{"id":9496,"date":"2019-04-05T20:31:24","date_gmt":"2019-04-05T11:31:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/?p=9496"},"modified":"2019-04-05T20:31:24","modified_gmt":"2019-04-05T11:31:24","slug":"kevin-woolsey-noh-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/2019\/04\/05\/kevin-woolsey-noh-translation","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Woolsey: Noh Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

For my CIP this semester I translated scripts of Noh plays under the supervision of Professor Diego Pellecchia, who taught the Noh portion of the class on Japanese performing arts at KCJS this semester. His team is creating a website which will serve as a reliable source of information on traditional Japanese performing arts for both English and Japanese speaking audiences. <\/span><\/p>\n

Noh is a form of classical theater which generally took shape in the late 14th century and flourished under patronage of the warrior class. There are more than 200 plays still performed today, with the scripts generally written from the 14th to 16th centuries. As a result, the Japanese found in the scripts is quite different from modern Japanese; in fact, even at the time of writing the style had already become a classical written form. On top of that, the language of the scripts becomes very poetic at points, using rhetoric techniques found in <\/span>waka<\/span><\/i> poetry as well as citing poems themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n

Naturally, this presents many challenges when trying to translate Noh scripts into English. Perhaps the most notoriously difficult to translate poetic technique is the <\/span>kakekotoba<\/span><\/i>, which are basically puns. One example which can actually work in English is <\/span>matsu<\/span><\/i>, which can mean a \u201cpine\u201d tree or to \u201cpine\u201d for someone, as in to wait for a loved one\u2019s return. However, such convenient cases are rare, leaving one with two choices: come up with something clever, or just give up trying to translate it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The following is an example from the play \u7329\u3005 (Sh\u014dj\u014d):<\/span><\/p>\n

\u98f2\u3081\u3069\u3082\u5909\u306f\u3089\u306c\u79cb\u306e\u591c\u306e\u76c3 \/ nome domo kawaranu aki no yo no sakazuki (Drinking will not change this autumn night’s <\/span>sake<\/span><\/i> cup reflects the moon’s)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u5f71\u3082\u50be\u304f\u5165\u6c5f\u306b\u67af\u308c\u7acb\u3064 \/ kage mo katabuku irie ni kare tatsu (light setting upon the inlet he stands among the withering reeds,)<\/span><\/p>\n

\u8db3\u5143\u306f\u3088\u308d\u3088\u308d\u3068\u2026\u2026 \/ ashi moto wa yoroyoro to (legs wobbling,)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The <\/span>kakekotoba<\/span><\/i> in the first line is within \u76c3 (<\/span>sakazuki<\/span><\/i>): as a whole it means a <\/span>sake<\/span><\/i> cup, but the last two syllables serve as a <\/span>kakekotoba<\/span><\/i> for \u6708 (<\/span>tsuki<\/span><\/i>), the moon. This allows two readings for the first line: \u98f2\u3081\u3069\u3082\u5909\u306f\u3089\u306c\u79cb\u306e\u591c\u306e\u76c3 (an autumn night\u2019s <\/span>sake <\/span><\/i>cup which does not change upon drinking = the <\/span>sake<\/span><\/i> never runs out) and \u6708\u5f71\u3082\u50be\u304f\u5165\u6c5f (moon setting above the inlet). In other words, there are effectively two sentences, with the end of the first and beginning of the second overlapping in the sound <\/span>zuki<\/span><\/i>. I tried to reflect this in the translation, stringing two sentences together into one around the word \u201ccup\u201d. <\/span><\/p>\n

Another <\/span>kakekotoba<\/span><\/i> can be found in the third line, with <\/span>ashi<\/span><\/i> meaning both \u201creed plant\u201d and \u201cleg\u201d. The end of the second and beginning of the third line can be read either \u67af\u308c\u7acb\u3064\u82a6 (withering standing reed plants) or \u7acb\u3064\u8db3 (standing legs). I tried to reflect both meanings naturally with the phrase \u201che stands among the withering reeds\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is impossible to fully recreate the experience of reading the original through translation, but it is possible to convey some sense of the techniques present in the text beyond the surface meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am glad to have had this opportunity to not only practice my translation skills but also contribute to a project which will be a valuable resource when released.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For my CIP this semester I translated scripts of Noh plays under the supervision of Professor Diego Pellecchia … \u7d9a\u304d\u3092\u8aad\u3080 →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":464,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_locale":"ja","_original_post":"9496"},"categories":[158,10,55],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/464"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9496\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcjs.jp\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}