Nuance (1)
Japanese Introductory Sentence Structure Theory
Japanese Intermediate Sentence Structure Theory
Japanese Advanced Sentence Structure Theory
Japanese Professional Sentence Structure Theory
And a couple of Japanese dictionaries.
I forced all of it into my head and muttered the same thing more than once. “This is grindwork, no doubt about it.” No matter how many pages I turned, the end never seemed to come into view.
Well, that was obvious enough. Still, it wasn’t impossible.
If anything, it was the most familiar kind of cram-style education a Korean could ask for.
It had worked from elementary school through high school and all the way into university, and I had always been a top student.
In other words, I had no deep resistance to this method. There was so much material that I had been prepared to stay up all night from the start.
Once I began, I wanted to get it done in one shot.
I also had no desire to keep these thick books tucked under my arm for any longer than necessary. By around four in the morning, I finished off the stale coffee I’d left in a mug with a few gulps and finally said, “I’m done.” I had made it through those miserable Japanese books at last.
“There are five hours left until work.”
Subtract the time it would take to get ready and walk there, and that left four.
It was just enough time for a quick nap. But for some reason, I didn’t feel like doing that.
The Japanese I had just jammed into my head were tangling themselves up, sticking to one another, wriggling around with far too much energy. Whenever I learn a new concept, the word tends to haunt me until I actually use it.
As if it were begging me to put it to work.
And this was an entirely unfamiliar foreign language I had crammed into my brain all at once. Naturally, my mind was in an uproar.
“One look. Just one look before I sleep.”
At this rate, it was too noisy to sleep properly anyway. I pulled out the Japanese original of Theater Lesson.
And then—
“Oh.”
I was jolted fully awake.
It was no longer a foreign language to me.
I didn’t need to interpret it or puzzle it out.
It was coming at me naturally, instinctively, almost like my mother tongue. And the result was clearly different from the translation.
The curtain rises. From the very bottom, the velvet drape folds upward one layer at a time. Beyond it, the stage comes into view. The children’s slender legs. The wrinkled curtain growing heavier and heavier. Before long, the curtain has risen halfway. The vertical cords stitched through it at intervals, the ones pulling and supporting the curtain as it rises, look as though they might snap at any moment. The children’s arms, chests, necks, and faces come into view. Now the curtain climbs on its cords to a point so high that even the audience can barely see it. Heavy. And burdened beyond endurance.
“Was this what the novel felt like?”
I pulled out the Korean translation and checked it.
The curtain rises. From the bottom, the velvet drape is lifted in folds. The stage begins to show behind the curtain. The children’s slender legs. The wrinkled drape grows heavy. Before long, the curtain has been raised halfway. The vertical cords set into it here and there tighten under the curtain’s weight. The children’s arms, chests, necks, and faces come into view. The curtain is lifted all the way to the top, where the audience can barely see it. Heavy and strained.
My brain lit up like a switch had been thrown.
Only then did I understand.
Why Theater Lesson had never really left an impression on me. “This is a matter of nuance.”
Nuance.
The word originally meant the subtle differences between colors,
but in language it had come to mean the texture and impression carried by words and sentences.
The meaning of the original and the translation was the same.
Nothing in the translation was wrong, either.
It had been adjusted to fit Korean tastes, which prefer concise, short sentences.
I was Korean too, so the translation naturally felt more comfortable to me. But the nuance had changed in the process. In the original, the focus was squarely on the curtain.
The process of the curtain rising from the bottom to the middle.
The process of it climbing from the middle to the top.
The writing devoted its energy to emphasizing the weight of that process, its precariousness, and how burdensome it felt.
The children appearing onstage were merely the result.
By contrast, the translation’s nuance was different. In the translation, the focus was not on the curtain, but on the people.
It wasn’t about the curtain rising, but about the person raising it.
And from that effort, the children’s figures emerged on the stage. That difference came from Korean’s basic reluctance to describe things in the active voice.
A curtain cannot raise itself. It cannot be heavy or burdensome by itself.
Those are feelings that belong to the person lifting it.
So from a Korean perspective, the translated sentence was perfectly natural. But Japanese was a little different.
Whether it was a cultural difference or a difference in cognitive structure, I couldn’t say.
Japanese was far more permissive and generous in this respect.
Not just with individual words, but with context as well.
In other words, even sentences that gave inanimate objects active agency were accepted as idiomatic, broadly speaking. Not that they would necessarily be praised as elegant, if you pressed the matter.
Which meant it was entirely possible for the curtain itself to “rise,” to be “heavy,” to be “burdensome.” It was as though the curtain itself had been emphasized as a living thing. Then why?
Why had the author chosen to emphasize the curtain in that way?
Especially the flow of it laboring upward from the bottom to the middle, and then from the middle to the top. Why bother?
“...”
After thinking it over carefully, I soon reached the answer.
“Ah. That’s it.”
Then it made sense why the translation team had missed this part.
No, maybe “missed” wasn’t the right word. Perhaps they had no choice but to.
No matter how perfectly you knew Japanese, you still had to understand Theater Lesson not only linguistically, but literarily as well.
That first paragraph was an implication.
It cut through the entire context of Theater Lesson.
And that implication must have taken control of the novel’s atmosphere.
But implications are difficult to translate.
Especially in detective fiction, where precision of interpretation tends to matter above all else, these poetic touches would be easy to overlook. Sadly, mastering Japanese and literature at the same time seems to be a difficult task.
But if it were criticism instead... maybe it was possible?
I reread the Japanese original of Theater Lesson from beginning to end that way.
And I made up my mind.
I’d cover Theater Lesson in volume 2 of Critique. Reading it in the original, this work was...
“Definitely different from the translation.”
It was absolutely worth it.
The Japanese phrases that had been knots in my head a moment ago were now lined up neatly, almost obediently.
Cute little things.
Once things had come to this, I no longer felt like sleeping.
If anything, I decided to write the criticism in Japanese as well.
Not because I wanted to show off the Japanese I had just learned,
but because I was writing about the original text rather than the translation, and that seemed more natural.
Instead, I opened a Word file. But then—
“How am I supposed to type in Japanese?”
I had no idea how to use a keyboard input method for Japanese.
Sure, when I only needed a few characters, I could draw them in with the mouse.
But I couldn’t use that idiotic method to write an actual piece.
“No helping it, I guess.”
I shut Word down.
Then I pulled out a notebook and started writing by hand with a pen. The Japanese flowed out smoothly enough.
My handwriting was a disaster, crooked and elementary-school awkward, but the title alone made me happy.
The Curtain of Murder Rose.
The next day.
I met with Team Leader Byun from the Foreign Literature Department and the editor responsible for Theater Lesson.
The first pass of the translation was outsourced, but the final review was handled by the editor.
Which meant the editor was also highly fluent in Japanese. I spoke frankly about the translation issue in Theater Lesson.
“There are limits to what I can say from a non-expert perspective, but I’d really like you to reconsider it from a literary angle. Especially the opening scene.”
“So, in the first scene, you’d prefer the curtain rising to be expressed with the curtain as the focus—am I understanding you correctly?” the editor asked.
He didn’t show it, but he was probably irritated.
Someone from another team, and not even a translator, had suddenly stepped in with revision suggestions. “Yes, that’s right.”
“By the way, Editor-in-Chief, did you already know Japanese?” Team Leader Byun asked, sounding puzzled.
A lie about having always known it wouldn’t work.
The publishing house where the Foreign Literature Department sat always checked whether applicants had a second foreign language.
I had done the same, and of course I had marked “none.” “I learned it after I joined.”
“What? No, even if you’re the Editor-in-Chief—” The editor gave a hollow laugh.
He probably couldn’t believe I was nitpicking a translation after learning a bit of Japanese.
...As expected, this was the only way.
I handed them both the Japanese criticism I’d written by hand yesterday, along with the Korean version I’d typed up this morning.
“I think it’ll be better if I show you rather than explain it out loud.”
“...Huh? You wrote this yourself, Editor-in-Chief?” The editor skimmed the content once, then looked up at me with widened eyes.
I nodded. “Yes. I couldn’t type it, so I wrote it down first. You should have no trouble reading it.”
“You’ve been in the company less than two years, and you wrote something this professional...?”
“I just kept at it. We can talk about that later. Please read it first.” The two of them each read my criticism.
Last night, I had poured everything into it.
The value I had found in Theater Lesson, and the identity of the nuance that preserved it.
And after they finished reading, both of them went—
“...!”
“...Huh?”
They stared at each other in shock, then turned back to me with trembling eyes.
“This,” the editor said, struggling to get the words out.
I finished the thought for him when he couldn’t continue. “What do you think? If that’s the reason, then there’s more than enough cause to revise the translation, wouldn’t you say?”
“We should. We really should. Team Leader, I’ll fix this. I’ll discuss it with the outsourced translator.”
“Good. I think that would be best.” Even fear seemed to flicker in their eyes.
As if they were looking at a linguistic genius—no, a linguistic monster.
I was shocked too, honestly, that my ability carried over into foreign languages.
But if I said that out loud, they’d think I was insane. So I just smiled and said, “Then I’ll leave it in your capable hands.”
“As you probably expected, volume 2 of Critique will be featuring a review of Theater Lesson. Please make sure to pass that along to Ms. Nashida.”
“Eh? Ah—yes, of course, Editor-in-Chief.” Her speech slipped between casual and formal all at once.
I left the conference room and gave them time to recover.
Tokyo, Japan.
Writer Nashida had been invited to a tea gathering hosted by a venerable old author.
He hadn’t come because he wanted to. He came because skipping gatherings like this would be rude, and so he dragged himself along reluctantly. Nashida wasn’t the sort of person who lacked social grace.
He didn’t have many friends, but he liked people, and he enjoyed these gatherings more than he let on.
After winning the grand prize of the Japan Mystery Writers Association Award, though, things had become a little awkward. “You’ve been so busy lately, Writer Nashida, and yet you still make time to come to our little gatherings. We appreciate it.”
“Exactly. You must have people inviting you everywhere. Though it is rare for a writer to enjoy going out so much.”
That was the sort of thing the others said, with thinly veiled envy in their eyes.
What they really meant, once you peeled back the surface, was that they didn’t like seeing someone who had won an award wandering around and showing his face everywhere.
But Nashida wasn’t about to take that lying down.
“Good writing comes from getting out into the fresh air now and then. I hope all of you do the same more often.”
In other words: you lot should go breathe some fresh air and write better novels while you’re at it.
The smiles that had been fixed on the other writers’ faces stiffened.
Nashida felt a little better for it, but he was still grumbling inwardly.
If you don’t like seeing me, then don’t invite me. You don’t want to be accused of ostracizing a successful writer, but once I’m in front of you, all you do is act like patronizing old men... I could spit.
Then one of the writers suddenly asked, “By the way, Writer Nashida, I heard your new work is going to be released in Korea soon?”