Finally completed the Japanese translation of an Icelandic report on how to reform the monetary system. The report is about Iceland, but it is also very relevant to Japan and to other modern countries with elaborate credit creation systems.
I chose the text for the simple reason that monetary reform will sooner or later become a topic of conversation in Japanese politics. Japanese monetary policy is increasingly looking like a patchwork of ad hoc remedies, and it seems that a need for some discussions on the fundamentals of the system will have to take place soon.
Needless to say, if the status quo is fine and if the current system ensures stability, then there is no need for such a discussion and no need for such a reform. That is much easier and simpler and everybody will be happier with it. However, sadly, that just does not seem to be the case. Hence the need to say something about it.
The Japanese translation of the report is my contribution to the debate. It will hopefully circulate under a creative commons license so that readers can redistribute it as they please to their friends and acquaintances and coworkers and family.
Compared to other works I have translated in the past, this report was very easy for several reasons. First, the original English text is written so clearly and concisely that no guesswork was required. This is a huge relief for a translator, especially since all too often clients come with half-baked texts, hoping to hit two birds with one stone, that is, hoping to have me do both editing and translating at the same time, which I am more or less obliged to do in such situations. Second, the topic of discussion is interesting and has substance. Again, all too often, translators are put in a position where they must translate a pile of rhetoric with no content. This is stressful, at least for me, because it makes me feel as if I am partaking in the lying and deception. Finally, the report was a great introduction to macroeconomics and monetary policy. As a translator, I was in the privileged position of reading the text really closely and really digesting every argument in it so as to capture the spirit of the text in Japanese. As Yoko Tawada put it to me once, a translator engages in a "fiery reading experience." This was exactly my experience with the report, which was good.
So, all in all, a great experience. It really feels good to have completed this project.
On a different note, today, I went to a screening of Margarethe von Trotta's Die abhandene Welt. The script is based on von Trotta's own experience, and it touches upon something universal, namely, kinship. In Japan, Kenji Nakagami is famous for exploring the topic of kinship and all its implication, almost obsessively. I felt the same intensity of expression in von Trotta's film today. Discovering or losing a kin is, for von Trotta, like discovering or losing a world. Like Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac, Die abhandene Welt traces a certain intense spiritual trajectory faithfully. I did not catch all the musical references in the film, and it might be that some of the references are quite crucial to understanding what is really going on. However, before anything else, what I took away from the film was that intense experience which von Trotta so precisely traces. It resonates with Susan Sontag's call for "an erotics instead of a hermeneutics." The difference is, though, that von Trotta's film does offer itself as a work to be interpreted as well. Although, at the moment, I am not sure what to make of it beyond the said experience...
On philosophy, the prevailing wisdom is that "we" cannot step outside "our culture" and so any attempt to think will be made within the context of cultural particularity. Be that as it may, the question is how free thinking is nonetheless possible. Are there not universal questions and thoughts which humans, qua free thinkers, all share despite their cultural differences? I think it quite plausible that that is the case. The question with which thinking begins bears a lot of the weight of what will follow, and so it is important, at least in my mind, to find a way through the thickets of historical contingencies to locate that point from which thought can freely develop on its own.
On philosophy, the prevailing wisdom is that "we" cannot step outside "our culture" and so any attempt to think will be made within the context of cultural particularity. Be that as it may, the question is how free thinking is nonetheless possible. Are there not universal questions and thoughts which humans, qua free thinkers, all share despite their cultural differences? I think it quite plausible that that is the case. The question with which thinking begins bears a lot of the weight of what will follow, and so it is important, at least in my mind, to find a way through the thickets of historical contingencies to locate that point from which thought can freely develop on its own.
