, with italics suggesting his thoughts, it would also be possible to mark the question at the end of the first paragraph above as his; Toshio is taking action in the past tense, compared to Shigeru's mother in present tense, and the thought would better align with his narrative.Toshio is named as the one taking action in the next paragraph in present tense, and with him named as a third person, the distance between narrator and narrated is firmly restored. We come upon a similar problem if the focus is on Seishin's show and tell---Seishin is explicitly defined by name as a third person separate from the narrator, aside from the last paragraph, which is notably in telling mode. We have nothing to confirm that Toshio or Seishin were ever telling or showing. However that makes ascribing tense or mood to any tense come down to context, at which point it's not only very subjective as to whether it's more the character or the narrator, but increasingly moot to denote. Perhaps it's that I read it in Japanese and am aware of these details, but I think the same impression, that of Shigeru's parents being extraneous characters making some background noise while our main characters wallow in impersonal self-pity for dealing with so many dead. In that case risking attributing thoughts directly to the character that are only potentially theirs but lack all the specific hard markers thereof such as parenthesis or 'he thought' or 'he felt' doesn't improve understanding but does potentially put a thicker translator's lens over it.
The second problem, which readers familiar with Toshio likely noticed in the above sample, is that the narrative voice isn't in the character's voice, if it is supposed to be the character's. The non-character narrator is, aside from the right to use showing grammar in a unique way, to speak an utterly un-characterized standard. Kinsui noted that most main characters in fiction used less "role language" because they had to be easiest for the standard reader to identify with. I wonder if this relates to being easier for the narrator more easily merging the narrative with the character's thoughts at times?
A narrative opinion justifying the character's actions and adds too characterized a flavor to the narrator, one that opens them up to no longer being an observer/recorder but a potentially warped lens... which can be entertaining, but is not the impression given in the standard Japanese text of an omniscient narrator story.
Is there a significance in choosing this ambiguity without appending 'he thought' even when it seems strongly suggested that the narrative focus is on the type of thoughts the characters are experiencing while the action is happening?
It's possible that the narrator is choosing to present the character's thoughts, summarized, in more plain language, like a summary of a conversation. This would work with Kinsui's idea that audiences connect better with standard language than stereotyped character language. In that case, forcing it into a character show/tell in English would not be appropriate any more than rewriting it into their character voice would be.
Consider a Seishin portion in which the tense marking sequential action is present tense. That would make the single past tense one stand out as potentially showing us Seishin's thoughts while the rest is telling us what's going on.
"If I'd known that it would come to this, I would have drug him to the hospital on Saturday!" His mother Norie broke down sobbing. "It was because he said himself that he was okay!"
What happened with Fuki---when Gotouda Shuuji died, is repeating itself here. His father Choutarou and Norie both looked to have rounded and become smaller too. Shigeru wasn't yet married. Seishin didn't know whether he should say that the two having no daughter-in-law or grandchildren was fortunate or unfortunate.It's also possible that the present tense is indeed to orientate the reader more into the moment. That Shigeru's parents strong reactions or Seishin's thoughts on how to deal with them as it's his job to give comfort are background is my interpretation based on my understanding of the actual focal characters of the two scenes. There's nothing to say that because many of those elements discussed in present tense do get such a brush over that the more dynamic present tense isn't used to highlight them in their brevity.
This tension on the thoughts of the coming, larger wave in present tense discussed in the next paragraph may support that. I'm more confident in my read on it, but that's based on the surrounding text highlighting that theme, and my subjective observations tend towards assuming apathy or colder emotions. That text highlighting what I think is the theme will be there whether I translate other aspects according to it or not... and so, I default to not making an effort to emphasize or de-emphasize anything, and let the text speak for itself.
There are only three incidences of explicit telling markers in the given Shiki sample, all of them past tense. These involved "no da" and "hou ga ii" after paste tense verbs, making them arguably a present tense telling.
Putting aside that the tense may demark showing or telling or narrator or character as we've discussed that enough, the red marked sentences have telling mood markers.
On these it may be that just as in the Gyakuten Saiban samples we're being told the narrator's cognition. 'No da' is further removed than plain da, and this degree of narrative removal draws attention to the fact that these details are not at the forefront of his mind as he's thought past that. We're shown that 'he knows that' but when it goes into the less removed past form without the explicit telling marker, that's where his real current thoughts are. The narrator-tell thoughts are necessary for context, and it may suggest that they really deserve more weight than Toshio gives them, even if his own excuses for inaction win out.
However, another possibility, more visible in the first paragraph, is that the no da is another layer of removal highlighting a different timeline of Toshio's own thoughts. They're future/conjectural. It may be telling us his thoughts and using the narrative distance marker as Toshio's own; non-narrator can and do use these telling markers in regular daily conversation. Perhaps the narrative is showing a change in his thought from past to considerations for the future. Perhaps it's showing different levels of thinking of the character in terms of his relation to them; students of Japanese are likely very aware that Japanese is a language near pedantic about setting the psychological distance and direction of things.
Recall that Hopper distinguished the potential for there to be two timelines in any story--the narrator in the present overlaying things onto a past narrative which also had to happen in its own order. Just as we think and speak on these multiple planes, so too may fictional characters, and the idea of only two moods or two timelines is a simplification made for the ease of explaining subjective theories in a more definable reference. This doesn't mean anything is truly limited to them. There may be the narrative foreground and background and Toshio and Seishin's own in-scene foreground and background.
Conclusion:
The fact that linguists study this through example rather than simply asking modern writers what they're doing and why shows that the authors themselves may not be certain what their exact intention is, only that it bares out a certain feel and expresses what they want it to express. The rules of language and linguistics were not made before the language, and native speakers can tell the appropriate conjugations and inflections of their language long before they know what a tense or a subject or an object is
As it must be one or the other, I'd rather lose something in translation than add in myself as a translator. Adding subtext as if it were a fact of the source is dishonest. There's too much potential for egotism to get in the way of improving as a translator, or for ulterior motives to slip in when you add to a translation.
Who would have ulterior motives in translation? Unpaid translators tend to translate because a work because of some personal investment in it. That means there's plenty of potential for bias; people want their ideas to be right, they want their pairs to be canon even if never textually consumated, they sometimes want to be the authority on the work more than they want the work to be accessed as it is. When you're a translator for people who don't know the source language, you're accountable to almost nothing but your own sense of decency. The more you intellectualize it, the more you can justify molding things to your view. So at the end of all my research, I decided I don't know enough to pass anything off as fact to readers. I've got thoughts on the grammar of novels and scenes, and with the lost tense many readers will not be able to discuss them, but short of translating the whole novel in the marked styles above, there's no way to do that. And doing that makes it less a story and more of an academic exercise--not what Shiki is first and foremost about.
If anyone wants to look at a novel as a linguistic academic exercise, I think it's fair to expect them to study the language. I don't think that's a fair requirement for anyone who wants to enjoy foreign stories in general. Likewise, I don't think it's necessary for anyone to know about this aspect to enjoy it--but some may, so, here it is.
Shigeru had been bedridden since three days prior, his breathing fizzling to a stop without anyone to care for him in the grey hours of the morning. When his family had come in the morning to try to wake him they finally noticed Shigeru was dead.
"To think that this could happen!" Shigeru's mother throws herself over the corpse sobbing. Toshio looked over that in irritation. Why, if he was ill, was he not made to go to the hospital, not brought into the hospital?
---Of course, he knows. Because it was over a weekend. It isn't that Shigeru's parents weren't worried about their son. Nor are they indifferent to his health. Shigeru became far worse than his parents feared. At first, they couldn't think it was something to call the doctor out for on his day off. All the same, because they were worried for their son, they planned to bring him in first thing at the beginning of the week. And that wasn't soon enough. The illness did not give Shigeru until Monday.
Toshio knows it'd be better to open the hospital even on days off. Those in the village are intimately familiar with Toshio. But that's why all the more they can't exploit him on his days off. There's no excuse for that, they think, most considerably. They mean well--it's absolutely nothing but the best of intentions but for those patients braving this disease, the two days of the weekend, just those two days of procrastination would become fatal.
It isn't just his patients. This is a problem for Toshio, too. Every time he's called out for an examination it's of a corpse---and unable to even do an autopsy, he can't observe its progress or observe it, leaving him unable to determine the source of the disease. Anyway, saying that he needed to fill out a death certificate, he asks about Shigeru's medical history, both parents' medical history, his habits past and present, pushing with all his might for who he'd seen recently, where he went, if there was anything there that could have infected him but nobody but the man himself could know all that. If he could at least ask Shigeru himself. While he was still lucid.
Lately the death reports had stopped. It is an incredibly short break. And then in came Shigeru's death notification. It was possible this is a beginning. After a small break ended the peak was coming.* The coming wave would probably be greater than the last one.*
It would be good to open the hospital on the weekend too.* He knows that. All the same, if he did decide to open the hospital, he would need staff. It wasn't as if he could tell his already busy staff to work any harder, and they weren't exactly surrounded left and right by places to try and recruit new staff from.
Toshio looked down at the Ohkawa husband and wife crumpled and crying, in a dark, somber mood.
Seishin received notice of Ohkawa Shigeru's death also at the usual time right after the morning services. Returning to the office for a short break Seishin and the others heard the phone ring and looked to each other. That a phone call in the morning was not a good thing was something all of them had come to feel in their bones this summer.
The one to take the call was Mitsuo, the one to say "again" in a small mumble was Tsurumi. Nobody else said a word beyond that.
When he went to the Ohkawa household in Mizuguchi for the bedside sutras, there unfolded the usual pathetic scene.
"If I'd known that it would come to this, I would have drug him to the hospital on Saturday!" His mother Norie breaks down sobbing. "It was because he said himself that he was okay!"
What happened with Fuki---when Gotouda Shuuji died, was repeating itself here. His father Choutarou and Norie both look to have rounded and become smaller too. Shigeru wasn't yet married. Seishin doesn't know whether he should say that the two having no daughter-in-law or grandchildren was fortunate or unfortunate.
For Ohkawa Choutarou and Norie, their son Shigeru's death was a disaster on par with their own deaths. It was a death so sudden they couldn't even imagine it in their dreams. The shock and significance was likely immeasurable to them, and yet to Seishin this was nothing more than another stereotypical scene he'd seen repeat so many times he felt nauseous this summer.
And so he found himself failing to ask indirectly about Ohkawa Shigeru's latest movements, too. Either way it there wasn't going to be any visible point of connection, he's feeling from the beginning in his heart. ---And, practically speaking, he couldn't find any point of contact between Shigeru and the dead to now.
Gyakuten Saiban/Ace Attorney
Statements given by Akane (Ema) in case 1-5 (Yomigaeru Gyakuten):
"On that day... I was waiting for Onee-chan in the office at the police station.
The criminal came in there when running away... I was taken hostage.*
Prosecutor Zaimon Naoto-san had saved me but...*
I still haven't forgotten the sight I saw in that moment!
The criminal's knife overhead, above the prosecutor's chest...!
Even though I drew a picture from that time. It looks like it had gone missing....*"
"This 'picture'... is the one that I drew two years ago. *
The lightening was so bright that I could only see dark outlines, but...
After that, I... fainted, it looks like.*
....There is no mistake, the scene is drawn just as it was seen it at that time."
"Seeing the person who was the criminal with the knife above his head.... I,
without thinking, I rushed forward!* ...Towards the two shadows.
And then I knocked away the person holding the knife... I think.
At that moment in the flashing of light in the window,
I... saw Taiho-kun!*
Even though he wasn't in the room....
It was definitely Taiho-kun!*"
Statements by Yahari (Larry) in case 3-5 (Kareinaru Gyakuten):
"I was looking at the stars that night. At that lodge deep in the mountains.
That's, I walked around that bridge on food a few times but...
I didn't see nothing like a s, snowmobile!*
That night I didn't see no one at all around the bridge!*"
"Since I went to the mountain hut around 9... It was probably half past ten, I guess?*
I was lying down in my futon when... there was a bright white flash of light right before my eyes!*
And then, outside the window, that run down bridge's bursting into flames burning up!
The lightening was sounding but I went to see it right away. That's what I did.
There, I did meet Naruhodo. ...That's what I did."
"I'm a Tenryuusai (TN: Last name)! An artiste. It should be obvious what I do! (TN: in response to a question of what he did, past tense)
I drew it!* In front of the bridge! I was in a daze, throwing myself into drawing it out!*
The blow to my psyche... it's all taken down in the notebook just how I saw it!*
...When I realized the fire was out, that guy came staggering up.*"
"When I went to the run down bridge, she wasn't there anymore but...
I... I was worried about her, so I searched all over around the area!*
And then, I found a pretty crystal half buried in the snow!*
I'm sure Ayame-chan... was wearing a spare hood.*
There's no one else who could have lost a crystal that night is there? So yeah."
In the Gyakuten Saiban samples there's no doubt any present-tense background information is the speaking characters' cognition or perception. In the Shiki samples the background information is less discernible.
In both the Toshio and Seishin halves the immediate actions of Shigeru's parents over his corpse are put into present tense-as if happening on a different level than the narrative of what Toshio or Seishin are doing. It's practically filler fluff information. Coinciding with that, neither of the characters at the center of the sequential narrative interact with present-tense active Norie and Choutarou in their grieving, beyond witnessing it in a way that seems, to me, passive. This would make the present tense actions of the parents "background" or "told" details. In Toshio's portion the aspects formerly central to such scenes of his, namely the medical assessments or possible infection routes, are now based on how futile those are. When he does pursue those avenues as is his professional duty, it's in present tense and quickly dismissed for more narrative focus on we might assume are the topics more actively on his mind at the time. In Seishin's portion of the narrative, it's even explicitly outlined that the entire affair taken on a repetitive, removed nuance for him, to the extent that he even opts for inaction due to the ineffectiveness of it all. I think that we are shown what they think and told what's happening around them as they do. The sequential narrative is at first background.
Yet much of the non-sequential narrative, such as the 4th paragraph, is also present tense.
Is it cognition told over the past-tense events which are then shown in the rest of the 4th paragraph? If so, is it the narrator or Toshio doing the telling? What about the past tense events after; should that be taken as the perspective of the narrator showing us objectively it happened, or is it Toshio showing what happened? Who is our lens? Is it the narrator telling us what on Toshio's mind, or perhaps showing us Toshio's thoughts? If so the framing device of 'he thought' would likely be in place, or it could be put in parenthesis, both choices the author has made multiple times to show thoughts. With no framing device, is it simply the narrator narrating or is it as Murakami suggests, a reflection of the character that could even substitute the subject 'he' with 'I' for the following?
"To think that this could happen!" Shigeru's mother threw herself over the corpse sobbing. Toshio looked over that in irritation. Why, if he was ill, was he not made to go to the hospital, not brought into the hospital?
---Of course, I know. Because it was over a weekend. It's not that Shigeru's parents don't worry about their son. Nor are they indifferent to his health. Shigeru became far worse than his parents feared. At first, they couldn't think it was something to call the doctor out for on his day off. All the same, because they were worried for their son, they planned to bring him in first thing at the beginning of the week. And that wasn't soon enough. The illness did not give Shigeru until Monday.
If the present tense is meant to set off Toshio's own show and tell as suggested by Murakami, with italics suggesting his thoughts, it would also be possible to mark the question at the end of the first paragraph above as his; Toshio is taking action in the past tense, compared to Shigeru's mother in present tense, and the thought would better align with his narrative.Toshio is named as the one taking action in the next paragraph in present tense, and with him named as a third person, the distance between narrator and narrated is firmly restored. We come upon a similar problem if the focus is on Seishin's show and tell---Seishin is explicitly defined by name as a third person separate from the narrator, aside from the last paragraph, which is notably in telling mode. We have nothing to confirm that Toshio or Seishin were ever telling or showing. However that makes ascribing tense or mood to any tense come down to context, at which point it's not only very subjective as to whether it's more the character or the narrator, but increasingly moot to denote. Perhaps it's that I read it in Japanese and am aware of these details, but I think the same impression, that of Shigeru's parents being extraneous characters making some background noise while our main characters wallow in impersonal self-pity for dealing with so many dead. In that case risking attributing thoughts directly to the character that are only potentially theirs but lack all the specific hard markers thereof such as parenthesis or 'he thought' or 'he felt' doesn't improve understanding but does potentially put a thicker translator's lens over it.
The second problem, which readers familiar with Toshio likely noticed in the above sample, is that the narrative voice isn't in the character's voice, if it is supposed to be the character's. The non-character narrator is, aside from the right to use showing grammar in a unique way, to speak an utterly un-characterized standard. Kinsui noted that most main characters in fiction used less "role language" because they had to be easiest for the standard reader to identify with. I wonder if this relates to being easier for the narrator more easily merging the narrative with the character's thoughts at times?
A narrative opinion justifying the character's actions and adds too characterized a flavor to the narrator, one that opens them up to no longer being an observer/recorder but a potentially warped lens... which can be entertaining, but is not the impression given in the standard Japanese text of an omniscient narrator story.
Is there a significance in choosing this ambiguity without appending 'he thought' even when it seems strongly suggested that the narrative focus is on the type of thoughts the characters are experiencing while the action is happening?
It's possible that the narrator is choosing to present the character's thoughts, summarized, in more plain language, like a summary of a conversation. This would work with Kinsui's idea that audiences connect better with standard language than stereotyped character language. In that case, forcing it into a character show/tell in English would not be appropriate any more than rewriting it into their character voice would be.
Consider a Seishin portion in which the tense marking sequential action is present tense. That would make the single past tense one stand out as potentially showing us Seishin's thoughts while the rest is telling us what's going on.
"If I'd known that it would come to this, I would have drug him to the hospital on Saturday!" His mother Norie broke down sobbing. "It was because he said himself that he was okay!"
What happened with Fuki---when Gotouda Shuuji died, is repeating itself here. His father Choutarou and Norie both looked to have rounded and become smaller too. Shigeru wasn't yet married. Seishin didn't know whether he should say that the two having no daughter-in-law or grandchildren was fortunate or unfortunate.
This tension on the thoughts of the coming, larger wave in present tense discussed in the next paragraph may support that. I'm more confident in my read on it, but that's based on the surrounding text highlighting that theme, and my subjective observations tend towards assuming apathy or colder emotions. That text highlighting what I think is the theme will be there whether I translate other aspects according to it or not... and so, I default to not making an effort to emphasize or de-emphasize anything, and let the text speak for itself.
There are only three incidences of explicit telling markers in the given Shiki sample, all of them past tense. These involved "no da" and "hou ga ii" after paste tense verbs, making them arguably a present tense telling.
Lately the death reports had stopped. It is an incredibly short break. And then in came Shigeru's death notification. It was possible this is a beginning. After a small break ended the peak was coming.* The coming wave would probably be greater than the last one.*
It would be good to open the hospital on the weekend too.* He knows that. All the same, if he did decide to open the hospital, he would need staff. It wasn't as if he could tell his already busy staff to work any harder, and they weren't exactly surrounded left and right by places to try and recruit new staff from.
It would be good to open the hospital on the weekend too.* He knows that. All the same, if he did decide to open the hospital, he would need staff. It wasn't as if he could tell his already busy staff to work any harder, and they weren't exactly surrounded left and right by places to try and recruit new staff from.
Putting aside that the tense may demark showing or telling or narrator or character as we've discussed that enough, the red marked sentences have telling mood markers.
On these it may be that just as in the Gyakuten Saiban samples we're being told the narrator's cognition. 'No da' is further removed than plain da, and this degree of narrative removal draws attention to the fact that these details are not at the forefront of his mind as he's thought past that. We're shown that 'he knows that' but when it goes into the less removed past form without the explicit telling marker, that's where his real current thoughts are. The narrator-tell thoughts are necessary for context, and it may suggest that they really deserve more weight than Toshio gives them, even if his own excuses for inaction win out.
However, another possibility, more visible in the first paragraph, is that the no da is another layer of removal highlighting a different timeline of Toshio's own thoughts. They're future/conjectural. It may be telling us his thoughts and using the narrative distance marker as Toshio's own; non-narrator can and do use these telling markers in regular daily conversation. Perhaps the narrative is showing a change in his thought from past to considerations for the future. Perhaps it's showing different levels of thinking of the character in terms of his relation to them; students of Japanese are likely very aware that Japanese is a language near pedantic about setting the psychological distance and direction of things.
Recall that Hopper distinguished the potential for there to be two timelines in any story--the narrator in the present overlaying things onto a past narrative which also had to happen in its own order. Just as we think and speak on these multiple planes, so too may fictional characters, and the idea of only two moods or two timelines is a simplification made for the ease of explaining subjective theories in a more definable reference. This doesn't mean anything is truly limited to them. There may be the narrative foreground and background and Toshio and Seishin's own in-scene foreground and background.
Conclusion:
The fact that linguists study this through example rather than simply asking modern writers what they're doing and why shows that the authors themselves may not be certain what their exact intention is, only that it bares out a certain feel and expresses what they want it to express. The rules of language and linguistics were not made before the language, and native speakers can tell the appropriate conjugations and inflections of their language long before they know what a tense or a subject or an object is
As it must be one or the other, I'd rather lose something in translation than add in myself as a translator. Adding subtext as if it were a fact of the source is dishonest. There's too much potential for egotism to get in the way of improving as a translator, or for ulterior motives to slip in when you add to a translation.
Who would have ulterior motives in translation? Unpaid translators tend to translate because a work because of some personal investment in it. That means there's plenty of potential for bias; people want their ideas to be right, they want their pairs to be canon even if never textually consumated, they sometimes want to be the authority on the work more than they want the work to be accessed as it is. When you're a translator for people who don't know the source language, you're accountable to almost nothing but your own sense of decency. The more you intellectualize it, the more you can justify molding things to your view. So at the end of all my research, I decided I don't know enough to pass anything off as fact to readers. I've got thoughts on the grammar of novels and scenes, and with the lost tense many readers will not be able to discuss them, but short of translating the whole novel in the marked styles above, there's no way to do that. And doing that makes it less a story and more of an academic exercise--not what Shiki is first and foremost about.
If anyone wants to look at a novel as a linguistic academic exercise, I think it's fair to expect them to study the language. I don't think that's a fair requirement for anyone who wants to enjoy foreign stories in general. Likewise, I don't think it's necessary for anyone to know about this aspect to enjoy it--but some may, so, here it is.