My project, “A Journey Through the Gate: Translating Tawada Yōko’s Essay ‘The Gate of the Translator, or Celan Reads Japanese’ from both the German and the Japanese” will focus on two source texts: Tawada’s German-language literary essay “Das Tor des Übersetzers oder Celan liest Japanisch” from the volume Talisman (1996) and her Japanese-language literary essay “翻訳者の門、シェランは日本語を読む時” [Honyakusha no mon: Sheran wa Nihongo wo yomu toki] from the volume カタコトのうわごと [Katakoto no uwagoto] (1999), both about thirteen pages in length. Profesor Kono is advising me for the Japanese translation, and Professor Keyler-Mayer for the German translation. The two texts are an enigma: although arguably the same essay by the same author, they are written in two different languages and at times contain diverging content. Her essay(s) address the translatability of Paul Celan’s poetry into the Japanese language, exploring the ways in which certain texts resonate, or, in her words, “peer into” their target languages through the act of translation. As an exophonic writer, Tawada writes in multiple languages, transcending typical boundaries of language, nation, and identity to produce new and creative ways of understanding all three such realms. It is this author’s aim to, in producing two translations from different source languages into the same target language, unify the two source texts and illuminate the effect of the “gate” of translation upon them.
by Kerry Walker, '21