Where's the 漢字?

[caleb carter]

Dear PMJS community,

Hello, I'm a doctoral candidate currently conducting dissertation research on the mountain site of Togakushi-san 戸隠山 (Nagano Ken) during the early modern period.  I'm somewhat new to the list, so apologies if this topic has come up in the past.

As someone who's been studying Japanese religion, history and classical language for the past number of years, I'm often puzzled to come across academic books on Japan (or China, Korea) that omit the character readings from names, places, texts, art, and so forth from all parts of the book.  This kind information would seem valuable to an audience that comprises a high percentage of scholars and students.  Guidelines among academic publishers seem to vary considerably, with some including kanji (e.g., with a term's first appearance or at the end of the book) while others provide none.  This question has come up in a number of seminars I taken too.  Just curious about the background on this issue and if there is any explanation for not including this type of information in scholarly works?

Cheers,
Caleb

.......................
Caleb S. Carter, Ph.D. Candidate
Asian Languages & Cultures, UCLA
2011-2012 Japan Foundation Fellow
Keio University, Tokyo

[Amanda Stinchecum]

Dear Caleb,

It would be helpful if you would clarify your query.  Do you mean books on Japan (China, Korea) published in English and other Western languages?  And is the question why a publisher might choose to include or not include kanji for important proper nouns?

Or are you asking about books published in Japan that do not include readings (furigana) for proper nouns that appear in the text, naturally, in kanji?

Amanda 

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[Howell, David]

If you are asking about books in English, once upon a time, the cost and hassle of printing characters was an issue. Now I think the bigger issue is that that characters scare away non-specialist readers (or that's the perception in any case). Nonetheless, I suspect most academic publishers are willing to print characters if the author makes the case. Of course it depends on the publisher. Personally, I don't put characters in my work unless there is a compelling need to do so. Specialists can figure the characters out, and non-specialists don't care (and might be frightened off, apparently).

If you are asking about works in Japanese, I suppose the authors often feel it's not necessary (even when it is), but with personal names I think they don't do it because often there's no way to know for sure how a name should be read. That's a buck we cannot pass, unfortunately. I just saw a guy on TV named 佐藤仁. The Satō part is easy enough, but is his given name Hitoshi, Jin, or something else? Turns out it's Jin, but who could know without asking him?

David Howell

[caleb carter]

Dear all,

Thank you Amanda Stinchecum, for asking me to clarify my original post.  I was referring to academic books written in English about Japan, Korea, or China where the publisher leaves out the characters for proper names.

And thank you, Dr. Howell.  I didn't realize that this was often a decision left up to the author.

Best,
Caleb

[Amanda Stinchecum]

Unfortunately, for those of us who write in English (or other European languages) as opposed to scholars who write in East Asian languages, we are forced to make a decision about how a personal or place name is read in order to include it in our writing.  My understanding (received from the librarian who catalogued the Japanese books in the East Asian Library at Columbia) is that the reading of a name should be supported by two published sources that provide the reading.  There are a number of potential sources for readings of proper nouns that appear in pre-modern sources, including biographical dictionaries, gazetteers, maps, encyclopedias, and contemporary sources in other languages.  I'm sure there are many more.  For readings of present-day proper nouns, newspaper articles often include readings, Japanese and Western library catalogues available online, information provided at the end of a book (I forget what this is called) about the author(s), etc.

Not to say there are no problems . . .

Amanda

[Jordan Sand]

I recently had a conversation on a related matter with an editor at UC Press.  I was advocating the insertion of kanji in English-language texts on Japan less for proper nouns than for key concept terms.  I have also been encouraging this in the Journal of Asian Studies.  My reason is that it is helpful to readers of Chinese.  It's my impression that Chinese characters make it into the English-language academic writing on Chinese subjects rather more than in writing on Japan.  It is always welcome to see the characters when one has some notion of the ideas being discussed but can't be sure of the characters through romanization alone.

Jordan Sand

[Mary Louise Nagata]

I think a good compromise argument could be made for providing the 漢字 at least in a footnote as well as a list of names and terms in an appendix. This way the reader without kanji literacy could ignore them while the rest of us could benefit from the information.

Mary Louise

[Janet R. Goodwin]

On the issue of including kanji in English-language texts:

When I was finishing Selling Songs and Smiles in 2006, the publisher
requested that I not include any more kanji then necessary in the body of
the text. Pages with kanji would have had to be handled separately, and
that increases publication costs. (This, of course, may have changed in
the last few years.) Instead, I appended a glossary with kanji and
definitions for all the specialized Japanese terms that I used, along with
the less familiar proper names. Also, Japanese titles in the bibliography
were rendered in kanji as well as in romaji.

I think we have to keep in mind that readers don't fall neatly into two
groups, specialists who read Japanese and non-specialists who do not.
Many people are learning how to read Japanese, and I think we should try
to accommodate them by providing kanji whenever possible. Also, there are
terms that might not be familiar even to Japan scholars outside a narrow
specialty. And including kanji in the bibliography helps us to find books
and articles in Japanese language sources. So I hope that we can include
kanji in at least glossaries and bibliographies whenever possible.

Name readings present another problem, of course. Even experienced
Japanese scholars can't necessarily determine how a name was read, so when
publishing in English we just have to make an educated guess. The
standard default, I learned from my teachers in the kanbun workshop, was
to use the on reading.

--Janet Goodwin

[Kristina Troost, Ph.D.]

Janet's point about how helpful kanji are to people learning the field
resonated with me; I remember the JW Hall texts on premodern history with
their appended glossaries. At the time I was learning both Japanese and
Japanese history, and they were very helpful.

Authors names are much easier in this era of online catalogs, but even
then they are not without their problems. A case in point is the author
of 肉体のアナーキズム. NDL says that his name is pronounced クロダライジ
and
KuroDalaiJee (but their authority record describes this as a guess), while
WorldCat says Kuroda Raiji. The characters are 黒田雷児 and/or 黒ダライ児 .
On
the particular book, he uses Kuro Daraijee, but he is also affiliated with
a museum in Fukuoka where he uses the other reading.

It might also be worth noting that Monumenta Nipponica includes characters
consistently.

Kristina Troost

[Andrew Watsky]

I personally find the characters for Japanese terms and names to be
very helpful in texts written in languages other than Japanese. One
solution, at least for books, is to put them not in the main body of
the text, but in the index, accompanying the romanized terms/names,
where presumably all important ones would appear. This also makes the
characters easy to search for, so if a term/name comes up many times
in a book, the reader need only consult the index to find the
character. There are times when including characters in the body of
the text is necessary to clarify meaning, but putting them in the
index is sufficient in many cases.

Andy Watsky

[Nobumi Iyanaga]

Dear Colleagues,

On Mar 5, 2012, at 1:48 AM, Jordan Sand wrote:

> I recently had a conversation on a related matter with an editor at UC Press. I was advocating the insertion of kanji in English-language texts on Japan less for proper nouns than for key concept terms. I have also been encouraging this in the Journal of Asian Studies. My reason is that it is helpful to readers of Chinese. It's my impression that Chinese characters make it into the English-language academic writing on Chinese subjects rather more than in writing on Japan. It is always welcome to see the characters when one has some notion of the ideas being discussed but can't be sure of the characters through romanization alone.

I think this is a very good point. I am editing a journal (Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie), which supposes readers not only in the U.S. and Europe, but also (at lease we hope) those scholars in concerned fields in Asian countries (China, Korea and Japan). I think this should be the case for any journals not limited to an area, and pretending to publish the most advanced results of study. One of our rules is to add a transliteration to any kanjis (or other characters written in original scripts) at the first occurrence of the word, and to use the traditional forms of the kanjis. The latter point (different variant forms of kanjis, used in different countries) raises delicate problems. I believe the traditional forms of kanjis should be something like a "lingua franca" in East-Asian scholarly community, but in fact, it seems that nowadays, many Continental Chinese people have difficulties to read these forms of kanji. On the contrary, most Japanese people, not specialized in sinology, have great difficulties to read Continental simplified hanzi... Even though, I think we should endeavor to use the traditional forms of kanjis in order to keep the "lingua franca" literacy in our study fields. Technical terms in Buddhism or Confucianism are same in all East-Asian cultures, but they are read with different pronunciations. It is important to make people specialized in different cultures understand each other, so that they would be able to have broader comparative perspectives.

Concerning the proper nouns, another difficult issue is the place names: for some of the most evident names, such as Tokyo (we always use the form "Tōkyō") or Kyoto ("Kyōto"), or Beijing or Taipei, we do not add kanjis. But for any other place names, we try to add them. In Japan, everyone knows the kanjis for, say, Saitama, but can we suppose the same for Chinese or Korean people? I think the same thing is true for Chinese or Korean place names for Japanese readers. But by which criteria can we distinguish "evident names" from other names? This is not evident at all... At least, my personal policy is "it is better too much than too little".

Another point is the names of publishers in bibliographical data. I notice that almost all publications in European languages omit to add the original script characters for publishers. But if we want to purchase a book based on such bibliographical indications, it may often happen to have difficulties to do so. I would say that references which can not be easily checked are not really useful.

You would say that such plethora of kanjis and other information is possible only for specialized journals. But as Professor Goodwin wrote:

On Mar 5, 2012, at 4:07 AM, Janet R. Goodwin wrote:

> I think we have to keep in mind that readers don't fall neatly into two groups, specialists who read Japanese and non-specialists who do not. Many people are learning how to read Japanese, and I think we should try to accommodate them by providing kanji whenever possible....

I totally agree with her, and would like to add that in fact, we are all learning, we are all students... So we need as much information as possible.

Best regards,

Nobumi Iyanaga
Tokyo Center of EFEO

[Michael Pye]

Dear colleagues,

Where are the kanji?
Well, in general I agree with the tendency to say that more are better
than less. How much more depends on the purpose of the publication.
They can be disruptive if overplayed.

But I must say that I have always felt most frustrated by writers on
various aspects of East Asian religions who decline to provide any
kanji on the grounds that specialists know them all anyway (do I
believe that?) and other people (idiots like me) don't need to know
them at all.

I take this opportunity to announce Volume 2 of the series Eastern
Buddhist Voices entitled "Listening to Shin Buddhism" (see futher
BELOW), which contains quite a lot of kanji. The authors in it are
modern, but they are usually referring to older Japanese and Chinese
material. It was therefore difficult to decide on a precise policy for
the use of kanji. In the end it was felt that apart from first cases
in the main texts themselves, two integrated lists at the back could
be of value. One gives a conspectual list of the titles of a wide
variety of Buddhist texts, both Chinese and Japanese, while the other
gives names which arise.

As has been pointed out, there is a particular problem arising from
the fact that Japanese and Chinese simplified and otherwise adjusted
their kanji script without any mutual consultation at all, which has
been quite disastrous. However, it sems to me that the clock cannot
just be put back in this respect. So in some cases alternatives need
to be shown. But when and where!

Note that theoretically the shinjitai for Japanese kanji only apply to
the normative lists (Joyo Kanji etc) so that in many cases there may
seem to be a mixture of types. This however is formally correct (I
understand) in modern Japanese, ven if it doesn't look pretty to others!

all best wishes, Michael Pye
------------------------
Professor of the Study of Religions, University of Marburg, Germany (retired)
Research Associate in Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Kyoto, Japan

JUST OUT:

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Starting Points of Modern Dialogue
edited by Michael Pye, Ōtani University
series: Eastern Buddhist Voices

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320pp, Equinox Publishing Ltd.

A collection of seminal classic essays on Shin Buddhism
In the early twentieth century, The Eastern Buddhist journal pioneered
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[caleb carter]

Dear everyone,

Thank you to all those who contributed comments to this string.  This is a question that's been in the back of my mind for a few years now.  Its nice to hear others' insights - many of which I had not considered - on the benefits and potential drawbacks to providing reference to the kanji for Japanese names and terms in academic scholarship.  For me (and it sounds like some others as well), being able to locate the kanji somewhere in a published article or book is extremely useful as a I learn to navigate the field, both in terms of content and language.  And aside from the practical implications, there's always the simple pleasure of being able to readily discover how a romanized term should be read in the original characters. 

Best wishes,
Caleb

[Scheid, Bernhard]

Dear all,

My impression has always been that especially American publications avoid both Kanji and footnotes for purely aesthetical reasons. And I agree, the first impression of a text without notes and foreign characters is much more appealing than a chaotic mix of different writing systems and different font sizes. German publications on the other hand tend to provide more Kanji and also prefer footnotes to endnotes by the way. While I understand that this can look overly academic and may shy away non-specialists, when using a text for research, I very much prefer having the kanji as well as the notes as close to the main text as possible. Monumenta, by the way, may have inherited their editing traditions from the originally German editors.

Still uncertain what is actually the best solution. As an editor of a web based handbook of Japanese religion (http://www.univie.ac.at/rel_jap/an ) I have chosen to make certain Japanese terms clickable so that they then show the Kanji equivalent - a solution for future net books?

Best wishes

Bernhard Scheid

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von Nobumi Iyanaga
Gesendet: Montag, 5. März 2012 02:11
An: pm...@googlegroups.com
Betreff: Re: [PMJS] Where's the 漢字?

[robin d. gill]

I agree with Nobumi Iyanaga’s “we are all students” and “need as much information as possible” reason for more Japanese script (not just romaji) in print, and would add that re. poetry, with the exception of old waka originally written in a manner that is as semiologically opaque as romaji,* including the script makes it far easier for others to assist you, provided it is in the text for ready comparison rather than hidden in separate notes. Recently, a Japanese amateur appeared from nowhere (well, Facebook!) to give me more corrections for “Fly-ku!” than I have received to date for all my other books combined. There is irony in this, as he approached me partly because he had read a book of mine that Englishes as “Mistranslation Paradise” (Goyaku-tengoku: Hakusuisha), but I am delighted and will post the Errata on my website before too long. Now, he is starting on the 3000 poems in Cherry Blossom Epiphany. 

 

*On second thought, there is something to be said for providing a Japanese script gloss for even all-hiragana waka, as an orthographically easy-to-use rendition of a waka would help us recognize the content more easily. Such has, after all, been done in Japan for centuries. 

 

And what Jordan Sand writes about proper names. Yes. And one can even include more names in Japanese than are Englished, simply because they are useful to have for searching in Japanese but it is too time-consuming to confirm their pronunciation. Such can be relegated to notes.

 

Bernhard Scheid mentions an aesthetic problem.  I would argue that to the contrary, books may look better for including the script. Believe it or not, there are many people who are not readers or even students of Japanese who enjoy seeing more of the real thing in their books.  People have other complaints about the books I publish, but I have yet to hear that they want less Japanese in them. And, who says publishers know what people want.  The sales department may aim for the lowest common denominator for all potential readers where they should be thinking of the same for a larger share of a more selective group of readers to whom they just might end up selling more books because the general market has far more competition so only a few best-sellers actually benefit from such marketing.

 

敬愚

--
"Rise, Ye Sea Slugs!"

[Jos Vos]

I've never been a hero at remembering the kanji, but I've always thought nothing looks more attractive than an English text which incorporates lots of them, and lots of footnotes as well (preferably at the bottom of each page).
 
Many publishers (even academic ones) underestimate their readers. In the current climate, where lots of American and European pop stars and athletes (supposedly) have their names tattooed in Chinese, surely any reader who's attracted to premodern Japanese literature is not going to run away screaming when they see kanji.
 
Apart from being an essential, invaluable reference tool, kanji may well be an additional selling point.
 

---

Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 01:22:42 -0500
Subject: Re: [PMJS] Where's the 漢字?
From: robin...@gmail.com
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

[Mark Schumacher]

Hello PMJS Members,

RE: Where's the 漢字?
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pmjs/0epIOpg3w5k

The advent of Internet technologies has greatly advanced traditional publishing and web-base publishing. For this reason, I agree with (1) Robin Gill that authors must lobby more strongly with traditional publishers to include kanji and macrons -- āaǎaōūŌŪ etc -- in their publications, and also with (2) Bernhard Scheid that web-based authors should include new technologies (like POPUP NOTES) to include both kanji and footnotes on the same page as they occur. I also agree with Scheid that journals like Monumenta Nipponica (and the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, I might mention) are preferable because they put footnotes on the same page as they occur -- I hate flipping to the back of the book. Iyanaga Nobumi and others make great points as well. This is no simple matter.

Lest we forget, Internet technologies arrived back in the 1990s. Some of the first people to fully employ the new technologies were Jim Breen (Monash University, Australia) with his EDICT J-E Dictionary and Charles Muller with his Dictionary of Japanese Buddhism (sign in with user name = guest). Muller was much more aggressive in his approach, providing spellings, macrons, and kanji for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian languages. We must also thank the introduction of the UNICODE FONT SET in the past ten years, which allows us to present all this information in fonts that can be read by most major browsers (Microsoft, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari) -- even Sanskrit is doable. Macrons are no longer a problem and most publishers now include them. Another major online resource is JAANUS, written by the late Dr. Mary Neighbor Parent. She elected to discard macrons entirely, and to write the macrons in long notation: hence, in her monumental dictionary, Fudō Myō-ō 不動明王 is written as "Fudou Myouou." Although I think her dictionary is the "bee's knees," and I find it to be one of the most comprehensive and understandable, I wish she had opted for macrons.

Traditional publishing houses have been slow to adopt the new technologies, and there are many reasons why, including the extra time and manpower needed to input macrons and kanji and then to verify/confirm these entries. Plus, perhaps, publishing houses don't employ people with a knowledge of Asian languages, making it all the more time-consuming and money-draining. 

One of the reasons I began to write my A-to-Z Photo Dictionary of Japanese Religious Statuary back in 1995 was because of a dissatisfaction with existing literature on Japanese Buddhist statuary and religious traditions. Back then, most popular publications and academic publications failed to give the kanji or the macrons. Another pet peeve was the crazy tendency for publications to give English names for the many Indian/Chinese/Japanese/Korean sūtra -- but without giving the kanji or mentioning when they were written, translated, transmitted, or otherwise authored. That drove me nuts, so I set out to write a web site aimed at all readers (scholars, art historians, practitioners, and laity alike) that provided all this missing information.

To date, my web site has been well received. But I must say that adding the macrons and kanji and dates, then confirming the spellings and pronunciations, is a maddening experience. In many cases, it takes longer to input/confirm these kanji/macrons/spellings than it does to write the page. So be it. That is probably the strongest point about my web site's popularity with both scholars and common folk.

Finally, we must congratulate ourselves. We have come a long way in a short time. The Wade-Giles system was difficult to say the least. Then came Professor James Legge -- replacing Chuang Tzu with Kwang-?ze, which required a bizarre font -- and then Needham's revision, which substituted T'ao for Thao and Ch'ang for Chhang. As one of my favorite modern pre-Internet scholars (Alan Watts) once said: "Department of utter confusion. In San Francisco's Chinatown, they will spell out the Wade-Giles Feng as Fung, and Wang as Wong, so as not to be read as whang. On the other hand, a restaurant labeled Wooey Looey Gooey is called -- to rhyme with 'boy' -- Woy Loy Goy. The problem of romanizing ideograms came to an even higher level of comedy when, shortly before World War II, the Japanese government tried to authorize a new romanji system in which FUJI became HUZI, and Prince Chichibu became prince Titibu.....Germans would certainly have referred to that noble volcano as 'Ootzee,' while the British and Americans would have sniggered about Prince Titty-boo. Fortunately, the Japanese have dropped the reform......although many Americans go on calling the cities of Kyoto and Hakone as 'Kigh-oat-oh' and 'Hack-own...........the scholarly establishment has worked it out so that to tell you about the Lord Krishna, I must have a typographer who can make it Kṛṣṇa, and to whom does this tell anything, other than those already in the know?'". 

I realize Watts' quote (from Tao, The Watercourse Way) contradicts what I said earlier, but his viewpoint is also valid. There is no fully satisfactory way of romanizing Japanese (or, for that matter, Chinese, Tibetan, Korean, or Sanskrit). To provide as much precision as possible, those of us in the Japanese field should all lobby harder for the use of Japanese ideograms (kanji) in our publications.

sincerely
mark in kamakura

--

MARK SCHUMACHER Tel/Fax: 0467-24-2384 (in Japan) and 81-467-24-2384 (outside Japan)

[Matthew Stavros]

I think the tension between accessibility and specialization is at the heart of the issue. Where we draw the line is a function of so many factors, including content, perceived audience, publisher, technology, etc.  

Throughout, I keep thinking of how frequently authors of English-language literature on Europe pepper their writing with Latin, French, and sometimes Russian (in Cyrillic!). Sometimes even their punch lines are in these languages, often spoiling it for the rest of us. 

We doing work on CJK are encouraged, sometimes compelled, to make our writing accessible to a broad audience, even if at the expense of providing details prized by specialists. To this, I have no particularly strong objection. In fact, I sympathize with Morgan Pitelka's argument that we should try our best to render terms into English. It seems, however, that many people writing on the West have no such compunction. Or could it be that they assume much more knowledge, linguistic and contextual? 

I suppose the explanation isn't just unfairness. Perhaps the salient issue is the fact that the medium is English and in that context, certain things can rightly be assumed. 

As we have seen in this discussion, however, many of us also make assumptions about what our colleagues will understand (Kanji readings, etc.). In the end, isn't all about striking a balance between clarity/readability/accessibility and conveying specialized appeal? 

Matthew Stavros
www.mstavros.com
www.pmjs.org

[robin d. gill]

Matthew mentions tension between accessibility and specialization. I do not feel that is the issue when it comes to the audience or content. Our chagrin at finding quotes in a language we do not read unaccompanied by a translation may help explain why foreign script scares away some readers; but once it is realized that including more Japanese script can make writing more inviting rather than less, even people who are not drawn to it for aesthetic reasons should find it something to be grateful for. Specialists, who might otherwise have to search for a poem, term, or name, save time, and all without access to the originals get to enjoy what they otherwise (I must pay $1000 for a friends of the library card for a year of access) must do without.  

 

Of course, sometimes it is fun to have tidbits only for the special reader, and one could have macronic prose as well as poetry, but that would be for novelty books and not relevant to the larger arguement.

 

Who cannot agree that we should try our best to render terms into English, when doing so also helps us think more about what we are translating?  Yet, if that term is really difficult – and not just a case where we fail to wait until the word reaches the tip of the tongue -- to translate, and we cannot find a way around it,  we will either need to use an English term that is a far from perfect match or invent one.  Either way, it would not hurt to have the original also given, at least the first time it is used, unless we were sure romaji would suffice.

 

The only reasons not to include Japanese script in the main text that make sense to me are that it takes more room and that most editors and designers lack computers enabled to read it. This means much higher editing and production costs unless the author can do it all and send a properly embedded pdf for the publisher to send to the printer. I would guess – just a guess as I do not work for a publisher -- that is where you’ll find the real bottleneck.

 

敬愚

[Michael Pye]

Dear colleagues,

To Robin Gill's:

<The only reasons not to include Japanese script in the main text that make
sense to me are that it takes more room and that most editors and designers
lack computers enabled to read it. This means much higher editing and
production costs unless the author can do it all and send a properly

embedded pdf for the publisher to send to the printer. I would guess ? just
a guess as I do not work for a publisher -- that is where you?ll find the
real bottleneck.>

I don't these are real worries. For one thing, if needless repetition
is avoided, that's just part of the book or article.

More significantly perhaps, nobody should be discouraged by the idea
that it is more costly or that computers can't read it on the
publishers' side etc. My recent experience is that they certainly can.
But embedded pdfs may well lead to more trouble; that may not be good
advice, except for a table or something. Recently I was urged to use
a comination of Gentium and Mincho. The latter, as most will know, is
a very nice script. Depending on the copy editor, there may be an
occasional exchange of information.

For example I have learned that Gentium could be in size 12 and Mincho
in size 11, thus keeping the lines equally apart whether there are
kanji in there or not. One copy editor gave up on that. Now I learn
that this can be set up (by them) as a repeated "paragraph
instruction" so that there is no problem about it at all.

I also once had to explain that if there are 4-5 kanji, they don't
have to be kept on one line. The person thought that as there were no
spaces they were one "word" an shouldn't be separated. I had to
explain about the uninterrupted sequence of characters which therefore
just continue on to the next line as they fall, without any need for
"word-wrap" and so on.

So those are things to look out for. But apart from an occasional
short conversation there really shouldn't be extra costs nowadays.
(Years ago people sent bits and pieces to Hongkong for special
treatment!)

all best wishes, Michael Pye
------------------------
Professor of the Study of Religions, University of Marburg, Germany (retired)
Research Associate in Buddhist Studies, Otani University, Kyoto, Japan

Zitat von "robin d. gill" <robin...@gmail.com>:

> Matthew mentions tension between accessibility and specialization. I do not
> feel that is the issue when it comes to the audience or content. Our
> chagrin at finding quotes in a language we do not read unaccompanied by a
> translation may help explain why foreign script scares away some readers;
> but once it is realized that including more Japanese script can make
> writing more inviting rather than less, even people who are not drawn to it
> for aesthetic reasons should find it something to be grateful for.
> Specialists, who might otherwise have to search for a poem, term, or name,
> save time, and all without access to the originals get to enjoy what they
> otherwise (I must pay $1000 for a friends of the library card for a year of
> access) must do without.
>
>
> Of course, sometimes it is fun to have tidbits only for the special reader,
> and one could have macronic prose as well as poetry, but that would be for
> novelty books and not relevant to the larger arguement.
>
>
>
> Who cannot agree that we should try our best to render terms into English,
> when doing so also helps us think more about what we are translating? Yet,

> if that term is really difficult ? and not just a case where we fail to

> wait until the word reaches the tip of the tongue -- to translate, and we
> cannot find a way around it, we will either need to use an English term
> that is a far from perfect match or invent one. Either way, it would not
> hurt to have the original also given, at least the first time it is used,
> unless we were sure romaji would suffice.
>
>
>
> The only reasons not to include Japanese script in the main text that make
> sense to me are that it takes more room and that most editors and designers
> lack computers enabled to read it. This means much higher editing and
> production costs unless the author can do it all and send a properly

> embedded pdf for the publisher to send to the printer. I would guess ? just
> a guess as I do not work for a publisher -- that is where you?ll find the
> real bottleneck.
>
>
> ??

>>> ------------------------------

>>>
>>> Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 01:22:42 -0500

>>> Subject: Re: [PMJS] Where's the ???
>>> From: robin...@gmail.com
>>> To: pm...@googlegroups.com
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I agree with Nobumi Iyanaga?s ?we are all students? and ?need as much
>>> information as possible? reason for more Japanese script (not just romaji)

>>> in print, and would add that re. poetry, with the exception of old waka
>>> originally written in a manner that is as semiologically opaque as romaji,*
>>> including the script makes it far easier for others to assist you, provided
>>> it is in the text for ready comparison rather than hidden in separate
>>> notes. Recently, a Japanese amateur appeared from nowhere (well, Facebook!)

>>> to give me more corrections for ?Fly-ku!? than I have received to date for

>>> all my other books combined. There is irony in this, as he approached me

>>> partly because he had read a book of mine that Englishes as ?Mistranslation
>>> Paradise? (Goyaku-tengoku: Hakusuisha), but I am delighted and will post

>>> the Errata on my website before too long. Now, he is starting on the 3000
>>> poems in Cherry Blossom Epiphany.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> *On second thought, there is something to be said for providing a
>>> Japanese script gloss for even all-hiragana waka, as an orthographically
>>> easy-to-use rendition of a waka would help us recognize the content more
>>> easily. Such has, after all, been done in Japan for centuries.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> And what Jordan Sand writes about proper names. Yes. And one can even
>>> include more names in Japanese than are Englished, simply because they are
>>> useful to have for searching in Japanese but it is too time-consuming
>>> to confirm their pronunciation. Such can be relegated to notes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Bernhard Scheid mentions an aesthetic problem. I would argue that to
>>> the contrary, books may look better for including the script. Believe it or
>>> not, there are many people who are not readers or even students of Japanese
>>> who enjoy seeing more of the real thing in their books. People have
>>> other complaints about the books I publish, but I have yet to hear that
>>> they want less Japanese in them. And, who says publishers know what people
>>> want. The sales department may aim for the lowest common denominator
>>> for all potential readers where they should be thinking of the same for a
>>> larger share of a more selective group of readers to whom they just might
>>> end up selling more books because the general market has far more
>>> competition so only a few best-sellers actually benefit from such
>>> marketing.
>>>
>>>

>>> ??

>>>
>>> On Mon, Mar 5, 2012 at 7:09 AM, Scheid, Bernhard <
>>> Bernhar...@oeaw.ac.at> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> My impression has always been that especially American publications avoid
>>> both Kanji and footnotes for purely aesthetical reasons. And I agree, the
>>> first impression of a text without notes and foreign characters is much
>>> more appealing than a chaotic mix of different writing systems and
>>> different font sizes. German publications on the other hand tend to provide
>>> more Kanji and also prefer footnotes to endnotes by the way. While I
>>> understand that this can look overly academic and may shy away
>>> non-specialists, when using a text for research, I very much prefer having
>>> the kanji as well as the notes as close to the main text as possible.
>>> Monumenta, by the way, may have inherited their editing traditions from the
>>> originally German editors.
>>>
>>> Still uncertain what is actually the best solution. As an editor of a web
>>> based handbook of Japanese religion

>>> (http://www.univie.ac.at/rel_jap/an) I have chosen to make certain

>>> Japanese terms clickable so that they then
>>> show the Kanji equivalent - a solution for future net books?
>>>
>>> Best wishes
>>>
>>> Bernhard Scheid
>>>

>>> -----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht-----

>>> Von: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von
>>> Nobumi Iyanaga

>>> Gesendet: Montag, 5. M�rz 2012 02:11
>>> An: pm...@googlegroups.com
>>> Betreff: Re: [PMJS] Where's the ???

>>>
>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>
>>> On Mar 5, 2012, at 1:48 AM, Jordan Sand wrote:
>>>
>>>> I recently had a conversation on a related matter with an editor at UC
>>> Press. I was advocating the insertion of kanji in English-language texts
>>> on Japan less for proper nouns than for key concept terms. I have also
>>> been encouraging this in the Journal of Asian Studies. My reason is that
>>> it is helpful to readers of Chinese. It's my impression that Chinese
>>> characters make it into the English-language academic writing on Chinese
>>> subjects rather more than in writing on Japan. It is always welcome to see
>>> the characters when one has some notion of the ideas being discussed but
>>> can't be sure of the characters through romanization alone.
>>>
>>> I think this is a very good point. I am editing a journal (Cahiers

>>> d'Extr�me-Asie), which supposes readers not only in the U.S. and Europe,

>>> but also (at lease we hope) those scholars in concerned fields in Asian
>>> countries (China, Korea and Japan). I think this should be the case for any
>>> journals not limited to an area, and pretending to publish the most
>>> advanced results of study. One of our rules is to add a transliteration to
>>> any kanjis (or other characters written in original scripts) at the first
>>> occurrence of the word, and to use the traditional forms of the kanjis. The
>>> latter point (different variant forms of kanjis, used in different
>>> countries) raises delicate problems. I believe the traditional forms of
>>> kanjis should be something like a "lingua franca" in East-Asian scholarly
>>> community, but in fact, it seems that nowadays, many Continental Chinese
>>> people have difficulties to read these forms of kanji. On the contrary,
>>> most Japanese people, not specialized in sinology, have great difficulties
>>> to read Continental simplified hanzi... Even though, I think we should
>>> endeavor to use the traditional forms of kanjis in order to keep the
>>> "lingua franca" literacy in our study fields. Technical terms in Buddhism
>>> or Confucianism are same in all East-Asian cultures, but they are read with
>>> different pronunciations. It is important to make people specialized in
>>> different cultures understand each other, so that they would be able to
>>> have broader comparative perspectives.
>>>
>>> Concerning the proper nouns, another difficult issue is the place names:
>>> for some of the most evident names, such as Tokyo (we always use the form

>>> "T?ky?") or Kyoto ("Ky?to"), or Beijing or Taipei, we do not add kanjis.

[robin d. gill]

I hope Michael Pye is right re publishers' ability to work with Japanese, so we will find books with Japanese scattered throughout as inexpensive as those with English alone. My guess is that some can and some cannot, depending upon the cost of employing bilingual editors.  And they would need them, as editting and design is only economical done prior to pdf, embedded or not. 

 

Embeddding leading to "trouble"?  Maybe I was not clear enough, as I did not mean to imply that anyone should work on an embedded pdf! Let me clarify what I meant in one short paragraph as it matters IF the prices of books with Japanese remain too high (I know they have come down already, but there is still a way to go!), an alternative way of going to press may help.

 

The world's largest printer (Lightning Source) needs pdf's to be embedded to certain specifications and, hurrah!  for 7 or 8 years now, one need only choose one overall setting to do this.  So, IF you have a publisher that cannot do the job or says it will up the price of the book, or you waste too much time explaining stuff to editors and designers,  it should be easy for you to do it yourself and either send it to your publisher ready to go.

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von
Nobumi Iyanaga

Gesendet: Montag, 5. März 2012 02:11

An: pm...@googlegroups.com
Betreff: Re: [PMJS] Where's the ???

Dear Colleagues,

On Mar 5, 2012, at 1:48 AM, Jordan Sand wrote:

I recently had a conversation on a related matter with an editor at UC

Press.  I was advocating the insertion of kanji in English-language texts
on Japan less for proper nouns than for key concept terms.  I have also
been encouraging this in the Journal of Asian Studies.  My reason is that
it is helpful to readers of Chinese.  It's my impression that Chinese
characters make it into the English-language academic writing on Chinese
subjects rather more than in writing on Japan.  It is always welcome to see
the characters when one has some notion of the ideas being discussed but
can't be sure of the characters through romanization alone.

I think this is a very good point. I am editing a journal (Cahiers

d'Extrême-Asie), which supposes readers not only in the U.S. and Europe,

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[ronald toby]

Dear Amanda,

I wonder if I could trouble you for an English equivalent--or just a
short explanation--of 芋布 and 芋麻. It's among the diplomatic gifts
from Korean kings to shoguns, and the Yaeyama page has a an explanation
of ふーぬぬ, but no translation. JapanKnowledge is no help, and I figure
if anyone knows, it's you.

Yoroshiku!!!

By the way, I officially retired from the university two weeks ago,
though I'll continue to teach on a part-time 非常勤 basis for a few more
years.

How are you doing? Hope all's well.

Best,

Ron

[Amanda Stinchecum]

Ron,

A little more context would be helpful. How does Yaeyama come into this? What is the document and its date?

芋（いも, う） may be a 誤字 for 苧. 苧麻 is ramie, or the fiber taken from the ramie plant, and in Yaeyama, ぶー is ramie and ぬぬ is ぬの（布）is cloth. If the gift originated in Korea, that also suggests ramie. However, bashou-u 　is bashou fiber (fiber-banana fiber is the awkward translation). If you want me to look into the orthography for u in this context, please send an email to my personal email address rather than to the list.

Best,
Amanda

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/

[Shin Jae-ho]

Dear Dr. Toby

If your question is on 苧布, not 芋布, it is called as 'mosi' in Korean and usually translated into 'ramie cloth' in English,
at least in modern Korea.
I think it was not quite different in the Choson Korea.


Jae-ho SHIN

Ph.D. Candidate
University of Pennsylvania 

 

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[Joan Piggott]

Hello all,

For the long history of "choma" in Japan itself, see Nagahara Keiji's useful book

芋麻、絹、木綿の社会史　　吉川張文館　　２００４

Wakita Haruko also wrote a useful review of the book in <Nihonshi kenkyu> 531 (2006) 56-64

Best,
Joan P.

Joan R. Piggott
Gordon L. MacDonald Professor of History
Director of the Project for Premodern Japan Studies
History Department
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California

----- Original Message -----
From: Shin Jae-ho <sh...@sas.upenn.edu>
Date: Tuesday, May 29, 2012 8:20 am
Subject: Re: [PMJS] Re: 芋布
To: pm...@googlegroups.com

> Dear Dr. Toby
>
> If your question is on 苧布, not 芋布, it is called as 'mosi' in Korean

> andusually translated into 'ramie cloth' in English,

> pmjs+unsubscribe@googlegroups.**com<pmjs%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com>> Visit the PMJS web site at www.pmjs.org

> > Contact the group administrator at edi...@pmjs.org
> >
> >
>

> --
> You are subscribed to PMJS: Premodern Japanese Studies.
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[Lynne E. Riggs]

Where's the Kanji? Now a brief style guide...

In response to the very interesting discussion on this list in March, a few of us in the Society of Writers, Editors, and Translators collaborated to create a style guide for use of Kanji in English text along with pointers regarding inputting of macrons for romanized Japanese. Updating the Japan Style Sheet entries on these two subjects, and based on the experience and knowledge of professional editors (myself, Nina Raj, Richard Sadowsky, and Mark Schumacher), the article is now online at the SWET website (swet.jp). 

We hope this will useful along with many other resources that can now be enjoyed online at our new website in the Columns and Professional Resources sections. 

Lynne E. Riggs

>>> -----Urspr�ngliche Nachricht-----

>>> Von: pm...@googlegroups.com [mailto:pm...@googlegroups.com] Im Auftrag von
>>> Nobumi Iyanaga

>>> Gesendet: Montag, 5. M�rz 2012 02:11

>>> An: pm...@googlegroups.com
>>> Betreff: Re: [PMJS] Where's the ???
>>>
>>> Dear Colleagues,
>>>
>>> On Mar 5, 2012, at 1:48 AM, Jordan Sand wrote:
>>>
>>>> I recently had a conversation on a related matter with an editor at UC
>>> Press.  I was advocating the insertion of kanji in English-language texts
>>> on Japan less for proper nouns than for key concept terms.  I have also
>>> been encouraging this in the Journal of Asian Studies.  My reason is that
>>> it is helpful to readers of Chinese.  It's my impression that Chinese
>>> characters make it into the English-language academic writing on Chinese
>>> subjects rather more than in writing on Japan.  It is always welcome to see
>>> the characters when one has some notion of the ideas being discussed but
>>> can't be sure of the characters through romanization alone.
>>>
>>> I think this is a very good point. I am editing a journal (Cahiers

>>> d'Extr�me-Asie), which supposes readers not only in the U.S. and Europe,