Japanese 469 - Japanese Literature, and Culture II

Something I learned was that しのぶ and 乱れ are a sort of play on words that go hand in hand. Due to this, I decided to use the word entangled to show how the heart is entangled like the しのぶ (Shinobu plant). I also wanted to use this word in both lines to show the relationship between them. I learned that the last line is a statement in which the speaker does not feel responsible for their own desire. While I had initially thought not specifically stating “you” in the third line was a demerit to the other translations, I realized that if you said “because of you” in the third line, it would have been too strange to then say “as it is definitely not I”, or any variation of that. As such, I had to change the other line to “who is to blame” which still captures the same overall emotion even if it doesn’t focus the blame on a specific person (the “you”).

The main aspect I tried to amplify was the relationship between the Shinobu plant and the heart. I did this because as an American with no knowledge of the Shinobu plant, I couldn’t understand why the Shinobu plant was mentioned in the poem, as such, I wished to explain this to the English reader without having to add a footnote. I think I made the metaphorical connection between the Shinobu plant and the heart clear by the repeated use of the word entangled. I also think my translation makes it quite clear that Michinoku is a place. In my final translation, “surely not I” has been removed leaving out the final line of the poem “我ならなくに”. This was is due to the fact that this line was deemed unnecessary and would have been redundant for the English translation.

In relation to the professional translations (click         for professional translations), I think that my translation follows more closely to the line order of the original. I also think that I translated the poem in such a way that the cultural grammar becomes clearer to the American reader than in the other translations. I make a clearer distinction between the relationship of the Shinobu plant and the entangled heart. Similarly, none of us have left out any important parts of the poem, which, I do see happen from time to time in other translations of different works. All of the translations follow rather closely to the original instead of using the poem as a guide for creating their own story (which I often notice in McCulloughs translations).