Paper short abstract:

In any translation project, it is imperative to carefully decide who the intended readership is before start writing. My goal in this presentation is to use the specific case of Kojiki as means for offering some ideas about how to improve the readability of translations of ancient Shinto texts.

Paper long abstract:

While no translation can be said to offer absolute accuracy, it is no less true that some translation projects present a much greater risk of incoherence than others. This depends mainly on the degree of similarity between the source and target language, but needless to say chronological distance may also be involved. It is one thing to translate an excerpt from a Japanese newspaper into modern English and another to render into the same language a paragraph from an old Japanese classic such as Kojiki. Any translation of such ancient texts is bound to require large amounts of contextual information, usually presented in the form of end notes and footnotes.

What is this "contextual information"? In the case of Kojiki, the information required includes not only historical background, but also explanations of a wide variety of topics such as the semantic ambiguities in the use of Chinese characters; the oft-difficult interpretation of the names of deities, emperors, and heroes; and above all references to the works of earlier scholars. It is not unusual for these supplementary materials to be double or even triple the length of the translation of the original text. However, while these long notes may be a treasure trove of information for specialists, they can become a tedious burden for the average reader. Some translators work to keep the number of such notes to the minimum necessary, and some will eschew specialized subjects as a strategy for mitigating such burdens. While the resulting text may be more attractive to the eyes of an uninitiated reader, a more scholarly audience may disagree.

It is imperative, therefore, to carefully decide who the intended readership is for any translation project and then render the subject text in writing that meets the standards of that target audience. My goal in this presentation is to use the specific case of translations of Kojiki as means for offering some ideas about how to improve the readability of renderings of classic Shinto texts into other language that can navigate between the shoals of simplistic vulgarization and over-specialization.