2015 Fiscal Year Research-status Report
Contemporaneous Translation as an intermedial cultural practice: refinding relationships among hybrid cultural productions, the hyper-local environment, and the online network
| Project/Area Number |
26503012
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| Research Institution | International Christian University |
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Principal Investigator |
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| Project Period (FY) |
2014-04-01 – 2017-03-31
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| Keywords | translation studies / comparative culture / manga / cultural studies / hybrid works |
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| Outline of Annual Research Achievements |
Research activities: presented papers at two international conferences: ""Contemporaneous translation and Minamata disease as unfinished cultural business"" at the IATIS Conference in Belo Horizonte, Brazil 6-11 July 2015, and ""Minamata Disease, ephemera, new media and new forms of dissent""at the Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art workshop at the International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2015) held at Simon Fraser University. There were three special lectures organized at ICU to explore the notion of contemporaneous translation in the form of overlapping places, voices, and performance; and forms of retelling and circulation included, one with poet Moya Cannon, linguistic scholar Professor John Maher, and master shamisen player Takahashi Chikuzan; another that introduced more than 200 students to manga artist Yada Eriko's Soranoito, a manga on Yokkaichi pollution, and launched a group translation project to translate this remarkable work into English; and a third special event that featured renowned translator Kakinuma Eiko discussing the sexual politics of 21st century novel and film translation by looking at her recently published Japanese translation of Patricia Highsmith's 1950s novel Carol and the new film adaptation of the same story by director Tod Haynes. I also attended a symposium on Re-evaluation Translation as a Driving Force in Scholarship"" at Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyuu Centre in Kyoto, and the premiere screening of Linda Ohama's documentary film Tohoku no shingetsu・A New Moon Over Tohoku at Sendai Mediateque.
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| Current Status of Research Progress |
Current Status of Research Progress
1: Research has progressed more than it was originally planned.
Reason
I had the opportunity to attend international conferences; arrange a number of very successful and well-attended events; work in archives at Simon Fraser University; interact with a number of artists, scholars, and translators within and outside of Japan; and get a paper published, which is a good signal that an extended work on contemporaneous translation will find an interested publisher.
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| Strategy for Future Research Activity |
This year planning is underway for a symposium in January 2017 at ICU's Dialogue House on manga, comics, and film as translational texts that encourage contemporaneous translation by calling attention to different versions of a story at once through different media and how to translate them. Although the invitees are not finalized, it is hoped that Hilary Chute (University of Chicago), a prominent comics researcher will be the keynote speaker, to talk about Disaster Drawn, her discussion of comics that revolve around war and conflict, including Nakazawa Keiji's Ore ha mita; Professor Isabelle Aredondo of SUNY Plattsburgh, who will look at super-8 technology and personal film storytelling; as well as manga and comic artists and translators. In addition to the organization of this special symposium on contemporaneous translation and hybrid cultural productions, I will be reading a paper on Maus as a translational text at the Rethinking Peace Studies symposium to be held in early June at ICU, which will draw a remarkable group of scholars, artists, researchers, and others to talk together on the themes of Translation,Memory, and Dialogue. I will be working, as well, on a book length study of contemporaneous translational texts for publication in 2017.
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