南向き翻訳事務所 岩渕デボラ ブログ

According to Yahoo Real Estate, Tokyo is the second most expensive city in the world, following Luanda, Angola. So you might want to consider that when planning your next vacation. Movies are a little bit cheaper in Luanda, but lunch will set you back considerably.

Thanks to overvaluation of the yen in recent years, Tokyo remains a pricey place to live, followed by Nagoya, Yokohama and Kobe in third, fourth, and fifth places.

Remember the good old days when $1 was 360 yen? Not many people do. Back before the Great Depression, my mother-in-law’s parents immigrated to the US. They farmed in Southern California (Imperial Valley, as far as we can tell), made a little money, moved back to Japan where their funds were worth quite a bit more, and never had to work another day in their lives. (Come to think of it, my mother-in-law and her younger sister were born after their parents had effectively retired.)

Nowadays, I suppose I could dream of doing the opposite. Close up shop in Japan and move back to California; maybe buy a house that has lost half of its value in the past couple of years. I wonder if the Oakland A’s still have Dollar Wednesdays…

Translator and blogger Anne Ishii posted her definition of what translation is all about on her blog “Ill Iterate.”

Her three basic steps of “Tuck” (as in “to tuck in”–I think), “shave,” and finally “dress up,” pretty much describe the process.

I was also delighted to see that she has renamed the profession: I can now proudly call myself a “trannie!”

A couple of weeks ago, I gave my students at GWPU an assignment to  reorganize and rewrite an English press release from a certain publisher, giving them both the Japanese and English versions to work with. Ignoring the fact that only about half the class finished the assignment on time, I was thrilled to see that they produced versions much shorter than the original, with one about a third of the original length.

It was an incredible job of “shaving,” now I’ll have to read it to see if it’s properly “dressed up…”

The Japan Today website has a wonderful review of How I Saved a Bank with a Little Help from the Cosmos by Tadahiko Ito, and edited by me.

生まれて初めて買った「マイカー」がかれこれ７才になろうとしてます。私は年取ってから免許を取ったので、色々な車を乗りたいのです。そろそろ３回目の車検が回ってきたし、車検を機会に車を変え買えようと思って、３月に検討し始めました。しかし、車業界が大パニックということをすっかり忘れてしまいました。その上、３月は決算です。

ちなみに、昔から車が話題になると私の仕事に必ずと言っていいほど影響がでます。日本の車は世界の車ですし、日本の産業と言えば車ですから、車関係の仕事がたくさんあります。どのクライエントでも多少車の翻訳仕事があります。でも、今回は仕事より個人的な影響がでました。

ディーラーに行っては試乗させてもらって、ついでに値段等について色々聞きました。１ヶ月でも２ヶ月でももっとでもゆっくりと調べたかったところ、ディーラーのセールスの皆さんはどうやら今週中に決めてほしいと熱心に働きかけてきます。

そして家に帰った後でも、夕方になるとそれぞれのセールスの方が訪れてきます。電話もなります。連日に訪問者がいて、落ち着かなくなりました。結局、安心して夕飯を食べるために鍵をかけて、雨戸をしめました。ホー。

毎日のストレスにさらなら緊張となりましたので、車を買うことを一時的に止めました。今の車を車検にだして、夏休みの終わり頃にもう一度挑戦しようと決めました。それまでは周りで走っている車を観察して、マイペースな車選びを楽しんでいます。

Nobuko Takagi, author of Translucent Tree, lives and works in Kyushu, doing research on other Asian studies out of Kyushu University. Read about her activities on her website, Soaked in Asia (SIA). The top page is available in both Japanese and English. You’ll also notice a tab that will lead to her “Short Stories.” Takagi writes a story set in each country she visits, and I’ve been privileged to translate the last three. Two are currently posted: vol. 6 “Mongolian Flight” (set in Mongolia), and vol. 5 “Casting Out,” set in Shanghai. Look forward to her latest, “Tomosui,” inspired by her trip to Thailand.

昔、女子中高に働いた時、（生徒や同僚の先生から色々学びましたが）毎日教えているうちに、自分は栄養分の足りない畑の土のような気がしてきました。自分の「脳の中身」を出しては、何も代わりに入らないというわけでした。もっと悲しいことに、元々大した中身ではなかったです。

だから翻訳をやりだして、 何が良かったかというと、じっくり日本語を集中しないといけないので、毎日そこから新しい情報が入ります。脳に栄養を注いでいるわけです。広告会社、マーケティングリサーチ、工場の品質管理発表、車の部品。すべてが面白かったです。

最近では、星和書店のご依頼で、 心理学に関する英語の本の日本語訳を「監督」しています。ようするに、英文和訳は日本人のスタッフが担当して、その内容が間違っていないかをこちらでチェックします。そんなことでただ今、いくつかの本が同時進行中です。大体の本は一般向き（いわゆるself-help)なので、勉強になる情報がたくさんあります。今週はメタボリック症候群のことを詳しく学びました。メディアではよく「メタボ」を聞いたり読んだりしますので漠然と「気をつけなくちゃ」と理解できるけれど、メタボリック症候群の仕組みがわかるとさらに納得します。

それと一緒に、ちょっと前流行っていた「低インシュリンダイエット」のことがやっと理解できました。いかに「インシュリンを食べる」 に聞こえたし、インシュリンは食べ物ではないので、なぞなぞでした。でも、やっとなぞが説けました！つまり、精製した食べ物(精米、白いパン、砂糖等）を減らすことによって消費する単糖を減らす。それによって、単糖の量に合わせて分泌するはインシュリンは少なくなる、そしてインシュリンからできる脂肪原因の悪いコレステロールが血液に溜まらなくなります。だからインシュリンが減ると体重も多少減るはずです。

人間が動かないとインシュリンも増えるそうです。

なるほど。仕事が忙しいと脳が甘いものほしいので食べます。その上、パソコンの前で座りっぱなし。

今晩はデザートを止めて、スポーツジムに行ってきます。続くといいですね。

How I Saved a Bank (by Tadahiko Ito, translated by Deborah Iwabuchi) is the fascinating and timely story of the author’s years at the helm of a regional Japanese bank. Brought in when the bank was on the brink of collapse, Tadahiko Ito decided to conduct operations at the fim based on a people-first philosophy. From the start, he championed a framework of moral and ethical responsibility in the company’s banking methods, foreshadowing the demands people are making of today’s financial institutions worldwide.

Ito’s system is anchored  in his own spiritual ideals. he belives that a focus on a universal goal of prosperity rather than a narrow-minded approach centered entirely on profit and self-interest aligns us with the universe, and results in a harmonious system that encourages all participants and helps guide us on our way. His system resulted in a dramatic turnaround that more traditional experts believed impossible: Kansai Urban Bank recovered and now ranks of one of the top second-tier banks in Japan.

When we built our house many long years ago, we asked to have a bathroom (toilet and small sink) installed on the second floor–something very few people did then and an amenity not included in the housing company’s array of pre-designed plans. In exchange for the luxury of not having to go downstairs in the middle of the night to use the facilities, the extra plumbing required took up space that had been designated on the first floor for a washstand in the changing/laundry room outside the bath.

What we ended up with was a washstand that had a sink that was exactly two-feet-four inches high (standard at the time). In contrast, the mirror over it was  inaccessible because we had to arrange our toiletries  on the shelf in front of it. Only the wider versions came with a medicine cabinet and we had no width between  the plumbing and an unfortunately positioned window. The result was that we had to bend down to our knees to use the faucet and then stand on our toes to see our faces in the mirror.

Fast forward several decades. Everyone in the house brushes their teeth and washes their face in the kitchen–generally spitting and splashing when I’m trying to cook. With college  expenses done with (and not a penny yet saved) we went to an optimistically named place,  Joyful Honda, to look for a sink to replace the miniature affair in the house.

Our hunt revealed that the standard height these days has increased to a whopping two-feet-eight inches. The Joyful Honda people agreed not only to make a base for the washstand to bring the sink up to three feet, but also to cut off part of the window frame to create some extra width. We decided we could deal with a partially blocked window.  And as long as we were getting all that done, we chose a sink large enough to wash  hair in, and a medicine cabinet that becomes a three-way mirror.

The new sink was installed yesterday, and as each family member walked in to check it out, he or she let out a shout of amazement. It’s enormous! We turned the water on and off, washed our hands without leaning over, and gazed at ourselves in the mirror. We all agreed that it made us much more attractive than the old one had.

Deborah Davidson, a Hokkaido-based translator who has devoted most of her career to translating the works of Japanese author Miura Ayako (subject of a future entry), is also active in a project to introduce the Ainu oral tradition to English speakers.

She was recently awarded a grant to translate Iyomante-Meguru inochi no okurimono, a tale centered around the Ainu “bear-sending” ceremony. In this posting on her blog she discusses the difficulty of translating “tricky spots,” passages that are integral to the story but difficult to work with considering the cultural sensitivities of readers of the translation. This is a point I too have struggled with, and Debbie’s comments offer valuable insight.

昨日、正田醤油スタジアムでザスパ草津はベガルタ仙台にぼろまけをしました。３−０。前半、ザスパはよくがんばったが、後半3点入れられてしまいました。ザスパの唯一の「ゴール」は審判がオフサイドと見てしまいました。いまだに私はオフサイドをどうやって決めるのかよくわかりません。とりあえず、審判がオフサイドと決めたものがオフサイドとしか思えません。

悲しい結果をさておいて、昨日の観戦の人数は7300人以上でした。群馬の人はもちろん大半を納めたが、たくさんの人が仙台からきました。1000人位いたでしょうか。とにかく、高速道路の「週末どこまでも1000円」はサッカー界のためになっているようです。

そして、仙台のサポーターは特別なものです。きれいに声も動作も揃えて、どちらがホームだかわからないぐらいすごい応援をします。時々試合を見るのを忘れて、仙台ファンにうっとりしてしまいました。

一緒に試合に行ってきたうちの娘兼社員兼ザスパサポーターは最近、認知治療法についての本の和訳チェックを担当しています。心理学専門用語をたくさん覚えて、それを何気なく会話に入れるようになりました。昨夜のコメントは「仙台サポーターの統合的な力は首尾一貫していますね。」