Literary Translation: a Practical Guide by Clifford E. Landers
I’m back to translating Dogtown from scratch, but this time I’m learning to do the right way. My mistake was approaching it from a typical interpreting angle. I should have approached it from the literary translation angle and so, I have been reading some random articles, essays and books to learn how it’s supposed to be done. There are quite a few books that focus on theories and philosophical issues, which isn’t what I was looking for so I was pleased to find this one. It does what it says: it’s a basic practical guide for translators. It even includes a list of a typical translator’s tools and financial issues.
Boy Alone: A Brother’s Memoir by Karl Taro Greenfeld
How I came to have a copy of this book is rather odd. I’d been trying to get a hold of a Japanese novelist when someone mentioned Fumiko Kometani, which had me googling her name. Somewhere along the line, I’d discovered her oldest son has written a memoir about her autistic son last year. I was curious enough to ask a friend – who read all materials possible about autism – about it. Without a reply, she sent me a copy.
Boy Alone is Japanese-American journalist Karl Taro Greenfeld’s recollections of growing up with a severely autistic brother during the 1960s and the 1970s during a time when doctors and other medical experts didn’t know much about autism. He also recalls his parents’ reactions, questions and handling of Noah’s ‘oddness’, which was eventually determined to be severe autism.
There’s already a wealth of information about Noah: Karl’s playwright and scriptwriter father – Josh Greenfeld- wrote three non-fiction books, apparently in form of diaries, about Noah and the effects on his family (his artist and novelist wife Fumiko Kometani and their oldest son Karl): A Child Called Noah: A Family Journey; A Place Called Noah, and A Client Called Noah (all were published 1989). In these, the family rejects the term ‘autism’, preferring to believe Noah to be severely developmentally disabled. However, in Boy Alone (published in 2009 – twenty years after Josh Greenfeld’s last Noah book), Greenfeld believes Noah may have severe autism, but his stance seemed to be mercurial throughout the book, though.
While Greenfeld’s writing seems to have a dispassionate – and occasionally with a tone of frustration and anger – view of his brother Noah, there is a strong sense of love and compassion as well, but there’s a strong underline that he knows Noah will never be a brother he wants and needs, and that kills him sometimes. He basically held back no punches and threw in a gut-kicking twist in the end. It was an interesting read, but I didn’t quite like his attitude.
He seems to equal a disability with… well, you know, instead of accepting autism as part of Noah, he views it as Noah’s burden. Or rather, Noah as their family’s unfortunate burden. Greenfeld frequently refers Noah’s autism as an ‘affliction’; something that needs to be cured. Sometimes he seemed defensive for having autism in his family at all, as if it’s a mark of shame. Now and then, throughout the book, he gave a mental ‘what can you do?’ shrug or a shot of bravado, in sense of “and yeah? what are you going to do about it?’, after making a provoking comment.
It’s typical, really, for families who had to deal with this alone before the 1980s (which is when doctors, researchers, psychologists and blah blah finally figured out what autism was). I did keep that in mind while reading Boy Alone but still, some of his comments irritated the fuck out of me. I do recognise, however, that I’m from a different generation and I have never had an ongoing relationship with a person with a disability that severe, so I’m in no position to criticise someone who did. Perhaps it’s his seemingly passive aggressiveness that pissed me off? I don’t know. I can’t pinpoint it, to be honest.
Regardless, Boy Alone has been an interesting read. I think some parents of autistic children may find some parts of his book upsetting or provoking, especially that odd twist that tears down a hope that all parents secretly or openly nurse. On the other hand, it’s an interesting chance to view through a sibling’s eyes.