Our first colloquium of winter quarter brought with it three unique presentations from faculty in the UW department of Asian Languages and Literature. Professors Paul Atkins and Ping Wang spoke on their research as scholars of East Asian poetry. Professor Justin Jesty gave an overview of the ways in which he has been utilizing translation as a pedagogical tool in his classrooms.
Professor Atkins began with his reflections on translating medieval Japanese Zen poetry, with a particular focus on Gozan Bungaku, or the Literature of the Five Mountains. This vast collection of influential poetry was composed by monks across five, state-sponsored monasteries throughout Japan between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. The collection has posed several challenges to scholars and translators alike. Gozan Bungaku was written in Classical Chinese; its domesticity or foreignness within both Japanese and Chinese literary studies has been debated. According to Professor Atkins, however, Chinese is the linguistic “other” that allows us to even understand classical Japanese literature as a genre.
As his pandemic project, Professor Atkins has gone to work translating the poetry of Zekkai Chushin, a particularly skilled monk known for his ability to write and recite poetry in perfect Chinese. The Shokenko collection of Zekkai Chushin’s work spans 172 poems and dozens of additional letters, prefaces, and other documents. For Professor Atkins, one of the most important aspects of his mediation of these texts has been to craft cross cultural translations that are attentive to the experience of an imagined reader. Because these poems have survived centuries of linguistic, social, and cultural changes, it is important to Professor Atkins that contemporary readers of medieval Zen poetry enjoy a similar feeling of leisure and inspiration as those of Japanese monastic orders once did.
Professor Ping Wang presented on the translation of the word and concept of “nature” and the nature of translation. Her presentation brought to light how fascinating just one word can be as it travels across time, space, and language. Prior to the 1917 Literary Revolution, Classical Chinese was the principal language for East Asian literature. Until the end of the eighteenth century, more texts were written in Classical Chinese than all the rest of the books in the world at that time combined. National modernization efforts in the twentieth century led to the decline of the use of Classical Chinese.
As the language of literature transformed, so did the vocabulary of writers. A newly translated word for “nature” came to popular use after centuries of there being no such equivalent word in early Chinese texts. While the concept of nature was consistently present in Chinese poetry and prose, it was used rather as a modifier to describe a state of being of a different object. To write of natural phenomena was to write specifically of landscape, countryside, forest, mountains, river, and so forth.
“Ziran” appeared in Chinese as the word for “nature” in the mid-1800s. Professor Wang traces it back to the Chinese translation of the book Elements of International Law by Henry Wheaton, wherein the phrase “natural right” was translated as “ziran zhi quan.” The word itself is perhaps a turn loan from Japanese: A Kanji term that was once derived from Classical Chinese. Through the middle of the twentieth century, “ziran” appeared with more frequency in the poetry and literature of China, especially as the environmental movement gained traction around the world. In spite of its historical novelty, this word along with many others have eclipsed the traditional vocabularies of Classical Chinese within only one century.
To conclude the day’s presentations, Professor Justin Jesty spoke about his fourth year Japanese reading course. Professor Jesty uses translation in the classroom as a tool to check Japanese reading comprehension. With real world collaborators from Japan, Professor Jesty leads his students in a group translation effort in order to prime them to use their language skills outside of the classroom.
The texts that students in the class translate align closely with Professor Jesty’s own research, allowing him to take the position of an advisor. As students connect to groups that are writing to raise awareness of social and political issues, they become accustomed to reading Japanese as written for a Japanese audience, rather than for language learners. But because this is still a language teaching course, students continue to toil over the complexities of grammar and syntax. Translation for publication simply pushes students beyond the goal of “good enough” or roughly comprehensible in English. Instead, they enter a new realm of accountability and responsibility.
According to Professor Jesty, translation for publication works well as a goal that can frame the discussions of nuance and creativity in and across language. At no point during the class do students focus too much on English; both language remain in parallel to one another, so that students can exercise their ability to think between them simultaneously. The more closely students examine the art of crafting an English sentence, the greater appreciation they seem to have for the intricacies and quirks of Japanese.
We thank Professors Atkins, Wang, and Jesty for spending time with us in our ongoing colloquia series. Our next event will be on Friday, February 19 with members of NOTIS. Click here for more information.