[Sca-cooks] Working from original vs "translation"

[Solveig]

Noble Cousins!

Greetings from Solveig! There was cryptic mention of this list over 
on the Japanese Mailing List, so I tried to search for whatever the 
fuss was about. I found a number of comments about Japan, and decided 
to respond to them. So, here they are in no particular order.

>I deal with this on a regular basis at work. I've found
>that "description" isn't really a description in the context I
>find it in. It has been bastardized into meaning "name" because of
>a poor Japanese to English translation that was made over 5 years
>ago. Now we are stuck with a database that lists a part's name
>as "Description" and the description is "Item". I can see that
>happening with the recipes and translations over the course of
>hundreds of years. Even between translators sitting next to each
>other translating the same document there is a disparity in the
>results. (The funny thing is the the American translator always
>thinks his translations are better than the Japanese/American's
>translations).

To quote a professional historian friend of mine, "a translation of a 
primary  source is a primary source". That said, the translation in 
question needs to be accurate and should be accompanied with the 
tools to check it. As for your two friends. Ability in specific 
languages is not a matter of genetics. It really does not matter what 
your friends look like. You have said nothing about your Japanese 
American friend which would predict that he would have superior 
Japanese to your other American friend.

Finally, not only have I seen some pretty poor translation out there, 
I have even seen some Japanese-Japanese engineers misread Japanese 
engineering manuals. The document in question described the IEEE 488 
bus and a chip which implemented this bus. The result was that the 
unit designed by the Japanese engineer did not work.

>It is also a mistake to assume that a "primary" source is either 
>primary or accurate just because it is old.

My friend the professional historian makes the same point. He points 
out that even a contemporaneous source can be a secondary source. A 
source is primary if it enbodies direct knowledge of the subject.

>The space under the table top was "cut away", as some Japanese 
>restaurants do so Gaijin can dangle their legs rather than sit cross 
>legged or in the proper kneeling posture.

Please do not be too hard on the restaurant. Not only have I seen 
this sort of arrangement in restaurants in Toukyou, I have seen this 
arrangement in a well-to-do Japanese home in Kyouto.
-- 

					Your Humble Servant
					Solveig Throndardottir
					Amateur Scholar

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| Barbara Nostrand, Ph.D.         | Solveig Throndardottir, CoM, CoS, Fleur |
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