Hiroshima and Translation

It's now more than half a century since the horror of the first atomic bomb was unleashed on Hiroshima. But it's just 50 years today since the classic book about it, John Hersey's Hiroshima, was published as a long article in The New Yorker. Both events have a connection with translation.

First the bombing. This connection is well known to historians of the Second World War. It concerns the English translation of a single Japanese word in the Japanese government's reply to the ultimatum sent to it from the Allies convened at Potsdam (the Potsdam Proclamation). The ultimatum threatened Japan with "prompt and utter destruction" if it did not surrender unconditionally, and the word in question in the reply was mokusatsu. Unfortunately it's polysemic. It's derived from the word for silence. It can mean to take no notice of; treat with silent contempt; ignore by keeping silent; but also to remain in a wise and masterly inactivity, ie (in the context) withhold comment for the moment.The meaning chosen by the Allied translators and the media was the former one; but quite likely the Japanese prime minister Kantaro Suzuki meant the latter one. Faced with what appeared to be an outright rejection, American President Truman ordered the bombing. It's been described as "the worst translation mistake in history" and it's been argued over ever since. My own opinion is that whichever was the correct translation, Truman would have gone ahead anyway in order to save American lives and impress the other Allies, not least Stalin. He says in his memoirs:

"Let there be no mistake about it. I regarded the bomb as a military weapon and never had any doubt that it should be used."

The second connection is, on the contrary, little known. Today. 31 August 2016,

"70 years will have passed since the publication of a magazine story hailed as one of the greatest pieces of journalism ever written, Headlined simply Hiroshima, the 30,000-word article by John Hersey [in The New Yorker] had a massive impact, revealing the full impact of nuclear weapons to the post-war generation,"

Hersey's approach, which he probably picked up from reading Thornton Wilder's novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey during his journey to Japan, was to relate his story through the eyes of six of the survivors. One of them was the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto, pastor of the Methodist Church in Hiroshima. On the morning of the bombing he

"had been helping a friend move some stuff to a house in the suburbs for safekeeping (since Hiroshima itself was in constant threat of being bombed)... While they were out there they saw a bright flash of light. Knowing that something bad had happened, and being far enough from the city that they had time to react, the two men dove for shelter before the concussion from the blast could reach them.
"When they were able to emerge from hiding, Mr. Tanimoto kicked into rescue mode immediately. After helping some passersby, he surveyed the damage in the city from a hill. Instead of running as far from the disaster as he could… he ran toward the city, where he ran around tirelessly helping those who were injured or stranded."

Inevitably he was affected by radiation sickness, but he survived and became one of the people known as hibakusha in Japanese.

By November 1946, Hiroshima was published in book form. It was translated quickly into many languages and a braille edition was released. In its book format it has never been out of print since. One translation lagged, however: the Japanese one.

"In Japan, Gen Douglas MacArthur - the supreme commander of occupying forces, who effectively governed Japan until 1948 - had strictly prohibited dissemination of any reports on the consequences of the bombings. Copies of the book, and the relevant edition of The New Yorker, were banned until 1949,"

When the Japanese translation did come out, it was by a Native Translator, none other than the Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto. He had become fluent in English during his training as a minister in Atlanta, USA. However, by a technique that is fairly common in literary translating, his text was revised by a professional target-language author. He didn't publish any other translations but wrote other books on religious topics and he became well known as an advocate for victims of the bombing, and he appeared in that role on American television. The annual Kiyoshi Tanimoto Peace Prize is named after him. His translation of Hiroshima is surely one of the most poignant translations ever by a Native Translator.

Term
For an explanation of the term Narive Translator, enter essential definitions in the Search box on the right.

References
Mokusatsu: one word, two lessons. National Security Agency, 2016. https://www.nsa.gov/search/?q=mokusatsu or click [here].

Harry S. Truman. Memoirs. Volume One: Year of Decisions. http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~schochet/Truman_and_the_Atomic_Bomb.pdf or click [here].

How John Hersey's Hiroshima revealed the horror of the bomb. BBC News, 22 August 2016. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-37131894 or click [here].

John Hersey. Hiroshima. Translated by Rev. Kiyoshi Tanimoto and Kin'ichi Ishikawa. Tokyo: Hosei Daigaku Shuppankyoku, 1949. There are a few copies left in libraries: consult WorldCat. (Revision of a Native Translator by an established writer is done not only to ensure the quality of the target text but also to put a well-known name on the cover as well as an unknown one.)

Kiyoshi Tanimoto. Wikipedia, 2016.

Shmoop Editorial Team. Reverend Kiyoshi Tanimoto. Shmoop, 2016. http://www.shmoop.com/hiroshima-book/reverend-kiyoshi-tanimoto.html or click [here].

Image
Kiyoshi Tanimoto on the American TV program This Is Your Life, 1955.
Source: Christian Greco, http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xl3jx5_this-is-your-life-1955_shortfilms

Infant Translators: the Salamanca Twins

In the collection quoted from in the preceding post there is another article that deserves to be saved from drowning in the flood of literature about translation that sweeps past us these days, It's by a team of linguistic researchers, Esther Álvarez de la Fuente and Raquel Fernández Fuertes, of the Language Acquisition Lab at the University of Valladolid, Spain. The data for it was harvested from a pair of English/Spanish bilingual twins at the old university city of Salamanca, not far from Valladolid. (It's unusual to have twins as subjects, but Esther and Raquel don't follow up that aspect of the situation.) The data was videotaped and is deposited in a computerised corpus, the FerFulice Corpus, which is incorporated in the CHILDES database.

The article analyses the spontaneous and elicited translating in the speech of the boys, named Simon and Leo, from the age of 1 year 11 months to 6 years 3months; an impressive total of 178 sessions were video-recorded at regular intervals. Their mother was American, their father Spanish. Each parent always spoke to the children in her or his or own language, following the OPOL (one parent one language) principle for avoiding confusion between languages. The recordings were made in natural settings while the boys were engaged in normal play activities.

For the analysis, a matrix of variables devised by Esther was used (and modified slightly here): COMPLETENESS (complete, incomplete, null), STIMULUS (requested, spontaneous), DIRECTION (towards English, towards Spanish), ORIGIN (self-translation, translating what was said by others, situational), MAPPING BETWEEN LANGUAGES (equivalent with communicative function, equivalent without communicative function, expanded, reduced). Other researchers may care to use it. What is very desirable is to arrive at a commonly accepted set of variables in order to facilitate comparison between studies.

So let's look at some examples.

1) Mother: Can you say water?
Mother, holding up the cup of water: What is this?
Leo, reaching for the cup: Ahi! [There!]
Mother: Water?
Leo: Agua.
(Age 1 year 2 months)

This was remarkably young, indeed before the age of speaking in sentences; but it replicates Jules Ronjat's observation made a hundred years ago (see References) that his son Louis composed French/German bilingual word pairs at that age. Obviously the situation helped in the present case.

2) Simon, trying to get his toy to make a noise: Está loto [a mispronunciation of roto].
Mother, not paying attention to Simon: How about…?
Simon: B(r)eak mommy b(r)eak.
(Age 2 years 3 months)

Now he was at the stage both of sentences and of communicative intent. Still remarkably young. Furthermore he differentiates between his languages and understands the language need of his interlocutor.
But not all the children's translation attempts are successful. That would be too good to be true. Thus:

3) Mother, pointing to an elephant: Look, look, show me that animal.
Mother: What's it called?
Leo: Elefante [Spanish for elephant].
Mother: Can you say that in English?
Leo, with a trace of tears in his voice: No, elefante.
(Age 2 years 7 months)

There are several things to note in this example. First that Leo's translating – like all Natural Translation – is limited by his proficiency in the two languages. Natural Translators don't use dictionaries. Secondly that he wants to translate and feels frustrated at not being able to do so. And thirdly that his mother doesn't ask him to translate (a word that was probably not yet in his vocabulary) but to say it in English.

Without a doubt this study ranks in importance, by its length and thoroughness, with the earlier studies by Harris, Swain and others right back to Ronjat. (For more about them, enter their names in the Search box on the right.) It's one of only a handful of such studies.

One final piece of good news is that you no longer need to fork out 50 euros to buy the book in which the article appears, because Esther has posted a collection of that and other related articles in the invaluable repository Academia.edu and you can download free them by clicking here or from https://uva-es.academia.edu/Esther%C3%81lvarezdelaFuente. Some of the articles are in English some in Spanish.

Terminology
The children involved in child language brokering are usually of school age and socialised beyond the family. For much younger translators who are still confined to the family, like the ones cited above, I propose infant translator. Hence the title of this post.

References
Esther Álvarez de la Fuente and Raquel Fernández Fuertes. How two English/Spanish children translate: in search of bilingual competence through natural interpretation. In M.A. Jiménez Ivars and M.J. Blasco Mayor (eds.), Interpreting Brian Harris: Recent Developments in Translatology, Bern, Lang, 2012, pp. 95-116.

The address of the Language Acquisition Lab is www.uva.es\uvalal.

Jules Ronjat. Le développement du langage observé chez un enfant bilingue [Language development in a bilingual child]. In French. Paris: Champion, 1913. 155 p. Available online by clicking here or at https://archive.org/details/ledveloppement00ronjuoft

Images
Left: Esther Álvarez de la Fuente. Right: Raquel Fernández Fuertes.

Child Culture Brokering

In 2012 some well-wishers of mine at the Jaime I University in Castellón, Spain, put together a collection of articles related to my work on Natural Translation (see Reference below). The one that still stands out in my mind is Nigel Hall and Zhiyan Guo's Child language and cultural brokering. For several reasons, of which the main one is the concept of child culture brokering (CCB), which it introduces as an extension to the more familiar child language brokering (CLB). CLB, for any of you who don't already know it, is the interpreting that children of immigrants do between the new communities around them and members of their own families and friends who aren't yet fluent in the new language. Hall and Zhiyan enrich CLB with observations that show how such children not only convey language but also social mores. This is of course important for adaptation to a new life.

(Note that Hall and Guo were at Manchester Metropolitan University, not the University of Manchester, from where most of the Mancunian publications about translation emanate. This may help explain their originality. Hall is an authority on childhood literacy. It is noteworthy too that their data comes from England and not from the USA, which is where most of the research on CLB has been done.)

The story that they tell to illustrate their point is one that did something research papers rarely do for me: it made me laugh, Well anyway, chuckle. It's the tale of a Chinese couple from Taiwan who come to live in England with their little girl and who get caught up in the ritual of children's birthday parties, something unknown in Taiwan. The girl and her mother are faced with many new decisions: what to wear, what to give as a present, etc. But it is the child who is in contact with the English community through her school and has constantly to inform and instruct the mother. With the result that it is the child, as in most CLB situations too, who runs the show.

"The cultural impact of the children's behaviour at an accommodative level was that the parents' views and beliefs about childhood were constantly being challenged In many respects everyday living it was like living on a frontier between Chinese notions of civilized child/parent relationships and British children's autonomy and freedom. Many things the children said or did, things that they had adsorbed unquestioningly from their school and peer communities, created dissonance and discomfort for their parents."

Fortunately there was a happy ending.

"The parents were very sensitive to their children's need to fit in to the school and peer community, and the result was that there was considerable compromise on the part of the parents."

And the story ends with a father saying, "If I go back to Taiwan I would start having birthday parties for my children."

And Hall and Guo's conclusion:

"We may have put less attention on language to give more attention to these children's other mediating behaviours, but like Harris we believe in the importance of studying people in their everyday lives, and there is nothing more fascinating and informative than the everyday lives of children."

Child culture brokering is a virtually untilled field that cries out for more investigation.

Reference
Nigel Hall and Zhiyan Guo. Child language and cultural brokering. In M. A. Jiménez Ivars and M. J. Blasco Mayor (eds.), Interpreting Brian Harris: Recent Developments in Translatology, Berne, Lang, 2012, pp. 51-75. Available through Amazon.

Image
Source: Bricks 4 Kidz. Spot the Chinese kid.