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Roundtable: The Translation and Publication of Contemporary Japanese Literature
Organizer and Chair: Stephen B. Snyder, Middlebury College
Discussants: Jay Rubin, Harvard University; Jennifer Crewe, Columbia University Press; Dennis C. Washburn, Dartmouth College
Contemporary Japanese fiction is currently being translated into a large number of foreign languages for publication in book markets around the world. As one of the most provocative elements in the recent globalization of Japanese culture, it has attracted attention not only from Japan studies specialists and educators but from general readers as well. The recent success in various national markets of works by Murakami Haruki, Kirino Natsuo, Ogawa Yoko, and Yoshimoto Banana, among others, is seen by some in the publishing industry as the advance guard in a new wave of global Japanese fiction that will parallel the successes of J-Horror, J-Pop, and anime. This roundtable, which is being planned in conjunction with the J-Lit Center, a Tokyo-based NPO dedicated to the promotion of contemporary Japanese literature, would bring together translation theorists and practitioners as well as representatives of the publishing industry to discuss ways to encourage the translation and publication of significant works of contemporary fiction and, as a consequence, enhance the study and teaching of Japanese literature. The organizers would send targeted invitations to translators, teachers of Japanese literature, and representatives of the publishing industry in order to widen the discussion beyond the roundtable participants. Topics to be addressed would include:
--issues in the translation, study and teaching of contemporary Japanese literature;
--the use of translated fiction in the teaching of Japanese literature;
--current conditions and potential problems in university-level translation education;
--strategies for training literary translators; and
--the publisher’s perspective; difficulties associated with the publication of translated fiction.