Paper short abstract:

This presentation describes how questions of access, location, technical expertise, and the politics of memory affect three different approaches to text mining the Mitsui Mi'ke Mine archive: indexing by research assistants, machine learning, and crowdsourcing.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation describes the possibilities and challenges of different approaches to text mining. It compares three approaches to mining the Mitsui Mi'ke Mine archive, one of the largest historical archives in modern Japan that includes 20,713 individual documents dating from 1889 to 1940. The three approaches are: 1) The creation of an index of the archive using a team of research assistants. The challenges of this approach included funding including issues of international transfer fees and tax implication in Japan, finding a head research assistant who was highly knowledgeable in reading cursive Japanese (kuzushiji), recruiting research assistants on Twitter, automating some of the data entry, establishing rules for entering the remaining data, and finally publishing the results using FAIR principles 2) A human-in-the-loop machine learning project that uses neural networks to detect and classify some one-hundred thousand stamps in the archive. This involved collaboration with computer scientists at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center and has already resulted in the publication of one paper. The computer scientists wrote the code, but they relied on content experts for training the model by manually entering some of the data. 3) Crowdsourcing the transcription of the entire text of the Mitsui Mi'ike Mine archive using the Minna de honkoku crowdsourcing website, which would have opened the tantalizing possibility of making the entire thirty-thousand pages of documents machine readable. This third possibility never took place because the Mitsui Archive was concerned about the liabilities of putting the documents online. Each of these three approaches requires different amounts of labor, types of labor, funding schemes, and amounts of time. And each yields different outcomes. Their comparison shows how issues of access, location, technical expertise, and the politics of memory can interface with various text mining technologies, research assistance, funding schemes, and publishing venues.

Paper short abstract:

This paper traces distinct features of the numerous Japanese translations based on Thomas Mann’s novel “Tonio Kröger” against the backdrop of Japan’s 20th Century intellectual-academic history. The extensive comparative analysis is facilitated by a digitally augmented criticism via Topic Modeling.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents results from my PhD project focusing on the comparative digital analysis of several Japanese translations based on the novel "Tonio Kröger" by German Nobel laureate Thomas Mann. Concepts and methods associated with the emerging Digital Humanities are applied in order to redefine prevalent notions of translation as a makeshift, semantically equivalent exchange.

To that effect, Steven Ramsay’s approach of a combined Algorithmic Criticism, i. e. determining text passages suited for further Close Reading via Distant Reading, has been proven to be heuristically adequate. Whilst traditional Close Reading only allows for a narrow scope of analysis, combining it with corpus-driven quantitative Distant Reading can expand the scope of inquiry to a substantial amount of Japanese translations. Because the combined approach includes textual characteristics that are usually neglected during Close Reading, it allows for a stilometric reassessment of literary translations.

Accordingly, a corpus-driven digital analysis further elucidates general strategies of translating Thomas Mann’s literary works into Japanese. Those strategies are considerably influenced by Japan’s intellectual-academic history: Since in 20th Century Japan, Mann’s writings are predominantly read and translated in an academic context, the development of Japan’s academic institutions before and after World War II needs to be considered.

Accordingly, my project aims to exemplify the historic complexity of literary translation in 20th Century Japan. Translating Thomas Mann into Japanese isn’t merely a necessity provided just so that non-native readers can satisfy their interest in foreign literature, but directly tied to changing cultural and educational interests, politics and attitudes towards the West.