{"id":833,"date":"2016-08-15T01:35:50","date_gmt":"2016-08-15T01:35:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/?p=833"},"modified":"2016-08-15T03:16:08","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T03:16:08","slug":"interview-tyran-grillo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/?p=833","title":{"rendered":"INTERVIEW: Tyran Grillo"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"grillo1\"Tyran Grillo is a translator, music critic, and scholar who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Japanese Literature at Cornell University. His music-related musings can be found at ecmreviews.com<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Rachel Cordasco: When and why did you start translating Japanese fiction?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tyran Grillo:<\/strong> My best friend in high school was a boarding student from Tokyo. It was because of him that I became interested in Japan. Whenever he returned home for winter break, he would come back with the latest music, video games, and novels to share. While the former two were relatively easy to appreciate as someone who didn\u2019t know the language, I had to rely on his synopses to understand the latter. He was particularly fond of science\/speculative fiction, and indeed the first novel in his collection to catch my eye was Hideaki Sena\u2019s PARASITE EVE. Having played the video game of the same name on his Playstation, I was fascinated to learn of the novel that inspired it, and that its depth and attention to detail went above and beyond Square\u2019s indulgent, if myopic, adaptation. I vowed there and then (this would have been 1997) to learn Japanese well enough to translate it, and sure enough I was fortunate enough to publish it with Vertical a decade later. I was hooked (though, in retrospect, in need of much more experience), as I\u2019ve since translated eight more books, along with a smattering of short stories, from Japanese into English.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RC:\u00a0 What were some of the challenges you faced while translating MR. TURTLE by Yusaku Kitano? Did you have contact with the author during the translation process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> Every translation project, of course, has its own set of challenges, but MR. TURTLE<\/a><\/span>\u2019s were more formidable than most. For reasons best left to the reader\u2019s discovery, the lyrical structure and wordplay of the novel are unusual, and I struggled to capture the profound simplicity\u2014if not also the simple profundity\u2014of Kitano\u2019s brilliant writing (and, to be sure, if any of that brilliance doesn\u2019t shine through, it\u2019s due solely to my inadvertent obfuscation). In particular, Kitano\u2019s clever punning of the word \u201cturtle\u201d exercised my linguistic muscles more than most literary translations I\u2019ve done, in which difficulties tended toward maintaining the integrity of social and\/or cultural discrepancies. As you know from reading the novel, the term \u201creplican[t]urtle\u201d is the running descriptor of its protagonist, a word which originally combines repurika (replica) with kame (turtle) as repurikame. I was in most cases able to come up with suitable portmanteaus in English for such terms. I broke form, however, with the term kamemorii\u2014that is, kame (turtle) combined with memorii (memory). Unable to devise a single compound around it, I settled on \u201cturtle recall,\u201d which maintained the same pun-like feeling and SF feel in English. All of which is to say that MR. TURTLE required me to be freshly creative in order to ensure that the Anglophone reader experience would be true to Kitano and his vision. The author and I were in contact throughout the translation process, and he was more than helpful in answering or clarifying the occasional confusion. He\u2019s one of those rarities who, in his own sense, practices what he preaches, and is head-over-heels dedicated to his characters and the world(s) they inhabit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RC: You are also a music critic. Have you found any interesting connections between writing that kind of criticism and translating a text?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> Definitely. Writing about music is, for me, an act of translation, as I am essentially using one medium to convey something originally expressed in another. It has given me license to be as creative and self-expressive as possible in all forms of writing, translation included, and to be unafraid of letting my personality show in another\u2019s work (any claims to the contrary would be impossible for me to sustain). In the case of MR. TURTLE, my experience as a music critic helped tremendously, as Kitano writes so musically and is himself a musician and performer. I\u2019m not sure whether any of this would be obvious to the reader, though. Maybe it\u2019s all in my head.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RC:\u00a0 Which Japanese authors do you hope to translate in the future?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> The list is always growing, but right now I\u2019m most interested in translating SF authors. To wit: Ch\u014dhei Kambayashi, Y\u016bsuke Kishi, and Issui Ogawa. I also have a stash of books\u2014by such authors as Otsuichi, Megumu Sagisawa, S\u014d Kitamura, and Kengo Ishiguro\u2014that I\u2019ve already translated but which has yet to see the light of publishing. Not least of all, there\u2019s so much more to explore in Kitano\u2019s universe, including his latest turtle-themed novel, KAM\u00c9LIE, which I hope to melt down and recast in my own mold someday.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

RC: Are you working on any big projects at the moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

TG:<\/strong> I am, but the need for secrecy compels me to stay tight-lipped for now. Stay tuned\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Thank you so much for doing this interview, Tyran!<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(read the Mr. Turtle <\/em>review here<\/a><\/span>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tyran Grillo is a translator, music critic, and scholar who is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Japanese Literature at Cornell University. His music-related musings can be found at ecmreviews.com.   Rachel Cordasco: When and why did you start translating Japanese fiction? Tyran Grillo: My best friend in high school was a boarding student from Tokyo.<\/p>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":836,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[38,132,142],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":842,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/842"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sfintranslation.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}