For Carleton University alumnus Emmett Harris, his interest in learning Japanese led him to fully translate the short story Curry Rice by Kiyoshi Shigematsu into English. The Japanese program at Carleton held an event Nov. 2 to celebrate his achievement.
Carleton Japanese professor Elizabeth Sowka said she and other professors in the department decided to put this event together not only to celebrate Harris’s achievement, but to inspire other students in the program to continue pursuing Japanese studies.
The department also announced that it recently received permission from Shinchosha, the publishing company in Japan, to publish Harris’ English translation.
Harris, who graduated from the communication and media studies program with minors in Japanese and film studies in 2020, gave a presentation describing his process and stages of progress translating the book at the event.
The event was also an interactive experience for attendees. The Japanese program provided a basket of Japanese snacks for guests to try, and they were invited to participate in a translation activity following Harris’s presentation.
Sowka assigned the short story as a reading assignment for the students in the Reading in Japanese – Kanji II course in 2019. After reading the story, Harris said he wanted to take his understanding of the book further by translating it into English.
“It was one of the first stories that I read in Japanese,” Harris said. “Even at the time, for a learner it was still a challenge, but it was interesting. I felt at the time that translating it would kind of give me better insight into understanding the way that Japanese writing works.”
Harris said he faced challenges when it came to translating the meaning of the text in full detail. Since Japanese and English differ in grammar structure, direct translations would not make for accurate sentences.
“In English you have words that have multiple meanings or deeper meanings, and so trying to look for equivalents [in Japanese] can be helpful,” Harris said.
Many Carleton students learning Japanese, such as special student Minh Binh, said they were inspired to learn more about Japanese after immersing themselves in entertainment media such as anime and manga.
“Originally I thought I’d just be looking at anime or manga in terms of that culture, but as I got older, I looked into more of the social issues around Japan,” Binh said. “After looking at that, I got the desire to learn their language.”
Though most of the people who attended the event were Carleton students enrolled in Japanese courses, Japanese exchange students such as Yuka Kusawake were also in attendance. She said he was excited by the event’s large turnout.
“I’m glad that so many people are interested in learning Japanese,” Kusawake said. “The passion to try to understand the language itself and the culture really makes me happy as a native speaker.”
Since translating Curry Rice, Harris has gone on to complete the translations of manga from two different series. He has also translated a few other short stories by Shigematsu.
Harris said he hopes to become a professional Japanese interpreter, either abroad or in Canada. He is currently studying to take the N2 level of the Japanese Level Proficiency Test, which measures reading and listening skills in grammar, kanji and vocabulary. Achievement of the N2 level is required to work in Japan.
“Translation is something that I find really interesting and fulfilling, and so if I could make it into a living that would be really awesome,” he said.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly spelled the publishing company, Shinchosha as “Shin shou sha.” Additionally, the Japanese program was misidentified as the Japanese Language Learning Department. Yuka Kusawake was misgendered. Finally, the Japanese Language Proficiency Test was incorrectly explained as a test of writing and speaking skills, rather than reading and listening skills in grammar, kanji and vocabulary. The Charlatan regrets the errors. The article was last updated on Nov. 26, 2022 to reflect these changes.
Featured image by Amatur Rahman Salam-Alada.
