NHK Folktale Translations Now a Book

By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok

Japan’s national public broadcaster, NHK, has offered folktale translations via website and radio broadcast which are now a book: Once Upon a Time in Japan. This book was translated by Roger Pulvers and Juliet Winters Carpenter, using scripts compiled by the NHK World Radio Japan English Section. A review appears here at BookDragon, a blog of the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center.

BookDragon’s Japan page also lists other Japanese books in English translation. Well worth a look!

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Reflections on Kenji: Visionary, Green, and Ever the Optimist

By Sako Ikegami, Kobe

Renowned translator of Japanese literature Roger Pulvers writes this week in the Japan Times about Kenji Miyazawa (creator of Ihatov) and how his life and views have meaning for us today, two-and-a-half years after the Tohoku earthquake.

Long-gone writer tells it how it is

NHK Website Offers Folktale Translations

By Juliet Winters Carpenter, Kyoto

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK has a new website that offers translations into multiple languages of three Japanese folktales. (I translated the second folktale, The Tale of the Bamboo-Cutter, into English.)

The translations into other languages—Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish, and Vietnamese—are all based on the English versions, which announcer Yuko Aotani reads aloud beautifully, with appropriate music and sound effects. The illustrations are great too—and all three stories will eventually be published as picture books.

The website does a terrific job of introducing the Japanese-to-English translators, as well, offering “studio interviews” with profiles, photos, and extended interviews about the translations. What a great idea!

Juliet Winters Carpenter (left) and announcer Yuko Aotani

Aotani and Arthur Binard, the translator of Urashima (or Urashima Taro)

Aotani and Roger Pulvers, the translator of Crackle Mountain